What are the pros and cons of human only space opera?

>>52966438
One pro is that there are no aliens-in-name-only that are just another anthropocentric stereotype.

>>52966438
>pros
-No excess fuckery with species and what it entails
-Space still has some mystery regarding its potential exploration

>cons
-Space feels empty
-All humans are the same

>>52966438
>pros: realism
>cons: no humans with funny foreheads and planets of hats, to allow the author to preach about whatever philosophy they want to push.

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>>52966467
>space niggers
>space kikes
>space chinks
>space arabs
>space mongols
>space anglos
>third reich 2: space boogaloo

>>52966473
>pros: realism
>anon confirms humans are alone in the universe
Nice bait. Have a you.

>>52966438
Pros:
Relatable
Realistic

Cons:
Unimaginative

>>52966586
It is realistic. The scale of the setting would have to be massive to have a high chance of encountering another alien race. Even more massive is you want them to be a space faring race.

It's more likely that offshoot colonies of humans will develop so differently that they're essentially alien. Especially if generation ships are/were a thing in setting.

>>52966467
>All humans are the same

You can have a lot of variation in humanity based on the myriad new cultures, subcultures, religions, etc. that could develop in an interstellar society. Not to mention the influence of cybernetics, genetic engineering, etc.

>>52966751
No anon.

Don't you know that all differences are based on genetics? Culture plays no role in shaping an organism

>>52966802
I can't tell if this is sjw or reverse sjw.

>>52966873
It's probably sarcasm.

Pros
>you can substitute fantasy racism with real racism
>Humans can be as noble or terrible as you need them
>No room for shitty Dr. Who moments
>Your villain was going to be a human anyway

Cons
>Can't have shitty Dr. Who moments
>No blue skinned asain girls
>No creatures that only speak in growls, yet still completely understandable

>>52967043
seconded.

pros:
>not having to think of outlandish non-human based life forms
>can create small customs based on any culture, past or present, to enhance for the future
>able to pick and choose aspects from different government types to create something unique without being bound by current logic


cons:
>not having to think of outlandish non-human based life forms
>having to come up with reasons for humanity not killing itself outright
>coming up with reasons for self-sustainable colonies to continue being affiliated with each other

>>52966438

Con; Have you seen Firefly? You know how insufferable Firefly fans are?

>>52967185
I'm insufferable?

>>52966438
Pro: the game will be forced to focus more on the human condition than stereotypes passed off onto various rubber forehead races

Con: any furries in your group will be extra-annoying during character creation

Had this happen to me a couple of times running Traveller.

>>52967270
Yea. Fuck you man.

>>52967320
I'm also a Firefly fan (not Serenity though)

Can I have a little scorn?

>>52967335

Yea. Fuck you man.

>>52967431
Anon delivers

thanks

>>52967335
>>52967449
....moving on.

Firefly isn't that bad, you know. at least it was willing to explore how humanity, if left to its own devices, will endlessly exploit itself.

I can see it working if humans are stuck to Hyperplanes and the like to travel. If you're stuck going through the designated routes to travel, it's easy to understand why we haven't found another alien species in the whole galaxy.

Still, I prefer having Aliens.

>>52966438
Pro- no more filthy xenos to pollute your worlds.
Con- no more filthy xenos to murder with glee.

>>52966744
>The scale of the setting would have to be massive
Yeah, like it would have to take place in space or something.

>>52967185
>You know how insufferable Firefly fans are?
The thing I hate most about Firefly fans is how they bring up things they hate at random even when nobody else is talking about them. So insufferable.

>>52967629
I think you're underestimating the size of space and relative chances of recognizable alien life forming within 200 lightyears.

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>>52967673
>200 lightyears.

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>>52967673

>>52967534
The first season of Firefly was pretty good.
The other six seasons that the internet pretends exist were all terrible, though.
But yes, it's a good example of 'human-only' space opera that works.
(In theory, nu-BSG was also human-only, unless 'no robots either' is a rule we're going with.)

>>52967904
Characters created by humans are likely allowed under the humans-only rule, unless it's some bullshit like they're created by pushing a button on an alien spaceship that makes a creature completely of non-terran origin.

>>52967053
>No creatures that only speak in growls, yet still completely understandable
We already something like those. They're called Scotts.

pros
>you don't have to explain the ways aliens interact with each other
>it makes the setting less complicated overall
>no neckbeards whining about how a race is unrealistic or some shit

cons
>no aliens
>why would you even want a space game without aliens

>>52966438
You can make it darker. With no aliens you don't need to create an earth like planet for each one. You can have more societies on space stations orbiting gas giants that mine gas for fuel and the moons for material. You can have the planets and systems closer together, which means having a slower, and thereby more realistic, faster-than-light travel mechanism.
Also you don't need to create a need for having universal translators that translate brand new alien languages in real time (worst thing about star trek).
And you won't have to come up with alien races and the culture.
Humans only makes it darker.
Also less technobabble, technobabble is cool if it's consistent but many scifi stuff is ruined by too much of it and too inconsistent in it's use.

>>52967884
>radio waves travel at speed of light
>first wireless radio transmission was in the late 1890s
>200 light years in 110 years?

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>>52967995
Rounding. Or the Fermi Approximation - if you're working on a big scale, everything is in powers of 10.

And thanks to the cubed-square law, the /effective/ range is pretty much 10LY, if that. Anywhere beyond that and even the loudest military radar is just background noise.

>>52967995
It literally says 200 light years in diameter. As in 100 light years in radius.

>>52967185

To be fair, both Firefly and nuBattlestar fans are both pretty insufferable about their particular flavor of wankery not having any aliums in it.

>>52966438
>>52966463
>>52966473
>>52967314
>>52966751
Pretty much agree with these anons.

Aliens in fiction will sadly always end up as just humans wearing funny makeup, pretending to be different and being really, really bad at it. Cut the crap and explore all the various ways humans could change and stay the same. We'd like to believe in the limitless potential of our imagination but ultimately fail when it comes time to really prove it.

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>>52968031
Oh shit, you mean anon didn't notice that?

That makes my explanation here >>52968029
even funnier.

>>52967884
thank you for making my point for me.

if anyone thinks that there's a recognizably intelligent alien species that close by, they're underestimating how big space is.

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>>52968082
That doesn't have to be the case.

It's /tricky/ to do, but I've done it. Pic related. But I'd be lying if I said it was easy. Prep work was easily 30hrs per session.

>>52967884
Space be big. At least the light from the first human's campfire will have covered the entire galaxy by now, and is well on the way to covering the first tenth of the distance to Andromeda.

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>>52968168
Yes, but light without context is just photos.

We could have been hit by a photon from the first All-Silicon Casserole Contest on Omicron Theta. Doesn't /mean/ anything.

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>>52966438
You can have aliens in a work and still have it be about Humanity.

You could have a bunch of inscrutable aliens acting as an outside existential threat to humanity, in order to examine how we would react.

I'm also a sucker for alien ruins

>>52968271
>I'm also a sucker for alien ruins

Alien archaeology is the best.

>>52968204
The meaning isn't on the receiving end. A camp-fire at 200000ly isn't even a photo, it's just a few lonely photons spread so unimaginably thin that no one will ever notice.

The meaning is on the other end. That going as fast as anything ever could for the entire extent of human existence just about gets you form one end of the galaxy to the other, and not a tenth of the way to the next major one over.

Space is big, we ain't.

>>52968290
Xeno-archaeology, mmm...so much fun.

Trying to identify a writing system without a single hint on their iconography.

You don't even need aliens.

Humans are fucked up enough to create any substitute you wanted.
>Sex bots replace hot alien chicks
>AI colony replaces hivemind alien species ( explaining how it doesn't just instantly win every conflict ever is another matter though )
If you really want to get fucked up
>Genetic engineering of slave/servant races
>Uplifting animals just for shits, giggles, and companionship
>Genetic engineering of MASTER races because some people just want direction
>Cybernetic implants along with the entire range from 100% organic to 99% machine

>>52966438
Pro: Less fetish-bait
Con: Less fetish-bait

>>52968513
Read Gurps - Biotech

>>52967534
Counterpoint: the specific statement is that the fans are bad. No judgement was passed on the show itself.

>>52968364
The limit I have on AI in my settings is that at Human-Level intelligence mental health becomes an issue, one which only gets worse at higher IQs. They aren't glitches, but actual issues and illnessess that arise from seemingly unpredictable sources.

The really advanced AI need near constant therapy to be effective for even small periods of time, so most are either number-crunchers or have pet-like intelligences.

>>52968612
point recognized.

but then why am I bad for liking a non-bad show? I don't go to conventions, and I acknowledge that not everybody likes the same type of entertainment.

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>>52966438
Pros
>Avoids most cliches
>No rubber foreheads or furries in space
>No "We are the progenitor species!" Bullshit
>Opens the door to harder sci fi
>No HFY

Cons
>ALWAYS ends up with fucktarded space nobles
>Or "Noble Spess rebellion vs Spess Nazis"
>Tech is usually autistic, in either the anime space magic way, or written by a college Freshman masturbating to his physics book.

>>52968906
Speaking of Bionicle, what are the pros and cons of Robots only settings.

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>>52966438
>>>52967534
>The other six seasons that the internet pretends exist were all terrible, though.
???

>>52969190
I've no idea what fake six seasons they're talking about.

there was only one, and it was hilarious.

>>52967995
>first wireless radio transmission

Was HF, propagates via the ionosphere and won't 'leave' the earth.

>>52968131
That's the tone Mass Effect 2 & 3 should have had.

You and your players seem really smart. What do you all do?

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You can have human problems like racism, greed and religion. Sure you could have these with aliens but if aliens are just as flawed as humans what purpose does having aliens serve in the story?

It's similar to cyberpunk in a way, it keeps things realistic and near future enough that the problems of today's world can still exist and be used as a story plot.

Thats why I personally prefer science fiction without any aliens or alien influence, I really hate the "ancient extinct super advanced alien race" cliche you see in things like mass effect.

>>52969645
That's funny, I actually find that sort of stuff more interesting than "Aliens are everywhere" sci-fi, to each his own I guess. Just out of curiosity, why do you dislike the extinct aliens trope?

>>52970116
not him, but the extinct hyper advanced alien thing is a relatively new trope in scifi. I suppose it just became very common very quickly.
At this point it's like having an alien/robot in the main cast

>>52967884
The only broadcasts that would be strong enough to be picked up would be the military broadcasts.

>>52966744
>The scale of the setting would have to be massive to have a high chance of encountering another alien race.
Life is not as rare as we used to think, we have found microbial life on Mars. Which isn't in our backyard, it's in our fucking bed.

Intelligent Life is more inevitable than ever.

>>52967053
>No blue skinned asain girls
Genetic Engineering and a society that approves of such.

>>52970473
>we've found microbial life on mars
Citation badly needed

>>52966438
The three examples that instantly jump to my mind are Dune, Hyperion and Foundation, so technology is going to have to be a big fucking theme.

Pros:
>Freedom to really expand technology
>Can speculate on future much easier with no out of context problems and black swan events
>Don't have to disguise your real racism with fake racism
>Can talk about cultural shit

Cons:
>Can't disguise your real racism with fake racism
>Really boring if you don't like technology
>No blue boobs, unless you want to open the jar of snakes that is genetic engineering
>More difficult to came up with an interesting setting as people will expect more realism

>>52970473
>>52971231
There were things found in an asteroid which were thought to be bacteria fossils, but has been rejected to have been someting else.

There has been no other evidence of life on mars.

>>52971231
>>52971544
If we'd found signs of *LIFE* on another fucking planet, EVERYONE would know. That asking for citations was needed means that we still haven't.

There are no cons.
Only poor imagination.
>Have it be thousands of years after discovery of FTL
>Thousands of planets have been landed upon and fully colonized
>millions probed
>Yet no new life discovered other than that on Earth
>Introduce genetic engineering, steal Pandorum's "rapid evolution" stuff
>some systems humans have evolved into *not Quarians *not space elves *not hobbits *not ubermensch *not smart apes
>apes
>have intelligent Orangutans/bonobos (they are more peaceful) be a whole new race of hairy space hippies, formed from humans as test if rapid evolution works.

Now that I think of it, this no longer became Human only space opera
100% only human space opera is lame

>>52966438
No bull shit space races.

You can focus entirely on politics and societal issues spanning entire galaxies.

>>52966744
What's the point of playing space Opera if you're going to be realistic?

>>52971806
space operas are darker, grimy, full of drama. hopefully not melodrama.
Drama is better received the less suspension of belief there is.

>>52971806
What's the point of having aliens if they're just poorly thought out/written humans with a species wide gimmick?

PRO:
>Actually anthropocentric without worthless makeup

CON:
>Its somewhat empty
>No qt space elves like macha
but then again, elves are pointy faced and eared humans, so not that much of the differance

>>52969645
>pic-related

Well I mean, they may or may not be extinct, but there are super advanced (probably) aliens out there.
Though I haven't read the books and have only been spoiled up to the Ring/Gate thing, so I'm probably wrong

>>52970473
>we have found microbial life on Mars

Okay, one, that's completely wrong. Like, it's not like the difference between "we've found life" and "we've found signs of life", because we've found neither. That is just completely, wildly wrong. Jesus. As far as human science is able to tell, Earth is the only planet that has, or has ever had, living organisms originate on it.

Two, and concerning the "inevitable"ness of alien life in the universe, humanity has no real data to go from. Our sample size is one. We know that life happened at least once. We don't know how, and we don't know why. We have a rough idea of the conditions surrounding the origin of life on Earth, but we don't know what parts of that were necessary for the creation of life, and we don't know when exactly it happened. Not only have we not found life elsewhere, we don't know the recipe for it here. For all we know, the next planet we discover could have alien monkeys all over it. Or, we could travel the universe until our species goes extinct without ever finding it. We have no control group. Our sample size is one. There's no data.

Now let's assume there *is* life out there for a minute, because the real question isn't if there's life or not, it's if we'll ever get to see them. Life existing in the universe doesn't help our space opera setting if it's so far away we'll never become aware of its existence, and, considering that space is a pretty big place, it probably is.

(Continued)

(Continued) >>52972167

Additionally, if alien life does exist, and is near enough to interact with us, who's to say we're at the same technological level? The sheer amount of time the universe has been around (and will be around for) mean that, in all likelihood, our civilizations (if any) would not be on an even playing field. Human civilization sprung up in the last ten thousand years or so. The universe is over ten billion. It's difficult to comprehend how large that timescale is, and how small a part of it we are. Where are the aliens that got a two billion year head-start on us running around in their relativity-bending vehicles? Why haven't they found *us*? Furthermore, considering--again--how old space is, and how the only civilization we're aware of (us) has been shooting out signals into space pretty much constantly as soon as we learned how, why haven't we seen any of those? They've had potentially billions of years to travel to us, but we've seen zilch, nada, nothing.

So, there might not be aliens anywhere. If there are, the universe is huge (HUGE) enough that we may never encounter them. We can be pretty confident that, if there were any within a significant distance that were equally or more advanced than us, we would have seen some sign of them--which we have not.

The most likely kind of alien contact we make at this point is going to be finding primitive life on a planet by pure luck, and--even if that would be a huge deal for the scientific community--it doesn't make much of a difference in a space opera setting. Our dreams of joining some intergalactic community of thinking species are almost certainly never going to happen.

>>52966438
Pros: Recognized professionals

Cons: Certified criminals

>>52971634
It was fun going on that journey with you anon

>>52972187
>We can be pretty confident that, if there were any within a significant distance that were equally or more advanced than us, we would have seen some sign of them--which we have not.

What if we won the time wars and erased all the aliens from history?

>>52968082
What about monster aliens like the Xenomorph?

>>52966438
Pros
>we're alone out there
Cons
>we're alone out there

>>52968131
That is some extremely fucking good high concept.

>>52966438
I think what hasnt been explored is Human based space opera that had minor contact with trans-galactic life forms, but that isnt in constant contact with them (think of a early renaissance European and how he may have heard of a far away place called china, but may have no knowledge of it except that thats were silk comes from.)

>>52966657
>Cons:
>Unimaginative
I find a lot of unimaginative people use aliens as a creative crutch ie

>They're just like us but green!
or
>Check out these floating jellyfish!
>What are they like?
>They're jellyfish that float!

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>>52966438
There are no cons.

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>>52966438
Why are people so concerned about racism when it's clearly an element of every single human civilization so far? Even with the advent of genetic engineering, you will still have people deriding literal "normies" for not having huge dicks and eye lasers.

Racism, like any other problem, is something you can either implement as a good thing to show the players how dark-gray the world morality is, even moreso if in this setting the people being segregated are objectively inferior (going back to the GenEng concept). Or you can present it as a problem to solve. If you play with people with enough suspension of disbelief about human morality to believe someone wants to create a doomsday laser to destroy the galaxy because of money, why not remind them that people are asshole but at least you can laser them down if you don't like them in this setting.

>>52968906
>or written by a college Freshman masturbating to his physics book.
I think this is more of a problem with commitment and consistency. People with autistic universe rules are only annoying if they limit how far you can travel because "muh einstein" but then have no problem with glowing stream-of-red lasers and sound in space. At least keep your shit together, and solving problems will become more challenging and even fun.

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>>52968364
>all those tropes
Oh yes, list your favorite books right now my man.

>>52966873
Neither, pretty obviously. It's obviously sarcasm, and I don't think anyone anywhere thinks cultures should be ignored when talking about a people in space. Maybe you're just a moron who sees things in black and white?

>>52972921
How prevalent space racism is is more a factor of how homogeneous colonies are.
If its a case that any fringe crazy cultural-revivalist movement can charter are colony ship to a virgin world, you're going to end up with a heterogeneous patchwork of individually homogeneous worlds.

>>52968906
>tech level is usually autistic

So what would a non-autistic technological base be?

>>52969083
Pro:
>You can create an in-game reason not to ERP
Con:
>People will ERP anyways as sexbots

Also speaking of Bionicle and aliens, am I the only one who really likes/would play in a campaign set during the Core War? I feel like I'm one of the only people I know who likes the Spherus/Bara Magna setting more than the original

>>52972187
>Where are the aliens that got a two billion year head-start on us running around in their relativity-bending vehicles? Why haven't they found *us*?
I never understood that argument. Everything else you wrote make sense to me but that one I've heard it many times and I simply don't get it. Well, actually I do get it, but I don't see how that would prove or disprove anything.
I mean, back in the Roman Empire days, Mayas never came to Europe, but it doesn't mean Maya didn't exist back then.
Maybe we are the most advanced civilization in our corner of space, or maybe in the whole universe. We have no way of knowing it. There's no reason why there should be a specie of "aliens that got a two billion year head-start on us". Maybe we are the aliens that got a two billion year head-start on the others.

>>52973633
>a heterogeneous patchwork of individually homogeneous worlds

desu that's a recipe for golden ages.

Diverse cultures that can communicate with each other boost advancement; but diverse cultures in physical proximity boost violence and decrease trust.

>>52973633
Uniformity is going to be very hard to maintain on the planetary scale.

>>52966550
I dont understands half of these words

>>52973962
Because of the proportions of time involved.

With diamond hard scifi like Orion ships, and centuries of time to VN them at the destinations, the galaxy could be totally colonized in under a million years.

It took life about half a billion years IIRC to hit the space travel stage on Earth.

The galaxy is about 13 billion years old.

So if aliens are common enough to have more than 1 species proc in a galaxy around the same time, and if even 1 of the species wanted to space travel, the galaxy would be completely swarmed before the first of our ancestral bacteria evolved.

>>52973985
I mean in the case that there are enough virgin worlds that it's easier to settle on one of them than already inhabited worlds. To be fair, planets tend to be big, so you could end up with a few fringe-groups per planet.

>>52973964
Well it's not just cultures, it's every fringe "utopian" idealist too. But still, it would probably be better for people who want change to settle somewhere new instead of imposing their beliefs on an extant society.
Could make said extant society kinda stagnant though

Hence why sci-fi settings should probably have limited real-estate, so there's conflict

>>52973985
Not really. Earth can be split into about 20 major ethnic lines, as few as 3-5 if you throw out or blend in the major mixes or outliers.

There can be a Chinese planet, Malaysian planet, Anglo-Saxon planet, Nordic, Arab, Indian, Balkan and Sub-Saharan planet. Imagine Polandball rubber-forehead worlds.

>>52972479

As long as they're basically just monsters/animals and no social interaction happens that' most likely fine imho.

>>52974159
Ah, yes, the Nordic Planet, colonized by all <30 million Nordic peoples there are.

Balkan Planet sounds like a recipe for failure, to be honest.

My huge point is the aliens often are quite simple so simple they often end up merely as humans but X. With X being usually restricted somewhat to a monoculture or some odd sets of features.

I have been toying with the idea that there is human dominated space with some minor xenos and maybe some far off xenos who actually amount to somethings.

And then the Veil, a region of space no man enters or leaves. Said to be ruled by cabal of mad men making worlds to watch them develop and die as a means to pass eternity...

>>52974820

Many hide into the Veil to see if they can steal the truly amazing technology the Veil's masters have. They can make worlds and massive wonders after all. But the Veil's inhabited worlds are all very fucking dangerous.

When a group of hyperintelligent beings are left with a set of powerful tools, the worlds they make and then set adrift are developing in ways that they they occasionally prod.

The only safe way to travel the Veil is through some sort of subspace teleportation linking the worlds in the veil together.

As going by ship leaves you at the mercy of people who enjoy playing , I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, with interlopers.

>>52966438
>pros
human only
>cons
space opera

>>52974051
Maybe it is?

>>52972814
>only one LotGH post ITT
Step it up, /tg/.

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>>52969558
3 chemists, 2 computer scientists, and a no-joke honest-to-god professor of planetary geology.

It was good.

I disagree though. Mass Effect is space opera, and in opera, you can't get complicated.

>>52966657
>Cons:
>Unimaginative
I don't necessarily see that. Humans are incredibly inventive and, frankly, often unwise. Cybernetics, genetic engineering, the "whoops we made terminators and they inevitably went rogue" scenario various human factions could in fact be functionally indistinguishable from aliens.

But then that DOES rather defeat the purpose. Is it still a boon to realism when we transhuman the shit out of ourselves?

>>52966438
Opinions on Space Opera not withstanding, I'm pretty sure it all boils down to this:

>PROS:
No poorly done alien races.

>CONS:
No alien races done well.

>>52968082
The problem I have with inscrutable aliens is they tend to switch the narrative conflict from man against (analogous) man into man against nature with the aliens typically representing some kind of primal force. Don't get me wrong, it can still be quite compelling. If the aliens are a threat to human civilization, say like the Formics, then they are a force of nature with intelligence, a storm that can guide itself, which is quite formidable.

But really it's making it a space opera can be seen as a genre shift from any story about man vs nature that involves a significant animal threat. In an ironic nod to the Formics consider the classic story of Leiningen Versus the Ants where a stubborn and formidable plantation owner struggles against a seemingly unending wave of equally stubborn and formidable ants consuming everything in their path.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KPIw_4wE8c

So while it appears superior to a story where aliens are basically humans-yet-different it's really just telling a different but equally well-trodden type of conflict. Don't get me wrong, though, that hardly means it isn't compelling or worthwhile! Far from it! Honestly I think perhaps it could be helpful to anyone wanting to make a story about aliens beyond human understanding or otherwise ability to communicate with or find common ground to tackle it from a narrative conflict perspective. It can help to formulate what kind of plot points you want to tackle and perhaps better predict player/npc responses.

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>>52977317
>The problem I have with inscrutable aliens is they tend to switch the narrative conflict from man against (analogous) man into man against nature with the aliens typically representing some kind of primal force.

The really interesting stories come from Man vs His Own Nature, and properly Alien aliens are great for that.

What better way to unpack your own cognitive biases and blind spots than dealing with a creature that not only doesn't have them, but will use yours against you.

>>52977480
So are zombies and rogue machine intelligences. Feels a bit done to death in some ways, but that's just my opinion. Even if it were true that would just increase the examples a GM could study for ideas and inspiration. After all, we're talking about tabletop gaming not trying to make the New York Times Bestseller List.

>>52968082
For whatever it is worth, I personally think there are fair odds that any alien life we discover will not be wholly inscrutable and "alien" to our very way of life. I realize it's egotistical and frankly sounds stupid to consider that alien life will follow evolution on our world, however at the same time even light years apart there are still certain shared evolutionary pressures. No matter where they are in the universe, to our understanding the laws of physics will still be the same. While environmental factors such as atmospheric composition and thickness, gravity, even proximity to their local star for heat/warmth/radiation etc, will play a huge role there are still certain, ha, inalienable factors that will be in play. They need a means of locomotion, the drive to obtain energy and excrete waste (unlikely to be 100% efficient), and the requirement to perceive their environment will require at least some aspect of the five senses (sure they may not see in the same end of the spectrum or hear in different frequency ranges but we see that even on Earth). Tool use requiring some form of grasping appendage, so on. Even feelings may be the same on a primitive level. Pleasure and pain are exceptionally useful forces in helping guide an organism in preserving itself long enough to reproduce, however that is achieved. A possibly universal "don't do that"/"do that" mechanism. Predator/prey dynamics are a very likely possibility just from the natural competitiveness to struggle over limited environmental resources necessary for survival.

>>52978101
I'm not saying inscrutable aliens are impossible, they most certainly aren't, just as I'm not saying that relatable aliens are a 100% given. But there is a real chance that even what seems inscrutable just means we haven't found a means of recognizing relatable commonalities as the basic foundation for achieving mutual understanding. The Formics were already mentioned and while both sides struggled to understand the other, for instance the Formics difficulty in perceiving that humans were individually sapient due to their own hive mind mentality, common ground of a sort was achieved. The Pequeninos similarly suffered a tragic failure to recognize key biological differences. I suspect the key contributing factors in an inscrutable alien race scenario are things like struggle to recognize the other is truly sapient and the struggle to find commonalities being confounded by cultural differences. After all, humans are largely the same to each other but that hasn't done much to curb our conflicts. Then of course maybe the alien does understand you, it doesn't give a shit.

Speaking of common ground reminds me of that lovely scifi trope of expressing universal mathematical concepts. "Look, the alien is only clawing sequential prime numbers in its victims! It's been trying to communicate this entire time!" Or maybe it's just a serial killer marking its prey in sequential order.

>>52978117
Of course it doesn't even have to be real as long as you can sell the idea as a means of hand waving why aliens, however different looking to humans, still act very human. Then we have TNG using the bit where an ancient alien race was seeding life across the galaxy creating many of the familiar races in the franchise in the hopes that they would come to see each other as space kinfolk and peace and harmony would ensue and nobody would feel alone among the stars. It may explain why everyone tends to look human but god damn was the rest wishful thinking.

>>52966751
Don't forget what a few thousand years of radically different environments could do, especially in combination with genetic engineering.

>>52967053
>No blue skinned Asian girls
It's like you don't even ready Larry Niven. They've got pills for that.

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>>52977545
>Feels a bit done to death in some ways, but that's just my opinion.

Every so often, you get a film like Ex Machina which raises some very interesting questions (kind of by accident). And there are some amazing books out there on topics like this. But yeah, it depends on what you want out of a game. The game I ran >>52968131
was amazing and I'll remember it for the rest of my life, but it was a fucking /ton/ of work. Hardest game I've ever run because I couldn't take narrative shortcuts. I couldn't make the game work the way we want stories to work, because that was the opposite of the point. I had to make the world as real and as solid as possible.

>Pros
>No slutty aliens to fuck
>Cons
>No slutty aliens to fuck

>>52974159
Orson Scott Card, pls leave

>>52966438
As long as it doesn't turn into Dead Space. And I'm not just ragging on the bit about aliens being introduced (technically they always were since even if the Necromorphs were artificial someone sure as hell made the Markers) but I never quite swallowed the setting. Sure planet cracking wasn't that tough but the idea that humanity had practical FTL and the entire galaxy to play in and we still had a resource and energy crisis? What the fuck was that all about? Sure spreading out would have issues since your supply lines back to places like Earth would keep getting longer but that just makes us likely to go migratory, like locusts harvesting worlds and moving on, but that's just resources. Energy makes absolutely zero fucking sense. Where was using moons and planets as gravity dynamos? Harvesting helium-3 from gas giants? Creating solar energy harvest satellite networks around stars (as opposed to a full dyson sphere)! Seriously, stars dump a shitton of energy into space just waiting for some blokes to figure out how to capture it! That alone would give you obscene amounts of power per star system for billions of years! No goofy as mind raping Markers need apply.

I guess Dead Space makes sense if you just assume the Markers were making humanity too stupid for its own good so we'd rely on the Markers and make monsters.

>>52974051
Despite the age of the galaxy we don't know if there are any other space faring capable civilizations out there. After all, we're just barely scratching the surface now. Even if older life exists they'd have to have the interest, the resources, come up with a viable plan, and actually be capable. Consider the humble dolphin. No matter how intelligent those randy fuckers are they'll never get to Captain Kirk across the galaxy since they can't build a space faring civilization with flippers, barring, of course, Douglas Adams being right and they can just triple summersault into the sky and never come back down.

There's still a shitton of other variables involved. For instance humanity could push out into the stars but we aren't even sure we'll survive to that point. Even if we did we aren't sure we'll still have the resources to make a decent go, or that we'd succeed, or that we'd be able to keep the effort going for that timeframe to spread to the entire galaxy. Hell, any space empire we attempt would probably be doomed to fracturing into factions bent on destroying each other.

>>52978547
IIRC, the energy crisis was mostly born of their being like 24 billion people on Earth, resulting in this bottomless fucking pit you could drop nearly endless resources into.

>>52979266
The simple facts are, as we understand right now, there's no way or even theoretical way to economically project force across interstellar distances. Any system would have no reason to be part of an empire with any other and there's no resources that could be worth enough to ship interstellar distances. The only thing the different children of earth would trade across the stars would be information and stories.

All of that changes if we can figure out a practical method for faster then light travel.

>>52979280
When you have practical FTL without even need for cryosleep and space does indeed appear to be dead so you have no rivals then honestly there's no excuse for getting that crowded. Again, unless some shitballs crazy alien artifact wants you to breed yourselves up so it can consume you and turn you into dumbass murder moons.

With at least one Marker already on Earth it was no doubt already happily spreading influence through bad ideas throughout human history to shape events to the ultimate benefit of the Brethren Moons. Probably for the best we'll likely never see how that plays out.

>>52979339
>The simple facts are, as we understand right now
The simpler facts are we wouldn't be doing this with today's technology but with some probably unknown technology for tomorrow. It doesn't even need to be FTL but something as basic as cracking the ansible for instantaneous communication regardless of distance. What would you do with an empire like that if sharing resources is impractical? Sharing culture and ideas! What practical use is that? Well if you have fresh colonies starting up in new systems with all these untapped resources to build and develop on their own paths you would see a huge increase in human ingenuity and branching developmental paths. What Earth many not solve one of the colonies might.

Seriously you are definitely not thinking outside of the box in terms of reasons. By your argument no current government would bother to expend resources to spread to another star system because they wouldn't really own it so why should they care? Only if they were either incredibly altruistic and dedicated to the preservation of our species through spreading us across the stars so that at least some of us may continue to survive whatever calamities may befall the rest.

>>52979339
You need to consider the scenario being discussed, anon. Let's use Earth as an example. If humanity is going to spread to every point in the galaxy, or at least a majority of it, in less than a million years we're extremely unlikely to decide to keep cranking out Orion ships and sending them out to every star in the galaxy. The resources required alone is staggering for such a - frankly - insane plan.

A more reasonable idea would be to leapfrog. We send out ships to the nearest stars we can and then in turn form colonies hoping at least one survives to develop to the point where they can send more ships to their next nearest stars (perhaps aiming some at any previous destinations where colonies failed) and repeated on and on as we spread like a network. But that too requires a fairly hefty degree of commitment. A sense of empire has done marvels on Earth for convincing people to spread out even when it was dangerous and return on investment was slow or could be lost on the long oceanic voyages.

Even if people never solve the problems of FTL I would expect the technology to continue to increase and the attempts to spread colonies would improve. Soon they'd be sending ships with robots and frozen embryos. Or probes with nanites for terraforming worlds, building cities and then constructing humans. All they need is the blueprints.

>>52979339
Artificial wormholes! Love 'em. Not the handy Farscape kind but creating a tunnel in space where no matter how far apart you move the ends matter can be transmitted instantaneously from Point A to Point B. You can't use them to travel to other systems initially until the new endpoint is delivered but the beauty is you can send it on a ship and people can come and go, resupply on the fly, all throughout the trip. That's just if you want to ride along, you could just send them in an unmanned vessel and when it's reached the destination send out colonization teams. Make your own Stargate network!

I think it's pretty cool shit! Can't swear it'll pan out but we're working on stuff like that.

>>52966438
>pros
-More realistic since if there were any intelligent life within reach, we would probably have seen them by now.
-Don't have to waste time inventing a whole planet with a whole ecosystem which developed in such a perfect way to create a lifeform which we have never ever seen before
-Alternatively, you won't make yourself look like an idiot for half-assing it with a bunch of green-skinned humanoids.

>cons
-Plebians will think it's boring.
-Given vast separations by time and space, humans will inevitably evolve into diverging species anyways
-Why set a story in space if you ain't gonna put in aliens?

>>52979577
>More realistic since if there were any intelligent life within reach, we would probably have seen them by now.

>the vast interstellar empires knew well and good about the Earth
>that's why they all stayed far away
>the only ones with an interest were the insane, the deviants, and the criminals; the butt probers, the cow mutilators, the corn field graffiti artists
>oh yes they all knew about the Earth, a word which to humanity could mean "dirt" but to everyone else it meant "shit"

>>52967884
And this is assuming there's even another intelligent species within our observable universe, maybe they're out there but we'll just never, ever be able to contact them so for all intents and purposes they don't exist, although technically they do, it's just we can't perceive them because they're too far away.

>>52974027

Dyslexia is a bicth

>>52979646
How does it go again... We used to rely on some pretty powerful transmitters on Earth which meant a lot of stuff like entertainment was being broadcast into space. Now if we bother sending signals up into space we're mostly aiming at satellites to relay that signal to other satellites and beam it back down, far less powerful and far reaching than when we broadcast the Hiterlympics which came to bite us on the ass by giving us the movie Contact but so far no actual alien contact.

Assuming other civilizations follow Earth's development (not the best idea but we're the only data point we have so far) the period of noisy broadcasting that might be picked up by space neighbors is pretty brief. Worse our ability to detect anyone else's noisy transmissions hasn't existed all that long relative to the existence of our species. That's an all around shitty situation for hoping to detect ET phoning home or just his sitcoms, especially if by the time they're spreading colonies to other worlds they are relying on very focused signals for keeping in touch. Laser pulse transmissions or using quantum twinning of atoms, stuff like that.

There could be all kinds of cool crap all around us and we might never know, but at the same time it might no be the best idea to broadcast, "Hey, we're here! We might be delicious and our anuses might be super awesome to probe so come check us out!"

>>52968131
Man, now I feel like a brainlet. Give me one good reason not to splatter what little I have all over the wall.

>>52973633
Given how difficult being so isolated would make immigration I'd imagine space colonies would wind up being incredibly homogeneous, even if it wouldn't be in a way we would recognize. There'd be black and white and all the rest but they'd all identify as members of their colonies first and foremost and perhaps only as that, because what else would they have experience with? Why would their be a pan-galactic sense of shared humanity when there's such difficulty making contact with other human, even just electronically. We've never had people living in such isolation before.

>>52979860
Would they or would they just go ambiguously brown? Like an entire colony composed of Jessica Alba and The Rock which, now that I think about it, is my new Hollywood screenplay. NOBODY STEEL THAT!

But who am I kidding, they'll just replace Jessica Alba and Dwayne Johnson with Star Lord and Katniss. At this point I'm not sure which joke would make the worst movie.

>>52979947
Depends who founded the colony, if the original founders were all white guys or all black guys their descendants wouldn't be ambiguously brown at all. When you have such profound isolation and relatively limited numbers of original inhabitants the founder effect would be insane.

>>52970473
I do agree that life of some kind may be very common. On Earth, unicellular life appears to ahve evolved practically the moment Earth was cool enough to sustain life. However, it then took billions of years to get complex multicellular life (some recent evidince shows that very simple multicellular organisms, on level with sponges in complexity although likely completely unrelated to modern animals, may have existed for a lot longer than previously thought), and life capable of developing advanced civilization and means to travel to space has only existed for a miniscule fraction of that time.

Finding extraterrestrial bacteria- or algea-equivalents I would consider almost inevitable. Multicellular life, still quite likely. But unless we spread across the entire galaxy, odds of running into another spacefaring civilization is insignificantly small. So if your setting focuses on a relatively small group of colonized worlds, keeping humans as the only space-faring civilization would probably be more reasonable.

>>52979995
>Depends who founded the colony,
Ah yes, Steve Bannon given the greenlight to design Trump's Mars colony in an initiative dubbed Operation Snowhite. Gotta turn that red world the right color, dammit!

God I hope that joke doesn't start shit. More serious note, I think your best bet at maximizing genetic diversity while minimizing weight is a good mix of different races. But that requires mixing to optimize genetic diversification among your population. If they're still sticking with the same race they'll remain pure at the gain of a sixth toe, and that's just for starters.

Okay so not that seriously. But yeah sending frozen embryos with a basic crew would be a good idea, though that has drawbacks. We haven't been using frozen "goods" long enough to really stress test it but I think about a decade is the current considered shelf life.

>>52980041
I don't think anyone would ever seriously prioritize genetic diversity over picking the most qualified crew members, they'd probably deal with that through screening embryos and genetic modification to limit the effects of the inbreeding, it's not the 18th century anymore we're not exactly helpless in the face of this issue.

>>52980072
Who said anything about prioritizing over qualified crewmembers? I know I didn't say that. But if you're seriously thinking about a space colony then you bet your aunt's bottom that among their priorities will be genetic diversity. Any healthy population will need a great degree to start with most especially because the further away they are going the harder it will be to import wives and husbands! And there sure as shitting won't be a native population to interbreed with unless space is really super weirder and more accommodating than hitherto believed.

That's why you'll most likely need stored embryos because the starting population likely won't have near enough diversity on its own otherwise due to crew size restrictions.

>>52980072
>it's not the 18th century anymore we're not exactly helpless in the face of this issue.
Anon, it'll be much much harder to colonize Mars let alone Alpha Centauri with today's technology than it ever was sailing from Europe to North America.

>>52980130
>I think your best bet at maximizing genetic diversity while minimizing weight is a good mix of different races.
That's sort of what you implied, there's better ways of dealing with the issues associated with inbreeding then trying to tailor the genetic makeup of your founding crew to avoid it as much as possible, which is what you were talking about. Also given how hard it is to get just one person onto another planet in our solar system (we still haven't actually done it) these colonies are going to be so tiny it won't matter how racially diverse it is, you're going to wind up with sixth toes no matter how much people are interbreeding across racial lines. Stop getting your ideas on genetics from tumblr blogs you idiot.

>>52980141
Where did I say it wouldn't? I was talking very specifically about the problems associated with inbreeding, did you not read the rest of my post?

>>52980148
>Where did I say it wouldn't? I was talking very specifically about the problems associated with inbreeding, did you not read the rest of my post?
Considering the bit about the 18th century was at the end, yeah, that wasn't hard. Your scenario is hugely flawed. How precisely are you going to engineer away the problems of not enough genetic diversity? If you're just cloning the same people you should be fine, but with a small sample size you aren't going to be doing much better than people straight up fucking anyway unless you can somehow manufacture new genes or you have a large supply handy in storage. At that point, though, it would just be easier to use frozen embryos.

>>52980148
There is no way I "sort of implied" that anywhere but in your own head unless you somehow think certain races could never be qualified members of the crew, which would be boneheaded so I choose not to consider that is what you meant out of courtesy.

Also I hardly think a better solution than trying to tailer the genetic makeup of your founding crew is installing a complete genetics laboratory to fix it with Science™. Humans can get alone fine with ordinary sex if you plan accordingly.

>>52980179
Best I can figure is trying to avoid errant miscoding when basepairs don't match properly. You can engineer away potentially harmful mutations. You could also engineer genetic super beings before sending them but be sure to call yourself the Emperor of Mankind before you do, that way the endeavor will be sure to have no foreseeable complications.

>>52969645
The only book I really liked about aliens was Rendezvous with Rama.

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>>52968290
The mystery of alien ruins and the question of why were alone in space were the best parts of Engine of the Gods and the Academy series. I'm a big fan of having a human only space opera but having it fairly evident that aliens did exist at one time. The idea of the human race as having shown up late to the party and now everybody that we could have had a conversation with is dead has always been really interesting to me.

>>52980405
They probably would have just snubbed us anyway. In fact that might be what they're doing.

Alpha Centauri, minus the fauna
Basically it's an excuse to represent a fantastical setting while still being grounded in reality (ie 'technology is believable magic' instead of 'magic is magic'). AC used it as a platform to tell a story of extreme ideologies, but the setting is wide enough to accommodate anything you wouldn't get away with in a story set in the 21st century.

>>52967995
>200 light year diameter
> => radius = 100 light years

>>52967884
I've got to agree with >>52970270

Most terrestrial broadcasts haven't been powerful enough to breach the ionosphere.

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/09/will-hitler-be-the-first-person-that-aliens-see.html

>>52967942
Hey man, what has gravelly voiced Scott ever done to you?

>>52974051
>half a billion
3.8 billion anon, unless you think single celled proto-organisms had space flight.

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>>52966438

Well, Gundam has done pretty well with a human-only universe, except for the disastrous alien invasion in 00's movie.

>>52974159
Or there is only one ethnic and everyone is brown now.

>>52966463
Truly alien aliens can't really be characters in the sense we would want them to be, they'd appear more like animals or forces of nature that we can't understand. You'd think that kind of super realism would make an appealing narrative, and it does on paper, but trying to put it into practice you just end up with a human-only cast.

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>>52979837
>Man, now I feel like a brainlet. Give me one good reason not to splatter what little I have all over the wall.

It's not a matter of what you've got. It's all about training and working and getting frustrated and keeping on going.

You can't jump in to G.E.B. or Blindsight or something straight away and expect to get it. You need to take a run up. Get your brain practice in. And then, eventually, you'll be able to do whatever you want.

There's so much content out there that requires no brainpower. It's tricky to force yourself to think well.

>>52967053
>Dr. Who
>shitty

you absolute idiot. Dr. Who is probably the greatest show ever made.

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>>52982555
I freaking love it.

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>>52982555
My favourite show.

>>52985991
>>52985991

It's ok if you're a teenage girl.

>>52986343
I'm a 27 year old male

>>52985991
It might be enjoyable but I wouldnt' ever call it good.

It's like enjoying the terrible Godzilla movies. They're fun and entertaining, but ultimately you're getting your kicks out of a guy in a suit kicking over cardboard buildings.

>>52974051
Depending on how long it takes to travel between worlds we're probably going to see homogeneous world cultures that vary wildly from ones in neighboring planets.

>>52967995
HOLY SHIT ALIENS CONFIRMED!!!!!!!1111!!!!1

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>>52968364
An AI would be pretty alien compared to us. They aren't going to have the same wants and desires.

Besides, they could all be inside 40 foot tall Mecha bodies that would stop people from trying to HFY them.

>>52986221

>Hydrogen igniting without oxygen.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>52988015
>An AI would be pretty alien compared to us. They aren't going to have the same wants and desires.
Depends on the AI, right? They'd run the gamut from totally incomprehensible to all-too-human.

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>>52988759
You have to excite the molecules with alcohol first.

>>52966438
>space opera

Better question: what opera would be best translated into space? Is it Der Ring des Nibelungen?

>>52991793
I'd go see it.

>>52990722
Yeah, but in a space Opera setting, they'd still be pretty advanced. They'll be able to understand humans, but I doubt there would be any that really want to be humans.

Maybe I read too much Eclipse Phase or something and that is messing with my view.

>>52991716
Anon, what do you think of He Who Did Nothing Wrong?

>>52992240
I don't think a space opera setting necessarily demands an AI be specifically advanced or inhuman. It's up to whoever does the setting. Consider Mass Effect still having EDI and Legion and yes all the way up to the incredibly idiotic Reapers. I mean that one may actually be worse than Dead Space in terms of nonsensical plots.

"We are machines dedicated to preventing the destruction of organic life by machines. To accomplish this goal we machines shall destroy organic life. It's totally cool, though, we only destroy the really smart ones who could build machines that turn against organics. We cool, bro? Yeah, here's your multi-colored endings."

I'm still divided as to whether the Reapers discovered a loophole that allowed them to avoid classifying themselves as anti-organic murder machines because they left some life behind, or if they were just using this as cover so they'd always have more organics to murder in the future. Like a hunter careful to leave enough population behind to rebuild the level of prey.

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>>52991793
Pagliacci.

Thanks to the popularity it becomes the defacto aesthetic for the future of spaaaaaace! In a vacuum nobody can hear you sad clown!

age

>>52996705
...Is that a pro or a con?

>>52996893
I just wanted to bump.

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>>52966438
>human only space operate

>pros
You learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone.
>cons
Sometimes you get nerve stapled.

>>52972508
also, underrated post

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>>52990722
>Yeah, but in a space Opera setting, they'd
Do whatever the plot demands of them. Pic related. It's opera. How things are done doesn't matter. "Space Opera AI" are literally plot devices.

Harder sci-fi AI... that's a different story.

>>52978547
Pretty sure it was the Markers which explains why humanity never bothered to use more robots. They just bred like crazy and picked up incredibly risky jobs that supplied a fuckton of corpses for later use, especially unitologists with their crazy cryo corpse ships.

Not that robots would probably help. Sure robots versus Necromorphs would mean no tissue to reanimate but the Markers can seriously fuck with machines too.

Of course if they ever do DS4 it can be Isaac once again on the Ishimura because the Ishimura never truly dies and using it to "planet"crack undead moons.

>>52997123
AI has no requirements for behavior rules same as aliens don't regardless of hard or soft. AI can be benevolent or [KILL ALL HUMANS] in either one, it's all up to the author.

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>>52967884

You see, the problem is that if we assume that aliens have reached the stars, they are either a couple million years more/less advanced than us, never equals even assuming that we are among the first technological species not only in the galaxy but on the universe.

If the energy necessities and drive for expansions can be applied to other species, then they should have expanded across the galaxy, building Dyson Spheres, and reach every corner of the galaxy within million years.

The fact that we don't see other galaxies, even 1% that are habitable, with evidence of Dyson Spheres seems to imply that technological civilisations are either super-rare, we are the first ones and at the beginning of history, or get extinct in the blink of an eye.

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>>52997320
There is another explanation.

You aren't going to like it.

But it's the only true one.

>>52997320
For all you know they've done just that. Doesn't mean they've bothered to visit every single planet, but sure let's imagine that they employ dyson spheres around local stars to maximize the use of all that lovely solar energy. That means to our perspective we'd see...nothing. No bright light in the night sky because it's covered and has been covered long before that light reached us. Might help explain why we can't account for some of the mass in the galaxy if it's shit we can't see and can't detect unless it's emitting some damn strong signals.

Frankly I'm not really sold on this whole "conquer the galaxy in millions of years" bit. Sure I guess it's possible but at the level of tech they might have, if they're making dyson spheres, if they use decent population control, what is their drive to constantly expand everywhere?

Of course we're in one of the spiral arms so maybe they just haven't gotten here yet.

>>52997427
>this explanation
Shit's not as bad as they make it out to be actually.

Space telescopes are pretty damn sensitive, and while a planet getting atomized is still many orders of magnitude less than a start exploding, it's not the thing that's likely to go unnoticed if it's happening with some frequency.

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>>52997939
Exactly.

Since using a relativistic missile is so obvious, it's almost as bad as saying "Here I am, come stab me please!"

So you use subtle and quiet means, if you can. Hence, no evidence.

>>52974368
The balkan planet is kept unified by how much it's various ethnicities hate each other

>>52997939
>>52997965
I'm not certain I buy that. We'd notice STARS winking out, sure, but how long have we been planet hunting? Hell, we're still not 100% sure what the hell is around Alpha Centurai yet! We've managed to detect some planets, sure, but not many.

Any RKV would need to produce an intensity readily distinguishable from the local star otherwise it'd be drowned out. At any rate we just haven't been looking for planets in deep space long enough for much chance to notice anything even if it does happen with relative frequency.

>>52998138
At least we've found some worlds from around 2012

http://www.space.com/32560-alpha-centauri-what-we-know.html

>>52998138
We don't have to be looking specifically for planets to notice them exploding, though.

They discovered gamma ray bursts from space using equipment that was designed to detect nuclear detonations here on earth. All I'm saying is that if people were exploding planets all over the galaxy, we'd probably have picked up on it. Especially since the energy being released from the destruction of an entire planetary body by an RKV would be enough to be noticable next to the star.

There are ways for advanced civilisations to not get killed by RKV. Simply, by living in space habitats instead of planets. If you have a Dyson Sphere, you can probably counter-attack with your own RKV, or lasers.

As for hiding, Dyson Sphere are among the less subtle things that a civilisation can ever made. It is still radiates waste-heat. We could detect a Dyson Sphere by the obvious infrared red that it can't be natural.

>>52997965
Technically it wouldn't say, "Here I am!" it'd be saying, "Something that can fuck up a planet was here" and the timeframe would depend on how many light years you are away. I mean if I could detect, say, 200 light years away someone blew up a planet my first reaction wouldn't be to build a bunch of knife ships to stab them, I'd be looking over my shoulder while crapping myself because they've had 200 years to go who knows where else. Maybe they're already coming at you.

>>52998202
We've detected shit that may be high mass stars collapsing into neutron stars or maybe even black holes, even bursts from distant galaxies, but how much gamma radiation do you expect an exploding planet to produce? Gamma seems...unlikely even if the force would still be extremely impressive especially if you were, you know, on that planet at the time.

This is the real world extent of our ability to detect planets dying:

http://earthsky.org/space/astronomers-find-dead-star-destroy-a-planet

>>52998211
For reason my mind keeps drifting towards the simile that it's like the above scenario with the muggers, except they have flamethrowers instead of knives.

There's also the possibility that aliens never expand to other systems for fear that they will create a rival. With the long distances, and century-long travel, far away colonies could easily grow independent and become an enemy of its ancestors.

How long would it be before it deteriorates in a Cold War scenario were the colonies and the homeworld threat each other with WMD and some day someone decides to fire them?

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>>52998211
But that works well when blowing up planets is a scary thing you can't do. When it's trivial, the situation is reversed. There's always a bigger fish, but if you're a big fish, it might be an incentive to bump off a smaller fish before they get big too. After all, if those assholes are blowing up planets nearby, it's likely to attract attention to you, and they could also become a threat, given time.

>>52998211
If you have the power to travel at relativistic speeds, shoot relativistic bombs, and the societal coherence, power, and intelligence to make these things happen, why in the WORLD would any such species waste time and resources traveling just to nuke everything they see? Couldn't they easily send relativistic probes quietly in and out looking for resources and data to accumulate? What in the world is there to gain from doing nothing but destroying and trying to build up your species? Seems like it'd eventually lead to horrific wars that'd wipe out the entire civilization as endless conquest and destruction would fuck up entire solar systems and put their own turf and goals at risk.

Nobody goes out into the stars without curiosity. And curiosity is a constant drive to try something other than "kill eat fuck sleep" as the single goal of existence and creating purpose.

A relativistic conquest species' is a dead end one. It has nowhere to go.

>>52998268
My point with the Gamma Ray Bursts had nothing to do with the type of radiation we should look for, or can find, it's about the fact that we weren't even looking for them, they were discovered. Completely by accident during the cold war, using satellites that were pointed at the earth for the purpose of detecting nuclear bombs going off.


And considering we can detect...
>shit that may be high mass stars collapsing into neutron stars or maybe even black holes, even bursts from distant galaxies
And a white dwarf star eating one of its planets, it's definitely possible we could detect the explosion of a planetary body. The real question is would we know what we're seeing, and again if planets throughout the galaxy are getting blown up with some regularity, then it's highly likely that natural human curiosity would take closer look and eventually notice.

>>52998347
I think you have to take that up with >>52997427

The one thing you fear more than anything else is competition because they may just become better at it than you are.

>>52998352
The point was that we can detect stars, which are REALLY big and powerful especially compared to planets, doing really big and powerful things like collapsing and exploding.

And with that link what we detected wasn't the planet as such as the star doing something, in this case dimming by a significant amount on a regular basis. That's what clued us in. So unless an RKV detonation does something to the star that we notice we, well, probably won't notice it.

>>52998357
>The one thing you fear more than anything else is competition because they may just become better at it than you are.

So wouldn't you want to play the smart game, the survival game, the long game, by stealthily seeking out all possible life to catalogue and understand in order to asses the danger? What if they have technology that completely crushes even your relativistic bombs? What if you nuke a planet belonging to a powerful empire you knew nothing about, and they decide to come find you? What if the planet has resources you can't find on dead rocks? Why not take the species' into your own collective if you find they're not a threat to bolster your reach and power?

That dude has a good point but he presumes that the only thing going out there is going to be murderous world-killer who shoot on sight.

>>52998357
Why people think the only way to survive on the galactic scale is to be a giant space-nigger is beyond me.

>>52998395
Extrapolating from human behavior I have to admit that of the two options of crazy space murder vs. benevolent peace and harmony, the former seems far more likely.

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>>52998347
>Nobody goes out into the stars without curiosity.

Curiosity might be an intermediate stage. It might be something, like fearing the weather, that we need to discard to progress.

So by all means, send untracable probes out into the void. And if you spot anything that /might/ be a threat, have those probes eat a few comets and build themselves into a missile. Or fuck it, redirect an asteroid to wipe out complex life.

Wars are an early-stage process. You're still imagining civilizations in very human terms, like aliens are going to be groups of mammals or something. It's not... going to work like that. Sure, some drives are translatable, but most aren't. We don't know what they'll want, or what leftover bits of code are kicking around in their minds. Hell, we have music. That's a puzzler.

>>52998395
Too much 40k. They think a species can actually thrive based off of a Kill Em' All strategy.

>>52998385
My argument is that a planet exploding would be big enough that a star's emissions wouldn't drown it out. In all likelihood it would seem like the star got much brighter for a brief period. And if this is something that was happening a lot, it's something we'd naturally take a closer look at.

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>>52997320

I believe we are at the beginning of galactic history. There's are still planets around, and stars bigger than a red dwarf. An ever-expanding super-advance civilisation would have stripped out the galaxy out of its resources long ago, had it ever existed. Note that covers that las millions of years or so. Early starters would have been wiped out by gamma bursts billions of years before that.

In all likehood, technological and tool-using civilisation are extremely rare. Note that doesn't mean that intelligence is rare, there are critters on earth that are following the same big brain strategy but for other reasons they can't develop complex tool using, specialisation, or industrial civilisation.

>>52998420
>You're still imagining civilizations in very human terms

Oooooookay what does every creature on earth do? Eat. Drink. Reproduce. Sleep. Some variation of the cycles. You... actually believe that alien life will somehow manage to be so far removed from the basic laws of biology that there will be nothing to relate to or assume? You actually think intelligent beings with auditory senses won't have fucking MUSIC?

>>52998419
I dunno, human beings tend to think in extremes, while reality continually imposes mediocrity on us. So I'm cautiously optimistic that we'd end up somewhere in the middle

And for another reason, a species capable of building RKV's has also been capable of colonizing other star systems for quite some time. If you have technology that advanced you've probably also figured out cryogenics and other sci-fi shit (you wanna get really crazy, ships controlled by AI's and loaded with frozen sperm and ovum, with directions to start breeding people on arrival at the new planet).

So causing another species to go extinct is not as simple as launching a space-nuke at the first planet of their's that you see.

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>>52998484
>Oooooookay what does every creature on earth do? Eat. Drink. Reproduce. Sleep. Some variation of the cycles.

Right, so break this down a bit. Eat Drink = Acquire necessary resources. Photosynthesis works. Reproduce Kill = survive. Immortal creatures don't need to reproduce.

So there are a few drives that life will need. But how they're met is going to be hugely variable.

> You actually think intelligent beings with auditory senses won't have fucking MUSIC?

Absolutely. Or rather, there's nothing about music that suggests it's universal, other than hope and anthropocentric bias. Hell, there's a lot to unpack in the word "intelligent", but this probably isn't the thread for it. We've walked over this ground before.

Look, read "Blindsight". Then come back here.

>>52998456
The problem, anon, is that an exploding planet is an instantaneous event so even if we detect it it is not very helpful to then look closer. It is extremely difficult to draw conclusions from a single data point, you need a continuous or trackable event. We may see debris but even then we can only guess as to what happened.

Planets have collisions all the time in a galaxy this size. Asteroids, like those that caused some of our own extinction events, or moons crashing into worlds, worlds crashing into worlds. We don't detect any of that shit on a routine basis so why do you assume RKV events are standing out?

>>52998504
I think in the end, crushing cosmic loneliness is going to win out against paranoia.

Every one of you would be lying dirty if you said you wouldn't blithely walk into an alien visitation, whatever form it takes.

I think that applies to any species' that reaches a point where it can think for itself and then go out into the universe.

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>>52998548
Again, that might be something you have to grow out of to survive as a species. It might be as self-destructive as a love of monuments on Easter Island. Curiosity and xenophilia might get you from point A to point B, but to get to Point C, we might need to try something else. Curiosity and frienship with dangerous things might be a local maximum.

It is probable that, to survive, we must change the way we think completely. The Enlightenment is going to look like background noise compared to the mental shifts required to break some of the barriers we know are out there.

>>52998593
I think you're in love with death and you're too scared to admit it. I think you believe that violence is the only point to existence.

>>52968082
Stop reading soft scifi and space fantasy.

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>>52998617
>I think you're in love with death and you're too scared to admit it. I think you believe that violence is the only point to existence.

I think that consciousness and the life of the mind is deluding yourself to thinking otherwise. It's the only way to stay sane and alive. But it doesn't make it objectively true.

Death is incidental. It's the removal of a threat or the control of one that matters. Violence is also just one option (but it's the simplest; all other options require more understanding of your target).

>>52998542
A few facts stick out in my mind making is a difficult thing to hide. An RKV of sufficient power to cause a species extinction on a planetary scale will at the very lease need to crack the crust and cause tectonic upheaval to such an extent that no surface structure could feasibly remain standing, whether from the tremors of the impact itself, or the subsequent alterations to the surface conditions, ala everything being coated in molten lava. And any species crazy enough to be launching something like an RKV is probably going to just go for overkill and shatter the planet to pieces, because an advanced society could theoretically survive long enough to evacuate a significant portion of their population from the surface of the world.

Also that a collision between planetary bodies doesn't involve relativistic speeds, would release much less energy. Like the difference between hitting something with a hammer, and shooting it with a bullet.

Meanwhile the instantaneous nature of the event isn't as much of a detriment as you might think, as recording equipment is standard when it comes to space observation. It would begin simply as people noticing that a great number of stars seem to go through a sudden brief moment of brightness at some point in their history. Someone else notices that they detected more planets around the star before the event happened. Another person determines that most of these stars that the incident happened to were those we consider most suitable for having planets that bear life. And so on.

You are right though about how we'd only be able to guess at what happened for a long, long time.

>>52998504
The typical Star Trek approach is that we would have learned to control our darker impulses, at least on larger scales, just to survive long enough to reach the stars in ernest. Of course it was a Cold War era product.

Even then of course they had their depressing moments. I recall Kirk talking to a surviving member of a species that doomed itself and pointing out how humanity survived our nuclear crisis, the alien says, sure, but so did they and eventually humanity, like these aliens, would reach a crisis from which self-annihilation is the outcome.

Honestly taking a look at the world today it seems clear that progress is a joke. We don't continually grow as a species becoming wiser and more enlightened. We carry our bigotries with us. How long as it been since the civil rights marches and the US still struggles with race. On 4chan perhaps especially being a racist asshole is something of a badge of honor. Maybe we are headed towards Idiocracy. Maybe we'll still reach the stars but it will be a second coming of Manifest Destiny. Maybe we'll finally blow ourselves up.

Let's just rule out politics as a discussion that will never end well especially on 4chan, from an economics standpoint we are so incredibly short-sighted. If there is anything about the economic implosion of 2008 the assholes didn't care if they could keep the good times going forever as long as they felt they could run to the exit with as much money as possible by the time it self-destructed, and sure enough the government bailed them out as their executives rode golden parachutes to safety.

Socially, economically, politically we seem fairly fucked. Sure you could fix it but the cure would look like tyranny.

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>>52998687

If an alien species would have wanted to eliminate all rivals in the galaxy, they would have done so long ago. Why would you ever wait until you technological life develops? Just kill every slimeball that appears in your sensors from the safety of your homeworld and don't let alien life to ever develop. We stayed that way for 3 billion years as unicellular life. No way we could ever fire back.

>>52998687
You don't need to crack the crust to cause mass extinctions and an extended ice age would kill most civilizations or at least severely knock them back in development as they freeze, starve, and watch their industries collapse.

Anyway I don't know if you quite understand how an RKV works. For instance the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was roughly 6 miles. You can get the same effect with smaller objects if you can get them moving fast enough. That's the magic of an RKV. That's because there are two ways to increase the force of of an impact: more mass and faster speeds. RKVs are the speedy method which allows for relatively smaller projectiles than an extinction level event causing asteroid. They're also handy because the speed makes them harder to detect. That said I'm not sure the end result would look all that different especially from light years away.

>>52998731
>No way we could ever fire back.
Unless their species was born of a time paradox.

WHAT WAS SHALL BE! WHAT SHALL BE WAS!!!

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLykC1VN7NY

>>52998731
Unless you have some super duper fantasy sensors your best hope would be waiting until you can detect signs of life which would typically be technologically based transmissions. You'd look for artificial activity. It'd also be easier than seeding sensors everywhere in the galaxy which would be a huge and lengthy undertaking.

All this talk of RKVs seems a bit silly anyway. They're such fantastically wasteful weapons, especially to waste on a planet as developed as modern Earth. What we'd likely see is some aliens showing up and abducting some specimens, turning some cows inside and collecting butt samples with their probes, and when they feel they sufficiently understand our biology engineering a viral solution. Hell, we've even given them a head start by collecting some very deadly specimens and we're even pretty bad about keeping tabs on them.

>>52998782

>Unless you have some super duper fantasy sensors your best hope would be waiting until you can detect signs of life which would typically be technologically based transmissions. You'd look for artificial activity. It'd also be easier than seeding sensors everywhere in the galaxy which would be a huge and lengthy undertaking.

If you relay on evidence of technological activity, by the time you fire the gun, the other will have its own have a Dyson Spheres and RKV ready to fire back at any genocidal aliens. You nuke them when they are still protozoos or risk retribution, it's the only way to be sure.

>>52998781
>~5:30 into the vid
>a gamma ray burst killed the lesbian space rocks
And thus this timeline was spared from a Steven universe.

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>>52998830
But as >>52997427
said, Dyson spheres and all that stuff is obvious. If you can see it from a mile away, you can snipe it with a cheap rock.

So don't build obvious. Build stuff that looks exactly like nothing. Build computers that look like dust and dust that hides your computers. Even red herrings are a sign that /something's/ been at work, so don't bother with decoys. Just hide. Blend in. If you want to live forever, make sure nobody can ever find or see you.

This probably means you have to move far, far away from your original home (that expanding sphere of early radio waves and light is going to look suspicious), so prepare a ton of von-Neuman probes the size of thimbles and chuck them everywhere. Maybe some will get through. Immortality on average.

>>52998830
That wouldn't be so bad. After all you already had a head start on them and unless you've grown complacent and your advancements have stagnated you'd still be ahead by the time you detect them. Besides, you're only likely to detect people nearby anyway who would be the ones you'd most likely have to worry.

>>52998863
Isn't that the kind of extreme spare paranoia you'd worry about? A dyson sphere or just a simpler dyson array would get you huge amounts of power from the local star which would be way more energy than most reasonable civilizations would ever need. But if you're sacrificing that to bury your head in the sand if you are detected anyway you're at a huge disadvantage.

What good is living if you're going to be scared of the unknown all the time? It's not a great way to live and it's even not a guarantee.

>>52966467
>-Space feels empty
Space is empty. Most of it is literally empty space.

That said, space is also so large that two different species could theoretically control more or less overlapping planet-spanning empires and still don't know that the other exists.

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>>52998887
A dyson sphere is a huge target that's still vulnerable to "cheap" shots. A distributed invisible array is far more sensible.

Extreme paranoia is the only way to go. It's the prisoner's dilemma, except the guy in the other room is absolutely insane and takes his orders from a god made of fire and whiskey.

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>>52998887
>What good is living if you're going to be scared of the unknown all the time? It's not a great way to live and it's even not a guarantee.

How very human of you. Does the amoeba care? Does the sparrow?

Life wants to keep on living. A distributed network of tiny computer-nodules, each containing a tiny virtual paradise/paranoid mind, is a kind of life that you've got to admire.

>>52998906
And that guy probably only lives in your head.

Besides, a dyson sphere would be detected from afar as a gradual dimming of a star as the construction blocks more and more of it. Once the shell is complete the star would be contained and would no longer emitting anything except what you vent outside your sphere.

Given the benefits of a sphere and the potential advancements you could make with all that lovely power you cost of living in fear is a very real self-inflicted harm. And if your civilization is capable of building one and it's been operational long enough for it to be detected light years away you probably won't just have the one by the time a potential enemy shows up. They'd run the risk of starting a way with a technologically advanced enemy they might not want to fuck with.

So the companion to paranoia, prudence, typically dictates that you probably wouldn't shoot first and ask questions later but rather investigate, study, and maybe even open up contact. They might be more beneficial as a friend then playing out a relativistic version of the OK Corral.

>>52998969
The alien megastructure was a fun one

http://www.space.com/32864-alien-megastructure-star-telescope-changes.html

>>52966438
>Pros
No xeno shit
>Cons
No xeno shit

>>52998924
Does the amoeba or sparrow seem likely to be running an interstellar empire?

Weird how yesterday this thread was talking about sending probes with robots and embryos or even nanites to seed life and today it's talking about sending spy probes to seek out other life to eradicate.

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>>52998969
>Besides, a dyson sphere would be detected from afar as a gradual dimming of a star as the construction blocks more and more of it. Once the shell is complete the star would be contained and would no longer emitting anything except what you vent outside your sphere.

And gravity. And neutrinos Good luck stopping those two. It's really hard to hide a star.

>>52999006
>Does the amoeba or sparrow seem likely to be running an interstellar empire?
Somebody somewhere is probably reinstalling Master of Orion as we speak.

>>52999016
Gravity as a fundamental force is macroscopic in scale but actually pretty damn weak. You'd need to look for anomalous gravitational behavior in nearby objects you can detect and then get a youngling to explain what is going on, Obi-Wan.

Besides, why the fuck would you want to block the gravity even if you could? You'd fuck up the rest of the solar system, or at least the parts if it you haven't deconstructed to make your dyson sphere. Some of that shit could be useful for resources.

Good look achieving so much efficiency that you reach cosmic background radiation-level emissions.

>>52999099
You mean like with the dyson sphere thing? I guess if someone wanted to make a stealth sphere they could. Honestly, though, I'm not sure why you'd bother. I mean if you wanted to you wouldn't need to reach cosmic background radiation level emissions. A dyson sphere is going to collect a lot of energy and if you are making an interstellar empire you'll have more than one anyway, so fine. Say you only use 70-90% of that energy and devise a means by which the outer surface of your sphere can emit the energy you aren't using. Now you appear to be a very weak and likely very uninteresting star. Maybe if someone detects the dimming they might wonder what is up, but whether they all jump to "DYSON SPHERE!" and grab their grandpappy's RKV shotgun from above the fireplace is another matter.

If you're already making a dyson sphere your civilization has reached a very masterful degree of engineering so if you're really hellbent on it you could find ways to make the construction look like some kind of natural effect from light years away.

>>52999149
You might not even need to make the dyson sphere in the same system you plan to populate. If the civilization can figure out quantum entanglement for the purpose of transmitting energy instantaneously between groups of particles without necessitating destroying either end of the paired particles.

You could use a dyson sphere much the same way we use a nuclear power plant and just beam the energy across the light years to power your various colonies. I realize that someone will probably say that that makes a single point of failure for multiple colonies, but then it depends both on how much power you can store and how many spheres you bother to create. If you're engineering on that scale you're pretty damn formidable. You could make steps to protect the sphere even from an RKV. Remember that it takes like over five hours to reach Pluto, and an RKV will likely be traveling only a fraction of c. A detection grid forming a perimeter at a distance from your sphere at or further than the distance Pluto is from our own will give you some time. Something that very likely would be doable for our happy little theoretical dyson building civilization. What you can do to stop it, well, you might be able to blunt it, I don't know. I won't guess everything such a civilization may come up with, but either way even a planet killing RKV will have trouble killing a dyson sphere. Punching a whole in one? Sure, but a dyson sphere is fucking massive. It's surrounding a goddamn star, after all. And honestly you may just build it with detachable sections anyway in case of emergencies like a stray space rock hitting it. Something with enough force to cause destruction may have shockwave triggered emergency separation systems. All you've done is pushed a section into the sun. The rest of the sphere is still collecting power, they can rebuild, and, oh yeah, you just fired your wad and they know you're there.

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>>52999333
Might work. The dyson sphere is a shell so penetration could send most of the energy out the other side. You'd get a kinetic shockwave but I suppose you could mitigate it. Detaching an entire plate may not be necessary, just uncoupling smaller plates around it. Basically what I mean is imagine your dyson sphere is designed like pic related, a bunch of geometric shapes attached to a skeletal lattice, a frame like the birders in a building. An impact will spread across the outer skin but if you separate just by tilting them away from the point of impact so they aren't touching the shockwave can be somewhat contained. Mitigated, at least. The frame will still transfer some of the energy and will need, let's face it, massive repairs, but I don't see why an RKV will equal a killshot. In fact an RKV might be the worst type of weapon since they're usually small and rely on speed, that means penetrative force and small impact sites. You either need a lot of them, which is doable, or something really big to fuck it up. RKVs, even a thousand of them, may not do more than poke holes across the surface without actually destroying it.

It's entirely possible I'm overlooking something.

If virtual simulations are common, you are probably one.

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>>52968082
The arrivals did an interesting aliens without them becoming human at all aside from having a form of society and language.

Solaris is also an excellent example of having aliens being non-human.

>>52999459
If that were true then wait for the day when science discovers the personal undo command and praise the god of nerds running that simulation because I got a lot of personal mistakes I'd love to ctrl-z.

On the other hand the first time they probably test the undo command they ctrl-z them ever having discovered it, so they may have actually discovered it many times already.

>>52980148
>there's better ways to deal with the effects of inbreeding than not inbreeding!
You're from the South, aren't you?

>>52999540
Probably since he seems hellbent on inbreeding like people weren't talking about maybe sending some frozen embryos. Sending colonies in waves that first involve robots to set up habitats and some basic mining and industry before humans arrive are pretty nifty. It's been suggested sending frozen embryos along with them so they can grow colonists later to populate what they've built since you cut out the weight of a bunch of humans and supplies to keep them going on an interstellar trip.

It's a nifty idea but I wonder how viable it is. What would humans raised by robots even with education tapes even end up like? Even if you could make them look human their body language would probably be off and if you use holograms the kids wouldn't be able to touch them. No clue what that might do to the first generation. I mean I know 4chan loves the word autism but...

>>52982555
>>52986183
>>52986221
>>52991716
this is an old show right, why do I suddenly see it everywhere?

It also looks great and will probably be the first anime Ive seen in six years

>>52999593
While we're back on the subject I wonder about artificially creating genes for a population. It's just the same four amino acids (and uracil steps in for RNA) so you could culture cells for building blocks. Our genetic engineering is still pretty primitive but for a theoretical space colony it might be doable. That way they don't need to carry large amounts of genes even in frozen embryos, they just need "blueprints" from genes recorded on Earth and, what, 3D print them? Or however. If they have decent nanotech it could be scarily easy to do.

They'd be making some designer babies but hey whatever works. That kind of genetic engineering would be very beneficial not just for making babies but for artificially adapting foodstuffs to your new world.

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>>52999635
I knew this thread reminded me of something:

http://fraggedempire.com

Basically humanity is long dead but they've managed to genetically engineered a successor who in turn creates a bunch of other races. Wackiness ensues, by which I mean universal genocide on nearly every front. Arguably distinctive "alienesque" races that are nevertheless human derived. One such race are double elf ears so you know /tg/s gotta love 'em! Pic very much related.

I've never gotten around to playing it (yet!) but it looks nice. There's threads about it occasionally which is where I learned about it. Here's the deviantart page with more art:

http://fragged-empire.deviantart.com

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>>52976089

Thank you for the roundabout introduction to the Tabletop Whale blog. Some finely illustrated infographics to be certain.

Also your campaign synopsis is up there with "Haunted Mars" as existential nightmare fuel and I feel both diminished by the universe and humbled by your generosity.

>>52998480
>having dolphins be your go-to example of uplifted animals
They do rape for fun, you know

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>>53001894
How would you even uplift them? Toss them in a tank with robot arms and legs?

Reminds me of the Xindi on Star Trek Enterprise where the aquatic version were these master ship builders but damned if that makes sense. Can't tool with flippers, can't mind, can't build shit. Maybe all that free time explains dolphin randiness.

>>52998969
Doesn't matter, dyson spheres are inefficient.

Human-only is the way to go since there have been no good (good as in quality) alien races, ever.
I challenge you to give me 1 movie, game, show or book that did aliens justice. they are all meme space fantasy rather then science fiction and I think everyone agrees with me in this thread that fantasy is a below shit tier setting

>>52998540
Blindsight wasn't as hard as advertized, science-wise. I'm talking specifically about the authors' notes concerning the presence of self-consciousness in primates.

And how could the scramblers possibly be so stupid that they wouldn't understand our casual conversations? Even if they or their makers rejected mental faculties which weren't strictly useful for survival * you'd expect humans wouldn't be the only civilizations that kept such luxuries. It's a rather cute expression of pessimism: the author takes the principle of mediocrity (this planet isn't exceptional, life is probably common in the universe) and meshes it with a twisted sense of human exceptionalism (humans are somehow the odd ones, it's implied scrambler-like species are much more common).

*which seems unlikely most sentients would do since, even though Darwinism explains why such faculties would arise and be selected for, inteligence functions largely in a modular fashion as the wants and needs of the sentients function independently from their evolutionary causes (e.g. you may want sex without wanting to reproduce) and sometimes even against Darwinian "goals" (you may find rewarding behaviors that reduce the likelyhood of you surviving and reproducing, such as experimenting with dangerous drugs).

>>52998593
>Again, that might be something you have to grow out of to survive as a species.
We wouldn't be the same species. And why would be willingly evolve into a species that is unlikable in our eyes? Why would any sensible creature?

>>52998924
Life doesn't want anything. Life often acts against itself. There are individual instances of life, crummy contraptions, and they have no grand mission, nothing to look forward in the long, long-term, they are only as functional as they need to be to not be destroyed before pooping out another crummy contraption, and if they avoid dying out then all they've earned is the right to be replaced with different contraptions that will either be dead-ends or replaced themselves.

btw virtual paradises take up cpu power. That is power that is not used to look for danger and plan against it. At least you may not have to feel miserable as even such feelings are somethings you might have to do away with if you are just looking to maximize your chances of continuing to exist.

>>53005327
Life could be argued to want something in a very broad sense, namely to continue. Oh it isn't a conscious effort on life's part in some weird abstract sense, as if there were a God of Life behind it. Still evolution, adaptation, has lead to an amazingly resilient self-perpetuating chemical reaction.

Of course creatures go extinct, evolution has hit a lot of dead ends. Sometimes a creature cannot adapt fast enough, sometimes the arguably "superior" genes don't get passed on to the next generation. But it could also be argued that the fact that species can die and yet life continues shows a necessary resiliency to the mechanism of life. It doesn't want dinosaurs or humans or rockets to other worlds, it just wants to continue. One day it'll have to end, as one day all things will end, but for better or worse life will fight for as many tomorrows as it can get. It's an amazing phenomenon. Especially since humanity might one day spread the life here beyond our world to other stars.

It would be an absolutely amazing if the drive to adapt and survive were somehow coincidental.

Aliens are rarely done well, and the best Space Opera settings (Dune, Alpha Centauri, Foundation) realized that how humans change is way more interesting than how rubber foreheads are like us

>>52968352
>mfw what you're moat likely to find would be graffiti
>mfw some guy ends up doing his doctoral thesis about some extinct alien species about how dick jokes really were universal

>>53009438
Gaius and Aulus. bros for all eternity. May their brotherhood outlive their species.

>>53005018
> And why would be willingly evolve into a species that is unlikable in our eyes? Why would any sensible creature?

"Unlikable" is a pretty mediocre bar. If the change is gradual enough people will accept almost anything as tolerably weird but still "us", until "us" stops being meaningful. Describe our current world one way and it's a utopia. Describe it another way and it's a nightmare.

We aren't going to go have Captain Kirk adventures with shirts and pants. We're already sending dumb robots to nearby rocks. Smart robots and farther rocks is pretty nearly inevitable. They won't be us at all.

We died when we tamed fire, wheat, animals, electricity, the atom. We change all the time. There never was an "us". There's just an aggregate, trying to pretend it's coherent.

>>53010781
There's a me, right now. I want to believe there is a you. And I want to believe these two things can agree that an existence devoid of love, beauty and curiosity, driven by fear of death or otherwise cessation of activity, is a downgrade from what we have now.

I'm actually OK with human extinction. I'm something of a transhumanist, even. But losing the stuff that matters to me to keep existing in some crude fashion for a long time is much less interesting than enjoying a relatively shorter but vibrant life/lenght of existence.

>>52968131

This is a good showcase of not only how to potray an alien AI, but also how to portray a human AI and the major difference between the two in how they would interact. Good work, I must say.

>>52974820
the purpose of aliens in star trek was not to be autistic life simulator 5000, but a way of examining different cultures without the baggage of real life prejudice, talking about soviets would instantly get your proposed character no sympathy, but a klingon would allow you to examine cold war relations free of political baggage

in RPGs, its not so much "aliens arent real" or "aliens are just like humans, so just use humans" but its a way of allowing players to have fun with certain archetypes or concepts, without having to be compared to a real life thing

its like why zombies are often used for disaster survival 101, even though zombies are not a thing, it lets you walk people through the class free of pre existing baggage or having to deal with too many close to home arguments, it also makes it more fun for people

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>>53011454
Thanks! It was a fun game. And having two comp sci graduates playing the AI helped.

>>53004889
>Blindsight wasn't as hard as advertized, science-wise. I'm talking specifically about the authors' notes concerning the presence of self-consciousness in primates.

Oh my yes, although his theory of consciousness is closer to the mainstream than you'd think. And the ATP references. And the linguistics.

But for all that, it's a damn fine book.

>>53000289
>Also your campaign synopsis is up there with "Haunted Mars" as existential nightmare fuel and I feel both diminished by the universe and humbled by your generosity.

Splendid.

>>53009099
The problem with statements like this is that it is a subjective judgement. What might be right for you might not be right for some, and vice versa. Especially when what people can want from aliens in fiction is a pretty wide field.

>>52999599
Folks are talking about it because people keep on hyping about it.
It's half "I love this show" and half "You guys lied! Thiss how sucks!" posts as i have seen it.

So, if you do watch it, know this, that it is kinda dry and plays more like a history documentary than an average show.
Also, prepare for surprisingly much gore and space politics.

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>wanting to explore human evolution and possible futures

>>52968082
FUCK YOUR ENTIRE PREMISE AND YOUR INABILITY TO ENJOY GOOD THINGS.

HAVE A YEHAT THEME, IT'S FUCKING AWESOME.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOE-vVuBXKE

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>>53019520
I WAS SO ENRAGED I FORGOT MY PICTURE

>>53016446
The Gravitals are huge dicks
Literally worse than the Qu

>>52978101
There's no reason to assume that a need for locomotion would result in a means for locomotion that resembles anything like what we have on earth. Same goes for the rest of the shit you said.

>>53020178
What do you propose, wheels or tracks?

>>52966438
You can have a wide variety of "humanity", depending on how far it spread and how FTL works.

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>>52998848

>>52968118
>>52967884
I'm surprised this thread hasn't devolved into a discussion of Fermi's Paradox

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>>52975285
Way ahead of you

>>52966438
DAGOBERT DID NOTHING WRONG

>>53020178
There's a limited amount of possibilites for different modes of locomotion

>>53025591
Always liked the idea of wheeled aliens.

>>52980179
>Considering the bit about the 18th century was at the end, yeah, that wasn't hard.
Oh so you just didn't understand what I wrote because you're a fucking idiot, as the rest of your post demonstrates.

>How precisely are you going to engineer away the problems of not enough genetic diversity?
Basically this >>52980244, that's what I was thinking.

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>>52966438
I would honestly say there are no inherent pros and no inherent cons. Everything you can do with humans you can do with aliens, and vice versa.

People are saying stuff like "It helps you avoid stereotypes" but you don't need aliums to have stereotypes, and this isn't really a flaw with the premise, it's a flaw in the writer's execution.

>>52966438
Mother fucker.

Is that some Hari Seldon?

>>52980193
>There is no way I "sort of implied" that anywhere but in your own head
Yes you did, whenever you argue for picking people based solely on what their racial origins are you're arguing for picking less qualified people because now qualifications aren't the only criteria, that's self-evident. That's what I was referring to, I guess if you're talking about really large numbers of colonists where they don't have to have really exceptional abilities it wouldn't matter so much but then why would you be worried about inbreeding? A large enough group of people, even if they're monoracial, doesn't have to worry about inbreeding while a small group no matter how racially diverse it is does. Your contribution to the conversation was simply nonsense, go learn how genetics actually works rather then basing your knowledge of it off of what political ideologues tell you. You sound like a neo-nazi boasting about how "superior aryan genes" would be immune to the effects of inbreeding, your ideas had no basis in science just ideology.

>unless you somehow think certain races could never be qualified members of the crew, which would be boneheaded so I choose not to consider that is what you meant out of courtesy.
No, I don't think that, and thanks for sliding in this passive-aggressive little insult so I can confirm you're exactly the kind of person who I suspected you were.

>Also I hardly think a better solution than trying to tailer the genetic makeup of your founding crew is installing a complete genetics laboratory to fix it with Science™
Your solution though wasn't any actual solution at all, as I've explained above. Really the only solution is to send a really large number of people so you have a health genepool, but that has obvious practical problems given how hard it is to transport people across space.

>>52999540
>small group of people reproducing naturally for a long time
>no inbreeding
pick one

You really should read through what they wrote, they seem to think if a groups racially diverse enough it doesn't matter how limited it's gene pool is due to the fact there's too few of them. They're a moron, but you seem like one too so I don't know why I bothered replying.

>>53012542
>The problem with statements like this is that it is a subjective judgement.
Yes anon, we call these "opinions". People are allowed to have them and are intended to provoke thought more then give a solid, objective definition of how the world operates. Generally people respond to an opinion with their own, rather then bitch and moan about how someone dared to offer an opinion. You think differently apparently.

>>52997427
Oh, so someone has read Dark Forest series? or did DF's author read that? Or do great minds think alike?..

>>52966438
>Pros
-More realistic given our understanding of the universe
>Con
-Your average /tg/er isn't a good sci-fi novelist and won't be able to make a world that will truly make use of realism, or even be realistic itself while still being a functional game.
-A FUNCTIONAL GAME
-It's a game not you god damn novel. I don't care how much effort you put into it if you can't let the players in to do their thing it doesn't work. Having a developed world is nice but the focus is the action of play. You avoided a common trope, congratulations you look patrician and all that but it's really only a minor detail in the over world from the perspective of the action.

Realism is just one thing you can do and it can be just as poorly executed as the fantastical. But at least the guy who made the shit fantasy isn't insulting the reality and live in. And as a general thing he doesn't punctuate every sentence by jacking-off in my face.

>>52966438
>Pros
Human Space Poon
>Cons
You still can't get laid

>>53027747
It's a famous meme among scientists and science-fiction writers that dates back to the 70s.

Dark Forest simply re-publicized it to a new generation of normies. The previous memebook was The Killing Star from 1995.

>>52999429
You're overlooking that solid, interconnected Dyson spheres can't exist with realistic materials; but Dyson swarms can.

They can also function as stellar lasers, which is a little faster than RKKVs.

The problem with RKKVs is relativity and the Kirklin mine dynamic. Each piece of dust hitting it arrives with full relativistic force, so swathng the outskirts of a solar system with dust from reprocessed asteroids can be a viable defense.

>>53029033
and fucking CONT I guess...

I don't care whether the game is green space dudes in silver suits fighting evil across the stars or operatic struggles of mankind in the monolith of galactic history. It doesn't even matter if the world is Tolkenesque levels of detail, as long as the GM is capable of inviting players into this world and supplying them with meaningful action. As long as they can create interesting situations and interactions.

This can be done with any setting but I find it more commonly well done by the guy who is doing the cheesy sci-fantasy space opera. It's because usually that guy knows what wants and how to get it. He wants a fun, exciting game with his friends, so he makes that. He's not so proud as to shut them out or bog them down with hours of exposition.

The fate of mankind guy usually doesn't know what he wants. Is he trying to write a novel? Deliver a philosophical message? Whatever it is it's not well suited for a table-top game. Yes, what you are making probably has its roots in great fiction and meaning but it doesn't matter if it's poorly implemented.

We spend a lot of time worldbuilding but are the worlds we build worth caring about? Does your realism have life? Will it survive if it leaves your head?

Sorry if salted up your thread. But if spent a lot of hours on a lot of games that were never really games at all. Theres a lot of weird pseudo literary frustration in this hobby and I find it usually stems from stuff like this.
I want to play good games and read goods. I want the people I'm with to know which they are working on.
I suppose I want to hear more about how these ideas can actually be implemented in a game.

tl;dr
>You have a cool idea, can you actually run that idea?

>>52972187
>The universe is over ten billion. It's difficult to comprehend how large that timescale is, and how small a part of it we are. Where are the aliens that got a two billion year head-start on us running around in their relativity-bending vehicles? Why haven't they found *us*? Furthermore, considering--again--how old space is, and how the only civilization we're aware of (us) has been shooting out signals into space pretty much constantly as soon as we learned how, why haven't we seen any of those? They've had potentially billions of years to travel to us, but we've seen zilch, nada, nothing.

Because you don't push your idea further. And this is something we can do in 400-1000 years.
But you yourself said they would be billions of years advanced.
So for them this might be very primitive, they might have vanished in alternative realities they created. Also I doubt they would contact us as intelligent creative life seems to be pretty rare, so they might prefer us to develop unique culture and ideas as it is the only rare commodity in universe. If we would contact such aliens, it is likely we would be dominated by their advanced culture.

>>52997427
>But it's the only true one.
It's idiotic, even our telescopes will be able to detect life bearing planets in 20 years time.
Advanced civilizations would know about existence of life bearing planets for eons before civilizations arise(and you can actually detect civilization by telescopes too).

>>52997320
>
The fact that we don't see other galaxies, even 1% that are habitable, with evidence of Dyson Spheres seems to imply that technological civilisations are either super-rare, we are the first ones and at the beginning of history, or get extinct in the blink of an eye.

We have detected several candidates for Dyson Spheres.
http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/infrared_astronomy/Fermilab_search.htm

http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/infrared_astronomy/infrared_astronomy_master.html


>If the energy necessities and drive for expansions can be applied to other species, then they should have expanded across the galaxy, building Dyson Spheres, and reach every corner of the galaxy within million years.
We can envision Dyson Spheres today and probably build them in 500-1000 years, you are talking about civilization billions of years advanced more than we are.

>>52998420
>So by all means, send untracable probes out into the void. And if you spot anything that /might/ be a threat, have those probes eat a few comets and build themselves into a missile

With gravity lensing and hypertelescopes you can observe all the planets in the galaxy with intricate detail(up to km size resolution). It is impossible to be invisible in universe. Hence the idea about RKV is retarded. You can't hide.

>>52998782
>Unless you have some super duper fantasy sensors your best hope would be waiting until you can detect signs of life which would typically be technologically based transmissions.

LOL, we have this technology already on drawing boards. See FOCAL mission and hypertelescope.
It isn't difficult in space scale to have telescopes capable detecting life and civilization in all of galaxy. You simply lack the knowledge about current level of science.

>>52998830
>If you relay on evidence of technological activity, by the time you fire the gun, the other will have its own have a Dyson Spheres and RKV ready to fire back at any genocidal aliens

We can detect city lights on other planets with telescopes that we could build today. Again, everyone is visible in universe to advanced civilizations.

To all people talking about RKV's and hiding in universe.
This is what we can imagine TODAY with our current level of science

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/12/vision-of-asteroid-belt-astronomical.html

The theoretical limit of 2 × 10^−11 arcsec suggests millimeter resolution at 100 light years.

Seth Shostak described a very large optical interferometry space telescope array. Using interferometry to pool data from thousands of small mirrors in space spread out over 100 million miles to image exoplanets 100 light years away down to 2 meter resolution.
Long story short, hiding strategy or RKV strategy is based on ignorance. Advanced civilizations if they exist already know about our existence.

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>>53029838
>Advanced civilizations would know about existence of life bearing planets for eons before civilizations arise(and you can actually detect civilization by telescopes too).

Explains the Fermi paradox then, doesn't it?

>>53019915
Gravitals kind of got better, though.

>>53029880
I think the best explaination for the scarcity of space age civilizations is that the universe was pretty unstable and is moving towards a steadier state. Quantum ray bursts would be much more common in our young galaxy. Massive, explodey stars slowly give way to smaller sleepy stars. Maybe we're one of the earliest civilizations, because planets often didn't have enough time to developed space faring civs before being wiped clean.

Or maybe the real smart guys moved towards the cooler edges of the galaxy because they want to be left alone in a quiet, cool place or towards the center of the galaxy where there's way more energy to harness. It's possible we are living in the sticks.

>>53029968
I don't think you understood that conversation. Someone was talking about destroying life long before they hit a technological state back when they were still goo that hadn't crawled out of their respective oceans. That's a pretty damn huge difference.

Unless your hypertelescope can detect primordial ooze good luck with that. You simply lack the knowledge about what that current conversation was about.

>>53027335
If it makes you feel better nobody discounted what he said, the post made it clear it can work perfectly fine for him. The issue was the way he presented his post was not as opinion but as fact.

>>53031340
>The issue was the way he presented his post was not as opinion but as fact.
Where they? Perhaps they intended it to just be a direct answer to the OP's question, with the obvious implication that he was presenting a pro argument for the side of a no-aliens space opera. There's no "facts" when it comes to this topic, that's self-evident, just an endless series of opinions hopefully backed up by some kind of evidence, which they did provide.

>>53031711
>Where they?
Earlier up in the thread. You can follow the conversation through the helpful reply links.

Also not sure why you're restating the exact same argument that it was just opinions. Yes, there are no facts, which is why implying facts like

>Aliens are rarely done well, and the best Space Opera settings (Dune, Alpha Centauri, Foundation)

Those are opinions masquerading as facts. Also this is a stupid aside from the thread topic.

>>53031813
>this is a stupid aside from the thread topic.
a fact we can all agree on

>>52968082

Transhumanist fiction, with a high degree of variation between different transhumanist enhancement & modification methods, is the best of both worlds.

>>53031813
Thread is autosaging, all hail the thread.

>>53032434
The flipside of that coin is it can, arguably, be seen as a way to have things that are pretty damn alien but still very much human, functionally identical to the too-human aliens others were complaining about.

>>53004410
Compared to fucking what? Letting the Star waste all that energy into the void?