Infrastructures and megastructures in Sector A1-0 (A1-0)

An organically grown Bishop Ring with a central fusion-powered luminaire.Image from Steve Bowers on Orion's Arm.

Empires and civilizations within Sector A1-0 tend to all be quite different from one another: with different histories, cultures, species, technologies and ideologies, there often isn't much common ground between these star-spanning societies. However, there are always exceptions, and one of these is infrastructure. No matter their culture or tech level, all civilizations capable of exploring and conquering the stars need some considerable levels of infrastructure, whether it be to support their industries, produce new ships and weapons for their vast armies and fleets, provide additional living space for their citizens, run vast simulations and experiments to better understand the cosmos, or all of the above and far more.

The complexity, size and amount of infrastructure any civilization can build depends on three things: their technological capabilities, the amount of resources and energy at their disposal, and their industrial capacity. These three factors usually tend to grow together at the same time during a civilization's development, as advancing technologies allow for a more efficient and larger industrial apparatus, that then leads to a larger amount of available resources. However, this is not always the case: some civilizations may have vast industries and plenty of available resources, all utilizing relatively unadvanced technology, while others may have few available resources but be at the peak of their technological advancement. While these off-cases may happen in the vastness of the galaxy, most civilizations still tend to grow and develop these three factors in a relatively uniform and coordinated fashion.

Here are some important technical terms relating to infrastructure construction and megastructure design:

• Diamondoid: strong materials consisting exclusively of allotropes of carbon in regular crystalline, planar or tubular configurations. These materials are extensively used for building purposes, as they are strong under tension and under compression.
• Exotic Matter: any highly unusual form of matter, such as quarkonium, neutronium, magmatter, charmonium, pentaquarks, Q-balls and more.
• Computronium: any form of matter which supports computation. Computronium can be biological, artificial, and more.
• Mass Stream Technology / Active Support: using accelerated streams of projectiles or particles to transfer momentum and support a large structure.

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List of Infrastructure and Megastructures

Sub-Orbital Infrastructure

• Aerostatic Habitats
• Chandelier Cities
• Dome Habitats
• Fusion Candles
• Gravitationally Suspended Habitats
• Launch Railguns
• Space Elevators
• Weather Regulation Systems
• Worldhouses

Orbital Infrastructure

• Antimatter Collection Arrays
• Conversion Furnace Arrays
• Orbital Production Arrays
• Q-Ball Synthesizers

Megascale Infrastructure

• Bank's Orbitals
• Bernal Spheres
• BioGeoComputers
• Bishop Rings
• Diskworlds
• Dyson Spheres
• Dyson Swarms
• Dyson Trees
• Ederworlds
• Flatworlds
• Freespheres
• Gravity Balloons
• Hawking Radiators
• Hoopworlds
• Jupiter Brains
• Matryoshka Brains
• Matryoshka Rose
• Matryoshka Micronodes
• McKendree Cylinders
• Metric Forges
• Moon Brains
• Niven Clouds
• Nucleosynthetic Forges
• O'Neill Cylinders
• Orbital Rings
• Ribbonworlds
• Ringworlds
• Rungworlds
• Niven Clouds
• Stanford Tori
• Stellar Propulsion Systems
• Supramundane Plates & Shells
• Topopoli
• Worldrings