Quote:Just dont have it too close the closer to the sun the less water, as it evaporates. The farther away the more water, but its mostly ice due to temperature.
Drop it into the number two slot, moving 'desert' and 'homeworld' each out one place?
Quote:Probably the Earth has more rare earth metals and the other races had a far more difficult time making the computer parts. Low metal worlds (being lighter) are their normal habitat also metal rich planets would make mining that must harder, because of the productivity lose due to gravity. Even their tech wasnt really made for such gravitically demanding tolerances they can adapt, but it takes time.
In short, none of the other nations likely have enough data for more than one or two jumps away from their home systems.
You might also want to make it so once the Earthlings figured out what was required to open a jump point, they calculated the most likely sections of space to have them. Then build unmanned probes to go out and fire off just enough of a open the jump point signal to start a few seconds of reaction, but not enough open it. Basically, poking the system with sticks and looking for them to get annoyed theyre playing Can you here me now? with space.
Id imagine that a lot of unmanned probes got made testing what would work while reverse engineering the mining ship. This would be good practice for engineers so they could make space worthy ships that if the new tech explodes its expensive rather than lethal. Also, there is a system ship or space station thats bigger than the Terran jump ships flying shipyards. Once you can do that, making a moving miner/factor ship that you land random belt objects and mine them, then fly back to the main production center.
Incidentally, do you have populations for all the races? Unless India and China have had a major war, Earth is going to be around 7-7 billion. Minus whatever the bombardment took out. What kind of population level are we talking here?
Some examples of wars are: 1) Chinese turning all the rivers coming into India into muddy sewage issue, 2) India and Pakistan smacking each other around, 3) China trying to solve its issues with something like 4-1 male to female ration,, 4) China tries to invade Taiwan and the US honors its alliance. If a major war hasnt happened the Chinese are moving into inter planetary construction. You already mentioned Mars was a military training world.
Quote:Those absences lead to new compounds being used in biology. Also, its not only the Terrans that have to worry about poisoning. There are disorders that are caused by too much/too little iron, zinc, or copper in your system. A toxin is basically a chemical your body cant deal with. In a low iron system blood may be a different color as hemoglobin is what makes the blood red and its an iron issue. Yes, having a lack of certain metals in the system may mean Terran army rations/gear include metals you suck on to keep your levels up. This weird habit of needing metals for a not obvious use may would increase the Terrans having odds needs that make the other races see them as demanding. Not that the Terrans havent explained the point, but laymen have their own theories to grind in the rumor mill.
Most of the local stars seem to be older and poorer in metals than Sol, so absences would seem a more likely problem than new and interesting toxins...
Have you thought about making the reason hyperspace crystallized being a matter of the most recent precursors trying out a new faster/better/shinier hyperdrive that got stuck in transit and did the crystallization with feedback of the looped partial jump? The only way to turn it off was to be one the ship and it took that long for the power source to fail/run out of fuel? If the mangled ship is found you have a political argument over the salvage and itll be bleeding edge, experimental so it will have only limited results from sheer complexity and if anyone figures out what it did you can have a plot hook of stopping people from repeating the exxperiment. Or you can just have a distant starlane not be usable, because its mid-jump wreckage keeps having the ships crash into it.