That could be some fun research.
This can easily be read as 'Do not go beyond your Heliopause'. The only other boundary I can think of would be the sun's gravitational dominance, but that is much less defined. Barring contrary evidence, I'm going with the former.
That's not very precise. Taken literally, it's the stars' diameter. Or the heliopause. Or the Oort cloud, 'outer' boundary.
I imagine that it's precise enough for their purposes. No mucking about in deep space (ie, not in the star's orbit) or around another star.
That's only necessary (as far as I can see) if they have to justify their actions. And that sheds light on the bigger power structures - it'd mean the SL are more restricted than I assumed until now.
Counterpoint: that sort of justification only flies if the people that they're justifying themselves to either cannot challenge them, or are disinclined to bother.
Which need not imply an outside power. There may be a part of their own population that is intent on keeping their Tribute Fleets within rules e.g. civilians back home.
""Do not go beyond your star."" also includes magic. The means don't matter.
And yet it gets you from A to B faster than light.
Yes, but for now I think we're going to have to settle on "later". Possibly even much later; at the moment we haven't even come close to fully exploring the resources of our own solar system, let alone gotten to the point where we need to expand to others. The reason we want to do it now is so we have a way to survive if someone nova-bombs Sol, but that kind of logic pales when you consider that the act of moving beyond our star will draw a War Fleet to us who will do the very nova-bombing that we're trying to guard against.
Incubators don't lie. Shiplords may have similar hangups. Heck, at this point I'm not even convinced that the original race still exists and we aren't just fighting some rogue AIs.
Actually, teleporters may be permissible under the ShipLords' rules, provided that they don't use the First Secret. Similar to how they forbid the Second Secret, but not human enhancement/immortality, which meant we bypassed that via the Sixth Secret. For that matter, the Calypso's FTL is apparently a permissible exception, although I'm unsure if it's because we're using scavanged tech (and therefore aren't held accountable for it's existence) or if ShipLord FTL drives use a Secret other than the First.
I mean, a quarter-mile of rock is a lot, but it wouldn't be likely to work. Rock is great in compression, but doesn't have much tensile strength. Which is a problem if it's the outer layer of a rotating ring... and if it's not, then a quarter-mile of rock is a ridiculously heavy load for whatever is.
Erm, I actually don't think the First Secret is actually banned; only going beyond our star is banned. Using First Secret tech to bounce around within our own heliopause seems to be fine; if it weren't I suspect we'd already have a War Fleet on the way, given that @Snowfire has implied that everyone, from Shiplords down to lowly humans, have lagless sensors with good enough resolution that hiding without stealth tech is useless, and FTL usage can be detected from across the galaxy.
An engine like that is also a Death Star class solar laser. The Shiplords can't FTL closer than 2.5 AU. Combined with proper anti-stealth sensors, this project is spelled 'we win'. It is also massively beyond our current industrial base. The only improvement I can think of would be to make it FTL. But that would be cheating.So this wouldn't violate that rule right?
Because that would be a game changer. Just move the star. And power an insane defense grid and industrial power house.
They didn't say no interstellartravel, just don't leave the star. Such wonderful loopholes.
That would probably make them be a little more precise with the next race if we pull it off.
This should be our end goal.
