How many sentient space traveling species do you expect?
- Thread starter _Flin_
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I voted 50, the poll didn't say ingame or in reality. Ingame 50 might be a tad much but who knows for how long the game will be supported and expanded ...
I voted zero.... apart from myself and a few others there's ample evidence in these forums of a complete lack of intelligent (your words) life...
Awww Mike, having a bad day?
Get yerself a single malt an feel better
Or perhaps the Thargoids thought we were the ones that were destroying all other species.
Cat people ala Vah Shir... oh and anything else you want.
Since you never actually see any faces in the game, theoretically there could be any number of alien species piloting the ships.
However, since FD will have to model, animate and possibly voice all of them when the expansions come, it's likely there will be very few. I expect Thargoids at launch, maybe they'll add some more in the future.
However, since FD will have to model, animate and possibly voice all of them when the expansions come, it's likely there will be very few. I expect Thargoids at launch, maybe they'll add some more in the future.
As far as sentient beings go, from what I've been able to gather from forum threads Interviews and Dev diaries I think they'll be Us, Thargoids and a third unknown Alien race in the game at some point.
I expect the Thargoids (eventually) and nothing else for a long time, if ever.
Any alien civilization that interacts with players primarily through combat will need very careful balancing. That's going to be complicated by the fact that the human ships will still be undergoing balance for their own ship-to-ship combat. It will be hugely disappointing if the Thargoids don't have their own unique weapons too. Thargoids running around with multicannons and pulse lasers won't cut it.
It's a massive enterprise to introduce a spacefaring, combat-capable alien civilization like this. So I don't expect more than the Thargoids for a long time.
I suppose FD could develop a few non-hostile spacefaring aliens, but that's still a lot of work with ship designs, trade interaction etc. And with guns available on every ship we fly, I'm not sure how well it would be accepted by players if we couldn't get in a scrap with them at some point.
That's the gameplay argument, anyway. In terms of "realism," I think there are some good arguments for a very low chance of encountering another civilization, at a similar enough level of technology, that we could interact with them in any meaningful way. The timescale of the Galaxy is too long -- i.e. advanced civilizations can rise and fall before you ever meet them -- and the mismatch between technology levels is likely to be too large. We can fight the Thargoids if they're somewhere close to us in technology, but any much higher advanced alien civilization would be a hopeless mismatch, even for basic communication. We don't try to talk to insects on our planet, after all.
That's the pessimist argument for extremely rare chance of meeting other alien civilizations, even given the huge number of stars in the Galaxy. The chances of finding a civilization at the "just right" Goldilocks stage to interact with us in a meaningful way, is very small.
Any alien civilization that interacts with players primarily through combat will need very careful balancing. That's going to be complicated by the fact that the human ships will still be undergoing balance for their own ship-to-ship combat. It will be hugely disappointing if the Thargoids don't have their own unique weapons too. Thargoids running around with multicannons and pulse lasers won't cut it.
It's a massive enterprise to introduce a spacefaring, combat-capable alien civilization like this. So I don't expect more than the Thargoids for a long time.
I suppose FD could develop a few non-hostile spacefaring aliens, but that's still a lot of work with ship designs, trade interaction etc. And with guns available on every ship we fly, I'm not sure how well it would be accepted by players if we couldn't get in a scrap with them at some point.
That's the gameplay argument, anyway. In terms of "realism," I think there are some good arguments for a very low chance of encountering another civilization, at a similar enough level of technology, that we could interact with them in any meaningful way. The timescale of the Galaxy is too long -- i.e. advanced civilizations can rise and fall before you ever meet them -- and the mismatch between technology levels is likely to be too large. We can fight the Thargoids if they're somewhere close to us in technology, but any much higher advanced alien civilization would be a hopeless mismatch, even for basic communication. We don't try to talk to insects on our planet, after all.
That's the pessimist argument for extremely rare chance of meeting other alien civilizations, even given the huge number of stars in the Galaxy. The chances of finding a civilization at the "just right" Goldilocks stage to interact with us in a meaningful way, is very small.
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There's 3 that we know of. Humanity, the Thargoids and the mysterious probably dead progenitor species thingy. That leaves room for two more before we get to five.
I very much doubt that we will ever see something like ''procedural space civilizations'', so a maximum of five in my belief (the three we know and room for two more), but just the three we know seems even more likely for me.
I very much doubt that we will ever see something like ''procedural space civilizations'', so a maximum of five in my belief (the three we know and room for two more), but just the three we know seems even more likely for me.
The key word here is space.
Sure there might be many intelligent species out there, but as long as my lasers have any juice in them they sure aint going to be travelling in space.
Well outside of a cargo crate that is, but being sold to the Empire in chains or stuffed and in a glass display cage doesn't count.
Before y'all say one man can't wipe out a whole species, it won't just be me, will it?. If humanity is still capable of selling themselves as slaves what do you think we'd do to the aliens? I'm just getting on the gravy train first.
Sure there might be many intelligent species out there, but as long as my lasers have any juice in them they sure aint going to be travelling in space.
Well outside of a cargo crate that is, but being sold to the Empire in chains or stuffed and in a glass display cage doesn't count.
Before y'all say one man can't wipe out a whole species, it won't just be me, will it?. If humanity is still capable of selling themselves as slaves what do you think we'd do to the aliens? I'm just getting on the gravy train first.
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I voted with > 50; however, this is an accurate statement as well. If we assume that .001% of all of the solar systems in the universe have space travelling species, that would still be what, 100,000 - 1,000,000 species? There are something over a trillion stars or around there in our observable part of space. There is still a horizon that we can't see past (some think it's because space, like Celestial bodies, are generally round).
This doesn't even include the theories of multi-verses or higher (or lower) dimensions. Interesting theory I've always had since studying black holes is that by theory, we know that "white holes" should exist, however, we can't find one. What if.. when a black hole forms, a white hole (exit point) is formed. It sounds to me like this seems familar.. ie: The big bang. Each black hole forms another universe. The expansion of the universe is relative to the amount of material that is sucked into the black hole and out through the white hole.
Unfortunately, the only way to test this theory, is to go to the center of our universe and see if there is a white hole there.
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I hope for rogue AI as a major threat at some point.
All hail OMNIUS.
All hail OMNIUS.
It sounds like an interesting project to me.
Random generation of large numbers of evolving shapes is something I've done before (with 2d fish, not 3d spaceships, but the difference is one of scale not a fundamental barrier); it would be straightforward to create distinct alien looks.
I opted for >50 — it's a pretty immense galaxy out there. I'm happy with just two, or one. Or even zero by my count on most days at work.
Initially it'll just be us(Humans) and the Thargoids. Perhaps after they've done the planetary landings and getting out of your ships expansions they'll expand on this a bit more but even then I think the majority of any lifeforms we encounter will probably be animal or insect like and not all that sentient . I don't think there should be hundreds of thousands of sentient lifeforms in the game or even thousands but say maybe 50-60 over 400 billion stars would be nice to encounter.
Can't completely agree here. With 4B stars randomly generated there should be randomly generated alien AI to encourage the exploration. Let them be under or overpowered, I dont think balancing is the issue as it's naive to expect that the "real" encounters will be "balanced". I'd imagine more advanced races will be less hostile.
Well, one other way to encourage exploration, and much easier, is to make them dead aliens.
FD could sprinkle the Galaxy with the archaeological remains of 50 or more dead alien civilizations to spice things up. Derelict ships, artifacts on moons and planets (once we can land there). That's a much easier way to incorporate aliens in the game, compared to having them live and flying around in spaceships. I'm expecting live and suitably scary Thargoids at some point, but I hope FD is working on this other background stuff too.
