Apart from federation and imperium like, how could an interesting

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>>52931752
citizen stratocracy

>>52931752

Holy Roman Empire, Space China, Space Nigeria and ecologically focused "Gardeners."

The last one is, in essence, a human civilization that had learned the lessons of our great mistakes in caring for the Earth, and uses this collective memory of waste and wasteland to travel the cosmos, terraforming worlds into lush paradises before moving on.

>>52931837
That's what got us in trouble with the Qu in the first place!

http://www.stellariswiki.com/Government

>>52931859

That's what makes the concept so cool! You've got these people going Galactic Johnny Appleseed while quietly collecting genetic material to better engineer their genetically-modified supersoldiers, or make a better tasting chicken!

>>52931837
Gardeners actually sounds really cool.

Alternatively you could go the "humanity as assholes" route, but instead of the usual Imperium, make US the space pirates/barbarians faction. No homeworld, no central government, just looking and merc'ing.

Or go a more noblebright route, like federation but even more grand. Mix it with the gardeners or something.

Or middle ground, like the UNSC, where the government does a lot of fucked up shit, but the people in charge are decent folks in the end and its all for the sake of survival. Basically what the High Lords think they are.

>>52931752
Wandering mercenary race. In the Space Age splat for Warbirds, we're the warrior race who specialize in crazy-awesome space dogfighters (heavy-worlder privilege) and for the most part keep to our own pocket of solar systems; more than content to explore mysterious corners of the Stellar Neighborhood while selling our services to all the other aliens.

Earth is still a fractured series of governments just trying to make things work together in the aftermath of a Great War, and our "stellar representative," consists of the planets largest mega corporation merc group made of all the other states. For the most part this merc group megacorp is portrayed in a neutral-leaning-toward-good-pseudo-state-with-it's-own-territory-and-people-to-look-after fashion as opposed to most franchises showing megacorps as evil wage-slavery states.

>>52932004
>Alternatively you could go the "humanity as assholes" route, but instead of the usual Imperium, make US the space pirates/barbarians faction. No homeworld, no central government, just looking and merc'ing.

I pretty much did this in my Space Opera setting, but humans are more like gypsies than orcs.

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>>52931868

>>52931752

Post-ascension remnants who wander the universe in a hollowed-out mobile Terra while shipping goods and ferrying life-forms from system to system, galaxy to galaxy?

Today they stop over to lend aid to disaster relief in the nearby system on the galactic fringe, tomorrow they offload several million tonnes of screaming crystals on their client's planetary port in the galactic core and linger for a week waiting for boarders for the next galaxy where they have a request to ferry a delegation across the galaxy's length to finalize a peace deal.

Basically a non-asshole version of the Silver Tribe from Heroic Age.

>>52931752
Earth never formed a unified government. Instead, colonization efforts were spearheaded by major nations and coalitions.

>>52931752
Merchant Republic (Capitalism Ho!)

Christian Theocracy (What if the Crusades were successful?)

Galactic Roman Empire (What if Rome never fell?)

Communist 'Utopia' (Brave New World, but in red)

>>52932043
That sounds cool. How exactly are we gypsies? We build makeshift shantytowns in the middle of an asteroid field? Or we just bum around and steal shit from other races when we can.

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>>52931752
Mandala thalassocracy IN SPACE!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala_(political_model)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajamandala

http://hariragat.blogspot.com.br/2014/04/on-southeast-asian-settings-part-ii.html

A kind of alliance between clades, planets, empires, pirates, nomad habitats and corporations in which they pledge themselves to one another. Unstable, hard to say who's in power, their power projection can amount to a paltry battleship or incredible amounts of varied hulls and configurations, the only common trait being some cargoholding and endurance or speed. Coming to power in this kind of model can be hard, just like Agammenon's rise during the Trojan War. Keeping the power is harder.

http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Age-of-Bronze

What really binds them together is a cultural memeplex and possibly a common origin. This would be formed into a sociocomm cryptographic protocol intentionally obtuse and hard to figure out, requiring such amounts of time and dedication that some outsiders mistake it for a religion.

One would dread to fight them just because of their unpredictability. Third-party probing attacks would be required to test the waters.

>>52931752
Individual countries laying claim to pieces of space with defense lasers.

>>52932531
Probably large flotillas a-la the quarians. In ME they had a bad reputation for being thieves and spoke in predominantly Eastern European accents while wearing colorful robes. They were meant to be space gypsies, so you'd do humanity similarly to them, I suppose.

>>52932531
Little bit of both, but mainly the latter. Humans are a tiny minority in the majority of the galaxy, and are exclusively the descendants of generation/sleeper ships that were sent out in the early days of deep space exploration. So largely they just have absolutely no infrastructure, no way to get infrastructure, and next to no production capacity. So they end up having to scrounge stuff up and live mainly as extended family groups. As a byproduct of this, they also now have a very bad reputation as thieves and bums among most species. Doesn't help that most aliens will never see a human, or even really associate the word "human" with them because a bunch of AIs have been using that word since before the first ships made landfall.

>>52932629
Pretty much >>52932592

>>52932336
I like this - having the solar system dotted with corporate claims and things like US States/Unincorporated Territories, French Région d'outre-cosmos, British Outer-space Territories (or possibly Commonwealth Realms), Russian Federal Subjects, Chinese Provinces/Autonomous Regions/Special Administrative Regions etc.

>>52931752
I run a setting where humans are lazy pan-galactic layabouts. They discovered FTL travel, replicator tech, and made some rudimentary self-replicating machines and just dissolved as a society. Striking out and creating your own little world became the dream for everybody, regardless of class. While the earth is still out there somewhere, the majority of human presence outside of it is just little familial colonies that have all their needs met and do not give one half of one shit.

>>52933178
How does one "run" that setting? Are you playing as aliens, or do the players just work for VR points and then have their own individual RP sessions by themselves?

>>52933208
You play as aliens. By the time the game is set in humans have declined as earth has been destroyed in a war with some userper fucks who ran the show for a bit before humans developed a disease to wipe them out. Humans that remain are nearly immortal lore-keepers that run little pockets of cloned humanity. They have tons of power and almost no ambition.

>>52931752

Space Opera = Space Fantasy. Do whatever you want. You may as well have troglodytes with rocket ships wearing medieval armour while riding on top of cybernetic space dragons.

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Dyson Megastructures builders.

>>52932268

I love this idea, it's like we enacted our own Rapture and now the remnants wander the galaxy; leftovers of an ascended civilization who would struggle with the fact that they were unworthy of joining their fellows into the higher planes of existence.

Some pockets of humanity-that-was would turn to piracy and sadism, lashing out at the universe in their rage and abandonment.

Then there would be the redeemers, who would wander the universe spreading the word, bringing knowledge and advancement in an attempt to redeem themselves and seed the beginnings of a second Rapture.

And finally there would be humans who just didn't care. Who saw the Rapture as a fool's errands and were content to continue their normal existence.

The Uplifters.

The Slavers and Tinkerers of All Life.

The Voidborn.

Puppet Masters.

>>52931752
I like the idea of Humans portrayed as "The guys who shouldn't be out here"
All the other aliens are used to space travel, or can breath all sorts of atmospheres, or survive the pressures of the ocean or the vacuum of space or anything else - meanwhile Humans are these mysterious group of armor clad bipeds that never take off their helmets or expose any skin on fear of death. No alien has ever seen a what a human truly looks like - at least not in person. Whereas most aliens managed to adapt themselves to the hostile environment of space, humans rely on an overabundance of strange technology to make the environment around them more human like.

Humans are the outsider race - when everyone else in polite intergalatic society can go to the local hubworld in their fancy clothes for a good time the humans have to rock up in great chunky armor with a gold faceplate hiding all signs of emotions lest the sun on this alien friendly planet give them skin cancer because space doesn't want us out there.

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Planet looters.

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>Not seeking to make the universe beautiful by populating it with vivid images of yourself.