Here' s the map to terraformed Mars without the legend proper to the game [url]http://www.scificincinnati.com/images/blue_mars_map.jpg[/url] and in color: [img]http://www.xs4all.nl/~fwb/rgb1440.jpg[/img] the map is based from Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy's locations (and shown as exemple) I'm of a mind ot use them in my EP games

Sepherim wrote:

I don't think Mar's terraforming efforts have advanced that much. IIRC, only thing they've been having important successes yet is in some minor zones and, specially, the creation of a more solid atmosphere. No?

Yeah. For the most part, Mars is still an arid desert wasteland. Terraforming has only really taken hold in the atmosphere and Valles Marineris, where 75% of the Martian population lives.

It'd be really nice if there were something akin to a "Sci-fi Writer's Primer to Mars". Like the rest of you I'm pretty fascinated with Mars as a sci-fi setting general, but I just don't have the planetary knowledge chops to be representing in games and fiction in a realistic manner.

Maps: there is a Google maps for Mars, http://www.google.com/mars/ but it doesn't show the names of all locations. http://planetologia.elte.hu/terkep/mars-mola-en.pdf is pretty good. My own favourite is this one: http://astro-natweb.wr.usgs.gov/Gallery/MapsAndGlobes/mars.html#MarsMOLA... and I have also used this elevation map for making my own terraformed Mars: http://www.oera.net/How2/PlanetTexs/MarsElevation_2500x1250.jpg http://www.solarviews.com/browse/mgs/mgstopo6.jpg shows the depth of Marineris, likely demonstrating where the bodies of water will be. Apropos the state of the planet: The lowest point on Mars is the Hellas Basin. If any air is getting dense or water accumulating, it would be here. So far I have not seen any references to it, which is a bit surprising. On the other hand, it is smack in the middle of the southern uplands which means that it will have long cold winters and hot dry summers - Marineris is going to be much more temperate. My guess is that in EP people use supergreenhouse gases to increase temperature and get some of the frozen water into liquid form. This can perhaps be done a bit locally in Marineris, further improving the temperature in this natural greenhouse. Terraforming Mars would involve the problem of getting a continuous hydrological cycle. The northern hemisphere is lower than the southern, and would tend to get most of the water. However, during winter water may accumulate as glaciers in the upland craters, getting locked in. The solution is to dig canals to get the water flowing out again (including restarting Uzboi Vallis, and maybe add a supercanal from Hellas to Isidis).

well, you don't have to tell exactly how cheap it is, do you? and it's not like they've got much of a choice, anyway: Earth's in ruin, and here they got the jewel of Sol, or at the very least a morph and a job. (I know, I sound like a Hypercorps representant. Should I change my name to Parker Selfridge? :p) more seriously, this protocol wouldn't ruin whichever organization is paying for it, you spread nano and let the nature do her job in accelerated. you could also drop ice from orbit too, on the pole caps it densify the atmosphere and saturate the atmosphere with vaporized oxygen and hydrogen, defacto creating greenhouse effect you could also dig tunnels to the center and adds a ferous mineral from asteroids to the core as a coating of sort, or use hypraconductor ring down under, to give Mars an artificial magnetic field Said magnetic field would need to be maintained (cost needy) but would do two things; it'd shield Mars from cosmic rays and keeps the atmosphere closer about the map, which has the EP related adding? I'd love to see where are the dangerous zones, or where the destroyed habitat is, and the Pandora's Gate

At least they won't have to deal with Earth's recentment and colonialist memes anymore. it appears in all Mars centric sci-fi media. Total Recall, RGB Mars trilogy, Zone of the Enders, Babylon 5 Instead, there's anoter problem: eco-terrorism. what length would Reds (those against Terraforming of Mars) go to stop the process from happening? the things going wrong could be the doing of these terrorist cells. (that alone could work as storyhook for EP game sessions, and shows another existential threat for your sentinels to work against) the anime mentioned above, Zone of the Enders (the Dolores, i series, I haven't seen the Idolo series yet), Mars is going through the early stage of Terraformation. There's water -albeit quite shallow in the boreal region, with algae producing oxygen at the bottom, harvested by riggs (the Links familly were rescued in one of these in the episode #13 "Die Hard") Honnestly, this anime is source of so many story hooks rezady to use (with some adjustment) on Terraformation, there is no real need to have a really high pressure or lots of oxygen in the air. all you need is to program the genome of the Morphs with genes from animals living perfectly with less O2 ratio. A solution akeen to it was used in Stanley's RGB Mars trilogy, since the second book (Green, if I'm not mistaken): the genetist used that gene in the longevity serum treatment

@quincy Why do you think the colonist memes wouldn't exist, I think that such memes and the new frontier memes have a perfet backdrop on Mars. For example I dont see the barsoomians as anti terraformers , I picture some of their followers as as ¨homestead¨ terrafomers that opposes a percieved growing corporate land grab and a conflict similar to the fencing of the wild west conflicts. http://www.eclipsephase.com/how-do-barsoomian-nomads-support-themselves Onwards to sabotage, evil hat Some {sabotage or resistance attacks would to switch seed tm brands to domestic brands, switching soil nutrient canisters to toxic ones instead. or vice versa. The discovery of the successful attack appearing on spring, a long time later. Both evil industry corporations and resisting ¨terrorist¨ homestead farmers, resulting to underhanded means. More about the setting. I think both western rpg adventures and victorian era call of cthullu ones, has excellent potential for EP deployment. Certainly after some cosmetic relabeling, instead of cultists or deformed villagers, its singularity seekers or exurgent infected habitat workers. Or the slave trade and slave plantages, its Wealthy¨plantage¨ corperations outfitting infomorph refugees morphs. the victims of their ¨hospitality¨ ending up as a indentured rusting syntmophs at a sweatshop plantage, in a ¨frontier town¨.

Mars is an interesting world. There are a lot of small quirks that make it exotic for us earthlings. Here are a few conclusions I have gained from my own extensive Mars-based campaigns in other games. The lower gravity makes waves in water slower and higher; when it is windy lakes will become strangely choppy. Lots of foam. The low gravity also makes convection weaker: fires will not strive upwards quite as strongly, chimneys have to be thicker and weather would tend (on a fully terraformed Mars) be rather ponderous (especially since the scale height of the atmosphere would be higher than on Earth: clouds and weather systems would be about 2.6 times higher). This in turn might make rain and especially hail heavier - but terraforming ijn EP is not there yet. Terminal velocity on Mars would be lower than on Earth if the atmosphere had equal density. However, outside the low regions like Marineris, the thin atmosphere actually makes parachutes less effective. But base-jumping from the Marinerian cliffs ought to be an amazing experience. Dawns and sunsets are going to be dramatic thanks to suspended dust in a high and now denser atmosphere. I expect that ice crystals produce complex optimal phenomena like halos, pillars or red light and spectral noctilucent clouds. The sun appears half as large (area-wise) on Mars as on Earth. The moons Phobos and Deimos move across the sky but does not give much light in the night. Phobos is so close that it orbits Mars three times in a Mars day, moving faster than the planet below it. This makes it rise in the west and set in the east, despite that it is moving in the same direction as Deimos. The passage from horizon to horizon takes approximately 5 ½ hours. The apparent size of Phobos is about a third of the apparent size of the Earth’s moon from the surface but it is darker and potatoshaped, producing a bumpy crescent about as bright as Venus. It is so close to Mars that it becomes invisible from the polar regions. Deimos orbits further away and more slowly, a small grey-white crescent that visibly shifts phase during the night. All the other orbital infrastructure is also noticeable in the night and sometimes even in the day. The beanstalk is visible from about a third of the surface, often quite conspicuous against the night sky when the top is in sunlight or sections of it are lit up artificially. It is visible from at least Noctis at the western horizon. I am unsure of whether it can be seen from Elysium. Low gravity has some effects on walking and running - it is hard to walk fast, so people either walk at a stately pace or run. One can do amazing parkour in martian gravity, and melee fighting requires a bit of finesse: if you jump into the air, it will take 2.6 times longer to get down than on Earth - a bad thing, since that gives enemies time to hit you while you are unable to change trajectory. Erroll Flynn would certainly look great on Mars, but he would be dead. Real fighting on Mars requires having good traction at all times. The eons of wind erosion has sculpted many strange rock formations in the uplands. Everything from suspiciously regular patterns of deflation basins, desert pavement, yardangs (long streamlined ridges), sharpened stones (ventifacts) to finely polished cliffs exist, and new surprises are discovered every year. Sand dunes are of course common and a problem; Gengineered kudzu can help bind them, but after a serious dust storm they can break loose or new dunes appear where they are least wanted. There is a standard terminology for Martian landforms. They are today often used by Martians to refer to smaller features than they originally applied to; a Cavi might refer to a personal dug-out and Rupes to a cliff in a crater wall: Catena: A chain of craters or depressions, often connected by underground rivers or due to a multiple impact. Cavi: a steep sided depression. Chaos: A region of broken terrain. Often caused by the past collapse of the ground due to subsurface heating causing ice to melt and rush away in a flood. Chasma: A very large linear chasm. Colles: Small hill or knob. Dorsum (Dorsa): A ridge. Fluctus: Flow terrain; a region that has been shaped by past floods. Fossa: A straight linear depression, usually of tectonic origin. Karst: Rough sedimentary country with underground drainage. Katabothron: Underground water-channel Labes: Landslide. Labyrinthus: Intersecting valley complex. Mensae: A small plateau. Mons (Montes): A mountain Patera: A crater with irregular or scalloped edges. Planitia: A plain. Planum: A large plateau Rupes: A major cliff. Scopulus: An irregular, degraded escarpment. Sulci: A network of ridges and lines, usually due to ancient tectonic upheavals. Terra: A general region of the planet. Used today to refer to nations. Tholus: A small domed hill. Undae: Dunes Vallis (Valles): A valley. Vastitas: An extensive plain. Note that the Martian landscape is very dynamic right now. The increased temperature and denser atmosphere is destabilizing a lot of things: A water reservoir beneath the surface can become unstable and cause an aquifer to flood. Large regions can collapse nearly overnight as subsurface water makes its escape, producing landslides, ripping open new channels and flooding plains with mud and boulders. Sometimes the result is mud volcanoes, where heating in the deep cause pressure to build up until mud breaks through and causes floods. Avalanches and Landslides are pretty common. In Martian gravity snow can accumulate on steeper slopes than on Earth, enabling highly unstable buildup. The energy involved is somewhat less and the movement is slower, but the effect of being buried beneath tons of snow or rocks is quite deadly anyway. While there were some ancient clays around from the old wet periods, clay formation is currently racing as the new watery environment causes weathering and erosion. The new clay is often collected by streams into unpredictable banks and fills minor craters. This can produce the feared claytraps, deep holes filled with semisolid clay. During rainy periods or when a crater wall is broken a sudden mudflow can occur. Quicksand is fairly common in water-rich regions: old dust deposits with rounded grains on top of aquifers often become saturated with water and will soften enormously if disturbed. Martian quicksand and mudtraps are less directly risky than terrestrial quicksand since the lower gravity makes sinking slower, but this adds another treacherous quality. It is possible to actually walk over some quicksand deposits before they liquefy, and some people have found that sleds or other equipment that they have placed somewhere during the night have sunk deep into the sand. While hardly as dramatic as the pre-terraforming storms that could cover the entire planet, the dryness and temperature extremes of the southern uplands can breed dangerous storms. While mainly a local hazard in the deserts, they sometime roar over Argyre, Hellas or even into the equatorial areas. There is no place on the planet where fine, red desert dust will not powder rooftops from time to time. Even a light wind can make fine dust or snow to form drifts in the light gravity. It is not uncommon to have snowdrifts and sanddrifts even in good weather. Snow is not as firmly packed on Mars as on Earth, and often stays powdery and loose. Great for skiing (although going downhill is more slow than on Earth), but getting through thick snow is hard.

Let me add my own thanks! Arenamontanus' descriptions of Mar's moons alone was worth it! I wish every sci-fi rpg included a first person common man perspective of his surroundings.

Or they could have just stuck a great big rocket engine on the moon and shifted it into an orbit where it won't hit the elevator.

Didn't Kim Stanley Robinson do the same in his Mars trilogy (and it got subsequently blown up)?

I am also a fan of Aremntanous ¨essays¨, good work there. Im a bit more cynical in my worlds,so I dont favor mega engineering in hard scifi, (though I am a fan of them). Thus I picture most engineering projects modest (even in a EP campaign), cost innefective & buroucratic burduned. Short term solutions and ¨fixes¨prefered over long term ones. Even with Micromachine technology, material printing & santa machines, red tape, proven technology and pessimistic pragmatism will hinder the pioneering or grander scale projects (despite them technically achivable). Instead of melting the Polar ice caps in a direct grandiose way,they are melted slowly, with diffrent competetive methods. For example most of them have been dyed back or blanketed with black material (that also had advertisment on them). Come t think of it, that look pretty costly to for auditors. Perhaps its done ¨jonny appleseed style¨, done by ¨nomadic¨ homestead terraform collonists. Also like the brief description information notes that, Eclipse Phase refere to the transformation period of a infected cell, My impression of this is that transhuman society is this eclipsing cell & exurgant the virus transforming it. I keep this theme regarding the transformation of mars, Its not yet achived, so most changes are almost unoticed. potentially springing up at any moment, players traveling through the same area at a later date find it altered & diffrent -though still not fully transformed.Alterations only apparent when compared to earlier versions. The maps & weatherdata from a mars year ago, innacurate.

Perhaps in the year 10 AF, with bourgeoning terraforming, you wont have the same view from Mars, but I find this image quite awesome nonetheless. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/4542423536/in/set-72157623906890222/

Four (although two of them aren't exactly domed). If you want to write more into your campaign, I suggest the Hellas & Argyre planitiae as good candidates for locating cities. They're both big, low lying basins that would see benefits from terraforming sooner than other regions.

You know, these posts make me think that a fun community project would be a large, fan-made Mars habitat in one of these suggested locations that we could communally develop and detail.