[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by (E)

Edit: the number of people who got left behind on earth during the exodus is another factor if the number needs to be reduced

However many humans there were before, there are about a trillion now. Even if there were a large number left behind who perished, humanity's population has recovered. This is certainly quite likely what happened, actually.

I also had the active alien population at 120 million but I left space for artificial hybernation, stored genetic material etc. I didn't read that the pods where zoo like enclosures either, I was functioning on the theory they where closer to settlement pods.

I think the questions are how many aliens do we want now- which would tell us the growth rate we need to justify; and how much clout do they have beyond that suggested by their population base.

I was figuring that the habitat pods were more like idyllic haven-like zoos, because the whole premise sounds more like the Ark was run by some collector species or intelligence. That's why it'd been visiting as many civilised systems on its journey as it could. Settlement, as in colonisation, doesn't seem to fit the MO, but of course it could have some ineffably alien purpose. An experimental cross-species society? A wandering interstellar city?

I'm also not sure how they were going to get humans to join- "jump on our ship, leave home forever, and 100 generations of your progeny will know nothing more than the inside of their habitat pod"- unless it was by forced abduction or trickery. Anyway, I'm not trying to rip on the premise- just saying we need to justify why the pods would be more geared toward settlement.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Answer 26A: (its kind of open)

Advanced tech base for the aliens coming along is by far the most interesting of the of the options listed, though all could help move things along. It also makes a good deal of sense.

Aliens in deep storage are another option. There might be a hundred deep hibernation aliens for every sentient alien.

Okay, with this and what (E) was saying, how about this for one of the races then:

Alien Race #4- The Cicads
These flying, 8-foot insectoids are native to a gas giant homeworld and have a wide pressure tolerance. After the Ark's crash, they set up deep in the Jovian atmosphere by building or deploying their Cicadian Grapevines- chain-like combined gas mining and manufacturing facilities that suspend 300-500 miles through the gas giant's atmosphere. These extract carbon compounds from the atmosphere to use in their brand of extruded polycarbonate manufacture.

At the same time as they were setting up their manufacturing base, the Cicads started on their explosive repopulation program. The 10 million or so Cicads that arrived on the Ark were accompanied by another 100 million in a suspended larval stage, which were activated and soon brought to maturity.

So within decades of the Arkfall, the leaders of Ganymede Colony were surprised to find themselves orbiting above the Solar System's first appearance of a true space armada- the Cicadian Fleet. Proper investigation of the heatspots they'd been observing in the Jovian atmosphere revealed that they were not floating Ark fragments as they had surmised, but were instead thousands of Cicadian Grapevines. The fleet of extruded polycarbonate ships numbered close to a million fighters and frigates, but fortunately for humanity, their carbon-based construction meant they were unable to mount gravity drives and were effectively range-limited to within the orbits of Jupiter's moons.

In the wars that followed, the Cicads drove away all human occupation of the Jovian moons and, after capturing a few gravity drives, were also able to establish a similar occupation of Saturn. Now, planetologists observing Jupiter have surmised that the newly developed Mauve Spot in the Jovian atmosphere is the beginnings of an attempt to xenoform Jupiter into something more closely resembling the Cicad home planet's atmospheric mix.

Originally Posted by (E)

Mankind managed to salvage a large piece of the superstructure and prevent it from impacting earth, this fragment designed to hold and link 314 habitats is now the largest single station in the system.

I like this, though not sure what to do with it yet.

A faction of humanity known disparagingly as the Noahs seek the Arc-mind. The Noahs also practice exogenetic splicing.

I had the idea that a group called the Noahs would be seeking to build a new ark to embark all the aliens back onto and send them on their way, but you posted this first.

Question 30- Grav-Drives:
How do they work?
What are the necessary ingredients for their construction?
What kind of travel times do they allow around the system?
Does Grav-Drive tech have any secondary or spin-off tech? e.g. Artificial gravity, possibly, as weapons or defenses were ruled out by sir_pudding's answer.

Question 31- Expanding on Cicads
What redeeming qualities might the Cicads have, so that they're not just an evil, conquering alien bug species?
Does their occupation of Jupiter and Saturn's moons continue, or has that territory been ceded?