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why stick with phenotypes? We all think of earthbound stuff. For all we know/unknown we could find a guy looking just like us while not being a mammal.
Moreover the chemistry could be totally alien and different. What if a civilization lives in a planet like the moon titan. where temperatures are waay below freezing, and thus bars the idea of fungoid/reptilian/avian/mammal/etc.
these guys would use probably use hydrocarbons as a solvent, instead of water, this literally turns all the ideas of "classifying" upside down.
And I haven't even left the solar system.
I understand the need to classify, we humans tend to do that, but we could do so in a different way. Maybe with type of DNA, or with the solvent they use, or social interaction, even the types of technology.
Sorry, i got carried away with the rant. I do understand the need to place everything in order, but I don't believe phenotypes is the way to do it.
Moreover the chemistry could be totally alien and different. What if a civilization lives in a planet like the moon titan. where temperatures are waay below freezing, and thus bars the idea of fungoid/reptilian/avian/mammal/etc.
these guys would use probably use hydrocarbons as a solvent, instead of water, this literally turns all the ideas of "classifying" upside down.
And I haven't even left the solar system.
I understand the need to classify, we humans tend to do that, but we could do so in a different way. Maybe with type of DNA, or with the solvent they use, or social interaction, even the types of technology.
Sorry, i got carried away with the rant. I do understand the need to place everything in order, but I don't believe phenotypes is the way to do it.
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Thanks for the nightmare.
That's a problem to all fiction work. Since we only know about life form here (outside of microbes) all of our knowledge says that life must be that way. If you don't create your life like that it looks like your talking out of your ass. For exemple: Mass Effect. Some of the lifeform, looking your way dextro-protein, are not compatible with human because of that. It felt weak, just there to add more drama when I romance Tali. So if stellaris was to do that it should be explain , if not it's just fantasy.
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Actually, I've never played mass effect so I had to briefly look up what you meant by dextro-protein, but you might be surprised that this actually seems very realistic.
For life as we know it to arise, the basics of DNA, RNA, protein, carbohydrates, etc have to work roughly the same. However, the chirality of the molecules has no effect of the overall functioning of the organism other than being incompatible with the reverse chirality. In fact, unless all life has a common origin, it would be immensely improbable for them all to have the same chirality. Much like the specific way our DNA is encoded, there are no laws of physics at the base of the choice for one or the other, it's fairly random.
So while I do agree with you on things like intelligent crystals and the like, I can't agree with youand that specific example. And even the weird things like rocks, the hydrocarbon aliens, etc. would still be fun to see, though probably not on launch. They could add them in a "Truly Alien" DLC later, and make them function quite a bit differently from the other species.
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Yeah, it's a pretty creature, however it's name is pretty kick-ass.
Imagine a snail like warlord named Cesare Berghia marching on your territories, slaughtering your men and then providing the corpses to Leonardo Da Vinci for inspection... It wouldn't surprise me. If I recall correctly, Da Vinci at one point did have a big thing for fossils and mollusks. It was all a ploy to study humans and send the recon he gathered straight to planet Berghia, the planet that sent one of their most loyal, Cesare, to Earth, to pose as a "Borgia"... Leonardo was obsessed with shapes. How many words are in his name? 3... What is a shape with 3 corners? A triangle... Illuminati confirmed... BUT WAIT! The illuminati aren't actually lizard people as everybody has been fooled to believe... they're molluscoid, and they're attempting to pass the blame on their lizard enemies!!!! OH MAN WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!
It was not about the realism but the implementation. In the game they never explain it. It's they can't eat the same food and if you have sex fluids can cause problems. Well thanks, that added a lot to the universe and it felt, to me, cheap.
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I think an important thing here is that we are trying to demand the realistic exoticness of alien life in a medium that is trying to appeal to the masses. Even top-shot scientists cannot really comprehend how alien life could look like without heavy influences from Earth life. For all humans know about the universe, or even the Earth, alien life could be anything, made of anything, and behave in any way. We can't even predict our own weather with over 93% efficiency, and we are trying to make definite claims about how alien life could and should be when they are just educated guesses and theories. We still don't know the chemical composition and properties of MOST of the universe, so there is a lot that is possible that we cannot comprehend until we see it with our own eyes.
Since the game is very much a work of art rather than a work of science, it should be able to appeal to a human and its senses. We need to be able to recognize a face on the alien, to read body language seen in portrait stances and poses or whatever (even an idle animation says something about a character). We can then attribute more non-human characteristics based on what we imagine from animals on earth. Erratic movements on the part of an arthropod, or an over-focused stance of an avian. The combination of physically human and non-human-yet-recognizable characteristics allows us to make up our own personifications based on the stories we tell in the game, and thus become emotionally attached to the subjects of our empire, experiencing more from the game.
However, we admittedly CAN comprehend and emotionally associate with things more exotic than what we have seen so far in the game. But I think the game would be better if people, instead of imagining themselves playing as "just" a race of space squids, they imagine themselves playing as a race of space squids who just recovered from a huge civil war between a traitor anarchist known as "Kab Blurmiphigtica" and the high-king whom some 30% percent of the space squid population wants dead for arbitrary laws and repression.
Since the game is very much a work of art rather than a work of science, it should be able to appeal to a human and its senses. We need to be able to recognize a face on the alien, to read body language seen in portrait stances and poses or whatever (even an idle animation says something about a character). We can then attribute more non-human characteristics based on what we imagine from animals on earth. Erratic movements on the part of an arthropod, or an over-focused stance of an avian. The combination of physically human and non-human-yet-recognizable characteristics allows us to make up our own personifications based on the stories we tell in the game, and thus become emotionally attached to the subjects of our empire, experiencing more from the game.
However, we admittedly CAN comprehend and emotionally associate with things more exotic than what we have seen so far in the game. But I think the game would be better if people, instead of imagining themselves playing as "just" a race of space squids, they imagine themselves playing as a race of space squids who just recovered from a huge civil war between a traitor anarchist known as "Kab Blurmiphigtica" and the high-king whom some 30% percent of the space squid population wants dead for arbitrary laws and repression.
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while it is true that hive minds are not possible through any natural biological means available to life on earth doesn't negate the possibility off such a feature being in an alien life form, perhaps these creatures have something resembling a built in radio transmitter and receiver for communication with one another, and due each individual being in constant contact with every other member of its own race, even before their birth, they have all developed identical though processes and knowledge base.
and as such a species spread through the stars they will develop into new isolated minds in each star system or maybe even planet, depending on the range of their connection, with tiny bits of the thoughts and knowledge being exchanged between those minds by messengers sent back and forth between them.