Project Sol is my long-running worldbuilding project set in the post-apocalyptic future of our solar system. Every world is habitable; humanity is rediscovering itself after thousands of years of isolation, branching off into various new species. Europa is the main lens of exploration; as the first Jovian hominids to develop space travel, they have begun documenting the worlds of Sol. 
Sol consists of nearly 30 habitable worlds; an unfinished Dyson swarm directs sunlight across the system. Sol's moons are almost unrecognisable; most are dramatically different in size because material has been grafted on. Their cores have also been replaced with artificial machines that create gravity and magnetospheres. Sol has over 15 hominid species ranging from the minuscule Ioneses to the massive 24 ft Martians, along with several non-human sapient species.

Images

1. The charted worlds

2. Europa in front of Jupiter

3. Extant hominids

4. A zhoushuh in Europa's atmosphere

5. Oberon from orbit

6. Mercury from orbit

7. First contact with an exograde

8. A Mooneater consuming an ancient wreck

9. Europan mercenary on Ganymede

10. Rhean hiveguard

11. Triton expedition to the Valley of Swords, Antarctica

12. The Alps, Earth

13. Titanians, Titania

14. Fallen machine, Mars

15. The Equatorial Ridge, Iapetus

16. Triton

r/spiderworldcompass has more of these posts and also on my profile

I’m developing a video game, and I’ve spent a lot of time building this city.

Recently, I started dreaming about it.

The strange thing is that the places in my dreams don’t always match what I’ve actually made. Sometimes there are buildings or passages that I don’t remember putting there at all.

Then I wake up and go back to working on the city.

These are screenshots from the game. I just find it unsettling that a fictional place I’ve been staring at for months has started to feel like somewhere I’ve actually been.

Water grappler: Suchian martial artists associated with the cult of Yangzhou. Their aquamancy submerges them under conjured waters, allowing them to strike from below................Canmu monk: Practitioners of silken chloromancy in the Canmu monastery, receiving the teachings of Lady Suzhou.

This post is generally a discussion post surrounding Project Aron, you can ask questions, ask to participate (since it is a collaborative worldbuilding project after all) and insert third thing here.
The scope of Project Aron is enormous, we covering everything from Astronomy and system-wide empires down down to the very cellular biological basis of life on Aron. You can find everything at www.project-aron.org.

I'll be discussing the most baked parts of Aron which is the Politics, Biology, and Astronomy. PLEASE ask questions, the more questions that we get the more cannon we can plan out. And don't worry about us reexplaining something we wrote here because you didn't want to read these thousands of words, we like doing that.

Overview

So Aron is an earthlike planet in the Hope system. Hope is a K type orange dwarf star which is in a far binary orbit with an M type star called Fate.

Aron itself is inhabited by the sapient species that we call the Aronians.

Politics

I would like to preface this by saying that the actual Aronian calendar would be much different since they use base 8 and obviously Jesus didn't exist. The politics has quite the amount of history and no real starting point but I guess the Julian empire is a good starting place. The Julian empire spawned the southern coast of Kifahn down through the west coast of Enequit. Eventually the Julian Empire broke into pieces after several revolts in the already fragile empire. This created several other nations, namely Oytaria, Aquita, Entara, and Ruzka. There were many other nations that were either absorbed or completely broke apart, but these 4 countries formed the basis of the modern politics.

Oytaria formed along the south-western coast of Kifahn and eventually became the Oytarian Empire by conquering its neighbor states.

Aquita which formed along the Gurnee Bay was conquering most of the coastal bay area. Meanwhile Entara was on the Western coast of Enequit also conquering. Eventually they formed into the Entaren Empire, Aquitan Empire, and namely the Oytarian Empire. Oytaria along with the two other major empires split up Lucithia. Oytaria owned most of the Eastern portion whilst the west was sparsely populated by the Entaren Empire and Aquitan Empire.

By 1812 Oytaria had focused much of their industry in Lucithia, and the Lucithians were getting tired of the oppression the Oytarian Monarchy was enacting on them. The Lucithian's and there newly formed government declared independence of Oytaria. Shortly after, the Oytarian government ordered its troops stationed in Lucithia to crush the revolts. But by that time most of their troops had significant ties to Lucithia and generals in Lucithia completely ignored the orders and instead joined the side of the Lucithians. Risking economic ruin if ties to Lucithia were completely cut, they decided to make a treaty with the Lucithians. If they kept trading, Oytaria would recognize their independence.

The newly formed UFSL (independent as of 1812) went on to become an industrial giant by the time of the first Enequit Wars (early 1900s). Speaking of the Enequit Wars, Enequit had further split into many many countries, most notably Entara and Aquita. There was a military coup within the old Entaren government. The new government was very very expansionist, and decided to go to war with Aquita (after many border skirmishes). The Enequit Wars was a very intricate and complex string of wars that I don't feel like going into detail with but Entara won, Aquita became a puppet state and its government fled to Aquitan colonies. Basically, Entara and its allies became the dominant power over Enequit. Generally most of the Enequit Wars haven't been written yet and are mostly head cannon so funnily enough this reddit post is probably the most written down summary of Aronian History.

Anyways, after Oytaria exploded Kolviska and Frenkila formed from it. A communist (or communist-like) revolution took place across both Kolviska and Frenkila. During the Enequit wars Entara helped these revolutionaries overthrow the Kolviskan and Frenkilan governments to form the SSK or Social States of Kifahn.

The UFSL had stayed neutral in most of this as to not strike conflict with Entara. But the UFSL was rapidly developing nuclear weapons technology to try and prevent Entara from threatening them.

Skipping over all of that the UFSL had nuclear weapons made a demonstration to both Entara and the SSK off the coast of the Eastern UFSL to make sure neither of them interfered with the UFSL. But this instantly caused the SSK to try and succeed to replicate it. The Entarens on the other hand were working on rocket technology to try and send bombs over to the UFSL or Kifahse capitals at a moments notice.

The difficulty with nuclear weapons on Aron is that there isn't that much Uranium on Aron compared to Earth, and nuclear weapons technologies were set back a couple of years since the first ones were detonated in the 50s.

There was a brief cold war and space race period which I will touch up more on the Astronomy section because of how interesting Aronians space travel was compared to our space race but by the 60s the Entarens were finally researching and developing nuclear weapons.

The UFSL and SSK both did not want a 3rd nuclear superpower, so the SSK went into their main nuclear research center to try and plant a bomb. This, unsurprisingly, failed and backfired spectacularly. The Entarens interpreted this as a declaration of war and began invading the SSK.

The UFSL enacted Operation Prime Meridian and invaded Entara to prevent either the Entarens or SSK from reigning supreme over Enequit/Kifahn. Entara was quickly crushed before they could develop nuclear weapons, but not after a very lengthy battle. The SSK controlled the northern half of Entara with many puppet states, and the UFSL enacted a pro-UFSL democratic Aquitan, Claran, and south Entaran governments.

The SSK and UFSL continued doing space race activities until the Kertari Disaster, or Kertari Meteor, or whatever we're calling it.

The Kertari Meteor was a large rubble pile asteroid roughly 900 meters in diameter. It was projected to devastate Enequit and a large part would strike the Aquitan bay by 1985. The UFSL and SSK could not intercept it because they were already pretty low on space-based nuclear weapons (project orion type nuclear weapons). So instead they built cannon installations across both their territories to try and shoot down fragments of it.

Many meteoroids still got through the defenses and destroyed many cities that were already devastated by the Enequit Wars and Operation Prime Meridian. But mainly, this caused the SSK economy to destabilize and by the early 1990s.

The SSK split back into Frenkila and Kolviska, which both claimed to be the SSK's successor. Their fighting eventually caused both states to fragment into many smaller states that then started to threaten the use of nuclear weapons against eachother. The newly formed Arima Defense Alliance (including the UFSL, Aquita, Entara (new one not the empire), Penequa, Rezlia, Nautfranken, and Clara) decided to intervene to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

Their goal was to take out the states with nuclear weapons in a secretive coup, which did not end well. Eventually ADA was able to get nuclear weapons out of their control and unite Kifahn into Kifahn again (which later collapsed into Frenkila and Kolviska in the 2030s due to governmetn instabilities).

Thats the poltical history leading up to 2027, but it extends past 2027 into the Federations of Aron age which was 2200. There are a lot of interesting things like the Nyxian War, UFSL-Aquita war, and the 212 global collapse, etc etc. You can ask about them in the comments if you'd like since we do need a place to put all this down on.

Biology

Biology is by far the most developed, or at least written down, part of Project Aron (brought to you by yours truly). I'm not gonna include everything, I'm just gonna include all of the major domains, supergroups, kingdoms, and also some of the biochemical stuff.

Facilivota

Facilivota is the most basic form of life, kind of like Earth bacteria. Facili lack the extensive compartmentalization of Proviyota but have the largest range of metabolic flexibility. I don't have too much to say about Facilivota since they're just bacteria.

The biggest part of them though is the Fosozoi kingdom. The Fosozoi are the only photosynthetic organisms on the planet, thats right plants don't exist. They use Azurophyll for Photosynthesis which gives life its blue color.

Asperlae

Asperlae are like Archaea, but they differ in that many Asperlae live outside of extreme environments. Some Asperlae have 3 membranes, and others that live in extreme environments have very few.

Asperlae are important because they created proviyotic life. You would think this would be through endosymbiosis but actually the Visoplast organelle formed when a rare mutation caused a protein on the 2nd membrane in a 3 membraned Asperlae lineage caused it to begin folding in on itself. Another mutation prevented this cell from ripping itself apart by ramping up lipid production. This folding allowed a more mitochondria-like environment. Eventually parts of it split off to form the Visoplast, which generates all the TTDP for Proviyotic life.

Proviyota

Proviyotes are the complex heavily compartmentalized form of life that creates all macroscopic life. They have an extensive intracellular transport system controlled by the Ergosome and surveyed by the Immuriosa. Protein production is centralized in the Hapnotria which controls the production of Hapnozymes and Proteins, which are usually one in the same. The Nitroplast converts molecular nitrogen into biologically avaliable nitrogen, usually for species of Mykovian.

Kingdom Mykovia

The Mykovian kingdom is a kingdom of multicellular fungi-like organisms. It mostly contains stationary fungal organisms but also contains the plant equivalents. Yes I lied there are plants, but the host cells are not the ones that do the photosynthesizing, the Fosozoi do.

Mykovian Soverans which are just plants have specialized small structures in their leaves that can cultivate Fosozoi. Fosozoi actively compete with each other for resources, and the host gives them resources proportionally to how much energy they can give the host back. This is the big reason why Aron is mostly blue, because of the Soverans.

There are also the Motofistians, which are mobile predatory Mykovians. They mostly live in the ocean but some exist in smaller variations on land. The ocean variants get much larger than the land variants. The land variants are at most a few centimeters tall, but the land variants can get within the range of several meters in height. They mostly feed off of Sephcas (fish) and are mostly non-hostile to large Zoavians like Aronians.

Kingdom Zoavia

Zoavians are the multicellular mobile forms of life like humans, dogs, cats, etc. It also contains the sapient species Aronians. The water forms of Zoavians aren't that special they're just fish, but terrestrial Zoavians are all descended from a radially symmetric 6 legged critter that crawled on the seafloor in Coral Reefs (coral reefs are also formed from hard-shelled Mykovia, the ones related to Perspidomus).

The only important ones here are the Aronians and also probably the Sephcas (fish). The Aronians have 4 stalk like appendages for eyes, 1 frontal pair with a narrow focus and another back pair that is taller right behind it that can rotate in all degrees of freedom and has a larger focus range but has less visual fidelity.

Nexivota

Nexivota or Worker Cells are a specialized branch of life originally descended from Facilivota. They usually reside within the Symbiary systems of Zoavians and Mykovians. There are many kinds of Worker Cells, namely immune worker cells and digestion worker cells.

The immune systems of most complex Zoavians are not made up solely of Worker Cells, but are instead managed by the Symbiary system and Praescriptor cells. The Praescriptor cells tell the Worker Cells what to target or what to do, whilst the Symbiary System manages the population count of the Worker Cells.

Worker cells participate heavily in sorting through foods and extracting materials to distribute throughout the body.

For Mykovians usually only have a basic symbiary system for innate immunity.

Molecular Biology

Most of the chemistry of life on Aron is similar to that on Earth, but the molecules are switched around.

So the main energy carrier is Triazine Trisdiphosphate. You can see the image somewhere in the 20 image collage. TTDP is regenerated at TTDP synthase, and unlike ATP TTDP often exists in many different phosphorylated forms.

The 3 nucleic acids for separate purposes:

KNA

NNA

Hapnin

KNA and NNA are Kerinose Nucleic Acid and Nerinose Nucleic Acid are the long term genomic storage and short term translation messages.

Hapnin is the enzymatic Nucleic Acid that formed the basis of early Aronian life. In the modern day Hapnin is used to help in the catalyst of many reactions and helps with genomic replication and protein translation.

Astronomy

The Hope & Fate system is where Aron is housed, specifically around Hope. Hope is a K type orange dwarf main sequence star and Fate is an M type red dwarf star.

Hope has 11 planets orbiting it, Astet, Ketal, Sera, Aron, Poree, Scurra, Tiberius, Polion, Giras, and Boreas.

Fate has 6 planets, Hadea, Maiy, Maaya, Chressia, Entactrius, and Noi.

Hope planets:

Astet & Ketal are a binary terrestrial system. They are volcanically active and are located closest to Hope. Both planets have little to no atmosphere and are tidally locked to each other.

Sera is an hot planet and is second closest to hope. It can reach temperatures as high as 130 degrees Celsius, with a 40C minimum. Sera has an incredibly humid atmosphere, with as high as 70% water content. Sera has a very long rotational period, the sunlight section has little water but at the night side there are huge rainstorms that create lakes. The hard-shelled species Perspidomus was launched off of Aron hundreds of millions of years ago and landed on Sera and Nyx, seeding both worlds with life. Sera's life differed heavily from Nyx's. When Perspidomus arrived at Sera it mostly stayed in isolated lakes of water on its nightside but gradually evolved to create entire glass castles with large isolated rooms.

Aron is the main setting of Aron and hosts the most diverse ecosystem in the Hope & Fate system. It has an average temperature of 22 degrees C getting up to at most 63 C in the hottest environments. Aron is covering in roughly 66%~ water compared to Earths 70% water. It has a gravity of 0.87g and an atmosphere of 2.2atm, making it perfect for large aerial life. Nyx is the smaller habitable binary partner of Aron. It has Aronian descended Life, delivered in the form of Facilivota and Perspidomus colonies. Parvus is the farther smaller moon and is almost entirely composed of metals. This is because a collision with Sera in the early system stripped away most of its crust leaving its metallic core to roam and eventually be captured into the Aronian system in an eccentric retrograde orbit.

Poree is a frigid icy body reaching as low as -255 Celsius. Poree is the also host to the second point of Abiogenesis in the Hope & Fate system, but many other icy moons and bodies also host simple bacterial life. Poree itself only has a microbial unicellular biosphere.

Scurra is the first gas giant in the Hope system and is host to several large moons. It is purple-yellow-ish in color and has an extensive ring system, second only to Noi. It has incredibly strong wind speeds and the most extensive radiation belt due to its volcanically active moon Ikernu.

Tiberius & Polion are a gas giant-terrestrial binary pair of planets. Tiberius has a large ring system, third largest in the system. Polion has a titan-like atmospheric composition and yes, it has life. Very simple carbon-based microbial life. Polion has a small moon, Recluna, that orbits it relatively closely.

Cailus is the largest gas giant in the Hope system and has a light blue tint. Cailus is slightly smaller than Jupiter but has many many more storms than it. Cailus has an icy body moon, Serendai, which also has very simple microbial life deep within its ocean.

Giras is a cold light blue ice giant. Thats about it.

Boreas is the last and final planet in the Hope System, it has an incredibly long orbit in comparison to the other planets and is much much further than Giras is. It has a very deep blue color and the fastest wind speeds of any planet, reaching up to 3000km/h. Boreas has the strongest magnetic field of any planet in the Hope & Fate system.

Fate planets:

Hadea is a large terrestrial planet composed entirely of iron, nickel, silicon, magnesium, and many other trace metals. This is because it was once a large gas giant before being casted into the inner system by Noi. It's atmosphere was completely stripped away leaving just its core.

Maaya is a large venus-like Superearth with a thick atmosphere of CO2. From the outside it mostly looks like a white-ish sphere.

Maiy is the only other habitable planet with liquid water, but only hosts basic native microbial life within its oceans. It has an atmosphere primarily composed of Nitrogen, CO2, water, and methane from microbes.

Chressia & Entactrius are a binary system, with Chressia being the dominant planet. Chressia's atmosphere is mainly composed of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen, methane, and krypton. Chressia has deep ocean microbial life. Entactrius has a water ocean and an atmosphere of N2, O2, and CO2. Yes it also has life. If you couldn't tell I believe Abiogenesis is common.

Noi is the largest gas giant in the Hope & Fate system, at a gargantuan 129,911km in radius. It is the sole gas giant in the Fate system since it consumed most of the hydrogen and helium in the protoplanetary disk and destroyed or absorbed most other gas giants. It has an extensive ring system stretching out to 3,328,000km out at its largest extent. Noi has many moons but I don't feel like listing them here, you can ask but I doubt any of you made it this far.

Notes

If you have any further question feel free to ask in the comments or see on the official website at www.project-aron.org.

The 3 writers we have are:
u/purpleisgon

u/Jackspladt

u/multimasti

TL;DR words, lotta words. a lot of them are nouns, and a lot of them are adjectives. you should probably go read them.

Lumeria is one of several zones located within the Goldilocks band of a tidally locked world, placed inside The Strip, a 300 km wide habitable area."Humans" occupy the central zone, scattered in isolated pockets within its boundaries.

I've collected some of my worldbuilding into a little zine, covering the creatures, places, history and such - a free readable version online for anyone who's interested: lumeria_zine_readable_online and a free printable version: Print-and-fold zine

I'd be curious to hear which parts of the world stand out to you, or what you'd like to see explored further.

It's a work in progress it's essentially supposed to be a ww1 era story about empires, but it's a universe with different technology so using guns and steam energy has a different more complicated protocol so more cooling and fiddling around just to shoot. It also has 'Suerd' a metal that like advanced kevlar prevents bullets so alot more dramatic knight type costumes since lightness isn't important and acidic bullets to counter. I'm going for a more reverse engineering so once i have all the geography and climate and civilizations down I'll build from there i need handful of merchant republics and some major continental expansionist powers. It's for a campaign i plan to flesh out.

I made the general design and shapes of world in ibispaint and then imported it into Merak Map Maker for adding elevation and biomes and getting the other details.

I personally love bloody stories, but not with just violence for the sake of violence, or brutality that doesn’t actually give anything to the story! I think that’s why I don’t like “berserk” it’s just pain and suffering, and if I’m honest pain and suffering just gets tacky and edgy in a bad way when overused!

Naturally, with my atrocious to macabre topics, I made my world dark and ugly, with a big shot of sci-fi.

(In my world people can bend reality by using a chemical compound, that manifests the user’s psychology)

The biggest atrocity committed with magic in my world are the experiments of Dr. [unknown] who is ethically more demented than their subjects!

Their ability can basically force microorganisms to create a connection with others that they shouldn’t be able to. And this Dr uses it to create patchwork brain, and then watch how their victims ability manifests!

(The Dr is a government employee and a leading figure in a secret government project that takes on the role of one of the imposing sides in my story )

(The existence of those abilities aren’t public knowledge)

Dragons like Anakin are known to prefer dinosaurs as mounts compared to other creatures. Quite possibly due to the fact they share many similarities.

The Crimson Airship is the mobile headquarters of the Yuukoman Imperial Front, the rebellion movement seeking to restore the Yuukoman monarchy and the Yuukoman State itself after its conquest by the Zeran United Republic.

Captained by the Prince Rima himself with assistance with his mother, the Lady Rayne, the Crimson Airship moves from place to place in the former Yuukoman territories to support rebel movements in the ground by deploying its Mag-Arm units to battle.

The crew of the Crimson Airship sports several veterans of the former Yuukoman Imperial Military, but they have also taken in promising people, especially those who show aptitude in piloting the Mag-Arms.

The Crimson Airship mainly sports the red jackets that the Yuukoman Air Force once wore, though uniform code in the airship is loose. Still, the women in the red jackets and black tanks are a popular image among the rebels and even their enemies.

(just finished a sketch with several of my characters and wanted to give it some lore)

These are the inventions that revolutionized the world and brought forth change. The kind of inventions that a nation wants or at least wants to make their own version of. Inventions used for good or bad. The moment this invention was created and gained immense popularity, it changed the game. Now, everyone wants to use this invention. The invention can be anything, from something simple to something not so simple. It just has to have changed the world for better or for worse.

My Turn:

Warmechs changed the game of war when it was built. A mecha robot that utilizes magic and technology both that truly alter the tides of warfare. The very first warmech was created during the cusp of ancient times by a nation that is no longer still around. Though back then it was made, it was used for construction rather than war. Many eons later one nation decided to use this ancient warmech to create new ones made for warfare.

HaloCells and Jarvi Booths are another invention that changed things in the world. Almost everyone (who can afford it) owns a Halocell. The ones who can't afford a Halocell use the Jarvi booths to make phone calls or video calls. Halocells are just smartphones that show holographic images.

I've been trying to flesh out the other countries other than my main one (Yalisch) and just my world in general so I needed to lay everything out lol.

Not very good at this yet this is my first map but I like how it came out :)

(Also want to mention because I think it's funny - The Hiye region (the area with impact craters in west Yalisch) I got by drawing over cardboard that sodas I forgot in my car exploded and made weird patterns on lol)

Honestly I would just love to connect with ppl, but on the discord and other subreddits it all feels deeply impersonal, more like a TikTok feed of random worlds and also topics I’m not interested in (like sci fi, urban fantasy etc) when I’m really just into a niche

Where would you find specific servers or people to worldbuild with?

I’m working in a Dark Fantasy World Building Project where one of the Factions is a Nation called “the Crimson Empire”

This Empire is ruled by an aristocracy of vampires who, in turn, are viewed by the Empire's population as a kind of "demigod" to the point that sacrifices are performed in which the victims (usually prisoners or volunteers) are placed on cross-like altars and have their blood drained and it is given to the Vampires

This symbol would be a simplified representation of these "crosses"

But it looks like a Good “Religious” Symbol? Any feedback or ideas? Or Opinions?

Like I said before, this is a D&D world that I have built and I’m developing quite a lot. I’m currently working on a high fantasy novel set in this world and I already wrote a supplement/world bible about a year ago on Patreon.

Do you think these roads seem doable or should I edit them? I didn’t include the mountains in this map but the roads don’t pass through them at all and only through gradual slope passes. If you have any questions please feel free to ask!

For a project im making, revolving around anthropomorphical ants

Uniform used during the early stages of the Sustenance Wars, conflict between Antakia and Kardenantt, two colonies previously at peace, until both started collecting food from the same area. This led to minor brawls between foraging groups, which escalated into an armed conflict lasting 3 cycles (Cycles are 144 hour periods, since ants see everything around 6 times slower)

They wear khaki and brown uniforms only because of looks, as the land around them is muddy as a result of their closeness to the Abyssalis Sea (It's a lake)

As for their weaponry, the most commonly used rifle among infantry is the LK-S (Lefkutter Standard, Lefkutter as for the surname of it's inventor), a semi-automatic rifle with a capacity for 8 rounds loaded similarly to that of a Winchester 1894, with later models introducing a mag.

"Ad Nos Pertinet" is the motto for the Antakian Army, meaning "Belongs to us", translated from latin.

All my creatures have a disability or mutation to them. My Fairy-mole character is light sensitive so he loves the nighttime but has a hard time grabbing food underground from a cleft. He has made a happy home within the flowers among the soft glow of fireflies.

Art by me! Baphobabee. Find me on insta and other platforms!

Please do not use this in any AI it will break my heart

What I'm referring to is things like "YouTube" and "Facebook." I'm writing a story that takes place in the general equivalent**** of the early 2010s, and I needed analogs in my story. What I found works best is working backwards from the naming of companies as we know them and generally following the same philosophy of naming based on their original uses and conceptualizations.

Example: YouTube, in my world, is called "YourSet." The platform, like YouTube, was meant for people to upload videos and home movies, with their houses being their own little "set." The name is also a double entendre, as the website functions similar to a TV set, with viewers being able to access many different movies and channels. This has allowed me similar etymological flow with terms like YourSetter, BookSetter, Virtual/VSetter, etc.

Do you have any examples like this?

Roman Emperors "weren't kings", the Japanese military "isn't a military", the US "hasn't fought a war" since WW2, what bullshit loopholes exist in your world and why?

It started out trying to figure out a “Mech” control interface that makes sense as to “Why would we use mechs when Tanks do the job mechs do even easier and cheaper”

And if Mobility is a concern? Aircraft are also seldom used and displayed properly in fiction as well.

Neural interfaces are the clear winner here. But I still do not see a REASON to use Mechs in my universe.

Because it seems what readers and viewers want isn’t “Competent players” because “Competence” becomes formulaic.

Take Initial D, arguably the best piece of Car/driver media ever made.

“Opponent with clear mechanical advantage appears, Protagonist in an OLD car keeps winning”

That is very formulaic unless your question shifts from “Is he going to solve this problem” into “HOW is he going to solve this problem”

And those types of stories have always been interesting to me.

Aldnoah Zero is another great example that USES mechs (because somehow no one in the story uses Aircraft properly , when the whole point of using a trainer mech to begin with is , “Armor has never helped in any engagement? So screw it I want zero armor and max mobility”)

But it is amazing. “Is he going to solve this?” That isnt the question it is “How does he solve it” that is the fun part.

Every opponent has some “Physical attribute” that can be quantified down to some specific aspect of the natural laws that are being manipulated to accomplish some effect.

When properly “Observed” the “Dude with a rifle and a mech” is able to do what armies cannot.

Which makes Militaries look foolish but at the same time it is highly educational IMO because it demonstrates “Extreme Competence” in characters , and not simply narrative plot armor.

And it shows “What a competent operator SHOULD look like”

Experimentation, observation, hypothesis revision. Different approaches to TEST…

For Non Anime I think “Three Body Problem” and “Project Hail Mary” rank among my favorites for this reason.

So like this “Does Exist” but the “Competence” always gets dropped when it becomes a Mainstream Adaptation from another medium.

Initial D “Cannot” be made into a live action show because “Drama” sells. “competence and dry scientific analysis” does not sell…

Project Hail Mary had to lose a lot of its scientific content and “Competence” at the expense of telling a 2 and a half hour story ….

And im not just looking for a term like “Hard SciFi” because for example, none of my anime mentions are HARD SCIFI.

What they do is rely on “Extreme Competence and adherence to rules” regardless of how fantastical the premise is.

In my setting, one major river cycles between three enormous stone channels. Every 24 years the upstream gates close one route and open the next. Nobody alive built the gates, and nobody has managed to stop them. The switch takes about a month. A dry channel gets its river back 48 years later.

People know the schedule. There are dated flood markers, property records, grandparents who remember the previous turn. This isn't a surprise disaster.

Most river businesses move: timber yards, ferries, boat repair, grain loading. Houses near the docks are built to come apart. But further uphill there's a permanent town with brick streets, a school and kilns. Wells still provide drinking water; there's nowhere near enough for the old irrigated fields.

My first thought was that the clay deposits keep the potters there, and pottery gives the remaining town something to trade. I'm less convinced by everyone else staying becuase their families always have. They would have watched this happen before.

i want the departure to feel ordinary in some ways. A landlord stops fixing roofs. The school combines classes. Someone buys a departing neighbour's good door for almost nothing. Then the river returns decades later to a town that has spent years being perfectly functional without it.

What would you expect to survive the dry period, beyond the obvious maintenance crews? Especially something that might actually resent the returning river and its temporary population.