Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Titann on January 29, 2019, 07:55:52 AM
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I think it would be nice to have spaceborne aliens in most of the empty stars and maybe missions about them?
It is pretty similar to;
Star Trek movie, Crystalline Entities...
Stellaris, Automated Dreadnought,Void Clouds,Dimensional Horror,Ether Drake,Ancient stuff...
and many other stuff
It will be nice content for players who want to explore and encounter a terrifying space monster. Of course you will need a fleet,different tactics etc to take them out and player should be rewarded with a unique stuff so that can be a weapon,hullmod,fighter/bomber...
This can be end game content or mid game content but it should not give you too much advantage over any enemy fleet and maybe AI Fleets with the stuff you got from the thing you destroyed should spawn rarely?
Like if you get a unique hullmod or a single weapon from the space alien you kill, there should be a chance of encountering with an AI fleet having the unique hullmod or one of the ship with unique weapon. So then things will be equal like that
So what do you guys think?
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Those so-called aliens (at least in Star Trek) are simply elves and orcs in space, or simply humans with pointy ears or unusual skin color or just wearing a Chewbacca costume. Having humans only is good enough. Killer AI akin to Cylons or HAL9000 is alien enough since AI does not need life support and is unfettered by religion or human emotions. Only problem with Starsector's Remnants is they just sit in their systems waiting to be farmed or exterminated.
I guess some of the other aliens are just Chthulu in space, and those are simply mindless or malevolent green beasts to capture or slaughter for XP and loot.
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Those so-called aliens (at least in Star Trek) are simply elves and orcs in space
Wrong aliens. He's asking for the space-borne variety. Space Whales whales and such.
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Things like that make the most sense to introduce relatively late in the development process. All the mechanics for them are either well-tested or currently being tested; it's just a matter of fitting the pieces together. It's a good bet that a game with such heavy Star Control influences is going to have funny and interesting dialogue interactions with... if not aliens, then weird AIs and people. But I'd expect some aliens sooner or later.
In the mean time, you could always roll up your sleeves and make some. We have all the tools already, baked into the game.
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Those so-called aliens (at least in Star Trek) are simply elves and orcs in space, or simply humans with pointy ears or unusual skin color or just wearing a Chewbacca costume.
*adjusts glasses* ACHTHSUALLY... there's a very good explanation in-universe for why that is. Tldr, all have a common ancestor or something like that.
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If i remember correctly Alex said that SS is about the humans that inhabit it and the slow but inexorable decline of both order and infrastructure.
Plus the Domain never found much in terms of advanced aliens.
TL;dr: if you want ayys then mod them in
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Those so-called aliens (at least in Star Trek) are simply elves and orcs in space, or simply humans with pointy ears or unusual skin color or just wearing a Chewbacca costume. Having humans only is good enough. Killer AI akin to Cylons or HAL9000 is alien enough since AI does not need life support and is unfettered by religion or human emotions. Only problem with Starsector's Remnants is they just sit in their systems waiting to be farmed or exterminated.
I guess some of the other aliens are just Chthulu in space, and those are simply mindless or malevolent green beasts to capture or slaughter for XP and loot.
Cylons unfettered by religion and emotions
Haha about that... Also its been stated before in a previous thread that true AI if made IRL could be more alien than actual biological aliens in behaviour since they dont play by organic life rules.
Also human cultural diversity IRL is vast and varying enough to dwarf any average made up alien civilization in scifi. And thats just planet Earth, SS sector has many planets that number in millions or billions, and thats just the Core worlds not counting the decivilized post apocalyptic worlds in the far reaches of unexplored space.
SS is a setting about humans for the most part, and you dont really care wether or not if a new "race" is just another human offshoot or split off faction seeing as how simply seperating groups by a few lightyears much less miles can turn both parties into something unreconizable in a few generations.
Thats just the cultural aspect too, you have transhumanism/technology playing into SS as well (Gunnery Implants as an example plus how the Ludds shun advanced tech while TriTach embraces technological depravity).
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Haha about that... Also its been stated before in a previous thread that true AI if made IRL could be more alien than actual biological aliens in behaviour since they dont play by organic life rules.
it actually turns out IRL AI just repeats the bigotry and hatred of the society that produced it. Like, disappointingly so; AI is just as racist as the most racist person you know, but faster
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Haha about that... Also its been stated before in a previous thread that true AI if made IRL could be more alien than actual biological aliens in behaviour since they dont play by organic life rules.
it actually turns out IRL AI just repeats the bigotry and hatred of the society that produced it. Like, disappointingly so; AI is just as racist as the most racist person you know, but faster
If you're talking about that Microsoft Tai thing then no. It wasn't an AI any more than Cleverbot is. Just an advanced chat bot.
It takes input and produces output in the form of twitter posts. Now what happens when some a bunch of epic memers go and recant "Mein Kampf" to it? Monkey see, monkey do. It didn't have feelings or reason or morality or anything, it just observed its input and saw that certain words associated themselves in certain ways, and it parroted them.
Chinese Room kinda deal.
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it actually turns out IRL AI just repeats the bigotry and hatred of the society that produced it. Like, disappointingly so; AI is just as racist as the most racist person you know, but faster
Because AI is unfettered by religion and emotions. AI has no trouble doing things that humans would not do or have trouble doing because humans have souls and AI does not. Alien does not need to be unknowable, unfathomable, or weird; just inhuman. AI that does not blink an eye at killing all humans, or otherwise casually doing other evil things, to achieve its goals is alien enough for human.
As for space whales, that just sounds like dumb beasts or evil monsters to slaughter and plunder their parts for loot. If not, probably yet another annoying resource sink obstacle like pre-0.9 storms.
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it actually turns out IRL AI just repeats the bigotry and hatred of the society that produced it. Like, disappointingly so; AI is just as racist as the most racist person you know, but faster
Actual AI is pure logic, it doesn't care about any cultural nor political norms. Whatever it does is calculated.
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Because AI is unfettered by religion and emotions. AI has no trouble doing things that humans would not do or have trouble doing because humans have souls and AI does not. Alien does not need to be unknowable, unfathomable, or weird; just inhuman. AI that does not blink an eye at killing all humans, or otherwise casually doing other evil things, to achieve its goals is alien enough for human.
That's a strangely religious way of looking at an AI, talking of souls and such as if humans have souls. What we call evil are the actions of humans; to not blink an eye at killing all humans, or otherwise casually doing other evil things, to achieve its goals are all things humans currently do.
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That's a strangely religious way of looking at an AI...
It is, minus the "strangely", and I will leave it at that.
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Biological "ships"/enemies (Like the Infected from Pulsar) would certainly be *** sick in Starsector with how satisfying ship destruction already is.
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lots of people ITT are super behind on their AI. I imagine if I explained to them in an effective-enough way that most popular sites such as Youtube (for just one example) are almost entirely AI run, and at that are run by an AI that no human built but was built by other AI to be good at running Youtube -- and are super racist, homophobic, bigoted & pro-fascist AI despite no human hands having been involved in their design to make them so, their heads might explode.
Like, we already have AI running some quite substantial infrastructure, and no human knows how it was made or why it is the way it is, and said AI's turn out to reflect the worst prejudices of the societies they came from. This isn't speculation, it's a known fact about the state of the world as it is today and if you read that and go "no but AI are logical" then IDK what to tell you other than that the image inside your head of what AI should be based on decades/centuries-old speculative fiction has no relevance to how it actually turned out to be
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lots of people ITT are super behind on their AI. I imagine if I explained to them in an effective-enough way that most popular sites such as Youtube (for just one example) are almost entirely AI run, and at that are run by an AI that no human built but was built by other AI to be good at running Youtube -- and are super racist, homophobic, bigoted & pro-fascist AI despite no human hands having been involved in their design to make them so, their heads might explode.
Like, we already have AI running some quite substantial infrastructure, and no human knows how it was made or why it is the way it is, and said AI's turn out to reflect the worst prejudices of the societies they came from. This isn't speculation, it's a known fact about the state of the world as it is today and if you read that and go "no but AI are logical" then IDK what to tell you other than that the image inside your head of what AI should be based on decades/centuries-old speculative fiction has no relevance to how it actually turned out to be
They're not behind, they're entirely correct. We don't have general AI and we're very far away from being anywhere close to being able to create a true synthetic intelligence, and we certainly don't have anything that could pass the turing test.
The "AI" you're referring to are, in fact, slightly more complex "cleverbots". "Cleverbots" have a more general term for them called Chatbots. They say a bunch of junk because that's the junk people say online (people also generally being more militant under the safety of online anonymity). These "bots" do not have a consciousness, nor do they simulate consciousness. Any chatbot regurgitating such junk is no more a bigot than any parrot that you'd train to say the same things.
This is way off topic from the original "space creature" thing.
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the assertion that taking something that's already a reflection of societal prejudices and increasing its ability to appear to be a human being would decrease how much its a reflection of societal prejudices