oohhhhhhh duuuude. Privateer. =)

Damn, this makes me want to load up MoO2 again. I put it on my uber laptop; it runs pretty well, but the combat's a little hard to follow cause, well...it was coded for a Pentium I MMX and my new laptop is a P4 monster with more cache than it really knows what to do with. What I *really* need man is for you to get us a demo of this game =)

I sooooo wish I could help you code it. Give me a few more semesters of calculus and I'll get on your case.

Sorry this post is so off-topic. Time travel is uber-powerful, but it seems that's not within the spectrum of their abilities, so that's good. When you say "cast time bubbles", do you literally mean they are incanting spells, is it an effect of their own biology, or do they have technology that allows it? I'd stick it to bio, if you haven't already...tech can be stolen/reverse-engineered, which would change the ENTIRE game and take away all desire to play this race. (I bet you've considered this already.) Slowing down time is one of my favorite things in action games these days, especially in Enter the Matrix (it was campy, but I *loved* that game).

I'm gonna check your other threads now, see what else is shakin with your design docs. =)

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Original post by onyxflame First off, I just wanna say WOW. This just totally blows me away...

Thanks for the great feedback! I'm glad to know this race has a bit of interest for some people.

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1. If each child is an exact replica of the parent, is the whole species genetically identical, with only memory-imprints differentiating them?

Yes, primitive Ceticians were clones broken into several distinct lines based on benign mutations. Children were raised communally in wandering tribes and developed skills and identity based on the chemical cross currents of the tribe.

When the Fading Immortals enslaved them they radically modified this process. They first tried raising the children in sterile, artificial environments, but found this created autism and dementia. While the Immortals could have actually corrected these defects continuously, Ceticians raised without tribes were found to have severely difficient sense clusters, useless for the purpose of controlling the timeflow organelles the Immortals needed for longevity. So despite the bizarre reproductive and sensory modifications they made, the Immortals left the Ceticians to raise their children in artificial swamp biomes for eons.

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How would other species tell them apart? (I assume they each emit different pheromone "identifcation scents" so they can tell each other apart.)

Great question. As a human you might not, without some sort of optical translator. (In game this is a glyph that identifies members of different races for players and should help reduce player confusion and eye strain.) They do identify each other by scent, but only because scent is a function of personality, otherwise it'd be impossible (they vent both mood and personality identifiers).

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Maybe they could selectively genetically modify their offspring or something?

I've been thinking about how this could happen. The Immortals would have faced problems with cellular rejection switching from an asexual to sexual means of reproduction. What I think would actually work is if the Immortals created reservoirs within a Cetician's body and a sort of placental shield around the splintering site. When a Cetician sense cluster docks with a mate the material is injected into the reservoirs which are connected to the splintering sites.

A new Cetician develops as a single stalk that splinters from one of the parent's three stalks (tradition still says that which one is a portent that determines the child's future).

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This process could change the color of some individuals...they wouldn't be able to see it, but humans would. A pink alien would be a bit less threatening. :P

Hah, you're right! Can you imagine standing in a huge crowd of pink, elephant-sized tripeds? :P

Genetically, I think coloration would make sense not for reasons of color but for temperature regulation. Light tufts of fur might even serve here as well, as radiation protection (I'm thinking about adding radiative fins around the stalks because their home environment was a high heat swamp). This certainly would create diversity, and might still be plausible if you reasoned that they all mutated from a single line.

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2. What is their notion of family? How many offspring does one typically have in oh, say, 1000 years?

Family is the pheremone-based tribe of hundreds. I'm basing this reasoning off the idea that an individual Cetician can remember hundreds of faces, unlike the human limit that keeps our tribes around a max of 200. This is partly based on the idea that they would have had highly sophistocated memorization and recall skills to develop a pheremonal language.

I imagine the number of offspring is on the order of 1 or 2 every 1000 years. It's reasonable to assume that children are very rare and precious as a result.

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You mentioned offspring being imprinted with memories from elders...how do they decide which elders it gets imprinted by? There's probably a big batch of social customs dealing with this. I'd imagine there'd be a relatively small amount of elders/memories involved, at least at the "newborn" stage, to avoid overloading the offspring's mind and making it go crazy.

Actually, I saw the children being raised in the center of the tribe with the young learning quickly as a result. Studies tell us that human babies exposed to lots of conversation may develop higher language functions faster than those exposed to "baby talk" or quieter environments. The adults can direct their pheremonal output, as well, either say generally emitting "smoke" (as with a speech or strong emotions) or using directed sprays. I'm thinking that personality would develop in the young in response to the triggers of the general, ambient clouds of pheremones because this is emotional as well as linguistic input. It would be like holding a baby or yelling at it.

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(Is it possible for them to go crazy? How does their society deal with this, if so?)

This is rare but does happen. Because they're the survivors of a great tragedy (the traumatic modifications done by the Immortals) they tend to rally around such cases. Incurable ones are placed in a kind of community stasis where individuals take turns interacting with and holding the time field around such victims. There is no concept of euthanasia in the species.

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I'd imagine that being imprinted with memories would make the kids more mature than most adult humans, but discipline problems would probably still arise. How is discipline carried out, both in relation to one's offspring, and with their version of criminals?

Though they're genetically similar, they're not emotionally or mentally identical, so deviation does occur. Their tribal methods involved shaming and banishment, but in the aftermath of their ordeal with the Immortals they've developed a kind of very uniform collective ideology which involves promoting life and doing no harm.

The ability to manipulate time, their plentiful resources and willingness to wander great distances in space make internal conflict very rare. However, since such a society in fictional terms is boring (we humans sadly thrive on conflict) I'm thinking that the Immortals might have created "sleeper" Ceticians as a last act of vengeance. (I have nothing for this so far, so I'll have appeal to the board again :P)

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(Can you imagine what'd happen if the elders all got together to decide how to punish a criminal, and it took them 500 years to figure out what to do, by which time he'd committed yet more crimes? They have to be able to make quick decisions *sometimes*.)

What if the accused were kept isolated but comfortable for the decades it might take for them to come to a decision? Or I wonder if stasis would be humane? What an interesting moral problem!!!

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Do they have permanent attatchment arrangements similar to marriage (except without the sex), or does their long life/ability to predict the future make this unfeasable? With such long lives, I'd imagine their relationships with each other would get very deep, whether they're best friends or worst enemies. I don't see them doing big flashy emotional stuff, but when you've known someone for 10,000 years, every word can have a thousand meanings.

I see the Ceticians as group / clan oriented, and I'd think their biology would make pair bonding a bit of an alien concept, even despite their modification. The question becomes what are the biological drivers for such things as loneliness and companionship, which are abated in humans through proximity, trust and emotional exchange? I do see them as being very "settled" in their relationships with their clan and slow to be swayed.

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4. If they can't see, how do they sense their environment? If one was on Earth, could it tell it was fall by the chemicals in the tree leaves? Another useful ability would be if they could detect impurities in water, metals, etc. that could be harmful to other life forms or operation of machinery and such. Rulers could hire them to tell if there was poison in their food, heh. Also note that without sight, there'd be no difference between day and night to them, in terms of "seeing where they're going". Bad weather could severely disrupt their communications/sense of where things are, though.

Evolutionarily their sense cluster gave them infrared, pressure sense and echo location (picture heavily misted bogs and swamps as their planet of origin). The pheremonal ability is for communication more than for sense.

The sense cluster, after modification, now has a wide variety of scanners, biological radar, color sense, etc., etc.

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5. Random thought: pheromone communication would make it likely that there'd be lots of random comments floating around, and it'd be easy to "overhear" stuff you weren't intended to. How do they deal with this? Do they have "pheromone channels" that prevent speech from floating around randomly, or do they refuse to tell secrets/gossip, or are secrets and gossip totally alien to them to begin with? If so, this could be as big a barrier to them understanding humans as the speech-to-pheromone translation. Also, they'd probably have a heavy aversion to lying, since memory of the lie could be handed down for generations. They might not even be able to understand lying, which could make them easy prey for humans in some situations. Maybe we're more alien to them than they are to us...

I do see them understanding lies and also being able to lie (though morally uncomfortable with it). Your speculation for why this might be is perfect (echoes of old conversations).

I'd imagine they could be secretive by controlling the range of output. It might be plausible that they could add a chemical decay to their communications. Or maybe secret messages were once bottled and carried secretly?

btw, your questions really help me detail this species and give me gameplay ideas for making them more playable. Thanks!

Sorry for the long post, but I really love having meaty ideas to play with. :)






Again, excellent questions. The Cetician home planet didn't have a lot of genetic variety, both in terms of disease and predators. I see the swamps as being very plant heavy, sort of like the Devonian period in our history before dinosaurs, but one where for some reason animal life had a hard time taking hold.

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Original post by serratemplar oohhhhhhh duuuude. Privateer. =) Damn, this makes me want to load up MoO2 again.

[smile]
I'm hoping having the huge, galaxy sweeping scope of a 4X game blended with the personal feel of an RPG is something that will have a lot of appeal, especially if the levels are tightly bound together and you get the feel of shaping the universe with your actions.

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I sooooo wish I could help you code it. Give me a few more semesters of calculus and I'll get on your case.

Hey, if you're interested, I'm always looking for more immediate help in easier areas, like content, story vignettes, character ideas, ship names, planet names, ideas for items, etc. :P

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When you say "cast time bubbles", do you literally mean they are incanting spells, is it an effect of their own biology, or do they have technology that allows it? I'd stick it to bio, if you haven't already...tech can be stolen/reverse-engineered, which would change the ENTIRE game and take away all desire to play this race.

Their bodies contain time control devices at the cellular level, so it can't be stolen but by a MASSIVELY advanced society. I imagine, though, that they might be kidnapped and pressed into service!

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I'm gonna check your other threads now, see what else is shakin with your design docs. =)

:P Thanks for the inspiration!

Necroing this thread as per forum member's request. Note that anti-necro policy exists for all of gamedev EXCEPT the writing forum. ;)

Sorry, I haven't read all the posts, I reall yhave to get to sleep. I just had a suggestion as to how they get around environments:

Maybe the more advanced time controllers could selectively speed time around obstacles, so that the molecules of the obstacle would be moving quickly enough to pass through it. Beyind that, they could also speed the time for an obstacle to its destruction, like a tree. I don't know if the tree would revert to the correct time when the bubble was removed though, and that would destroy forests pretty fast >_<

I could see the creatures, changine the time around them, slightly, so that they become invisible (the light eminating from them would be in the hard gamma, or in the IR or radio end of the spectrum).

I could also see them, slowly walking through a solid wall, only to pass through without a scratch, or even falling asleep inside a solid block or rock, as a protection measure.

From,
Nice coder

If they use their time-manipulating powers often, even casually, then I think their speed would be variable. For instance, if a Cetician has to abondon his ambulatory form and "fly" from one place to another, he might get there, wrap himself in a time bubble, speed himself up by about a billion times (or whatever's practical) and metabolize minerals in the surrounding matter into a new body in just a few seconds. My mental picture of this process is pretty impressive. And when I think of them "walking", I envision the time-lapse footage of starfish traveling across the seafloor. Neat.

As immortals, they'd probably be vastly patient, and disinclined to manipulate time just to hasten themselves through a boring spaceflight. Or would they? Might a cetician "hibernate" for aeons by shrinking that span into a perceived moment? If so, humans that spend time with them might be seriously messed up, especially if the ceticians extended the courtesy of time manipulation to them. Accompany a cetician on a "short trip" and find yourself home a week later, in a world that's seen two hundred years pass in your absence. Or perhaps you'll spend a few months working with ceticians on a hybrid technology, and come home to find that it's later on the afternoon that you left, Narnia-style.

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Original post by Wavinator Well, the help I got from you guys on the last worldbuilding post was so invaluable that I thought I'd try again. The Ceticians are a playable alien race whose main ability is the control of time. They are very alien, which is probably going to freak people out (concept sketch, concept render). Here are there main concepts for this species: Elephant sized Oxygen breathers Communicate with pheromones Constantly vent gas at the top of their three ambulatory stalks Color and texture of gas reveals their mood Lovers of knowledge, books and culture Prefer to entangle and stymie rather than fight Have a limited amount of regenerating energy that they can use to slow or accelerate time within a bubble Highly sought after for their ability to create exotic materials Respected elders that younger races look up to Sense cluster in the middle of the body can detach and float (using biological gravity machinery): This supports mating, personality transfer and exploration Immortal except for illness, accident or injury Asexual reproduction Newborn personalities are imprinted from the pheromonal input of elders I see this species as being organized around Academia, so that perhaps their leaders are Chancellors or Provosts. Status in society is gained either by joining a Peacekeeper force which is dedicated to serving other cultures, or becoming a Time Sifter (archaeologist). They are probably a socialist democratic society that places a heavy emphasis on the group over the individual (like Japanese culture?). Because they control time, they may have many inefficient methods: For instance, they might not think twice about taking a 3 or 4 century trip if they're skilled enough to place themselves in a bubble; or they might not have adequate hospitals on a world because they could just as easily suspend a patient and ship them offworld. Most friends have commented that the species is extremely disgusting. One said that he'd shoot it on site. I would like to take on this xenophobia head on, but I'm not sure how you overcome a human's natural revulsion. How do you think a society that can control time and has been around for millions of generations would be organized? Can you think of any cool aspects to add to them that would make humans less afraid of them?

Well, because of the significant evolutionary period, organization would be almost automated, because if a species is around for that long a period of time, so then must their principles and values, as well as troubles and challenges, be well hashed out and solidified in an internal civilization sense.

Also, it is not likely they would have a heirarchal system such as marshalls and provosts, but more likely a collective inhibitor AI or collective consciousness self organizaing principle. To make such an evolved society so structured would be logically redundant. These people are highly self reliant and individualized, and, because they are all over space and also time, they are not likely to be predisposed to having a large homeworld or collective location of origin that is highly populated, since they are time farers, who would want to be showing up in real time at once place as this is contrary to both the time vagabond status and is really an earmark of an underevolved species. Rather then, this species is likely to be each it's own nation state, which in dramatic senses, is much more viable, as you can apply the human principle of power corrupts, and as time travelers and almost certainly incredibly technically advanced, they pretty much have absolute power, so if the human principle of absolute power corrupting absolutely applies universally, so it is true for this species. This gives you more dramatic choice in terms of characterization in the sense that each can be quite uniquely designed, offering huge contrast opportunities between each archetype of species you choose to portray.

Addy

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Original post by Wavinator Story-wise the name Cetician actually is related to whales and comes from a mistake. Terrans first encountered the Ceticians near Kappa and Tau Ceti, about 29 and 11 light years from Earth (respectively). Because of the long time it took to break the language barrier, the name the news media bestowed upon them, "Ceticians" stuck.

I don't understand. How is it related to whales? While did they not call them "Cetians?"

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander I think this is a big problem. Pheromone communication would be very ineffective. Okay, I hear what you're saying but consider this: Effective by what measure? Surely there is no absolute measure other than physics. Consider that until the greater part of the last two centuries the vast majority of human beings lived very slow, sedate and inefficient lives. We were mostly hunters and gathers, then became farmers. In geologic time our notions of effectiveness pale.

You seem to have misunderstood (or perhaps I'm not completely clear on the mechanisms of what you're describing).

Human speech travels at the speed of sound, about 700mph. That is fast enough for ancestral applications, like "Hey, there's a tiger behind you!"

In order for pheromone communication to be useful in a situation like that, it would have to travel pretty fast as well. It would require tremendous energy expenditure to repeatedly expel a gas at 50mph, let alone 700mph.

Furthermore, speech is omnidirectional (though stronger in the middle 45 degrees than the rest). A jet of pheromones would be in only one direction. This means that a general alarm, eg "Tigers are coming!" would be very hard to pull off, unless there are multiple emitters, which would greatly increase the cost, or the organism spins, which Ceticians don't seem capable of.

Additionally, it would be biochemically taxing to produce the quantities of pheromones required for a language at least as complex as English. And they would require huge storage bladders.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander It wouldn't carry far Not sure I agree here. In fact, when you look at pollution studies its clear that factory outputs can carry downwind as much as 200 miles or more. No human voice can carry that far. If anything, they'd be subject to the kind of electromagnetic smog we're experiencing as we ramp up our telecommunications infrastructure. There could even be a time in Cetician history when they might have had a global "voice," depending on the natural decay rate of the compounds, of course.

It's true that human voices don't carry that far. However, my point is, how useful would that be?

If there is another individual 100 yards away from you and you send a jet of pheromones at it on even a moderately windy day, the wind would have blown it off course--and that's assuming there are no solid objects interdicting. If the message was, to continue the example, "There's a tiger behind you!" how useful is it if the person with the tiger behind them never gets the message, but someone 200 miles away does?

And are the pheromones more or less dense than the planet's air?

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander wouldn't transmit through surfaces. To an extent, yes, if the surface is non-porous. But this would simply have been a problem for primitive Ceticians to overcome. I imagine they would have used water to carry pheremone messages throughout structures. In fact, early city-states could have been connected by wind relay stations and rivers.

I'm talking about the normal surface matter of an M-class planet rocks and plants and such. Sound waves can go around or through them, but gases cannot, except by diffusion.

Can you elaborate on the water distribution system? It seems implausible.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander It would make electronic communication impossible. Why do you say that? The human voice is very poor for electronic communication, but we handled that first with a manually entered code that encoded messages (telegraph); then we switched to a membrane that did the same (phone).

Why do you say that the human voice is very poor for electronic communication?

Perhaps I overstated that a bit; what I meant was that it would be very difficult for a primitive society to get it working, and thus it would be unlikely that they progress past that point in that area.

It's relatively simple to convert sounds into electric signals and back again; as you say it basically just requires a membrane. It would require much more advanced technology to translate chemicals into electrical signals and even more advanced tech to translate it back and synthesize the required substances.

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Original post by Wavinator I'm thinking that Ceticians would have actually developed a network of communication similar to the nerve cells in the human body, which are electrochemical. This would require a good understanding of ions and the ability to create some sort of ion pump, which nerve cells are, but they're naturals at chemistry by din of their makeup.

I don't follow...neurons are very, very close together.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander Pheromone libraries would be incredibly impractical. Actually, it would depend on how complex the language is at what materials they have that can absorb and hold pheremones, wouldn't it?

There are numerous problems. For example, after I read a book, others can read the same copy. But if it were pheromones, it would be used up, and would require "reprinting."

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander It would probably also make them very, very hard to understand and communicate with for species that speak. Now let me challenge you strongly here: What in your world view says that the universe MUST make species able to communicate? I'm keenly interested in your thoughts here because I strongly suspect that a generation of Star Trek/Star Wars/Farscape etc. have numbed us to the idea of what alien means. I suspect we now thing alien means "human with funny nose" or "slimy bug-like thing to shoot." If that's the case, I'd like to offer a few alternatives to tweak people's very conservative view of what alien is.

You've misunderstood me, I think, but I will address this and my original point below.

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Original post by Wavinator What in your world view says that the universe MUST make species able to communicate?

Any social species must be able to communicate in some way. It's axiomatic.

Now, then, what I was trying to get at:

We communicate with each other with words. But under the words is culture and common experience.

If I say, "I feel like I could fly," you know what I mean, right? You can translate each of those words into another system of communication, but to a species that could fly, it would be meaningless.

Now, a harder one. "I'm in love." Love is a psychobiochemical phenomenon that exists to make sure we reproduce and protect our offspring. It is a result of evolution.

How do you explain love to a species that has none?

There is a famous story told by Albert Einstein that should help us illuminate:

Without any hesitation Einstein rose to his feet and told a story. He said he was reminded of a walk he one day had with his blind friend. The day was hot and he turned to the blind friend and said, "I wish I had a glass of milk."

"Glass," replied the blind friend, "I know what that is. But what do you mean by milk?"

"Why, milk is a white fluid," explained Einstein.

"Fluid, I know what that is," said the blind man. "But what is white?"

"Oh, white is the color of a swan's feathers."

"I know what feathers are, but what is a swan?"

"A swan is a bird with a crooked neck."

"Neck, I know what that is, but what do you mean by crooked?"

At this point Einstein said he lost his patience. He seized his blind friend's arm and pulled it straight. "There, now your arm is straight," he said. Then he bent the blind friend's arm at the elbow. "Now it is crooked."

"Ah," said the blind friend. "Now I know what milk is."

We have a hard time communicating even with other humans from non-Western cultures, like the Japanese. Can you imagine trying to communicate with a species that has no emotions, no gender, can control time, communicates using chemicals, is capable of personality transfer, and is immortal?

You'd have better luck explaining baseball to broccoli. Our minds are 100% the products of evolution, just like our bodies. Our perceptions and ideas are tainted. Alien intelligences would be likewise, but in completely different ways.

You seem to be so concerned with making them physically different that you have neglected the consequential differences in their psychology. You're taking one aspect of the human psyche and exaggerating it--exactly what Gene Roddenbery did.

Also, it seems like you're saying that all individuals are similar--is this purposeful, since they are genetically identical?

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander Quote: Original post by WavinatorHave a limited amount of regenerating energy that they can use to slow or accelerate time within a bubble I don't follow here. What kind of energy is this? Where does it come from? I have a hard time believing something like that could evolve. Yes, I would to. It didn't, the Ceticians were modified by a very technologically advanced species called the Fading Immortals. While the Ceticians did not have advanced technology beyond a pre-industrial level, they did have amazing minds and perception capabilities. The Fading Immortals used quantum mechanics to radically reengineer the Ceticians eons ago.

I advise against this. The "ancient, incredibly-advanced, now-fading or vanished race" is quickly becoming a sci-fi cliche.

And you didn't address my other questions.

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"Highly sought after" makes it sound like they're being enslaved--is that the case?

They once were, but now because they've lived long enough to see empires crumble to dust, they're one of the wise elders of the cosmos.

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Original post by Wavinator Their sense cluster, now heavily modified, allows them to see possibilities in the quantum foam intuitively. Like a master billiards player that can anticipate trajectories of various balls on the table, Ceticians can "see" and hold configurations of matter and inject time-space distortions down at the quantum level. They're able to anticipate and use virtual particles as well as enforce shifts between particles and waves when it suits the structure they're trying to build. Not only does this allow them to preserve atomic configurations that should exist for only very short periods of time, they can rapidly speed up the half-life of undersirable compounds that are often toxic byproducts of such high energy manufacture.

Will this be in-game? I have a limited though above-average knowledge of quantum mechanics and this doesn't seem possible. That's not really a criticism; lots of good sci-fi uses shaky science. I just want to make sure you're aware. Apologies if the problem is mine.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander That would lead to a huge population problem. Yes, if the birthrate were incredibly high. Imagine if only a handful were born every few centuries.

Yet if none are dying, on a very long timeline--as you seem to be dealing with--there will still be a very large population. Furthermore, such a species would not be evolutionarily viable; in the species' ancestral environment, there would be some type of predation or something with the same effect. Therefore they would have to reproduce fairly often, and would retain the instincts to do so, as we have, unless they are purposefully excised.

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Original post by Wavinator Eh, you're right, I'm using the wrong word. Here's how I saw this developing: Naturally, a Cetician fragments to give birth, a type of asexual reproduction common in creatures like flatworms. This would suggest an evolutionary environment where disease was relatively mild--a thin low pressure atmosphere might do it, as we find with plants and animals on earth that live in similar environments (high altitude, low heat). In competition, sexual reproduction would have lost out to asexual reproduction due to speed in a low-virulency environment.

Virulency is not the only threat to species.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander 2. Sexual reproduction is essential for evolutionarily viable species. I don't think this is proven, either in mathematical models or in considerations of entirely alien ecospheres. Asexual reproduction in the right environment is superior to sexual reproduction because all genetic material is passed on and you don't need to find a mate. But on our planet sex may have the upper hand in higher species due to its ability to pass on useful mutations which help to fight disease.

It's not proven mathematically because we don't have the data required to do that.

Asexual reproduction is great in a highly stable environment, but does not allow for fast adaptation or speciation. Evolution is very, very slow using only asexual reproduction (and that's saying something, given how slow it is anyway). Beneficial mutations cannot be put together and detrimental mutations cannot be bred out.

The time required for a species such as the one you have designed to evolve with only asexual reproduction would be several times (again, no exact numbers are available) what it would be if they had some mechanism for trait transferal.

Given the this is supposed to be a very old race, you'll either have to add some such mechanism, or increase the amount of engineering the species has undergone, meaning that either they once had genetic recombination and it has since been removed, or that their development was guided by outside agents, probably these Faded Immortals.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander Why does this species need archaeologists? You probably asked this question because they're immortal? If so the answer correlates with the fact that they were slaves for eons in a relatively confined space. In their freedom they are naturally curious about other species and how they live. Their galaxy is littered with the ruins of other cultures, other unique perspectives that went extinct while they were in captivity. So they find themselves naturally curious, and the fact that they're pokey about the process means that although they've been around a long time, they've by no means exhausted the trillions of potential dig sites throughout the galaxy.

You might want to use xeno-archaeologists in that case.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander What's 3 or 4 centuries when you're immortal? Exactly. Or were you disagreeing with me here?

I'm just not sure why this species would exert the energy and effort for such a relatively short time.

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Original post by Lysander Can you elaborate on the water distribution system? It seems implausible.

Implausible?

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Original post by Lysander It's relatively simple to convert sounds into electric signals and back again; as you say it basically just requires a membrane. It would require much more advanced technology to translate chemicals into electrical signals and even more advanced tech to translate it back and synthesize the required substances.

Why? If the technology was chemically rather than mechanically based then how would there be a problem? At the point in their evolution where they develop electronics they would probably already have advanced knowledge of chemistry ( being more chemically focused than humans... )

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Original post by Lysander I don't follow...neurons are very, very close together.

Neurons are based on the build-up of electrical potential at their dendrites. These beings could similarly be based on the build-up of certain chemicals (chemical potential rather than electronic) in the environment around them...it would (of course) be slower than a human brain, but no less effective.

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Original post by Lysander There are numerous problems. For example, after I read a book, others can read the same copy. But if it were pheromones, it would be used up, and would require "reprinting."

What's wrong with that? They don't think in terms of "books" do they? so they don't know what they're missing...(anyway: maybe they have developed some kind of gustatory/audible/visual/stimulus-based form of their language?)

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Original post by Lysander Any social species must be able to communicate in some way. It's axiomatic.

It's also true that they can communicate...that's what we're discussing. The point was that the aliens don't have to be able to communicate with us.

[edit] removed some stuff that really had no point...
and all that stuff about communication when a tiger is behind someone: these things can bend time

[Edited by - lucky_monkey on January 21, 2005 6:36:51 PM]