Class Scale

This page is courtesy of Ghelae's blog on Sporewiki.

Pre-Spacefaring
These classes are those that describe societies that lack spacefaring capabilities, from small tribes yet to discover fire, to global superpowers that run on nuclear energy and digital computers.

Class 1 - Archaic
Archaic civilisations have little to no technology (typically no more than fire, agriculture, woodworking, and basic metallurgy), and are usually very small. Archaic stages of development may persist indefinitely, but are typically on the order of tens of thousands to a million years for most species as a whole.

Examples:


 * On Earth: All non-human tool-using animals, prehistoric human civilisations, and many human tribes (especially uncontacted ones) even into the 21st century.
 * In the Second Gigaquadrant:

Class 2 - Classical
Classical civilisations are larger and more advanced than their archaic predecessors, but without the much larger scales that dominate industrial societies. The period of time that a civilisation is in a Classical stage depends mainly on cultural factors; for example, societies with a large degree of slavery are unlikely to develop the industrial techniques that lead to further advancement, due to the initial costs outweighing the negligible benfits compared to the use of slaves.

Examples:

On Earth: Most ancient and medieval civilisations.

Class 3 - Industrial
Industrial civilisations are characterised by large-scale technology such as mass production and automation, aided by new means of power supply such as steam power and electricity, eventually including the development of the first technologies that allow for space travel, from aerospace engineering to quantum computing. This occurs side-by-side with new scientific discoveries, with the Theory of Everything potentially being formulated as early as the end of this stage after the discovery of high-energy physics, although it may turn out to be incomplete and have to be added to with the discovery of new physics in later stages.

Examples:


 * On Earth: This stage started in the 18th century, and most of the world has been industrial since the early 20th century. The most economically developed countries at the beginning of the 21st century are at the top of Class 3.
 * In the Second Gigaquadrant:

Early Spacefaring
Early spacefaring civilisations have expanded beyond their homeworld, but are still at a perilous stage - a single gamma ray burst in a particular location could cause their downfall, for example.

Class 4 - Interplanetary
Interplanetary civilisations exist across more than one planet of their home star system, and possibly in nearby star systems too. They are unlikely to have FTL travel, at least at the start. However, they are likely to have mastered much in the way of low-energy technology, with their main limitations being in power supply, therefore their high-energy technologies will be weak compared to that of more advanced empires, with several areas of high-energy physics only existing in theory, and for short moments inside particle accelerators. Other technologies, such as the use of degenerate matter, are probably nonexistent. E xamples:


 * In Second Gigaquadrant:
 * In other sci-fi: Most humans in fiction set during the 21st and 22nd centuries.

Class 5 - Early Interstellar
Early interstellar civilisations have several systems to their name, and relatively rapid interstellar travel. Low-energy technology may be improved close to the point of mastery, especially with the development of nanotechnological engineering techniques that allow for easy synthesis of a variety of materials and chemicals, while concurrent improvements in power sources such as nuclear fusion are likely to aid the high-energy technologies. This may in turn open up high-mass technology with the creation of microscopic black holes in particle colliders. In sci-fi (and similar speculative fiction) universes where technologies relating to faster-than-light travel are possible and relatively easy to acquire, this is usually the latest stage where those technologies first appear. Depending on the nature of the physics involved, it can happen at any time up to Class 6.

Examples:


 * In second Gigaquadrant: True Yaman Empire
 * In Other sci-fi: Most spacefaring civilisations seem to be predominantly at this level of technological development, but with some more advanced technology and often larger territories, which is generally a result of easy FTL travel in such universes.

Class 6 - Stellar Husbandry
The beginning of stellar husbandry sees some of the earliest megastructures, such as dyson swarms to harvest large portions of a star's energy. In a civilisation with such capabilities, there may be few other developments in the fields of low-energy technology to make, besides finding potential applications for more and more of the infinite variety of atomic combinations that can be made. Access to such large power sources as stars will instead be a boost to high-energy technologies, as well as high-mass technologies such as the production of black holes.

Examples:

Surprisingly few. Most spacefaring civilisations in sci-fi may be here, but only due to being an average of Class 5 (in tech) and Class 7 (in size), or due to simply having the several hundred colonies that Class 6 societies may be expected to have, not as a result of any of the star lifting that gives the class its alternate name.
 * In the Second Gigaquadrant:
 * In Sci-fi:

Established Spacefaring
By this point, the differences between classes become huge, and is more of a logarithmic scale of development than a linear one. Established spacefaring civilisations can last for eternity, unless destruction is brought to them by the hands of equal or greater powers.

Class 7 - Late Interstellar
Late interstellar civilisations control anything from a few hundred systems to a noticable fraction of stars in a (typical life-bearing, not dwarf) galaxy - note, however, that size in and of itself is not enough for a society to be considered as having Class 7 features until the upper end of those values. Fully-developed stellar husbandry, including the use of degenerate stars such as neutron stars and black holes, results in access to huge energy and material supplies as to make the production of megastructures from space habitats to superdreadnoughts easier, particularly towards the upper end of this stage. Examples:


 * In Second Gigaquadrant:
 * In other sci-fi: Terragen Sphere in Orion's Arm; most societies more advanced than the Federation in Star Trek, e.g. Borg Collective.

Class 8 - Galactic
Galactic civilisations are those whose extent covers most to all of a typical galaxy, and therefore have at least several thousand systems, but may potentially have billions. Astroengineering is simple, high-energy technologies trivial, and high-mass technologies, such as the production of black holes at will, enable noticable spacetime engineering to take place. Examples:


 * In Second Gigaquadrant:
 * In sci-fi: Nearly all precursor races not in Class 9; galactic civilisation (particularly Galactic Empire and onwards) in Star Wars.

Class 9 - Intergalactic
A civilisation covering several galaxies is likely to have technology at the limits of comprehension for a 21st century human. Some technology may even go beyond such understanding. Examples:


 * In The Second Gigaquadrant: The Grox Meta-Empire, Union of Mecholife
 * In other sci-fi: Most precursor races; the Culture from the Culture series; Time Lords and the Dalek Empire from Doctor Who.

Class 10+ - Universal
Universal civilisations are the "godraces". Their technology at the very least appears to defy the understanding of less advanced civilisations, aided by sentience quotients of +23 and higher, up to the quantum limit of +50. In sci-fi universes with a tendency to hardness, godrace technology can include outright control over the laws of physics, up to and including complete violations of them.

Examples:


 * In The Second Gigaquadrant:
 * In other sci-fi: Godlike races such as Xeelee from the Xeelee Sequence and Q Continuum from Star Trek.

Note
The two factors that affect a civilisation's placement in systems such as this one are size and technology. It may be useful to consider societies as having one class for each of the two factors.

For example, a civilisation could cover a significant proportion of a galaxy, thereby fitting into Class 7, but without having built so much as a single dyson sphere and only having expanded so much due to finding high-speed FTL technology developed by another race, and so would only be Class 5 in technology. A more extreme example of these would be "swarm" races, covering large portions of galaxies but with little to no advanced technology.

Conversely, an isolationist society may have only claimed a few star systems, and therefore be Class 5 or even 4 in size, but with technology equivalent to that of a galactic empire. There could also be "fallen" races, who once held large empires but lost most of their territories while keeping much of their technology.

The issue of developing technology in an order different to that which is expected also causes problems; it may be best to just "find the average" of the technology and use that.