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[alexandertnt]

What if the enire planet biosphere was made out of slow animals similar to turtles and the local sentients live 300 years but act really slow... or in reverse a short lived rodent like sentient that lives for 20 years at most percieveing us as VERY slow witted.

This seems to come from the idea that fast metabolisms can supply energy to larger brains, but burn out quicker. Which is totally reasonable, and the sort of explanation I would be looking for to justify an aliens unique characteristics. Its a much better explanation than just assuming "Human - Animal = Human - Alien".

[Mech#4]

Hm, "Universe at War: Earth Assault" has three alien factions. Hierarchy, Novus and Masari. There are humans but they're depicted more as an unfortunate victim caught in the middle of a three way war on Earth.

I'll agree with Nelia Hawk: Warhammer 40,000 games could be interesting to the end of a different view of humans. The Imperial Guard is made up of average humans who're depicted as poorly equipped, tank toting, mass deployed fodder against vastly more powerful foes. It's not really different stats though. In a universe of war, humans breed fast enough to have near limitless numbers of reinforcements. Space Marines are super humans with excess organs and heavy armour, better tanks and equipment, etc.

Though, humans in 40k aren't so much different as they are exaggerated. Take traits of humanity and turn them to 11. Xenophobia, paranoia, superstition, warmongering. Game wise, "Dawn of War" 1 and 2, "Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine", "Warhammer 40,000 Epic: Final Liberation". Other than those there's not really that many more.

Hn, "Sid Meier's: Alpha Centauri" is a Civilization type game where you play as one of a number of factions of human colonies on Alpha Centauri. They're split along different ideologies. There is aliens but they're more of a neutral hazard to all, though I believe some of the factions can weaponize them.

[Chaoswizkid]

Endless Space does this decently IIRC. So does StarDrive. And Warcraft III (insomuch that they are very similar to Orcs, but Night Elves and the Undead are both very different from either or eachother).

What you're mostly looking for is something where the point of view is centered from another race looking toward humans, though. I can't think of any game that does that in large enough doses at the moment though. Dragon Age: Origins, at least from some of the origin stories, perhaps? The Elder Scrolls series?

If you're not looking at games with multiple racial options, Borderlands portrays humanity as having an increasingly unstable genome, causing all sorts of ridiculous physical and mental mutations.

[pisskop]

Not to get OT a bit, but lets say aliens came into orbit right now.  Who would be the official liaison or the organization that speaks to them on behalf of humanity?  They would most likely decide our 'racial traits'.

[Chaoswizkid]

The problem with that is our racial traits would still have to be defined by the recognizable difference between us and the aliens. Let's assume that the aliens are a very peaceful people and America, just for the sake of example, represented humanity. They would see humanity as somewhat war-like and lots of traits aligned with that. Now assume the aliens are very war-like (although not immediately hostile). They might see humanity as mostly peaceful and emphasize the traits and emotions that go along with that, while anything that would be more "war-like" would just be a baseline.

[BFEL]

And if our first action was uploading 10 million gigs of porn to the aliens? What would our racial traits look like then?

[pisskop]

+20% max population
+10% population growth rate.

-10% diplomacy bonus
+10% unhealth
+10% unreast

[alamoes]

The problem with that is our racial traits would still have to be defined by the recognizable difference between us and the aliens. Let's assume that the aliens are a very peaceful people and America, just for the sake of example, represented humanity. They would see humanity as somewhat war-like and lots of traits aligned with that. Now assume the aliens are very war-like (although not immediately hostile). They might see humanity as mostly peaceful and emphasize the traits and emotions that go along with that, while anything that would be more "war-like" would just be a baseline.

I agree to a certain extent.  What I believe would be our most defining feature to set us apart from other space faring nations is our form of thought.  For example, the Soviet Union under Stalin believed in Lamarckian evolution.  What would happen if they became the colonizing space people?  The way it is now, it is quite unfeasible to think that any single planet would have the same political allegiance.  I mean space Victoria 2.  The same should probably go for aliens too.  As so, on that scale, I don't see the potential for aliens to be much different than us.  Unless they are a) insane b) an organic hive civilization, c) or share the same opinions on things, because we don't.  So, the potential differences between us and them is that we are beings that have a diverse amount of opinions.  I really can't think of anything else barring going out and figuring out everyone's opinions and seeing what the average human likes/does not like.  Oh yeah, we do have a rapidly expanding internet culture, so there's that. 

[Sirian]

I remember reading a novel about a race living on the outer reaches of the solar system -maybe the oort cloud. They were made of frozen stuff and were super slow compared to us, and could only survive in extreme cold. To them, we were extremely short lived but also incredibly fast evolving, and they would die just from touching us (because of heat transfer).

[anexiledone]

The problem is humans are not very adaptable. We're smart. People who live in the north aren't exactly adaptable to the cold anymore than someone from the south as far as health goes. Comfort wise they're very different. What made humans thrive is our ability to think. It's cold here, but bears live here... so let's kill the bears and wear their fur. What sets us apart from animals is rather than adapt to the environment or stay where we are comfy, we alter parts of the environment to fit us.

If I had to make a space 4x race of humans, they'd have these traits.
Impatient (bonus to terraforming, decreased happiness)
Productive (bonus to food and construction, decreased health)
Liars (bonus to subterfuge and diplomacy, increased chance of rebellion)
Mechanically Inefficient (1.5 material/cost)
Creative (base research rate +2)

This would create a race that can either specialize in mass production, researching, or diplomacy. Would also allow us to be very balanced. But at the end of the day, we are a bit of a careless race, and we are extremely impatient as far as animals go.

As you can tell, I'm a bit of a pessimist. lol

[sambojin]

Whilst humans are definitely the default in the series, Ultima VI's take on the Gargoyle's view on humans was interesting (if a little disjointed). We saw them as daemons from the underworld, and they saw us as thieving bastards that were also destroying their world (kind of by accident). More of a "two philosophies both being equal and correct" sort of portrayal, but at the time it seemed pretty cool.

Disjointed though since all the gargoyles seemed fairly happy to talk to the "False Prophet", even though he was considered evil incarnate. Well, that was when they weren't trying to kill you around the shrines and stuff. You probably were evil incarnate too. How many gargoyles had you killed in the preceding games, thinking that they were daemons? Not to mention that you stole the only copy of their holy book and caused the events that were destroying their world.

Default, yes. But nice for another race's take on the default and the real outcome of the "hero's" adventures. I guess with all the random theft, murder, lying and general sociopathic actions you do in the series, it was bound to happen (you were the Avatar, no matter what you did).

Joyfully attempted genocide. Thou has lost an eighth!

[BFEL]

The problem is humans are not very adaptable. We're smart. People who live in the north aren't exactly adaptable to the cold anymore than someone from the south as far as health goes. Comfort wise they're very different. What made humans thrive is our ability to think. It's cold here, but bears live here... so let's kill the bears and wear their fur. What sets us apart from animals is rather than adapt to the environment or stay where we are comfy, we alter parts of the environment to fit us.

If I had to make a space 4x race of humans, they'd have these traits.
Impatient (bonus to terraforming, decreased happiness)
Productive (bonus to food and construction, decreased health)
Liars (bonus to subterfuge and diplomacy, increased chance of rebellion)
Mechanically Inefficient (1.5 material/cost)
Creative (base research rate +2)

This would create a race that can either specialize in mass production, researching, or diplomacy. Would also allow us to be very balanced. But at the end of the day, we are a bit of a careless race, and we are extremely impatient as far as animals go.

As you can tell, I'm a bit of a pessimist. lol

You...supposedly are basing this around "Humans alter the environment to suit them" but ANY race would have to have that to even IMAGINE going to space today.

[Teneb]

The problem is humans are not very adaptable. We're smart. People who live in the north aren't exactly adaptable to the cold anymore than someone from the south as far as health goes. Comfort wise they're very different. What made humans thrive is our ability to think. It's cold here, but bears live here... so let's kill the bears and wear their fur. What sets us apart from animals is rather than adapt to the environment or stay where we are comfy, we alter parts of the environment to fit us.

If I had to make a space 4x race of humans, they'd have these traits.
Impatient (bonus to terraforming, decreased happiness)
Productive (bonus to food and construction, decreased health)
Liars (bonus to subterfuge and diplomacy, increased chance of rebellion)
Mechanically Inefficient (1.5 material/cost)
Creative (base research rate +2)

This would create a race that can either specialize in mass production, researching, or diplomacy. Would also allow us to be very balanced. But at the end of the day, we are a bit of a careless race, and we are extremely impatient as far as animals go.

As you can tell, I'm a bit of a pessimist. lol

You...supposedly are basing this around "Humans alter the environment to suit them" but ANY race would have to have that to even IMAGINE going to space today.

I suppose this could work on a fantasy setting, though.

[anexiledone]

You...supposedly are basing this around "Humans alter the environment to suit them" but ANY race would have to have that to even IMAGINE going to space today.

I guess adaptable wasn't the word I was looking for. Resilient maybe? I mean humans are pretty frail when it comes to an environment they can thrive in on earth. Let alone an environment they can thrive on other planets. I think of the ultimate adaptable race as something along the lines of the tyrannids or robots. Tyrannids rapidly evolve to fit the environment based on what's already there. While sentient robots could flourish anywhere they can keep themselves powered.

We're really only meant for earthlike planets. We could mine the hell out of planets, but we can't really thrive as a major population on most planets without a ridiculous amount of terraforming and I'd imagine it would be a logistical nightmare too. Outposts,colonies, those kinds of things should be very easy for us.

[alexandertnt]

Lets think what aliens would probably need in order to get to space:

1) Intelligence and creativity, to invent required technology an have the desire to do so in the first place.
2) The ability to spread across a good deal of the planet (adaptability/enviromental adaption), to get to the wide range of resources they would need.
3) Strength enough to interact with the enviroment and defend from local fauna, equiptment etc. But not too much muscle as to take away brain power from 1.
4) Reasonably peaceful, so as to not annihilate each other, but not so peaceful that they get eaten by the local fauna.
5) Reasonable productivity, so they can get into space in the first place.

There are probably others. The common human traits compared to aliens are not really justified and are usually the reuslt of blind comparisons with animals, which are done without considering what a space faring species would actually probably need to be space faring.

Outposts,colonies, those kinds of things should be very easy for us.

Again, why are we good at this, and aliens not so good?