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Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

nweismuller posted:


Second: Klackon reproduction occurs via small clutches of eggs laid by females after being fertilised by males. Although each clutch produces more young Klackon than comparable live births from Humans, there is a very slow turnaround between clutches by Klackon, and they do not have dramatically higher birth rates than Humans.


Yuck. Reminds me of cockroaches.

On the ants/bees discussion point, since the hivemind is a telepathic phenomenon, it doesn't have to mean the Klackons started as hive insects. They could have started out like sand wasps. (Sand Wasps build small nests with only a few wasps per nest. Technically, Sand Wasps don't have queens since the adult females are all more or less the same. )

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POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
I believe bumblebees are the same way. There's a sliding scale between the sort of sophisticated hive organism you see with honeybees to primitively eusocial and down to solo populations. It's neat stuff.

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.
ManxomeBromide: the Bulrathi lack any close analogue to Humans, although Humans are sometimes compared to sickly, shaved Bulrathi in Bulrathi portrayals. The view of Humans as 'sickly' and 'pathetic' has only been intensified by wartime propaganda. The Mrrshan compare Humans to the 'naked howler', a hairless arboreal creature native to some Yilerian forests with rudimentary tool-using skills that has become an agricultural pest in some areas. The naked howler is a gregarious animal that nests in bands, can be friendly if domesticated, and has a near-preternatural ability to get into trouble between its high agility, good manipulative abilities, and possession of just enough brains to get itself firmly into places it shouldn't be. The comparison tends to grant Humans a somewhat humorous cast in Mrrshan perceptions, even as they are fully aware of the many differences between the two species.

Crazycryodude: Well, really good sci-fi may push your boundries and make you think. I can't say I get that far, and I work with the material I'm given, but I at least try for some level of... plausibility, I suppose.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
So humans are the universe's comedy option! Nice.

Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?


Oh, yeah, you do fine Nweis, and any failings are easily attributed to the source material. Maybe it's just because I consume so much sci-fi, but the rubber forehead aliens I see in 95% of it start to wear on me.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

Crazycryodude posted:

Oh, yeah, you do fine Nweis, and any failings are easily attributed to the source material. Maybe it's just because I consume so much sci-fi, but the rubber forehead aliens I see in 95% of it start to wear on me.

You should try Master of Orion III, that game has some truly alien aliens.

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.
Xenorelations Council Report: the Meklars and the Meklar Combine, 2620



Meklars are an artificial sapient 'species' native to the planet they call Meklon Prime, orbiting the star Meklon. Meklon Prime is a lush, Earthlike planet, hosting a complex biosystem. The Meklars as a 'species' are only approximately eight hundred years old, having originated in the waning days of a late pre-FTL species the Meklars refer to as the 'Precursors', which appears to have developed the foundational technology of the Meklars, 'neural gel', shortly before the birth of the Meklars proper. Neural gel is an electrochemical compound that will naturally organise itself into highly efficient neural networks in response to input/output feedback systems, and evidence suggests that its first applications were in the creation of mechanical 'pets' for the Precursors. The energy needs of neural gel require it to be soaked in a solution of sugar water, which has forced the need for an agricultural industry throughout Meklar history, growing vast fields of 'sugar grain' for processing into food. Neural gel architecture will form minds of varying sophistication based on the size of a gel mass, its early developmental environment, and its access to database information tied into its early 'education'; there is an upper practical limit to neural gel brain size based on heat dissipation and efficient absorption of nutrients from solution, which leaves the fixed minds of the Main Combine Cycle the largest practical examples of the Meklar 'species'.

When the first true Meklars were created, the Precursors were already a dying species, ravaged by the effects of virulent bioweapons released into their biosphere. The first Meklars to be created were a desperate attempt by a group of technicians and engineers which had survived until that point to create some chance for the continued survival of their culture, creating neural gel minds that could be peers to Precursors. A few thousand young Meklars were manufactured and given the rudiments of an education before the last of their creators died off, and the infant culture was left to fend for itself amidst the abandoned civilisation of the Precursors. The miniscule population and industrial base and the incomplete stores of information provided led to a near-collapse of technical infrastructure amongst the Meklars, and second-generation Meklars relied on the crudest of electronic and mechanical peripherals. Disagreements over resource management, ownership, ideals, and cultural practises were common, and, with the vast amounts of unclaimed territory available, Meklar history was marked by a series of diasporas with individuals or groups setting off to experiment with their own arrangements, or to claim their own patch of ground to cultivate as sugar grain farmers with no higher authority to answer to and only occasional trading trips to nearby towns to force contact with others.

Amongst the most successful Meklar societies to emerge from the diasporas were those built on a model of creating a single installation leader or council as large-scale fixed intelligences with significantly greater cognitive potential than workers, which then served as administrators, governors, and capitalists managing the shared resources of those societies and establishing trading and communications links with other communities. These overseers, although functionally permanent inhabitants of their positions, nonetheless were subject to a constant stream of petitions, advice, and opinions from their followers, and many of them credit many ideas as having come from the smaller mobile intelligences they led. The slow shrinkage of unoccupied space and growing sophistication of the links between communities eventually led to many of these fixed intelligences establishing dedicated networking links between each other as the Meklar technical and industrial base grew, which eventually became the Main Combine Cycle, a council of fixed intelligences led by the Overseer CZK-21 since the Cycle's formation 413 years ago. The constituent members of the Cycle continue to be bombarded by the ideas and suggestions of the workers beneath them, and in turn continually advise the Overseer as it attempts to maintain the peace and harmony of Meklar society.

Neural gel 'brains' can support direct data link connections to external databases or an arbitrary variety of industrial sensors and tools; this has allowed Meklar industrial workers and technicians unrivalled control over their tools and skill at their trades. Meklar society continues to host many subcultures with radically experimental social organisations, although many of those collapse within months or years as the members move on. Meklar networks are swept by a dizzying array of fads, memes, games, and entertainments- whatever can hold the attention of the masses of Meklars, who are at least as susceptible to 'boredom' as any biological intelligence. Meeting biological species has not been a surprise to the Meklars, who expected this as the natural development course of ecosystems, but there is a certain undercurrent of disappointment amongst many Meklars that they have met no other culture truly like them.

Meklars are Cybernetic, consuming only half the amount of food that other species require, and automatically repairing their ships slightly every year, even without local repair facilities. They are also Industrialists, gaining a 25% bonus to industry produced by their population and automatically gaining knowledge of Physics after researching Space Travel. Given that Meklars still require some food consumption, I have glossed their foundational technology as requiring some basic nutrient inputs that still require farming.

nweismuller fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Jan 19, 2017

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.
I hope the report on the Meklars was everything you hoped, and stand ready to take suggestions for the next report to do.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
That's some good fluff! I hope we can be good buds with the Meklar even if our cyber isn't big and beautiful enough.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

nweismuller posted:

Meklars are Cybernetic, consuming only half the amount of food that other species require, and automatically repairing their ships slightly every year, even without local repair facilities. They are also Industrialists, gaining a 25% bonus to industry produced by their population and automatically gaining knowledge of Physics after researching Space Travel. Given that Meklars still require some food consumption, I have glossed their foundational technology as requiring some basic nutrient inputs that still require farming.

Nice idea! And it actually works better than the stuff the devs of Master of Orion III came up with to explain why the now pure robotic Meklar still needed food/agricultural products: They're sometimes using organic parts in their robot-bodies. Apparently just for the hell of it. There's even a leader who installs flesh-parts into her body to have as much sex with as many beings as possible. :shepface:

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.

Libluini posted:

Nice idea! And it actually works better than the stuff the devs of Master of Orion III came up with to explain why the now pure robotic Meklar still needed food/agricultural products: They're sometimes using organic parts in their robot-bodies. Apparently just for the hell of it. There's even a leader who installs flesh-parts into her body to have as much sex with as many beings as possible. :shepface:

... what. :wtc:

ManxomeBromide
Jan 29, 2009

old school
I find it interesting how drastically different the Meklar are between MoO 1/2, 3, and NuMoO.

nweismuller posted:

The naked howler is a gregarious animal that nests in bands, can be friendly if domesticated, and has a near-preternatural ability to get into trouble between its high agility, good manipulative abilities, and possession of just enough brains to get itself firmly into places it shouldn't be.

I can definitely see Humans acknowledging the metaphor as fair. This is also kind of interesting because—along with the other differences in ecosystems and natural talents—it implies that the athletic feat that is most distinctively human would be acrobatic gymnastics. Floor routines would be more common, but the more "arboreal" types like the uneven bars would fit the stereotype better and Human physiology might also simply be better at it.

Rick_Hunter posted:

I'm gonna go with the Star Trek answer: It's easier to portray alien races as humanoid because it's easy to slap make up or a suit on a human.

"Because the creators were lazy/deliberately evoking lazy space opera" is indeed the most likely answer, which is why I was trying to avoid that answer by flipping the script. The Mrrshan wouldn't see themselves as the ones in the suits.

Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?


Oh, MoO 3, you beautiful trainwreck you. Love the Meklar, good solution to the "robots that eat food" paradox.

As to my question about humanity - how's transhumanism (or whatever philosophy it's spawned/morphed into over the past few centuries) doing? I know that gene modding is almost universal for at least eliminating disease and the intelligence boost, but what about mechanical augmentations or further biological manipulations? Is seeking to improve yourself beyond the baseline taboo?

The real transhumanist holy grail here is irrefutable proof of digital/machine consciousness in the form of the Meklar. Has making contact with them spurred any social or technological movements promoting (or lobbying against) developing proper AI or even uploading human (and I guess Bulrathi) minds into computers to achieve immortality? Is immortality seeking in any form popular beyond the fringe in modern Republic society?

Really, as an addendum to that, what about religion? Not just in how it may clash with radical transhuman notions like copying your mind onto a hard drive, but in general terms as well - what are the various religions (if any) and how do they interact with society/government.

Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Jan 19, 2017

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

Yeah, that came as a surprise to me, too. Luckily she hasn't made an appearance in my LP yet, probably because Silicoids have a lower chance to get Meklar-leaders (we still got a Robo-Hitler and a traumatized Robo-Victim of Antaran experiments though.)

MO3 is kind of a mess. Lots of good points, but then you suddenly get stuff like... this.

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.
Transhumanism is still a thing, and tinkering with genetic manipulation for better health, longer lives, and better looks is extremely common. That said, radical changes from the current Human baseline are still difficult to implement, and work continues to be tinkering at the margins. Mechanical augmentations have hit a brick wall thus far in setting up high-quality linkages between natural nerves and mechanical control systems. There's some that can be done, but cybernetics still tend to be relatively primitive compared to what some might expect. Seeking immortality is popular, primarily through radical genetic and medical techniques to attempt to slow and reverse aging damage. Humanity isn't to 'immortality' yet, but they have been working on it.

Meeting Meklars has been exciting- although neural gel itself is hard to generalise to traditional computing technologies, there are some researchers who hope to implement sophisticated neural nets in existing optronic architectures for smarter and smarter computers, and the hope is eventually to achieve AIs that match Humanity or the Meklars using Human-native architectures. Whether the next generation of neural nets in computers matches the Meklars or not, it doubtless will continue to push Human knowledge forward. Mental uploading is not a thing people are even certain how to start to achieve in the Republic, so it gets talked about less than biological attempts at immortality.

Religion continues on amongst Humanity. Society is largely secular and many of the population are atheist or agnostic, but traditional religions have adapted and persisted into the current day. The principle of freedom of conscience is well-established in the Republic, and laws to suppress or support religion are both considered out of bounds. Some Human religions have even attempted missionary efforts amongst aliens- both the Catholic and Mormon churches continue to endure and actively seek converts where they can.

E: still looking for suggestions for my next alien report.

HiKaizer
Feb 2, 2012

Yes!
I finally understand everything there is to know about axes!
Interesting. I note that your take on the Meklar deviates from the original lore for conquer the galaxy. In the game's lore the precursors are kept around in what are essentially zoos or reservations, because the Meklar neural net is so old, complicated and organically evolved that they can't rule out that there are failsafes or triggers that will occur if their creators are fully dead. I think that is what is supposed to explain the food cost?

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.

HiKaizer posted:

Interesting. I note that your take on the Meklar deviates from the original lore for conquer the galaxy. In the game's lore the precursors are kept around in what are essentially zoos or reservations, because the Meklar neural net is so old, complicated and organically evolved that they can't rule out that there are failsafes or triggers that will occur if their creators are fully dead. I think that is what is supposed to explain the food cost?

I don't pay much attention to the lore on the website itself- some of it is fairly silly, the implication that there was Bulrathi contact with Humanity before the FTL era is just straight-up dumb, and where there's a difference between what is reasonable given the things presented in-game and what is said somewhere in some supplemental source, I trust my own interpretation.

Stormgear
Feb 12, 2014

nweismuller posted:

Religion continues on amongst Humanity. Society is largely secular and many of the population are atheist or agnostic, but traditional religions have adapted and persisted into the current day. The principle of freedom of conscience is well-established in the Republic, and laws to suppress or support religion are both considered out of bounds. Some Human religions have even attempted missionary efforts amongst aliens- both the Catholic and Mormon churches continue to endure and actively seek converts where they can.

E: still looking for suggestions for my next alien report.

Someday they will find Kolob. It'll be weird when they do, but they still have faith.

Let's hear something about those shifty cloaked guys who live a little too close to home for comfort.

JamieTheD
Nov 4, 2011

LPer, Reviewer, Mad Welshman

(Yes, that's a self portrait)
The whole "Aliens as rubber suits" thing, while it does, it's true, have at least partial basis in media demands (IE - It's cheaper to rubber suit someone than craft something truly alien, or spend stupid budgets on that), but it also has roots in a number of other things. One of them I remember discussing in the SOMA thread way back when, what is known as the Other Minds Problem. We are, for example, now reasonably certain that Ravens, Dolphins, mantis shrimp, and even octopi are sentient to some degree (Puzzle solving, tool use, domestication, social structures, changing their environment for their own benefit, as just some factors we consider sentients to possess) . But we don't know to what degree, and we have had real problems in understanding the idea of "animals" with sentience, let alone discovering why, for several reasons. And one of them is that... Well, they don't think like us, and we have real difficulty understanding even other humans who don't think like us.

And things we have difficulty relating to? We tend to dislike, shun, dismiss, or fear, sometimes to the point of not wanting to understand them. So, from a marketing standpoint, you want something relatable, on some level. So even most of the more alien aliens in games have faces, or face analogues. Not just because writers have a hard time (being fellow humans, with the same Other Minds Problem), but because if nobody understands your alien, and that's not the entire point? You're probably not going to sell so much.

Similarly, making aliens more human-like allows us to analogise. This thing is like an ant. Okay, ants have all sorts of associations, some of which are inaccurate (Like the "highly efficient" leafcutting ant, which... Well, they are, but it isn't their technique, that's for sure.) This thing is a cat, and a cat's a kinda feudal animal, right? (Cat -> Lion/Panther/Tiger -> Heraldry -> Monarchy!) We can say things there. We can also, as a writer, set traps for our readers. Aha, you thought this thing was human, but actually... And, funnily enough, this is the main premise for quite a few SF stories, including The Mote In God's Eye, where at least some of the misunderstandings come precisely from thinking Moties are more like humans than they are.

Finally, from a mechanical standpoint, you want one of your mechanics to make sense: Diplomacy. Yes, you have to research a thing to talk to other species (And then some more things to improve that), but you don't have to, for example, do it individually for each race. You just assume the xenobiology institute is that good (Or, if you're just playing the game, rather than thinking about it from a narrative/design standpoint, just going "Yup, there we go, now I can maybe tell my neighbour to stop murdering me, or shamelessly take advantage of my bonus with cashmoneys to buy tech.") That one research element won't make sense if the species can't plausibly learn to talk to each other (And indeed, in some other 4X games, there are races that are either incapable of diplomacy, or so hardwired for fighting that the very idea will never, ever occur to them... Although one sometimes wonders how the other races know this just from first contact. :P )

Anyways, props on the loreposts, I particularly liked the Mrrshan one, because it does acknowledge what fighty bastards they are (Their race intro is a thing to behold, as it's one of the few, in my opinion, that is not relatively neutral in tone.)

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.
Xenorelations Council Report: the Darloks and the Darlok Administration, 2620



It is maddening to attempt to pin down firm information on the Darloks. We have rough population figures for the Darlok Administration and an idea of what systems they claim, because they told us. We know that their home planet, Gorgor, in the Nazin system, is a generally Earthlike planet, because they have provided embassy facilities for us on the surface of Gorgor. We know they are vaguely humanoid in form, because we have interacted with them. And yet- no Human has yet seen what a Darlok looks like under their clothing and masks, which appear to be environment suit equipment, which should be unnecessary for them on their own homeworld. Our ambassadors are confined to the (admittedly spacious) embassy complex unless they are taken on official tours guided by officers of the Darlok Administration, and when taken on tours, they are shown what we strongly suspect are stage-managed itineraries of happy locals, clean city streets, and efficient factories (exclusively limited, we note, to sites that have no concievable strategic value). We know their ruling body is known as the 'Cabal' and its primary spokesman is named Nazgur, but the size and composition of the remainder of the Cabal has not been discussed with us. Our traders are allowed to stop at fortified stations at the edge of Darlok territory, where Administration officers handle the buying and selling of goods without letting Human traders further into their territory. Attempting to even discuss Darlok military preparedness has gone absolutely nowhere, and no information on their history or evolutionary development has been provided.

For the 'edification' of our readers, we will provide the official statement regarding the Darlok Administration as provided to our ambassadors: 'The Darlok Administration is a just and benevolent government guided by the wise members of the Cabal, who seek to ensure the safety, prosperity, and happiness of all Darloks. As you can see from what we have shown you, we have the love and support of our citizens. The Darlok Administration absolutely would be grateful for the assistance of the Human Republic against the cold and lifeless evil that is the Meklar Combine.' If we were particularly gullible, we might almost believe this to be true.

What little we can determine is that the Darlok Administration exhibits a near-fanatical degree of paranoia in its dealings with Humanity. Why this is so remains obscure.

nweismuller fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Jan 19, 2017

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.
Oh man, these guys. I hope the report was not too frustrating for people to read. So, do people trust them yet?

nweismuller fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Jan 19, 2017

JamieTheD
Nov 4, 2011

LPer, Reviewer, Mad Welshman

(Yes, that's a self portrait)

nweismuller posted:

Oh man, these guys. I hope the report was not too frustrating for people to read. So, do people trust them yet?

I would trust a Darlok about as well as I could throw a Sakkra.

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.

JamieTheD posted:

I would trust a Darlok about as well as I could throw a Sakkra.

Was the report too vague and uninformative? I'm worried it might be too little to satisfy people.

JamieTheD
Nov 4, 2011

LPer, Reviewer, Mad Welshman

(Yes, that's a self portrait)

nweismuller posted:

Was the report too vague and uninformative? I'm worried it might be too little to satisfy people.

Nah, it fits perfectly with what the Darlok are (spymasters and propagandists extraordinaire.) It also got across that the humans aren't buying what they see as the whole story, and that they have that racial paranoia thing going on. That, plus the melting point of whatever endoskeleton they may contain, is the only information you need.

Unless, of course, you're playing a Darlok, in which case, you must know everything, everything!

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Each Darlok is comprised of three Antarans (who are actually dwarfish in stature) sitting on top of each others' shoulders, all of them encased within a suit fitted with complex animatronic arms :colbert:

JamieTheD
Nov 4, 2011

LPer, Reviewer, Mad Welshman

(Yes, that's a self portrait)
This is Science Officer Libluni, I am about to open the Darlok facial mask no- h god. OH GOD.

Sir? We must never broach this subject again. Hush it up. Orders are now to burn on sight...




:v:

Kassad
Nov 12, 2005

It's about time.
Hah, that reminds me of when the true form of the Overseer aliens in Childhood's End is revealed. They hint that they're too scary to behold so I expected some Lovecraftian abominations. But that's... not it.

And I think you can reasonably safely infer that the Darlok Administration is some kind of totalitarian regime from the Potemkin village tours. That'd be enough reason not to trust them, wouldn't it?

Rick_Hunter
Jan 5, 2004

My guys are still fighting the hard fight!
(weapons, shields and drones are still online!)

ManxomeBromide posted:

"Because the creators were lazy/deliberately evoking lazy space opera" is indeed the most likely answer, which is why I was trying to avoid that answer by flipping the script. The Mrrshan wouldn't see themselves as the ones in the suits.

I mean it's the most likely answer for 20th century TV but I wonder if it's a psychological thing that humans have developed over thousands of years. Just like a fear of the dark or anything having more than 4 limbs, maybe it's a comfort to the human mind to imagine unknown things in their shape if they're from the stars/sky/space.

thsgrn
May 6, 2007

Kassad posted:

Hah, that reminds me of when the true form of the Overseer aliens in Childhood's End is revealed. They hint that they're too scary to behold so I expected some Lovecraftian abominations. But that's... not it.

And I think you can reasonably safely infer that the Darlok Administration is some kind of totalitarian regime from the Potemkin village tours. That'd be enough reason not to trust them, wouldn't it?

Well ... that only applies if they have humanlike psychology, which is quite an assumption!

All that can truly be inferred from Potemken village tours is that the tour-givers want to communicate something that is not entirely in accordance with reality.

But ... that could be "our people love us so much", which is what totalitarians are generally communicating ... or it could be a matter of concealing something, like that there's a Darlok-specific bioweapon that ran rampant on their homeworld, and the result of that is to render them all happy docile slaves if they ever take off the suit outside a positive pressure enclosure.

... which would still be kinda totalitarian but also "complicated", especially if the current rulers had no connection to whoever released such a bioweapon...

ManxomeBromide
Jan 29, 2009

old school

Rick_Hunter posted:

I mean it's the most likely answer for 20th century TV but I wonder if it's a psychological thing that humans have developed over thousands of years. Just like a fear of the dark or anything having more than 4 limbs, maybe it's a comfort to the human mind to imagine unknown things in their shape if they're from the stars/sky/space.

Well, if we want to go that route, Humanity has associated animals with various traits and aspects of humanity for as long as we've been human. We also domesticated dogs before we worked out agriculture. The idea of humans getting along with some animals, to the point that they are basically family, is older than all our civilizations and a definite Trait Of Humanity That Isn't Guaranteed To Be Universal.

Fictional cat aliens aren't far from no-longer-credible cat spirits.

JamieTheD
Nov 4, 2011

LPer, Reviewer, Mad Welshman

(Yes, that's a self portrait)
You leave my completely credible cat-spirits alone, you, you... Bastet!

(Bad pun aside, there's even a name for it: Anthropocentrism, and it does tie into the Other Minds Problem I mentioned earlier. :D )

Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?


My favorite line in any Mass Effect game so far is along the lines of "[because Asari don't work like humans], you anthropocentric bag of dicks".

The Problem of Other Minds is certainly a roadblock in a lot of sci-fi, and that's basically what I was getting at - cats with boobs are way more relateable (and thus more popular) than, say, the aliens from Blindsight. I get that, and have pretty much accepted it's how things are done. It's probably for the best, anyways - I consider myself pretty well-read when it comes to sci-fi (consumed enough to see most tropes/"twists" coming from half a book away) and I've got a young, neuroplastic brain that takes to things easily, and it STILL took me basically the entire book AND a few hours of thinking afterwords to completely wrap my head around the Blindsight aliens. I can totally understand your average person wanting to sit down and play some videogames for an hour or two and wanting to just have fun, not spend 10 hours wrestling with all the, well, alien poo poo about the aliens to try and get so much as a sketch of what they are, want, think, etc. But every now and then, I do wish there was more sci-fi that hurts your brain, that really makes you think. Not just about what strange and wonderful things may be out there, but about ourselves.

GunnerJ
Aug 1, 2005

Do you think this is funny?

Kassad posted:

And I think you can reasonably safely infer that the Darlok Administration is some kind of totalitarian regime from the Potemkin village tours. That'd be enough reason not to trust them, wouldn't it?

Maybe, maybe not. It's possible their society is no more or less repressive than any other, but there are things about it that are just diplomatically disastrous to show outsiders. So they show humans a version of darlok life that is a reflection of something humans would see as good and orderly, a reflection of human culture and industry. The reality might just be nightmarish from a human perspective.

Which is still a good reason to not trust them.

Stormgear
Feb 12, 2014
Wow those guys are sketchy as all get out.

Either that or they desperately want us to be their friends and are afraid that by showing us their real selves that we'd reject them like everyone else in their lives.

Darloks, creepy, secretive race of untrustworthy masks, or the galactic equivalent of the sad, lonely teenager coming off of their sixth breakup?

The world may never know.

Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?


We should liberate them with the help of our robo-friends and find out. I mean, we've already got a fleet geared up for war, like, 2 jumps away.

E: I originally suggested this as a joke, but they're LITERALLY Space North Korea. Like, the absolute antithesis of the Republic and all it stands for. Plus, I know you don't like to play the galactic conqueror Nweis, but we're on the tail end of a century long war that has killed billions - and it's with the aliens that were FRIENDLY to start with. If we ignore the Darloks for too long, it may come back to bite us an order of magnitude harder than the Bulrathi did. Remember Earth, and all that - if the proud warrior race that's poo poo at espionage could pull off crippling our homeworld imagine what the galactic puppetmasters that literally call themselves a cabal can do. We've got a geared up fleet right next door, they're being pressed by the Meklar on the other side of their territory, this is the perfect opportunity to take an existential threat off the board in a two-front war and cement our friendship with the robo-bros.

If you want to slap an executive "this is my LP and I'm straight up saying no" veto on the idea, that's fine, but I do think it's worth considering (both in-universe and from a gameplay standpoint).

Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jan 19, 2017

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.

Crazycryodude posted:

We should liberate them with the help of our robo-friends and find out. I mean, we've already got a fleet geared up for war, like, 2 jumps away.

E: I originally suggested this as a joke, but they're LITERALLY Space North Korea. Like, the absolute antithesis of the Republic and all it stands for. Plus, I know you don't like to play the galactic conqueror Nweis, but we're on the tail end of a century long war that has killed billions - and it's with the aliens that were FRIENDLY to start with. If we ignore the Darloks for too long, it may come back to bite us an order of magnitude harder than the Bulrathi did. Remember Earth, and all that - if the proud warrior race that's poo poo at espionage could pull off crippling our homeworld imagine what the galactic puppetmasters that literally call themselves a cabal can do. We've got a geared up fleet right next door, they're being pressed by the Meklar on the other side of their territory, this is the perfect opportunity to take an existential threat off the board in a two-front war and cement our friendship with the robo-bros.

If you want to slap an executive "this is my LP and I'm straight up saying no" veto on the idea, that's fine, but I do think it's worth considering (both in-universe and from a gameplay standpoint).

No, that's legitimate. We actually have two more or less legitimate wars we can join after the Bulrathi right now- attempting to preserve Mrrshan territorial integrity or attempting to deal with the shifty-as-Hell Darlok guys who ended up sinking the Benjamin Hornigold in a 'misunderstanding'.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug

nweismuller posted:

No, that's legitimate. We actually have two more or less legitimate wars we can join after the Bulrathi right now- attempting to preserve Mrrshan territorial integrity or attempting to deal with the shifty-as-Hell Darlok guys who ended up sinking the Benjamin Hornigold in a 'misunderstanding'.

What? We lost a boat?

nweismuller
Oct 11, 2012

They say that he who dies with the most Opil wins.

I am winning.

POOL IS CLOSED posted:

What? We lost a boat?

We lost a ship, yes. One of our three military scouts tried to wander into a Darlok border system so we had a fix on a planet to spy on, and the Darloks basically hit it with absolutely everything. We got the fix we needed, though.

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Well there you go then! Plant some troops on Nazin, call it a 'police action', done :smug:

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POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug

nweismuller posted:

We lost a ship, yes. One of our three military scouts tried to wander into a Darlok border system so we had a fix on a planet to spy on, and the Darloks basically hit it with absolutely everything. We got the fix we needed, though.

:psyduck: I can't believe I missed that. At least we got the fix.

e. Nazin! :tinfoil:

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