[Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If their biotech is that advanced, why are they bothering putting similar species on different planets? They can just make up species on the fly with those capabilities.

Perhaps they couldn't create the psionic genes themselves, and wanted them seeded into a wide range of environments.

I admit the epoch-spanning timeline stretches credibility though. Perhaps you could counter with a reason why humanity is super special.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Perhaps they couldn't create the psionic genes themselves, and wanted them seeded into a wide range of environments.

In any normal universe, genes are genes. Once you have them, you can sequence them and copy them. If the Precursors can change a species' genome to make it seem as if it evolved on a given world without changing the species' nature, grafting in some other genes would be trivial.

I admit the epoch-spanning timeline stretches credibility though. Perhaps you could counter with a reason why humanity is super special.

Because the script-writers are human-centric? I'm afraid I find the concerns of the scriptwriters show rather clearly in the stories of the Star Trek franchise, which is among the reasons I'm not a fan.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

...
I guess I'm just being resistant to making humans extra-special without some kind of worthwhile justification.

Perhaps humans are just lucky with so many experiments succeeding. Or the precursors did it with other species like Trek's numerous unrelated Vulcan-like species. And I'm not talking about Romulans which are offshoots of Vulcans.

Perhaps they just seeded the local X cubic light years with humanoids, and Trek people just haven't gone far enough to see the next ur species region.
This also makes sense if pre-sapient species "raw material" are super rare, so there's a large gap between such regions.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by johndallman

In any normal universe, genes are genes. Once you have them, you can sequence them and copy them. If the Precursors can change a species' genome to make it seem as if it evolved on a given world without changing the species' nature, grafting in some other genes would be trivial.
...

Who's to say that psychic powers obey known genetic and biological rules? Once you allow them, you're already admitting known laws don't fully apply.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Perhaps humans are just lucky with so many experiments succeeding. Or the precursors did it with other species like Trek's numerous unrelated Vulcan-like species. And I'm not talking about Romulans which are offshoots of Vulcans.

Perhaps they just seeded the local X cubic light years with humanoids, and Trek people just haven't gone far enough to see the next ur species region.
This also makes sense if pre-sapient species "raw material" are super rare, so there's a large gap between such regions.

Something like this would probably work.

I'm a bit too tired to make a final decision right now, though, so I'm going to give the conversation another day or two (and also see if I can get the First Contact post ready, or if I'm going to post something on weapons, instead).

[Prince Charon]

First Contact question

How do we want to do this Earth's first official contact with aliens?

* Do we want it to be something like the version from the movie Star Trek VIII: First Contact (with or without time travelers), with an alien vessel coming by when the first spacetime warp-drive vessel is being tested (or at least a rather early one)?


* Do we want it to be some form of alien invasion, like the Kzinti (who did appear in an episode of the Star Trek cartoon called The Slaver Weapon, and were said to have fought several wars with humanity, at least one of which may have been pre-FTL)?


* Should it be a peaceful contact that takes place before these humans develop warp drive, possibly later learning or buying it from the aliens?


* Should it be later, after humans have been developing warp travel for a while, and are out exploring beyond the Solar system?



In all cases, should it be a Star Trek canon race, and if so, which one? If not, what race should it be?

[Prince Charon]

Is the question that boring, or is it just that nobody has any ideas or opinions on this?

Should I try to do a timeline of an alien invasion and the development of warp drive, for consideration?

[Flyndaran]

I honestly thought I had posted a response. Maybe I thought it was incoherent and deleted it.

Personally, I think realistically, if we want future humans to maintain mostly recognizably human cultures, first contact should be with a very controlled species. We know when emotional humans of higher tech meet lower tech humans, at best, the more advanced one swamps the other with cultural pressures.
That's why I've always liked Star Trek's Earth first meeting the Vulcans. They're likely the only major canon species that wouldn't intentionally or unintentionally take advantage or "corrupt" primitives.

Alien invasions of a modern-ish Earth always seemed way too anthropocentric silly to me. It's like starting a story with a small tribe of cavemen defeating the modern American army with spears, five stolen rifles, and "gumption".

As to when, I again, like the ST canon in that it still gives a sense of "humans are at least interesting and innovative if not an OMG, super-amazeballs species".

[ericthered]

Its a hard question to answer. Star Trek embraces technological parity among major races, but also has humans as the "youngest" species, which leads to some awkward questions.

A "Parental" race is a strong option. Of course, by that interpretation, the canonical federation is really the "Vulcan" polity, though humans may have some sort of "Favored Son" status and are junior partners in a multi-species empire. Or possibly the Vulcans are undergoing an internal population crisis and are shaping Humans to replace them.

Another strong option is to embrace a "Generational approach", where for some reason the current powers in the galaxy are all fairly new, and Humans were never really that far behind everyone else.

One option is to say that FTL travel is very very very expensive, and invading a planet isn't terribly feasible for that reason. A few important ships are owned by powerful planets, thus drawing attention to why the signature ship does what it does.

But I'm still not sure what the best answer is. These are just suggestions, and all of them have major flaws.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by ericthered

...
Another strong option is to embrace a "Generational approach", where for some reason the current powers in the galaxy are all fairly new, and Humans were never really that far behind everyone else.
...

Star Trek does have those doomsday weapons. So one could say that at some point in the past, a galactic war broke out killing every interstellar species leveling the playing field to an extant. That still wouldn't explain why so many were right on the cusp of developing FTL at essentially the same time, in a geological time frame. But it's a start.