Why not?

[monty]

What I want to know is, why not aliens in Axis & Allies?  Don't you get tired of Russia v. Germany v. Great Britain v. Japan v. America?  Wouldn't it be cooler if they created a version of Axis & Allies where flying saucers invaded in the 1940s?

A version of Axis & Allies based on Harry Turtledoves Worldwar series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwar would be cool.

[martian]

This man need to be hired a concept developer, Nazis and Flying Saucers? Throw in some zombies and you just developed a bazillion dollar game!

I have seen similar-themed game in my local game shop. It is called "Dust Tactics".  From I have seen around the net it seems this game is pretty popular. And it seems it includes everything you mentioned.  :)

[Orin J.]

I can't believe we are the only intelligent life in the universe.

i can believe it. universe tries this whole sentience thing, see how well the test run goes and shelves it on some tiny world and hopes it kills itself off in a couple millennium.

as soon as the accordion was invented, it was obvious that sentience is far more trouble than it could be worth on a cosmic scale of things.

[deathfrombeyond]

I'd like to see some referenced cultural aspects of the BattleTech universe fleshed out more (like actual samples of Swedenese and Clan battle language) than adding sentient "aliens" to the BattleTech universe.

[verybad]

I can't believe we are the only intelligent life in the universe.  I think a game with aliens is more realistic.

I don't think it is more FUN though.

Aliens, by definition, have an alien point of view, one that is hard to...really show us.  If you think about it, most aliens are really just bumpy foreheaded or long eared or ridgenecked humans in most movies or tv shows.  And the more alien they get, the harder it is to be interested by them.

I doubt this. Any intelligent creature will have risen to dominate first it's homeplanet, then others because it's species evolved to take advantage of tools, other species and so forth. They're be land based (because you can't start a fire underwater in order to forge more capable tools), they'll be omnivorous (because using other creatures as food gets you more energy quicker, providing more time to communicate, create tools, and form social/governmental structures.) They'll be standing creatures (ie the won't be horses, though they could be centaurian, the manipulating structures will need to be capable of fine movement). They'll be based on a planet from @ 0.8-2 Gs, as higher or lower G's will result in atmospheres, and temperatures incapable of supporting sentient life. Microbes at the bottom of a methane pool? Next.

They would be just like us, only looking different. However they would result in a dumbed down view of the universe, because it's ok to be racist against aliens.

There are many cultures on Earth today that have a hard to understand point of view, eg the differences between Western, Middle Eastern, and Eastern cultures.

Aliens bring nothing to the table. They're boring, it's like changing a game of Civilization to a Game of Doom. Whoopee, it's a tentacled monster, kill it, or do you make a deal with one civilization in order to get supplies, while paying another civilization to attack it in order to weaken them both for your eventual war of conquest?

Both games have their points, but if you have to have sentient aliens in battletech, just call each of the factions different species and your'e there. Change the name of a Lyran Heavy Gauss Rifle to a Lyran Acid projector, a Capellan Plasma Rifle? Well it's shot by biogrown weapons that are fused to the biomechs through genetic and phychic adaption between the biowarrior and the biomech.

What the hell ever happened to kids imagination. If you want something, then you grab a few sheets of paper and do it. The core universe is great as it is. The developers know this. It would be truly jumping the shark to add sentient aliens, because it would make all the cultural and political structures moot. It would dumb down the universe, make it like every other universe I know of, and really kill the game for a LOT of people.

If you want it though, it's not hard to make an alien invasion fleet of your own.

[Fallen_Raven]

I doubt this. Any intelligent creature will have risen to dominate first it's homeplanet, then others because it's species evolved to take advantage of tools, other species and so forth. They're be land based (because you can't start a fire underwater in order to forge more capable tools), they'll be omnivorous (because using other creatures as food gets you more energy quicker, providing more time to communicate, create tools, and form social/governmental structures.) They'll be standing creatures (ie the won't be horses, though they could be centaurian, the manipulating structures will need to be capable of fine movement). They'll be based on a planet from @ 0.8-2 Gs, as higher or lower G's will result in atmospheres, and temperatures incapable of supporting sentient life. Microbes at the bottom of a methane pool? Next.

Just out of curiosity, how many sentient extraterrestrial species have you encountered? Because if you're basing your assumptions on observations made on a single planet that all life evolved on simultaneously, your assumptions are valid only for that planet and life on it. Just because there aren't talking cephelopods walking down the street on tentecales and breathing methane gases in your average small town doesn't mean it's impossible, just that it hasn't yet been observed.

[roosterboy]

actual samples of Swedenese

We've seen some of that already, actually. Not a lot, granted, but some.

[deathfrombeyond]

We've seen some of that already, actually. Not a lot, granted, but some.

Was this sample of Swedenese more recent than the Blood of Kerensky, and not just Swedish that was merely called Swedenese?

[roosterboy]

Was this sample of Swedenese more recent than the Blood of Kerensky, and not just Swedish that was merely called Swedenese?

Yes to both.

[StCptMara]

I can't believe we are the only intelligent life in the universe.  I think a game with aliens is more realistic.

Realism?

Here is all the realism you shall need!

*kicks Medron Pryde into the Pit of Death, raises the fist of the Minotaur Protomech and shouts through the
amplified loudspeaker* This is BATTLETECH!

[Neufeld]

Was this sample of Swedenese more recent than the Blood of Kerensky, and not just Swedish that was merely called Swedenese?

Masters & Minions page 103, top right side citation by Cilla Amdahl looks like it is Swedenese.

[worktroll]

What I want to know is, why not aliens in Axis & Allies?  Don't you get tired of Russia v. Germany v. Great Britain v. Japan v. America?  Wouldn't it be cooler if they created a version of Axis & Allies where flying saucers invaded in the 1940s?

See Harry Turtledove's "World War" series. And yes, I think it would be excellent if they produced a "The Race" expansion pack for A&A - or bette still, for Avalon Hill's "Third Reich" ... ;)

W>

[Lord Harlock]

You know the Race probably would be the best type of alien to pop into Battletech.

Lizardman #1- These humans are savages. See how the records recorded two thousand cycles ago show them using rocks and arrows as weapons.

Lizardman #2- Another victory for our people!

Attacks just for laughs Earth(Terra) 3043

Lizardman #2- The horror! The horror!

Lizardman #1- Get a hold of yourself. The colonization force will be here in twenty cycles. We have escaped orbit where those weapons platforms destroyed most of our force and now we safe. You hear me safe.

Lizardman #3- Something just appeared next to the ship.

Lizardman#1- I need some ginger!

[CSS Invisible Truth appears next to Race's ship. Opens fire obliterating them.]


One of the things that I love about the Race is that they have more advanced technology than say 1940s humans. However, they advance slower than humans at things, so they had a head start but any tech gap is quickly within a hundred years reached and surpassed. By the time, that series ends humanity had developed faster than light tech while the Race was still slow boating it.

Then again, I don't necessarily believe that aliens if they appear are going to benevolent space gods like in the Day the Earth Stood Still(The original not the one with the Whoaher). And though I enjoy the original, it has its issue. Honestly, another alien race that I love is the Kilrathi from Wing Commander because again they aren't near perfect space being who are super advanced past humanity. They have roughly the same tech.

In both cases if we put the Race or Kilrathi like species into Battletech, it doesn't add much.  The Kilrathi are basically the Clans. And the Race are really low tech space aliens by the 31st Century, and the Tetatae already are the Race basically in Battletech if anyone can get there to see them. For it to be different for Battletech, you need the equivalent of the Monolith aliens from 2001 to show up.

And honestly what fun would that be if near unbeatable aliens showed up? Though ancient ruins of possible aliens creating a cult that spreads across the worlds of the former Republic of the Sphere would create an interesting next story arc. Though people would probably think it would boarder too close to the Blakest mentality, so there you go. 

[haesslich]

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment and ask the people who argue that aliens are unnecessary because they wouldn't add anything new "Well, and what do the specific human factions we have actually add to the game, exactly?"

I mean, the canon universe is nice and all...but really, Liao vs. Davion, Steiner vs. Kurita, Inner Sphere vs. Clans, everybody vs. the unimaginable might of the Tetatae Armada: it's at heart just yet another iteration of Red vs. Blue. There's nothing new under the sun here anyway.

(And yes, that's the main reason I've personally grown a bit distant from and disillusioned about the whole "canon" thing over the years.)

To add to what StCptMara's already said, the theme of BattleTech has always been that humans fight given any opportunity.  Except now they've got big stompy robots to fight with, so battles were less the 'push a button, five million people half a world away die' impersonal school of war we're drifting into and more chivalric - or at least, in-your-face, unit-versus-unit - combat.  That made war as personal as a punch in the face, which is where the setting began... although over the last twenty years it's drifted a bit towards the 'soldiers as expendable bullets for the House Lords' school of war, at least until the horrors of the Jihad brought home the reality of it again.

Adding aliens who are just like the Clans adds nothing that already exists... and then brings up an issue with regards to explaining WHY they're waging war on humans if they're not simply 'humans with bumpy foreheads'.  If this was some other game with 'exploring the known universe, meeting new species and new civilizations' as its focus, then aliens would fit better into it

.

I doubt this. Any intelligent creature will have risen to dominate first it's homeplanet, then others because it's species evolved to take advantage of tools, other species and so forth. They're be land based (because you can't start a fire underwater in order to forge more capable tools), they'll be omnivorous (because using other creatures as food gets you more energy quicker, providing more time to communicate, create tools, and form social/governmental structures.) They'll be standing creatures (ie the won't be horses, though they could be centaurian, the manipulating structures will need to be capable of fine movement). They'll be based on a planet from @ 0.8-2 Gs, as higher or lower G's will result in atmospheres, and temperatures incapable of supporting sentient life. Microbes at the bottom of a methane pool? Next.

They would be just like us, only looking different. However they would result in a dumbed down view of the universe, because it's ok to be racist against aliens.

There are many cultures on Earth today that have a hard to understand point of view, eg the differences between Western, Middle Eastern, and Eastern cultures.

Aliens bring nothing to the table. They're boring, it's like changing a game of Civilization to a Game of Doom. Whoopee, it's a tentacled monster, kill it, or do you make a deal with one civilization in order to get supplies, while paying another civilization to attack it in order to weaken them both for your eventual war of conquest?

Although this is a rather human-centric view of the universe (there's no guarantee that aliens would develop a tool-using culture like ours, or civilization like our own), I do agree with the core concept of 'aliens don't add anything new, at least  with regards to BattleTech.  If they're low-tech, then there's no real competition with mechs in terms of gameplay unless they're extremely large or tough. If they're high-tech, then there's no guarantee that humans would be able to fight them if they're extremely advanced... or conversely, they're just like the low-tech aliens who humans would just stomp over.  Or if they don't have a technology type we'd recognize, then we might not even recognize we're in combat with them and it'd be more a game where a rancher's trying to chase off a flock of wolves which are actually sentient aliens who don't use any type of technology or social organization we'd recognize... and then it's less about war and more about pest control.

[SteelRaven]

Aliens are simple used as different factions in other Sci-Fi universes, the BTU and other non-aliens game universes don’t need aliens. Adding aliens would not only be pointless but would wreck the whole point of setting up a game based on human conflict.

[deathfrombeyond]

Although this is a rather human-centric view of the universe (there's no guarantee that aliens would develop a tool-using culture like ours, or civilization like our own)....

I could be wrong, but I think verybad was being sarcastic.

[Korzon77]

One of the things that I love about the Race is that they have more advanced technology than say 1940s humans. However, they advance slower than humans at things, so they had a head start but any tech gap is quickly within a hundred years reached and surpassed. By the time, that series ends humanity had developed faster than light tech while the Race was still slow boating it.

Harry turtledove used to teach history at UCLA and a lot of his stuff makes use of some pretty strong trends in history-- the Race gets a lot from the Imperial Chinese, right up to the fact that they have to create a new protocol for dealing with what had, up uhntil that point, been an impossibility-- other *legitimate* governments.

[verybad]

Just out of curiosity, how many sentient extraterrestrial species have you encountered? Because if you're basing your assumptions on observations made on a single planet that all life evolved on simultaneously, your assumptions are valid only for that planet and life on it. Just because there aren't talking cephelopods walking down the street on tentecales and breathing methane gases in your average small town doesn't mean it's impossible, just that it hasn't yet been observed.

 Life's evolution hasn't happened simultaneously, it's happened in many places at different times and certain forms and responces to different challenges. The successful forms have happened over and over again. There are certain things that stay the same no matter where you go, and chemistry and physics are two of them

Tentacles aren't a good system for walking because they would have to maintain a harder structure to walk in an atmosphere, than a liquid. Maintaining muscle pressure at all times would take more energy, and the creature would die out long before it became sentient. Tentacles are used by octopuses and squids as grasping organs, NOT as their primary form of movement. Additionally, they use it underwater, where their mass is countered by the mass of the water.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/06/why-is-the-hydrogen-exiting-titans-atmosphere.ars
A predominantly Methane gas atmosphere will require a very low content of oxygen, as oxygen and hydrogen like each other more. To generate energy, the life form would "burn"molecular Hydrogen (H2) with Carbon resulting in CH4. The base methane would need to be liquid, as a gas  methane would lose the Hydrogen, it would float to the top of the atmosphere, and then away, this would happen in a few million years unless you have a very large planet, with a high G.

Planets with large gravity's can keep Hydrogen as a gas, but otherwise you have to keep it as a very, very cold liquid. Or as part of another (ie Something like water)

Liquid Methane on a planet able to gather energy from solar energy has to be about -200 degrees Celsius. It also means that there is very, very little energy getting down from the solar energy. Any life form like this will move extremely slowly if at all, and would probably be something like a black scum on the top of the methane pools. It might eat itself (ie be cannibalistic). Even if it were somehow capable of becoming sentient and capable of traveling FTL, it would blow up if it were to step into an earth like atmosphere. It would be like stepping into Venus for us. It would have no use for our planets, and we would have none for theirs. No reason for warfare. No reason for having it in the game, and ridiculously unlikely.

I'm more than willing to discuss your ideas on other potential forms of life if you wish to post them however.

[monty]

  Even if it were somehow capable of becoming sentient and capable of traveling FTL, it would blow up if it were to step into an earth like atmosphere. It would be like stepping into Venus for us. It would have no use for our planets, and we would have none for theirs.

But in the Battletech universe humans did live on Venus for centuries.  :) While Iwould agree that you are probably right and that I cannot see how a lifeform too disimilar to ours could evolve sentience we are arguing from the basis of having seen life from only 1 planet until life was discovered near them no scientist would have believed that life could exist near underwater hydrothermal rifts. Until we actually reach other planets where life has evolved we cannot say for certain that life can only evolve along a pattern similar to ours.

As to conflict between us. Picture a race that evolves on a planet similar to the 1 you describe. They develop space travel and discover 2 earth like worlds in their solar system. They regard the conditions as hellish but as their race takes a few mellenia to develop a K-F drive after entering space they develop techniques to allow them to live and and work on this hellish world so they can mine it and exploit its resources, perhaps using huge powered enviromentally sealed exoskeletons. By the time they do come in contact with BT humans resources more redily available on earth type planets than on those like their homeworld  may have become vital to their civilisation readily setting them up for conflict with humans. I'm not saying I think that even if such a lifeform existed and developed spacefaring trechnology conflict between our species would be inevitable even then but if a writer wanted to have it happen it could be written in.

However I'm firmly in the Battletech is better without aliens camp. After all how would they reach the Inner Sphere past the Wolverines.

[Gunbuster]

Why are there no aliens? I mean I get the reasons for there being no aliens and all in the game, but why are there no aliens in the universe? What happened to them, given that the universe is big enough  for them to exist.

[A. Lurker]

Why are there no aliens? I mean I get the reasons for there being no aliens and all in the game, but why are there no aliens in the universe? What happened to them, given that the universe is big enough  for them to exist.

We don't know. If they exist -- and given the variety of alien animal and plant life that's hanging out in the BT universe already, I'd agree that they probably do --, then it's simply that no human has actually seen them yet...or made it back with a reliable eyewitness account, at least. (Ardan Sortek may or may not have stumbled across stone-age level natives on Stein's Folly in The Sword and the Dagger, but he was delirious at the time and I don't believe that they were ever actually found. And as far as Far Country goes, well, a planet that has so far only been reached twice through catastrophic misjumps that wrecked the ships involved beyond repair might as well be in an alternate universe altogether.)

Personally, on some days I like the idea that they discovered humanity first, thankfully without being spotted in return, and promptly decided to put this bunch of hopelessly rabid apes under quarantine until they either evolved into something remotely civilized or died out, whichever came first. ;) It's a big galaxy, after all; there's probably nothing they'd really urgently need in the area of space where the human monsters are currently running amok that they can't just as easily get somewhere else...

[Sigma]

There could be and probably are advanced aliens in the universe. The Inner Sphere only encompasses a small chunk of a single galaxy. The point is humans will probably never interact with anything above stone age tech. Doesn't mean non-sentient. The dude who invented the bow and arrow 10,000 years ago wasn't any less intelligent than you or me.

If you are asking why we seem to have a dearth of alien species on earthlike planets that had developed their own higher life (some up to mammals)... the answer is that humans don't seem to give a crap about the local ecosystems and just dump a bunch of Terran life on it. Those native things that survive in the face of Terran competition or are somehow useful to the humans are all that winds up being left.

Conservation isn't in much of the people's vocabulary.

Also need to post this image for posterity.

[Lorcan Nagle]

Why are there no aliens? I mean I get the reasons for there being no aliens and all in the game, but why are there no aliens in the universe? What happened to them, given that the universe is big enough  for them to exist.

There are plenty of aliens, just no sentient ones with a technological society in range of the Inner Sphere

[martian]

...
Even if it were somehow capable of becoming sentient and capable of traveling FTL, it would blow up if it were to step into an earth like atmosphere. It would be like stepping into Venus for us. It would have no use for our planets, and we would have none for theirs. No reason for warfare. No reason for having it in the game, and ridiculously unlikely.

First, no Aliens in BTU for me. And now to the point.

There is one thing you could consider. Aliens developed in completely different environment (For example Jupiter, Saturn,... ; forty years ago there was an opinion that there could be firm ground you can land with your rocket, albeit under gigantic atmospheric pressure and titanic storms) and capable of faster-than-light travel could invade other planets to terraform (if I may use this term) them. Exactly as mankind in BTU terraformed Mars, Venus, Bryant or other planets. Aliens could invade to planet colonized by humans and trigger some environmental processes to change the planet to better suit alien needs. And voila - conflict with humans under way.

You may read very nice science-fiction book about it (different title in the USA):
Wyndham, John. The Kraken Wakes (London: Michael Joseph, 1953)
Wyndham, John. Out of the Deeps (New York: Ballantine, 1953)

This book describes this type of conflict between mankind and Aliens (from some gas giant in the Sol system). It is very dramatic and worth reading.

[skiltao]

If they exist -- and given the variety of alien animal and plant life that's hanging out in the BT universe already, I'd agree that they probably do

Given how many planets possess indigenous life in the Inner Sphere alone, I'd say that the old Star League had an extraordinarily solid, extraordinarily optimistic set of data to work from.  I wouldn't want the writers to introduce aliens as a notable faction, though; my first thought would be "oh, the creative well must have run dry," which is not a thought that leads to me buying more things. 

One genuinely "alien" feature that wasn't mentioned in the two prior threads, which could be done with a visibly human population, is to have that population speciated just enough that they can't breed with mainstream humanity. 

Moving on, thinking about an alternate universe where godlike aliens think humans are lowering the local property values, I understand that one of the Interstellar Players books contains something about hyperspace squids.  Does that rumor give enough detail to build an Orkin Squid vs. Human Vermin campaign?

I have seen similar-themed game in my local game shop. It is called "Dust Tactics".  From I have seen around the net it seems this game is pretty popular. And it seems it includes everything you mentioned.  :)

Are the zombies IN flying saucers?

[martian]

Does that rumor give enough detail to build an Orkin Squid vs. Human Vermin campaign?

Hardly. Not classical campaign, even though I can imagine a non-classical one.

Are the zombies IN flying saucers?

It doesn't seem se to me. But I don't know much about that game. Just seen the miniatures and read the description:
“Add the speed and power of the Axis Zombies to your Dust Tactics forces! These nightmarish creatures are one of the most powerful units of the Axis. Allied units are advised to use all available resources against these living corpses as they can destroy both squads of soldiers and powerful walkers in close combat. Despite their simple minds, the Blutkreuz Korps needs these undead soldiers to focus on only one objective, annihilating the enemy. Allied commanders will need to adapt quickly to these new enemies as they are fast, mindlessly fearless, and sometimes appear impervious to gunfire.”
Rule #1 - "They hunger!"
Rule #2 - "They just keep on coming!"
Rule #3 - "I've been bit!"
Have you seen rules like this in Tactical Operations?   ;D

But back to Extra-Terrestrials...

[rlbell]

Why are there no aliens? I mean I get the reasons for there being no aliens and all in the game, but why are there no aliens in the universe? What happened to them, given that the universe is big enough  for them to exist.

I will rephrase your question to "Why are there no intelligent aliens?", as that is the question that I believe you are asking.

We think intelligent creatures are a big deal, because that is what we are, but humans very nearly went extinct before we got out of Africa, and it was only technology that catapulted us to the point where we could destroy the biosphere.  Absent our technology, there are plenty of things more successful than we are.  If there was an election and each species got one vote for every hundred tons of biomass amongst its members, the winner would be some kind of insect, probably a beetle, with no vertibrates in the top ten.  The fossil records show that cockroaches have survived several mass extinctions in their 350 million year history.  We view intelligence as an adaptive advantage because it seems to be all that we have, but the vast majority of living things seem to get by without the faintest shred of intellect.  If life on Earth is an example of life in space, the vast majority of aliens will be practically brainless things about an inch long, except for niches that encourage something larger. 

As for what an intelligent alien will look like, the only thing we can say with any certainty is that every creature, on earth, that does not cluster its sense organs together also does not have a brain, so any intelligent alien will have a head which will house its primary senses.

[verybad]

But in the Battletech universe humans did live on Venus for centuries.  :)

No, they lived on a terriformed version of Venus.

While Iwould agree that you are probably right and that I cannot see how a lifeform too disimilar to ours could evolve sentience we are arguing from the basis of having seen life from only 1 planet until life was discovered near them no scientist would have believed that life could exist near underwater hydrothermal rifts. Until we actually reach other planets where life has evolved we cannot say for certain that life can only evolve along a pattern similar to ours.

Sentience requires the capability to form a virtual world within your mind that simulates multiple outcomes to an action. (Imagination) This results in empathy and language. Tool use is probably necessary as a part of development of sentience (look at Chimpanzees for an example, they're almost there)

As to conflict between us. Picture a race that evolves on a planet similar to the 1 you describe. They develop space travel and discover 2 earth like worlds in their solar system.

A liquid methane world. Oxygen is highly lacking (ie not a common part of the atmoshphere/ocean) You need high temperature fire to melt metal. You need much higher temperatures that can be generated through prestone age cultures. No way to get there. Everything on the planet moves at a slowed down pace because of the lack of available energy. Rather than fast moving animals, a mold that covers another species of mold is the highest form of predatory actions...it might take a year to eat an inch of another mold...

They regard the conditions as hellish but as their race takes a few mellenia to develop a K-F drive after entering space they develop techniques to allow them to live and and work on this hellish world so they can mine it and exploit its resources, perhaps using huge powered enviromentally sealed exoskeletons. By the time they do come in contact with BT humans resources more redily available on earth type planets than on those like their homeworld  may have become vital to their civilisation readily setting them up for conflict with humans. I'm not saying I think that even if such a lifeform existed and developed spacefaring trechnology conflict between our species would be inevitable even then but if a writer wanted to have it happen it could be written in.

However I'm firmly in the Battletech is better without aliens camp. After all how would they reach the Inner Sphere past the Wolverines.

I am more than willing to accept when and or if I am wrong, however I'll use as much science as I can glean to support my arguemnt.

Sentient aliens? I am pretty sure they're out there in real life, and I bet they're similiar to us in overall scope.

Adding them to Battletech doesn't imrove the game, and I think would reduce it's depth. Suddently a game with many scopes is polarized if aliens are "evil powerful aliens that want to kill us all. If they act like people, are playable, and have different tech but are balanced for the game, then you're just making elves or orks that are playable for the game, and it's dumbed down.

While the main scope of the board game is the mechs, the main scope of the fluff behind the game is of empires clashing. You've got two options for aliens. Powerful antagonists (eg super clan robot death borg sith warriors)that players can't use in a game because they'll pwn everyone in the first turn.

Or different looking humans with either sexy mysterious elf women or manly ork men (who may eat with sporks, and have ridges on their faces, but are brutally handsome in a completely honorable way (ie Klingons).

Mining eathlike planets doesn't make much sense for a Methane based life form. For biology it's gonna use Methane based planets, and for minerals, once you've got space travel, it's cheaper to mine asteroids. Additionally, space travel on a methane based planet would be an order of magnitude harder to develop because of the lack of oxygen, you'd have to mine it, and it would be like uranium here. Also release of oxygen in the atmosphere would probably be like releasing toxic gas is to us. I just don't see it happening.

It's a big universe, all thigns are possible, the likelihood of methane based life forms being highly evolved are extremely low however, it's much more difficult than on a planet like ours. I DO think methane based life has evolved, probably even here on Titan (or here on earth in isolated ares). Just nothing higher than microbes or molds.

[monty]

No, they lived on a terriformed version of Venus.

And the hypothetical alien race could plan to transform an earth like world to a form suitable for their needs. If our world is as hostile to them as venus is to us and the star league terraformed venus an alien race should be capable of a similar feat with a similar technological base.

I'm not saying your wrong that another sentient species we encounter is likely to be broadly similar to ourselves. From all of our experience it is. But that experience is based solely on ourselves and the world we have evolved on.

One of my favourite SF scenes is the opening chapter of the Genesis Quest by Donald Moffitt. In it an alien race's SETI programme picks up a signal from Earth. The first thing they identify within the transmission is the first ten prime numbers. From this they deduce that we must have ten limbs just like them.  For them an efficent body plan presupposes radial symmetry and a diffuse neural network with most of the brain at the centre of the body where its well protected and can send impulses to all the extremities with minimum delay and whatever evolutionary path life takes to arrive at sentience it will in a form similar to their own because thats the only intelligent life they've ever met.

Mining eathlike planets doesn't make much sense for a Methane based life form. For biology it's gonna use Methane based planets, and for minerals, once you've got space travel, it's cheaper to mine asteroids. Additionally, space travel on a methane based planet would be an order of magnitude harder to develop because of the lack of oxygen, you'd have to mine it, and it would be like uranium here. Also release of oxygen in the atmosphere would probably be like releasing toxic gas is to us. I just don't see it happening.

My point regarding the hypothetical race evolving on a very different world and after they develop interplanetary travel discovering an extremely inhospitable (to them) earth-like world which they learn to exploit and become dependant on as they do not develop the K-F drive for a mellennium was meant to illustrate one possible way in which a writer could develop a basis for conflict between ourselves and a very different race.

As regards asteroid mining being cheaper yes it probably is. But AFAIK we have as yet discovered only 1 asteroid belt outside our solar system compared with over 500 candidate for planets. Now while that is likely to be because asteroids are harder to detect and a lower priority for detection as its a far less glamourous discovery than a planet this does mean that we really have no way of knowing how common asteroid belts actually are.

Like I said earlier I would agree with you that sentient alien life is likely to be similar to us, but I  can see how the writers could also use a very different lifeform. Either way, broady similar or very different I would hope that they don't as I feel that the BT setting is stronger without sentient aliens.

[RichardC1967]

you guys are thinking waaaaayyyy to hard about this topic... ;D