Hey, folks! I'd like to apologize if you have not seen any of my postings in rec.games.design. The news server I post to seems not to be posting my posts correctly so you guys are not seeing my posts or so it seems. I have decided to bring NET SF DESIGN to email. If you are still interested, please respond to this message. However, please include the following and yes, it will help if you make it clear and precise. 1. name (also, include what you prefer to be called) 2. email address (your address you will most likely respond/read from) 3. digest distribution (would you like me to send you the email all together or seperate... see below for details), yes or no? 4. hard SF, soft SF, doesn't matter? 5. setting (past, present, near future, far future, other) if other, please elaborate. 6. design preference (small to large, large to small, other) again, if other, please elaborate. see below for what I mean by small to large, etc. 7. any additional comments. Here's how I plan to run this through email (unless some strange luck I get access to a mail server). Everyone will send their comments, ideas, flames, what-not to me. Each day I will gather them up and distribute them out to all of you. I can either send them individually or all together - digest form. I'm pretty sure you're going to want them in digest form (so that your mailboxes don't fill up). If you're going to reply to what someone said, please include the original and send it back to me. Also, feel free to send emails to each other if you would like to discuss something outside of NET SF DESIGN. I will be distributing them atleast once a day (unless I notify you beforehand), if not twice a day. I will be commenting on them, also. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. On the design preferences, what I mean is the following. Small to large refers to working on a small area and expanding out from there not knowing exactly what there is. Ex: Lets say you're designing a fantasy world (which we're not, but it will serve as an EASY example). If we were to design "small to large" we would start with a small village and design it's culture, politics, layout, etc. etc. Then, we would work on the nearby forests, caves, towns. Soon we would have an entire kingdom. Work then would go onto neighboring kingdoms, etc. Throughout it all we would develop the relationships between everything we make. Also, we would work on the histories, past, present, and future of the lands. "Large to small" is the reverse. Ex: With the fantasy world, we would come up with the overall concept of the lands. We would work on the relationships first. As we developed it, we would slowly add more and more detail to everything else. In the beginning we would not know anything about Derek the Brave of Stone Wall, but we would know about the White Spiral Kingdom in which Stone Wall is located. You get the picture. Anyway, I probably have gone on more than I needed to. Please, if you're interested get back to me. Also, I truly would appreciate additional comments (or flames) because it would help a lot in getting this off the ground. Thanks and hope to be hearing from you soon, James maelstrom@csnet.net Hi, Thank you for joining in on NET SF! Time to begin on the ground work. This where we're going to have to lay out the concepts behind the overall project. I'll begin with a couple of notes on how I plan to run this just so things move smoothly (hopefully). I've already explained how I plan to handle the emailing. If you note the subject heading I felt it would be easy to have NET SF first so you know what it is about and then after the colon, a description. In brackets is just info for me to keep track of the digests for archive purposes (also, if you accidentally delete or some how are missing some of the digests, I can send one to you). If you're wondering just how it works it's - year,month,day-# (the # being how many packets sent out... usually 1 or 2 in a given day). Just reply to the messages as you normally would. We'll solve any possible problems that arise by playing by ear. Okay, onto the important stuff! First, that little survey was just to get to know basically where everyone stands on just a few ideas. I'll be summing that up as I go on. (Trust me, we get less informal as this goes on.) All info is kept confidential. I'll be handling a lot of the work. It's going to be hard to get everyone to agree so I will be the final judge on what will and will not be included. It is so that there will be a definite vision - not just parts all stuck together with glue. After that I'll assign areas for everyone to do work on under the constraints of what the "vision" is. I'll will be assisting on as much as I have time do. Anyway, onto the discussion (the fun part!)... Most of you were game for just about anything so here we go. I say we go for something set in the far future. Interstellar? Lets try it. Here's the catch, we're shooting for a hard SF genre. We can't exactly take the space opera-ish approach of Star Wars here. :) Oh, just so we all have sorta an agreement on the term for hard SF - basically, lets attempt not to break known physical laws. Of course, it is hard to know exactly what will be learned so far in the future, but if we follow what we know now with physical laws, I think we will be pretty much okay. Agree? Now will there be an empire? I really don't see huge majestic empires and nations throughout the stars. It will take quite a while to colonize, making the development of huge empires that much harder. Alien races? Yes, of course! Just not on the scale that you see in Traveller (mind you that is a fun game) and other games. Traveller has numerous large scale races all in roughly the same reason of space. There is not that much left to the "unknown". That's kinda the atmosphere I would like to set. Space is cold and unknown. Even so far in the future. Here's an analogy: We've developed quite a lot here on Earth, but we still do not know everything there is about our oceans. We're still finding new species and trying to overcome new obstacles in our exploration of the oceans. I see space as the oceans needing exploration - unknown and dangerous. Comments? James PS: At a later date, I will send out a list periodically of who's onboard in developing the project. -- maelstrom@csnet.net Return-Path: Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 14:59:09 -0700 X-Sender: hwkwnd@johnny.poky.srv.net To: maelstrom@csnet.net From: hwkwnd@poky.srv.net (Alan D Kohler) Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground Work [960219-1] >Hi, Hello >Now will there be an empire? I really don't see huge majestic empires and >nations throughout the stars. It will take quite a while to colonize, making >the development of huge empires that much harder. Alien races? Yes, of >course! Just not on the scale that you see in Traveller (mind you that is a >fun game) and other games. Traveller has numerous large scale races all in >roughly the same reason of space. There is not that much left to the "unknown". > >That's kinda the atmosphere I would like to set. Space is cold and unknown. >Even so far in the future. Here's an analogy: We've developed quite a lot >here on Earth, but we still do not know everything there is about our >oceans. We're still finding new species and trying to overcome new obstacles >in our exploration of the oceans. I see space as the oceans needing >exploration - unknown and dangerous. Ok, lets start a few comments along this line. Empire? This term has been used is so many far-future hard SF settings that it's a little cliche. I would like to explore the possibility of a space nation with an alternate form of governemt than the standard imperial type government - perhaps something like Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium setting (but many other forms of government are possible and could be explored). Second, I am toying with the possibility of adapting the formula set forth in GURPS Space for world population growth to an interstellar scale. More on this as I get time to work on it, but it could give us a groundwork for a realisitic timescale to set our interstellar government in. Lastly, if we are give a "unknown space" type background, there are a couple ideas that I would like to espouse. - Players as "frontiersmen", alone in the void, with little to help them in their explorations except the meager technologies that thay have onboard their ships (or at outposts). - Sapient alien races - I don't think if we are doing this unknown space that a "humanocentric" type setting where we sit around and explore the limits of how big a human empire can get, and the social ramifications of such an empire" is a direction we want to go. Better we have spacefaring aliens that the player must discover how best to deal with. Well that's my .02 for today. Alan D Kohler hwkwnd@poky.srv.net ---- Return-Path: Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 18:54:54 -0600 (CST) From: Richard Hopkins To: maelstrom@csnet.net Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground Work [960219-1] On Mon, 19 Feb 1996 maelstrom@csnet.net wrote: > Hi, > > Thank you for joining in on NET SF! Time to begin on the ground work. This > where we're going to have to lay out the concepts behind the overall > project. I'll begin with a couple of notes on how I plan to run this just so > > > James > > I heard this saying. Things are pretty much the same all over. So I would like to propose creatures of the following classes. Reptile, Bird, Insect, Mammal (probably wolf like) and maybe an amphibian race. i prefer colonies instead of empires. Colonies would be like nations on Earth, but you could still have alliances. **************************************************************************** ***** Richard S. Hopkins THE REALMASTER * rshopkns@cedar.netten.net Home of the REALMS role-playing system * "Actual brain cells were wasted in the creation of this document." ---- Return-Path: Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 02:03:05 -0600 (CST) From: Nathan Hauke To: maelstrom@csnet.net Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground Work [960219-1] On Mon, 19 Feb 1996 maelstrom@csnet.net wrote: > Hi, > > Most of you were game for just about anything so here we go. I say we go for > something set in the far future. Interstellar? Lets try it. Here's the > catch, we're shooting for a hard SF genre. We can't exactly take the space > opera-ish approach of Star Wars here. :) Star Wars was fiction? ;) > Oh, just so we all have sorta an agreement on the term for hard SF - > basically, lets attempt not to break known physical laws. Of course, it is > hard to know exactly what will be learned so far in the future, but if we > follow what we know now with physical laws, I think we will be pretty much > okay. Agree? It would be helpful, imo, if someone here knew a lot about physics. I mean, we wouldn't want to get years into this and find out that we forgot a decimal place or an exponent in an equation somewhere. :) But seriously, I think it would be a great help, just so we don't break too many rules to begin with. > Now will there be an empire? I really don't see huge majestic empires and > nations throughout the stars. It will take quite a while to colonize, making > the development of huge empires that much harder. Alien races? Yes, of > course! Just not on the scale that you see in Traveller (mind you that is a > fun game) and other games. Traveller has numerous large scale races all in > roughly the same reason of space. There is not that much left to the "unknown". Empire, nah. Although a few groups that would like to be an Empire *might* work. It'd be interesting politics at any rate. Also, with what you were saying about large scale alien races in one place, I think you've got something there. There probably wouldn't be a large variety of alien races in one solar system. And even if there were, you'd have to consider that they'd most likely be completely and totally, well, alien, to each other (there's a great theory in Michael Crichton(sp?)'s "Sphere" along these lines). > That's kinda the atmosphere I would like to set. Space is cold and unknown. > Even so far in the future. Here's an analogy: We've developed quite a lot > here on Earth, but we still do not know everything there is about our > oceans. We're still finding new species and trying to overcome new obstacles > in our exploration of the oceans. I see space as the oceans needing > exploration - unknown and dangerous. But not something like Star Trek, either. I'm not a big Star Trek fan because every time I watch it, no matter how good the story may be, I never feel that space is anything grand, there's no sense of wonder to it. There's no, "Gee, this thing really is bigger than anything I can comprehend," feel to it. That's what could make a game cool, knowing that there's a relative infinity between you and anything else recognizable. I think "Enemy Mine" worked on this level, but it's been about 10 years since I saw that, so it might not have. L. Ron Hoover Church of Appliantology ---- -- maelstrom@csnet.net Return-Path: Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 14:59:09 -0700 X-Sender: hwkwnd@johnny.poky.srv.net To: maelstrom@csnet.net From: hwkwnd@poky.srv.net (Alan D Kohler) Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground Work [960219-1] >Hi, Hello >Now will there be an empire? I really don't see huge majestic empires and >nations throughout the stars. It will take quite a while to colonize, making >the development of huge empires that much harder. Alien races? Yes, of >course! Just not on the scale that you see in Traveller (mind you that is a >fun game) and other games. Traveller has numerous large scale races all in >roughly the same reason of space. There is not that much left to the "unknown". > >That's kinda the atmosphere I would like to set. Space is cold and unknown. >Even so far in the future. Here's an analogy: We've developed quite a lot >here on Earth, but we still do not know everything there is about our >oceans. We're still finding new species and trying to overcome new obstacles >in our exploration of the oceans. I see space as the oceans needing >exploration - unknown and dangerous. Ok, lets start a few comments along this line. Empire? This term has been used is so many far-future hard SF settings that it's a little cliche. I would like to explore the possibility of a space nation with an alternate form of governemt than the standard imperial type government - perhaps something like Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium setting (but many other forms of government are possible and could be explored). Second, I am toying with the possibility of adapting the formula set forth in GURPS Space for world population growth to an interstellar scale. More on this as I get time to work on it, but it could give us a groundwork for a realisitic timescale to set our interstellar government in. Lastly, if we are give a "unknown space" type background, there are a couple ideas that I would like to espouse. - Players as "frontiersmen", alone in the void, with little to help them in their explorations except the meager technologies that thay have onboard their ships (or at outposts). - Sapient alien races - I don't think if we are doing this unknown space that a "humanocentric" type setting where we sit around and explore the limits of how big a human empire can get, and the social ramifications of such an empire" is a direction we want to go. Better we have spacefaring aliens that the player must discover how best to deal with. Well that's my .02 for today. Alan D Kohler hwkwnd@poky.srv.net ---- Return-Path: Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 18:54:54 -0600 (CST) From: Richard Hopkins To: maelstrom@csnet.net Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground Work [960219-1] On Mon, 19 Feb 1996 maelstrom@csnet.net wrote: > Hi, > > Thank you for joining in on NET SF! Time to begin on the ground work. This > where we're going to have to lay out the concepts behind the overall > project. I'll begin with a couple of notes on how I plan to run this just so > > > James > > I heard this saying. Things are pretty much the same all over. So I would like to propose creatures of the following classes. Reptile, Bird, Insect, Mammal (probably wolf like) and maybe an amphibian race. i prefer colonies instead of empires. Colonies would be like nations on Earth, but you could still have alliances. **************************************************************************** ***** Richard S. Hopkins THE REALMASTER * rshopkns@cedar.netten.net Home of the REALMS role-playing system * "Actual brain cells were wasted in the creation of this document." ---- Return-Path: Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 02:03:05 -0600 (CST) From: Nathan Hauke To: maelstrom@csnet.net Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground Work [960219-1] On Mon, 19 Feb 1996 maelstrom@csnet.net wrote: > Hi, > > Most of you were game for just about anything so here we go. I say we go for > something set in the far future. Interstellar? Lets try it. Here's the > catch, we're shooting for a hard SF genre. We can't exactly take the space > opera-ish approach of Star Wars here. :) Star Wars was fiction? ;) > Oh, just so we all have sorta an agreement on the term for hard SF - > basically, lets attempt not to break known physical laws. Of course, it is > hard to know exactly what will be learned so far in the future, but if we > follow what we know now with physical laws, I think we will be pretty much > okay. Agree? It would be helpful, imo, if someone here knew a lot about physics. I mean, we wouldn't want to get years into this and find out that we forgot a decimal place or an exponent in an equation somewhere. :) But seriously, I think it would be a great help, just so we don't break too many rules to begin with. > Now will there be an empire? I really don't see huge majestic empires and > nations throughout the stars. It will take quite a while to colonize, making > the development of huge empires that much harder. Alien races? Yes, of > course! Just not on the scale that you see in Traveller (mind you that is a > fun game) and other games. Traveller has numerous large scale races all in > roughly the same reason of space. There is not that much left to the "unknown". Empire, nah. Although a few groups that would like to be an Empire *might* work. It'd be interesting politics at any rate. Also, with what you were saying about large scale alien races in one place, I think you've got something there. There probably wouldn't be a large variety of alien races in one solar system. And even if there were, you'd have to consider that they'd most likely be completely and totally, well, alien, to each other (there's a great theory in Michael Crichton(sp?)'s "Sphere" along these lines). > That's kinda the atmosphere I would like to set. Space is cold and unknown. > Even so far in the future. Here's an analogy: We've developed quite a lot > here on Earth, but we still do not know everything there is about our > oceans. We're still finding new species and trying to overcome new obstacles > in our exploration of the oceans. I see space as the oceans needing > exploration - unknown and dangerous. But not something like Star Trek, either. I'm not a big Star Trek fan because every time I watch it, no matter how good the story may be, I never feel that space is anything grand, there's no sense of wonder to it. There's no, "Gee, this thing really is bigger than anything I can comprehend," feel to it. That's what could make a game cool, knowing that there's a relative infinity between you and anything else recognizable. I think "Enemy Mine" worked on this level, but it's been about 10 years since I saw that, so it might not have. L. Ron Hoover Church of Appliantology ---- -- maelstrom@csnet.net Return-Path: To: maelstrom@csnet.net From: Samuel Penn Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground work [960220-1] Reply-To: sam@bifrost.demon.co.uk References: <9602210308.AA08805@mhv.net> Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 21:51:39 GMT Organization: Somewhere in Aldershot First, how about some introductions? Nathan mentioned it would be useful for someone to know about physics. Someone with knowledge about biology, ecology, genetics, chemistry and various other disciplines would also be useful. I suggest people give a little introduction about themselves, so we know who to pass things onto. It also makes things a bit more friendly so we know who everyone is! For starters, I'm a software engineer with good layman's knowledge of physics and astronomy (or so I like to think). My biology is non-existant, and chemistry little better though. The preferred game system to use would be none at all - much better to let individuals plug whatever mechanics they want into things later. Okay, I was going to reply to individual people's comments, but I think it's easier to do it all in one go in this case. Before we go *anywhere*, we need some real groundwork. We can either decide on what we want in the campaign (ie political structure of the human 'Empire', how many races, etc), and then work out what sort of technology and assumptions we need to allow this, or we can work from the other end - decide on what technology is available, and then see where it takes us. Personally, I prefer the latter. What I've done is, laid down a few points which need to be addressed if people want to go along with doing it this way. Now, I've assumed that we're having a campaign with several dozen to a few hundred colonised worlds, and that we're going to be having some alien races which are more or less on a level of technology equal to our own (this seems to be what people are interested in doing from what I've read, so I'm willing to go along with that). General Technology ------------------ How are we going to assume technology advances in the next few hundred years? Since the 18th/19th century, technological growth has been somewhat exponential. Though we want some very advanced tech in certain areas (such as power systems, maybe 'magic' technologies such as hyperspace, or anti-gravity), we don't want it to be beyond our ability to predict. One possible thing to do is to assume that technological advancement is an S-shaped curve. When a civilisation first discovers 'science' they are able to learn all the 'easy stuff' with a few hundred years, say about 90% of all there is to know. After that though, progress slows down as quickly as it originally accelerated, taking several hundred more years to get to the next few %, and so on. This way we can have alien races several thousand, or several hundred thousand years in advance of our own, without them being _too_ incomprehensible. Interstellar Travel ------------------- Some form of 'FTL' is going to be needed if we're going to have any form of useful interstellar travel. The question is, how are we going to go about handling this? _Any_ form of FTL allows time travel, if relativity is to be believed. Since we don't want a time travel campaign (I assume), we need to break relativity somehow. Sticking to 'Hard SF' ideas, I can think of three solutions. The first is hyperspace. Hyperspace is nice, easy and everyone understands it. It has the disadvantage that it can mean players can go _anywhere_ they want to, speeding off into the unknown to explore distant parts of the galaxy the GM doesn't even have on his map. Hyperspace doesn't have to contradict what we know to be definitely true about relativity. If hyperspace without time travel is possible, then relativity is wrong, but only in the way Newtons Laws are wrong (ie they're a damn good approximation in 99.999% of all cases). Warp Drives. The Alcubierre warp drive allows very fast travel, but not quite in the same way as Star Trek. From what I understand of it, the conditions allowing super-luminal travel aren't naturally occuring, so 'interstellar pathways' (sounds tacky doesn't it?) will need to be set up. I'll (or someone) will need to check this one out more fully if people want to go with this method. Wormholes. These basically link two regions of space-time. They _can_ allow time travel, though there is a possible fix to get around this problem. Both ends of the wormhole are intially created at the same point, and both obey relativity - so you can't move either end FTL. In other words, it'll still take you at least 4.25 years to get to Alpha Centauri, but after that first journey, travel time becomes zero. There are also interesting time dilation effects for wormholes, allowing a star empire to stretch through time, as well as space. More of this if people are interested. btw, Wormholes and Alcubiere warp drives both work within the framework of relativity, so are more suited to a Hard SF background. Aliens ------ Aliens can be the most interesting (when done well), and most embarressing (when not) part of SF. Since we're having them, we need to decide on a few basic principles. How common is life? Not intelligent life, just life. Assuming life is common (say 1% of star systems have advanced life (ie animals and plants, not necessarily 'intelligent' aliens) - note that there are over 700 stars within just 50ly of Earth. 1% chance of life gives about 7 habitable worlds ripe for colonisation right on our doorstep), is safe enough, and makes for a somewhat more interesting campaign. How common is intelligent life? A much more tricky question. Breaking my plan for working out the rules first, I'd say 2 or 3 alien civilisations would (IMO) be best. Not too many to be improbable, but enough for some interesting and diverse cultures. And remember, a single alien race can have many diverse cultures within it, and maybe even genetically engineered sub-races. How anthropomorphic is life? Is all life carbon based and oxygen breathing? This is acceptable, since oxygen is common and easy to use. Water is _very_ common. Carbon is one of the best choices to build self-replicating molecules out of. Chlorine breathers are possible (Hydrochloric Acid for oceans...), as are various other atmospheric conditions. Maybe one 'wierd' race, and the rest all oxygen breathers might be the safest bet. Of course, if large proportions of aliens don't breath oxygen, then a similar proportion of those habitable worlds aren't going to be habitable for humans. Also, how advanced are the aliens? More advanced than humans? Less? It would spice things up to have a super-race (something like the Xeelee if anyone has read Stephen Baxter, or the Planet Killers from Greg Bear's 'Forge of God' and 'Anvil of Stars'). Time ---- And what year are we setting things? 2200? 2300? 2400? Later? This has a big bearing on how many colony worlds there are (once we've decided just how quickly we can get between stars). Anyway, I've gone on longer than I planned to, so I'll finish things here and wait for the disagreements which are sure to follow... -- Be seeing you, Sam. ---- Sam wrote: >First, how about some introductions? Nathan mentioned it would >be useful for someone to know about physics. Someone with knowledge >about biology, ecology, genetics, chemistry and various other >disciplines would also be useful. I agree. Introductions would be very useful and plus, it would lighten the atmosphere up quite a bit. I'll introduce myself after I finish commenting on your post. >One possible thing to do is to assume that technological advancement >is an S-shaped curve. When a civilisation first discovers 'science' >they are able to learn all the 'easy stuff' with a few hundred years, >say about 90% of all there is to know. After that though, progress >slows down as quickly as it originally accelerated, taking several >hundred more years to get to the next few %, and so on. I think the S-shape curve is a reasonable way to handle technological advancement. Of course, if we wanted to ever expand beyond what technology is available, another S-shape curve could be beyond the first one (basically, a breakthrough allowing more growth), but I feel right now that is not needed. Those would be for an ancient (in terms of the universe) race, one that would have no interest in matters of the races we're dealing with. Or atleast assume they would not. It's like humans dealing with ants. >This way we can have alien races several thousand, or several hundred >thousand years in advance of our own, without them being _too_ >incomprehensible. Making it very workable. >Some form of 'FTL' is going to be needed if we're going to have any >form of useful interstellar travel. The question is, how are we going >to go about handling this? If we were to use FTL... >Hyperspace doesn't have to contradict what we know to be definitely true >btw, Wormholes and Alcubiere warp drives both work within the framework >of relativity, so are more suited to a Hard SF background. I think "cutting" through non-space would be the ideal solution since it is believed space-time to be curved. It's not going faster than the speed of light directly. Also, it does not deal with black holes or worm holes. It is a theory that is not used as often in SF and it could handle the dealings with relativity. Where the problems arise are how does a vessel enter the non-space (or pierce into into it and then out of it)? What effects of time dilation travelling through non-space cause? What effects will non-space cause on life forms and inanimate objects (such as the vessel)? Finally, how would one navigate through non-space? >Aliens can be the most interesting (when done well), and most embarressing >(when not) part of SF. Since we're having them, we need to decide on a >few basic principles. Definitely! >How common is life? Not intelligent life, just life. Assuming life is >common (say 1% of star systems have advanced life (ie animals and >plants, not necessarily 'intelligent' aliens) - note that there are >over 700 stars within just 50ly of Earth. 1% chance of life gives >about 7 habitable worlds ripe for colonisation right on our doorstep), >is safe enough, and makes for a somewhat more interesting campaign. Life could be common. Not every system. Obviously! Advanced life would be far less common. Intelligent life even more so. When I have the time, I will go into this in more detail. >How common is intelligent life? A much more tricky question. Breaking >my plan for working out the rules first, I'd say 2 or 3 alien civilisations >would (IMO) be best. Not too many to be improbable, but enough for some >interesting and diverse cultures. And remember, a single alien race can >have many diverse cultures within it, and maybe even genetically >engineered sub-races. There could always be more alien civilizations. Some may not be interstellar. Others may just roam their own system. Until we know how easy it is to populate a region of space, we cannot begin to imagine how far reaching civilizations can be. I hope Alan can provide some work on this. Also, the method of interstellar travel will have a major impact on how easy the spread alien races are. >How anthropomorphic is life? Is all life carbon based and oxygen >breathing? This is acceptable, since oxygen is common and easy to >use. Water is _very_ common. Carbon is one of the best choices to >build self-replicating molecules out of. Here are considerations we will have to assume for life: 1. Life will evolve to suit prevailing conditions and it will adapt itself to changes in those conditions. 2. Life will need an in-built system containing information about itself on how to replicate it and carry out various messages to run the different enzyme reactions. (Basically, DNA and RNA or some similar system.) Life will need a common element. Here the basis of all life revolves around carbon. Elsewhere it could be silicon. Water is an important element in life here, but liquid ammonia could be just as suitable (under the right, stress right, conditions). Oxygen does not need to be the "respiratory" backbone either - chlorine or fluorine are possibilities. >From readings, I can discuss why certain life forms (such as silicon) are highly unlikely, but I will not. For now, lets assume mostly carbon based life forms. Respiratory is another matter. We can debate and go on for a while in this area, unless we have a biologist and chemist aboard in the discussion. >Also, how advanced are the aliens? More advanced than humans? Less? >It would spice things up to have a super-race (something like the >Xeelee if anyone has read Stephen Baxter, or the Planet Killers from >Greg Bear's 'Forge of God' and 'Anvil of Stars'). How 'bout the Borgs (Star Trek)? :) How advanced the aliens are, should be varied. There should also be species that are advanced, but not necessarily the same as we. Take for instance, the species in the movie, _Aliens_. They're quite advanced, but I wouldn't put them in the same ballpark as humans when it comes to common similarities in social, cultural, and other behaviors. They're much like are primates in relation to us. They're developed, but not necessarily as much or the same us we. >And what year are we setting things? 2200? 2300? 2400? Later? This >has a big bearing on how many colony worlds there are (once we've decided >just how quickly we can get between stars). Good question! I have no idea and it will make a big impact on everything! Finally, my introduction! I'm a highschool grad' (I'm probably the youngest here) soon to attend college in the fall. I took the year off before going off to college to pursue a goal to compete in the Paralympics (Olympics for the disabled - not the same as Special Olympics.) in Atlanta to be held this summer. I have a strong background in computer science (which will be my major in college). I'm well read, especially with the year off. One the key areas is interstellar travel and alien life forms. Unfortunately, I wish I was more suited in chem/bio to be of more help in the area of alien life. Until next time... -- maelstrom@csnet.net