The future of Distant Worlds - Is DW2 necessary?

[Ranbir]

Good DW2 is coming. I just want it exactly the same stuff, just more of it, on a newer engine that allows more flexible stuff to go on.

[feygan]

I'm all for DW2 for a few reasons but you have to separate some of them due to how the game is viewed. For me personally modding is a huge part of my decision when buying 4x games, I fully understand that unless I were to spend years learning how to program I just will never see a game that perfectly fits what I want. That is fine though when you have a game with a large amount of modding flexibility, DW was really never meant to be truly modded, the changes you could make were mostly aesthetic in nature with some actual modding being opened up in the last expansion. Even with that there are quite large limitations on what can be done and the methods for making these changes are somewhat clunky to use. In that vein a game built from the ground up to be modded would be fantastic, however it comes down to the developers own design plan and vision for their product.

The most important reason I can think of though is due to the engine used for DW and taking advantage in hardware advancement. Two perfect examples I can think of in this case are Civilization 4 and Space Empires 5. Both of these games are very old by gaming standards, and yet they do still have a reasonably large amount of folks who play them on a regular basis. However both also suffer from ancient coding by today's standards, this severely hampers the performance of a modern powerful machine. Granted some talented individuals have made great strides with modding to improve things, but factors such as game size, AI numbers etc still cause many of these games to become tedious at later stages.

I can easily imagine that in 4-5 years DW will still have a respectable number of fans who play it weekly or more. But by that time the average level of hardware being used to play the game will be bottlenecked by what will be ancient code. An advanced DW2 engine will be able to make full use of 64bit os environments, and multiple cores. This will allow players to either have vast galactic sizes, or intelligent AI algorithms along with many other things we always crave for any 4x game. This and this alone I think will determine if DW becomes a long running success or ends up in 10 years time as a fondly remembered piece of nostalgia we fire up for 10 minutes before realising how dated and frustrating it has become.

[2guncohen]

I hope if they make a Distant worlds 2 is that they don't make the same mistakes as Sword of the stars II.
That game has so much potential but is still feeling clumsy and broken...

What would rock is a distant worlds with multi-player capacities that would literally be fun.
And maybe include warp-space ? a layer of space reality above the normal space [:D]
More roles for Units on planets a turn based combat mode for certain objectives for planet assets would be fun.

There is so-much they can add or expand on.

[eyegore]

Distant Worlds 2 is a given. It's just too popular...even on Steam...which is a very hard sell for a complex 2d graphics anything. It has to be done because it is so close to being the best 4x game out there but it misses the mark in a couple key areas that only a new engine can address.GUI and A.I.

Overall for everything it does the A.I. is pretty darn good overall. I think a lot that can be improved simply is waiting for a better engine that can handle an expanded code base (and libraries) to pull off.
This goes down to how the A.I. builds and fits ships and bases to how it handles diplomacy, etc on top of it's overall defense/attack abilities and overall strategic thinking.

The GUI is not just needlessly complex, it's badly engineered. I can deal with complex if it gets the job done, but if I'm scrapping 200 bases after I research long range missles because the ONLY WAY to change it's standing orders is to scrap it and GIVE THE ORDER IN THE DESIGN PHASE...something is terribly wrong and thought out and it's not getting the job done. Ever since Space Empires 3 a right click brung up any possible thing to do, include changing an order to an existing base. That age old simple design worked and it is not here and is the single largest reason I can only take so much of playing distant Worlds.

After that there's a lot of features added I could list but they've all been mentioned elsewhere. They all add up to needing a new engine as well.

Another thing to concider is 2d or 3d. Eyecandy is nice but overall we have an epic size universe that takes lots of memory and processing power to pull off---to expand on the current design will take a lot more. Generally speaking 3d is always smaller than 2d...for the simple reason you skin the model and it loads once and it's in the game...whereas 2d requires a series of frames to be loaded into memory for each action...like a soldier walking, shooting, dying. To animate him and his actions usually involve dozens upon dozens of frames to be loaded, quickly exceeding that 1 detailed 3d model. But Distant Worlds is an exception...it is just one flat 2d image that can be turned and moved with a couple lines of code, and for death and fighting the same 2d effects frame is used/replayed for everything...so in this one case 2d actually is less of a memory hog.

Of course Sins of a Solar Empire showed large universes are certainly possible in 3d, and with games jumping to 64 bits --and all the tricks 3d can bring, like LOD, Occlusion Culling, and other built in performance tools just not possible in 2d it is a very hard call for the developers to make. You could go 3d and get the eye candy but you'd be upping the player base default rig requirements by a large margin. And you would lose that charm that 2d brings.

I'd like a more serious look at Lore as well. It seems some mad idea that all 4x Space games have talking rodent and roaches...including popular worlds like Star trek and Starwars...but I'm a hard sci-fi guy. My favorite sci-fi movies are 'believable' sci-fi movies like Gattaca or Children of Men....under no evolutionary vision will a rodent ever speak or enter space...it has no thumbs. And it is just silly to me to have some miles long tech research, complexity in ships and planets in a massive universe and go and ruin the whole thing by putting a hampster in a space suit. Of course this is modable so if they choose to remain lazy in this regard that can be fixed by the player and is not the end of the world, but for once I'd like to see a developer be as serious on LORE as they are with all the other stuff. It is such a huge missed oppurtunity. A serious sci-fi LORE 4x would do extremely well in a market filled with cartoon crap.

I GET Star Trek is popular...but I still laugh at loud when and see Kirk and Crew being thrown across the bridge in just about every episode because in the 23rd century these morons never heard of a seat belt. As much as I enjoy Star trek I never found any of it believable.Something more serious would be a nice change.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: eyegore

The GUI is not just needlessly complex, it's badly engineered. I can deal with complex if it gets the job done, but if I'm scrapping 200 bases after I research long range missles because the ONLY WAY to change it's standing orders is to scrap it and GIVE THE ORDER IN THE DESIGN PHASE...something is terribly wrong and thought out and it's not getting the job done. Ever since Space Empires 3 a right click brung up any possible thing to do, include changing an order to an existing base. That age old simple design worked and it is not here and is the single largest reason I can only take so much of playing distant Worlds.

The GUI is for sure not perfect, but I have no clue about what you complain about in the above. There is never a need to scrap anything. Yes, you can scrap to balance research output, and maybe a stubborn mine unable to retrofit is faster to rebuild, but...

What are standing orders? The top left of the design (how to invade, when to flee), can be changed for the design at any time.

As for graphics you have good points, but the fear of any "2" is of course that it will lose its identity and become a stinker...

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling
but the fear of any "2" is of course that it will lose its identity and become a stinker...

So avoid the 2 and call it ... Distant Worlds COSMOS.

[Nanaki]

ORIGINAL: eyegore

I'd like a more serious look at Lore as well. It seems some mad idea that all 4x Space games have talking rodent and roaches...including popular worlds like Star trek and Starwars...but I'm a hard sci-fi guy. My favorite sci-fi movies are 'believable' sci-fi movies like Gattaca or Children of Men....under no evolutionary vision will a rodent ever speak or enter space...it has no thumbs.

Copy and pasted from a previous post... but:

Hard sci-fi never really had a 'flavor' of alien race, as, the only things we know about alien races is what we can prove/disprove through chemistry (Note: Silicon-based lifeforms are improbable) and the liklihood that we are not alone. Most hard sci-fi just avoids the question entirely as hard sci-fi tends to accept the fact that FTL travel is impossible with our current understanding of astrophysics.

Thing is, the whole concept of 'serious' space species went endemic after MOO3 and is one of the reasons why I avoided the 4X genre for so long. Aside from it boiling down to just making alien races 50 shades of similar looking eldrich abominations, which makes the races about as interesting as watching paint dry, the whole root concept reeks of arrogance, especially since there is the possibility we could be horribly wrong and aliens could end up looking more familiar than we would normally assume. The key factor is that we do not know.

Overall, it just tends to boil down to taste. I much prefer the MOO2/Distant Worlds racial selection as, at least, you have interesting, visible aesthetic differences.

I GET Star Trek is popular...but I still laugh at loud when and see Kirk and Crew being thrown across the bridge in just about every episode because in the 23rd century these morons never heard of a seat belt. As much as I enjoy Star trek I never found any of it believable.Something more serious would be a nice change.

Not sure if you ever watched star trek, but the DW/MOO2 racial aesthetic is too exotic even for Star Trek's standards, whom mostly stuck with humans with bumpy forheads or different colored skin. Given, this is not due to any willful choice but rather it was much cheaper on costuming* and it only continues even to this day mainly due to canon-fueled inertia.

*The Wing Commander movie is a good example in how expensive and difficult it was to turn actors into even the Kilrathi, and the end result was so crappy that they had to cover it up with horrible lighting. Thats just the Kilrathi, whom are fairly analogous, physically, to the Zenox.

Although, overall, I doubt DW will change the race selection a whole bunch. The last X4 I remember making massive changes to its racial selection for the sake of realism ended up singlehandedly killing the most popular franchise in the genre.

[DeadlyShoe]

MOO3 was unpolished and unfinished and that's what killed it, didn't have anything to do with its racial selection

It's actually pretty fun today if you slap a bunch of bugfix patches and mods on it.

The GUI is not just needlessly complex, it's badly engineered. I can deal with complex if it gets the job done, but if I'm scrapping 200 bases after I research long range missles because the ONLY WAY to change it's standing orders is to scrap it and GIVE THE ORDER IN THE DESIGN PHASE...something is terribly wrong and thought out and it's not getting the job done. Ever since Space Empires 3 a right click brung up any possible thing to do, include changing an order to an existing base. That age old simple design worked and it is not here and is the single largest reason I can only take so much of playing distant Worlds.

Just want to emphasize: as others have pointed out, you can change the standing orders of a design at any time without having to scrap or anything.

[eyegore]

The GUI is for sure not perfect, but I have no clue about what you complain about in the above. There is never a need to scrap anything. Yes, you can scrap to balance research output, and maybe a stubborn mine unable to retrofit is faster to rebuild, but...

What are standing orders? The top left of the design (how to invade, when to flee), can be changed for the design at any time.

When you redesign the new orders ONLY AFFECT that design. If current bases are of a different design you absolutely need to replace them. And it is just crazy. Ever imagine watch Deep space 9 and some new sector wide weapon tech comes available and the captain says....well we need to redesign and build a whole new base because I can't give a new standing order to attack any target.


Hard sci-fi never really had a 'flavor' of alien race, as, the only things we know about alien races is what we can prove/disprove through chemistry (Note: Silicon-based lifeforms are improbable) and the liklihood that we are not alone. Most hard sci-fi just avoids the question entirely as hard sci-fi tends to accept the fact that FTL travel is impossible with our current understanding of astrophysics.

Thing is, the whole concept of 'serious' space species went endemic after MOO3 and is one of the reasons why I avoided the 4X genre for so long. Aside from it boiling down to just making alien races 50 shades of similar looking eldrich abominations, which makes the races about as interesting as watching paint dry, the whole root concept reeks of arrogance, especially since there is the possibility we could be horribly wrong and aliens could end up looking more familiar than we would normally assume. The key factor is that we do not know.

Overall, it just tends to boil down to taste. I much prefer the MOO2/Distant Worlds racial selection as, at least, you have interesting, visible aesthetic differences.


Hard sci-fi can be far more than simply choosing to be either Ernie or Bert from Sesame Street--which is the overall trend today in 4x games. Sins of a Solar empire works just fine as the 3 races being clearly beliavably humanoid. Emperor of the Fading Suns is another Universe with TONS of differences between house/factions/races without going to saturday morning cartoons. Dune...though the space bending aliens are certainly far fetched -- everything else from the many houses/secs makes it far better and more interesting than a Star wars or star Trek....if you read the books that is.

Although it is impossible to imagine what a true alien would look like, it is certainly possible to know WHAT THEY MUST HAVE to communicate and build ships to enter space, and a talking roach does not cut it. It is a matter of taste...but seems to me there's only one taste prevalent...Mickey Mouse in Space. Was cool when I was 10...but at my age now it IS GETTING VERY OLD.

Some of the best sci-fi for my tastes, although poorly done in Hollywood, tend to not kill religion as most 4x games do but make it a center point as it is in DUNE or EMPEROR OF THE FADING SUNS. In fact if you listen to Carl Saigon and others, it would explain how these races reached Space travel without destroying themselves--using Religion (and forbidden tech), Tradition (like a government of Kings/queens over Democracy)- to explain self checks to allow them to reach the tech levels they do before they manage to wipe each other out before ever being able to reach us on Earth...which is Carl Saigon's belief.

DW is simply a generic copy of everything before, and not a very interesting one. And the mods available are mods done to death in every 4x game before it. I appreciate and enjoy extended universe (great, more talking bugs), Star trek and such for what they are but I still see that HUGE VOID or nothing else to choose from.

The modding limitations simply would not allow the concept of a Church from a Emperor of the Fading Suns. The Diplomacy is lacking as well. Too much remains hard coded or limited by the engine itself. If they don't create such a World at least allow the community to create it through mods---

[Nanaki]

ORIGINAL: DeadlyShoe

MOO3 was unpolished and unfinished and that's what killed it, didn't have anything to do with its racial selection

Unfinished and unpolished? The only unfinished part of the game was the AI, other parts of the game that were also trashed, like the UI, graphics, and gameplay, were definatly in their final, intended state. It was just a bad game that, no matter how much time and money thrown at it, would have been crap no matter what.

As for the racial selection?

MOO3 removed a half dozen races and then replaced them with textureswap copypasta of the remaining, even admitting as such by calling them subspecies. The only actual unique race added was the Ithkul, whom is just another zombie apocalypse in space, which is a terrible trope which should just die in a fire already, mainly because I still remember Homeworld: Cataclysm.

I still distinctly remember the forum arguments back in the day that questioned why the developers removed races like they did. I also still remember the snarky 'for the realisms' replies that Rantz gave. At least the guy's game development career ended with MOO3, so I can be greatful for that at least.

It's actually pretty fun today if you slap a bunch of bugfix patches and mods on it.

The patches/mods just made it playable and only barely just... there is a long, long way between 'playable' and 'fun'... unless someone overhauled the game from the ground-up after I stopped paying attention to it but at that point it might as well be a different game.

Just want to emphasize: as others have pointed out, you can change the standing orders of a design at any time without having to scrap or anything.

Indeed, although it would help if the game explains that you can still edit some things with a pre-existing design.

[eyegore]

I have to agree with Nanaki on MOO3. I kept hearing about all these mods that made Moo3 so much better-but after playing a fully modded Moo3 I still think it is a horrible game---even modded. The amount of work you have to do to keep track of everything as you expand simply becomes work instead of fun---and the lore is as dry as Gin.

[buglepong]

What? Cant say distant worlds is any more original. Besides, I really liked that jellyfish race that could only live on gas giants. DW could do with one. It doesnt even have a custom race editor! Not to mention the races in DW are either painfully similar or very imbalanced.

i actuallu liked MoO3. It does bring out the ocd in me, but i have to say its empire management system was realistic and layered. Thr only thing that really brought it down was the UI. It was worse than DW's pretty clunky one.

[Nanaki]

Hard sci-fi can be far more than simply choosing to be either Ernie or Bert from Sesame Street--which is the overall trend today in 4x games. Sins of a Solar empire works just fine as the 3 races being clearly beliavably humanoid. Emperor of the Fading Suns is another Universe with TONS of differences between house/factions/races without going to saturday morning cartoons. Dune...though the space bending aliens are certainly far fetched -- everything else from the many houses/secs makes it far better and more interesting than a Star wars or star Trek....if you read the books that is.

I know what hard sci-fi is. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of my favorite books and I am probably one of those few people who understand what TANSTAAFL means, to this day I find it deeply ironic that a Japanese manga/anime, Planetes, manages to pull off hard sci-fi harder and better than most western 'hard' sci-fi out there.

Which brings me to my point. Theres a lot of supposedly 'hard' sci-fi you claim that is really not all that hard. Dune is not hard sci-fi. Sins of a Solar Empire is not hard sci-fi. Emperor of the Fading Suns is not hard sci-fi. Yes, a lot of sci-fi out there does contain some 'hard' elements, but even including one major soft element contaminates the whole 'hard' part.

Hard sci-fi, real hard sci-fi, is incredibly difficult to write. You have to read up, learn, and understand rocket science. Theres so many differences between hard and soft sci-fi that a lot of things that people love about sci-fi are a lot more different and mundane in hard sci-fi, space combat being a big example of this.

But you know what?

There is nothing wrong with soft sci-fi. It makes up the vast majority of sci-fi out there and is the only sci-fi with any kind of popular appeal at all. A lot of that is that it bends/breaks the rules in order to allow cool stuff to happen, and there is absolutly nothing wrong with that.

In fact if you listen to Carl Saigon and others, it would explain how these races reached Space travel without destroying themselves--using Religion (and forbidden tech), Tradition (like a government of Kings/queens over Democracy)- to explain self checks to allow them to reach the tech levels they do before they manage to wipe each other out before ever being able to reach us on Earth...which is Carl Saigon's belief.

Carl Sagan (I am pretty sure thats who you were talking about) is, imho, a model example of the human folly of assumption. As a species, humans tend to dislike the unknown, to the point where we will even make stuff up in order to explain it. His entire work on extraterrestrials is based off of hypothosis which in turn are based off even more hypothosis and none of it has any observational data to back any of it up.

I am personally not a big fan, because, imho, hypothosis without observational or experimental data is about the same as writing fiction, it makes a mockery of science. Infact, he was known for making lots of wild predictions, many of which turned out to be completely incorrect.

As for the Fermi paradox, well, we just recently discovered that radio waves have this annoying habit of decaying into white noise after a few light years... too bad for SETI I suppose.

DW is simply a generic copy of everything before, and not a very interesting one. And the mods available are mods done to death in every 4x game before it. I appreciate and enjoy extended universe (great, more talking bugs), Star trek and such for what they are but I still see that HUGE VOID or nothing else to choose from.

Hate to break it to you, but virtually everything out there has been done before. Sins of a Solar Empire? Oh look, a Protoss which is rather deeply ironic considering that in the game they hold the Zerg niche (I will get to that later), and its not like the 'robed temple faction' in the Advent and the generic 'Human' faction are any more unique.

...and I am certain that virtually everything you like was done before.

and you know what? That is OK.

When most people complain about originality, it is mainly because a trope becomes too overused and people get sick and tierd of seeing it over and over, and in that case, yeah, it is a good idea to pare back on usage of the trope, but it hardly means 'remove the trope entirely'.

Which reminds me, there is a lot of that going on now with the Terran-Protoss-Zerg dynamic, which actually started with Alien Vs Predator (vs Humans), evolved to its pinnacle in Starcraft, and still lives to this day in Sins of a Solar Empire. Thats certainly a trope we could lay off for awile.

Overall, Races in DW should not be removed or physically altered. Now, I agree in that balance and differences can be improved. I agree in that a great deal of races could use improved portraits (This could fix most your complaints, I imagine). I also am perfectly fine with DW2 adding new races.

But please, do not start advocating for removing races because you happen to not like them. I already seen this happen before in MOO3. The end result was terrible.

[Gregorovitch55]

ORIGINAL: eyegore

Although it is impossible to imagine what a true alien would look like, it is certainly possible to know WHAT THEY MUST HAVE to communicate and build ships to enter space, and a talking roach does not cut it. It is a matter of taste...but seems to me there's only one taste prevalent...Mickey Mouse in Space. Was cool when I was 10...but at my age now it IS GETTING VERY OLD.

I would tend to disagree with that for a number of reasons. Firstly we know that on earth there has been a lot of convergent evolution (e.g. dolphins share a lot of characteristics with fish) which suggests that certain design principles are generally effective for species in particular niches, therefore it is reasonable to expect alien species may well evolve along similar lines in roughly similar environments.

Secondly we know the universe looks pretty much the same wheresoever you look and the laws of physics appear consistent, so it is reasonable to expect a lot of alien species will be evolving in habitats broadly similar to earth in which similar designs will prove equally successful.

Thirdly there is no hard evidence that RNA and DNA first appeared on earth. A number of pieces of space rock have been recovered that contain nucleic acids and appear to come from way out in the Oort cloud or beyond, which means it is entirely possible that RNA/DNA arrived here on earth from elsewhere shortly after the birth of the Solar System which in turn means the galaxy could be teaming with DNA based life very similar to our own.

As far as insects are concerned, we can thank our lucky stars that their respiratory systems are based purely on diffusion, O2 in and CO2 out, via static trachea and that they have not evolved lung type organs to pump the stuff in the quantities required to grow to the sort of size we are. This strictly limits how big they can grow. Spiders are somewhat closer as they posses "lung books" that are somewhat more efficient but still static diffusion based.
Again we can thank God they haven't evolved a pump for this organ or the Dhayut would be a lot closer to home than our computer screens. The point is just because insects have not evolved lung type organs on earth does not mean similarly designed species elsewhere haven't, and our observations of convergent evolution here tend to support the argument that they quite possibly have. A space faring roach is by no means as fanciful as it sounds and, given lungs or lung-type organs, it would have no better or worse chance of becoming space faring than we we do.

Which is perhaps something not to dwell on too much when you go to bed at night.

[eyegore]

I think Carl Sagan (yeah I'm a terrible speller) was a product of his time. The nuclear age. Like me remembering those drills in school where somehow hiding under a desk or going to the basement saved us children (rather than impact horrible phobeas) from a nuclear attack. Today the idea of any nuclear attack, however likely or widespread, would completely wipe us off the planet probably is a bit too paranoid after having them around 60 plus years and seeing us still standing. Oh, they might be used again, and they might be devasting, but they will not wipe us off the planet. Not all of us.

Yes, unless your doing 2001 (book or Movie) true good hard sci-fi is rare and hard to find.And i will note they did not kill the idea of God here either in 2001...I think it is used often in good sci-fi. But I can suspend my disbelief in a game if the races I choose don't reflect a Raid commercial or Daffy Duck. I was reading an article on how good old Stardock's Howard didn't want to mess up the LORE too much in Cal Civ3 but rather wanted to flesh it out. Inside i was laughing, and I'm still laughing. I can't take that lore seriously anymore than the lore in Wizard of Oz. If Howard really wants me to take his game serious he should take the LORE seriously. It doesn't have to be Kubrick's 2001, but it certainly should be better than talking hampsters. Wether a hampster could ever EVOLVE...or a roach...to have lungs, vocal cords or telephic means of comunication...or thumbs...a basic requirement...I'd say by that stage it stops being a roach or hampter and starts being pretty huminoid in nature.

Dophins are only another example. As intelligent as we think they are, along with Killer Whales I might add...ALL ATTEMPTS to form any communication or understanding in this matter have pretty much been total failures. It takes huge leaps of Assumptions where there are no real world facts-

Humanoid you can sell me. Even an intelligent underwater breathing type of humanoid looking race, or ones perferring swamps, desert, or whatnot...but by no stretch can I buy a talking roach zipping across the milky way. If you want those characteristics in a race make them zealous nymphmaniacs that can't stop having sex at every turn with a religion that forbids birth control. Even the race pictures would be more pleasing to the eye.

[Hannable]

After reading this entire thread, I've come to only one conclusion:

I want some Luftwaffles.

[eyegore]

[Spidey]

A few things. First, regarding the UI and the strategy choices, you can always select a unit, click on its design name, wait for the design screen to pop up, change the strategy choices, click on save, and that's it, you've changed the strategy. You don't need to scrap anything.

Next, regarding alien races and whatnot, I think it's ridiculously arrogant to suggest that all intelligent life has to be humanoid. We don't really know what "intelligence" actually is so how can we speculate that only humanoids can have it? Oh, because we can't talk with dolphins yet? So by that reasoning, space colonization is impossible in hard sci-fi because we can't do it yet? Come on.

Ant colonies can do optimization instinctively that your average human being couldn't do with a computer. They also have a means of communication, though it isn't quite as advanced as human language. That being the case, I really don't see any logic supporting a categorical rejection of the possibility of intelligent ant colonies existing. Each individual ant might be pretty stupid but suppose they developed a capability of reading each others mental state without verbal communication. Suppose they evolved an instinctive divide and conquer approach to problem solving, resulting in these space ants having increasingly greater problem solving speed as their numbers grow. As improbable as this may be, how can you say it's entirely impossible for the ant colony to figure out a solution to the food problem? And if they can fix the food, they can grow numbers even bigger and become an even smarter group. Suddenly we have our bug hive. It would be hard for humans to build anything with ant tech but in this case the ants develop naturally into an organic continental-sized computer with trillions of individual cells. You want to tell me how you know what that might be capable of?

Regarding felines and cute talking teddy bears (or not so cute, in the case of Atuuks), why do you assume their paws are exactly like Earth counterparts, just because their faces are? Because assumptions are fun? Opposable thumbs in order to pick up stuff is nice but that han happen in many ways and an opposable claw or a tentacle would do the trick as well. How do you know Dhayut don't have an opposing claw on their big spider-legs? The truth is, you don't. Based on what we've seen on Earth, it seems unlikely that rhodents or felines or other stupid animals would develop into warp species. They just don't have the capacity for it, based on what we've seen on Earth. But how much have we actually seen and how much is that relative to the rest of the universe?

[Nanaki]

ORIGINAL: eyegore

Yes, unless your doing 2001 (book or Movie) true good hard sci-fi is rare and hard to find.And i will note they did not kill the idea of God here either in 2001...I think it is used often in good sci-fi. But I can suspend my disbelief in a game if the races I choose don't reflect a Raid commercial or Daffy Duck. I was reading an article on how good old Stardock's Howard didn't want to mess up the LORE too much in Cal Civ3 but rather wanted to flesh it out. Inside i was laughing, and I'm still laughing. I can't take that lore seriously anymore than the lore in Wizard of Oz. If Howard really wants me to take his game serious he should take the LORE seriously. It doesn't have to be Kubrick's 2001, but it certainly should be better than talking hampsters. Wether a hampster could ever EVOLVE...or a roach...to have lungs, vocal cords or telephic means of comunication...or thumbs...a basic requirement...I'd say by that stage it stops being a roach or hampter and starts being pretty huminoid in nature.

Hard/Soft sci-fi can both be serious or unserious, the seriousnessness really has nothing to do with the hardness of the sci-fi.

Dophins are only another example. As intelligent as we think they are, along with Killer Whales I might add...ALL ATTEMPTS to form any communication or understanding in this matter have pretty much been total failures. It takes huge leaps of Assumptions where there are no real world facts-

The only example we have is, well, life on earth. There is a good reason why a vast majority of 'alien' races out there are either anthropomorphized critters (or even inanimate objects), or humans with slightly altered characteristics, stick to what you know and all that.

In terms of actually forming hypothosis... well, we run into the problem of not a large enough sample size. We only know of one life-bearing planet, Earth, and on that planet only one race had become a sentient, civilization-building race, humans. You cannot make a decent hypothosis based off of a sample size of one.

The truth is there is no known answer, and we likely wont ever find out unless we happen to discover the remains of an ancient civilization on Mars.

As far as insects are concerned, we can thank our lucky stars that their respiratory systems are based purely on diffusion, O2 in and CO2 out, via static trachea and that they have not evolved lung type organs to pump the stuff in the quantities required to grow to the sort of size we are. This strictly limits how big they can grow. Spiders are somewhat closer as they posses "lung books" that are somewhat more efficient but still static diffusion based.

Note that the current limit on insect size is also based off of atmospheric temperature and composition... sometime in the distant past the world was a lot hotter and more O2 rich, which resulted in some fairly massive insects.

[eyegore]

Next, regarding alien races and whatnot, I think it's ridiculously arrogant to suggest that all intelligent life has to be humanoid. We don't really know what "intelligence" actually is so how can we speculate that only humanoids can have it? Oh, because we can't talk with dolphins yet? So by that reasoning, space colonization is impossible in hard sci-fi because we can't do it yet? Come on.



Science is observation and an act of proving assumptions. It's how we got from the World is Flat to the world is Round. The basis of Science is pretty consistant across the Universe, therefore it is anything but arrogant to expect intelligent life to evolve alone simuliar lines of those found on Earth. And yes...you need a thumb.

Besides we already know your bias based on your Avatar. In a court of law you'd be proclaimed a hostile witness and would likely be easily impeached by a clever defense attorney. You favor Minnie and Micki Mouse and will stop at no ends to push the agenda to include them in any 4x game known or planned.