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AndrewLyon

Prime Directive Questions

Now I was playing Civilization IV, deep into the end game, and I was avoiding certain techs so my wonders would keep working/giving me benefits when this little question me.

 

As we all know the Federation has a pretty strict rule when it comes to First Contact, you must achieve warp flight. The idea being if you achieve faster than light travel you are ready to work with the interstellar community.

We also know they like to study developing civilizations. A lot easier to say Hello if you know the guy wants a shoulder punch over a hand shake.


You have to wonder what does Civilization & the Prime Directive have to do with one another?

Let's take a budding civilization, and they do not achieve warp drive. As they develop technology, they take a side step, and do something different. They develop a new branch of technology the Federation has never even considered, would that lead to the old PD being loosen so the Federation could trade for it?  

Or what if they skip warp drive, and go straight to slip stream, or transwarp. Does the Prime Directive apply to these guys?

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Mr. Lyon,

Without familiarity of your present game, it seems logical that any civilization that achieves FTL drive in any means could override the Prime Directive, depending on the circumstances.  I would want to consider the targeted civilization in its entirety.  For instance: are they hostile, how did they acquire the technology for FTL and are they able to control it, and a few others that do not immediately come to mind.  Also, considering that the Prime Directive does not pertain only to primitive civilizations, but to all civilizations that use FTL means, I would want to tread lightly.

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I agree that any civilization that acquires FTL travel is usually fair game for contact. And usually Starfleet would want to get to them before someone else did. That being said the other idea of them sidestepping FTL travel, whether disinterest on their part of whatever, but discover advanced tech in other areas is an interesting question. We saw in Insurrection that Starfleet is not above and in fact very willing to relocate a population they believed to be primitive in order to take something they feel would be beneficial to themselves. So you can't rule out the possibility of Starfleet interfering with an advanced race despite their lack of FTL. I think the most obvious idea would be observance and espionage. Or maybe depending on HOW advanced they are, Starfleet would discuss amending the Prime Directive for such a circumstance.

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