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[Madman198237]

Thinking extremely long-term, plentiful warp routes is a danger. The Imperium or a comparable galactic-level power would inevitably end up wanting that system. System-scale resources and *maybe* even a nearby nebula resource we could conceivably mine out and thus render undesirable to anything unpleasant we might bump in to, since it's unlikely that even with good choices in a universe of stupid we could become a galactic power against the incredibly goofy predestinations of the galactic screwups.

Early contact with others is not a problem, it may allow us to get in some early conquering and become much more capable for it, whereas being in a sparse region makes us perhaps more likely to safely develop but might not be such a great boon later on when we find it more difficult to maintain a sufficiently warlike state to oppose whoever might want to come knock us over for our goodies.

The Warp is bad, pure and simple. Maybe with sufficient tech we could circumvent the need for the Warp at all, maybe not, but I really would not recommend a thin Immaterium veil for fear of the consequences of being attuned to the Warp on those (far too plentiful) occasions that reality literally breaks.

Honestly I find that this phase has a few too many options to keep track of, though maybe that's just me and my unfocused self right now.

Powder miner plan (4): Powder miner, Andrea, Kashyyk, Madman
Nirur Torir plan 1(1): King Zultan
Glass plan (1): Glass
Kilojoule Proton plan (2): KJ proton, SC777
MetalSlimeHunt plan (1): MSH
Naturegirl1999 plan (1): Naturegirl
Nirur Plan 2: Superior Soldiers (1): Nirur

[Nirur Torir]

I'm a bit tempted to drop acidic oceans, as acid resistance doesn't help as much after we get powered armor, and it'll slow our growth a bit.

Hm. boring later on is a fair point, maybe we don't need to be fully isolated. I would still rather not be crowded however.

Do I have your vote if I swap that out? It still leads to a different play paradigm than an isolated and rich start.

I'd also prefer a more interesting home system as an impetus for exploration and expansion, otherwise Nirur II: the Evolutioning looks fine to me. So I'd probably be swapping out Empty Home System for Frequent Meteorites (trusting in the caverns to reduce a portion of that danger).

Every disaster slows us down relative to our neighbors, apparently on top of the evolution perks, and I don't want to be too far behind on a plan dedicated to being great soldiers.
That said, I'm hoping that the nexus will bring us some early traffic to encourage space, or that thin veil will make it easier to notice the nexus and get early FTL.

Barren + high-g does limit our home system space infrastructure even more than the radiation and thin veil do. I'm banking on that slowing our overall growth less than meteorites would. We'd still lose cities with them unless we spent the resources to build entirely underground.

Honestly I find that this phase has a few too many options to keep track of, though maybe that's just me and my unfocused self right now.

I see three main schools of thought: Isolated and rich, crowded and slightly less rich, and my new plan focused on evolving to be strong (and breathing oxygen).

[Madman198237]

Honestly I find that this phase has a few too many options to keep track of, though maybe that's just me and my unfocused self right now.

I see three main schools of thought: Isolated and rich, crowded and slightly less rich, and my new plan focused on evolving to be strong (and breathing oxygen).

I meant in terms of GM-provided options, not suggested plans.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

A thought occurs. We don't just have to survive first contact with the Imperium, because on this timescale that's not likely to be the first time we meet humanity.

We have to survive: The first human galactic expansion ("Federation") -> The Iron Men rebellion -> The Fall of the Eldar -> Old Night (galactic warp travel collapse for thousands of years) -> The Great Crusade -> The Horus Heresy -> and then ten-thousand years of the moldering Imperium.

And we have no way to know in advance when we'll first be introduced to...that, and that's just human-related galactic disasters.

Fuck. This is gonna be hard no matter how it goes.

[Ardent Debater]

Honestly I find that this phase has a few too many options to keep track of, though maybe that's just me and my unfocused self right now.

I see three main schools of thought: Isolated and rich, crowded and slightly less rich, and my new plan focused on evolving to be strong (and breathing oxygen).

I meant in terms of GM-provided options, not suggested plans.

Spoiler:  GM Note (click to show/hide)

That's fair and I was worried that I might've been overdoing it at the time of posting with 12 Advantages, 12 Disadvantages, and 7 assorted System aspects to sort through, but there's a massive amount of things to take into account for the sake of versimillitude and I figure it's easier (and more fun for everyone involved) to do it with a rudimentary point concept all at once than ramble on for fifteen updates and a few more days asking about each individual part of the home-world or home-system.

A thought occurs. We don't just have to survive first contact with the Imperium, because on this timescale that's not likely to be the first time we meet humanity.

We have to survive: The first human galactic expansion ("Federation") -> The Iron Men rebellion -> The Fall of the Eldar -> Old Night (galactic warp travel collapse for thousands of years) -> The Great Crusade -> The Horus Heresy -> and then ten-thousand years of the moldering Imperium.

And we have no way to know in advance when we'll first be introduced to...that, and that's just human-related galactic disasters.

Fuck. This is gonna be hard no matter how it goes.

Spoiler:  GM Note (click to show/hide)

There's a reason I went with the 40k setting for the idea of a gestalt alien evolution+civ-building+spacefaring civ thread, and not just because it's popular and I'm mildly severely obsessed with the lore myself. This ought to be !!FUN!! in the sense we're all familiar with. On the upside, your home-system's location is relatively out of the way and that gives you some breathing room on the macro-scale, micro-isolation/crowding aside.

[Nirur Torir]

GM question:
Can we write in minor perks here?
I'm thinking of a pair making our moon slightly richer, with the minerals visible through a telescope, at the cost of guaranteeing a super-predator evolves to hunt us. I don't want it to be on the level of a deathworld predator, but evolved specifically against our strengths and weaknesses. I imagine smaller tribes will usually escape notice and be fine, but larger tribes will start to see problems. Iron age cities might be able to be relatively safe, with enough investment, but we wouldn't be able to properly properly deal with them until around the industrial era.

[Ardent Debater]

Spoiler:  GM Note (click to show/hide)

Well, that, and it's a novel way to interact with the setting from a legitimately alien perspective, instead of the standard lens from the Imperium. Life on the planet guaranteed not to be eradicated before something has developed sapience, and from there, I'll be keeping track of the timeline and slowly increasing the small chances of outside intervention accordingly. I have a handful charts for determining circumstances and will be doing a lot of rolling behind the scenes, I want to rely on GM fiat as little as possible. The guarantee of a prosperous, thriving future for the descendants of your species is achievable, but it won't come easily and it will be a long way getting there.

GM question:
Can we write in minor perks here?
I'm thinking of a pair making our moon slightly richer, with the minerals visible through a telescope, at the cost of guaranteeing a super-predator evolves to hunt us. I don't want it to be on the level of a deathworld predator, but evolved specifically against our strengths and weaknesses. I imagine smaller tribes will usually escape notice and be fine, but larger tribes will start to see problems. Iron age cities might be able to be relatively safe, with enough investment, but we wouldn't be able to properly deal with them until around the industrial era.

Spoiler:  GM Note (click to show/hide)

Dangerous predators (or at least, local predator-equivalents) are nigh-guaranteed to evolve, but having a superpredator occur much sooner and deadlier than it otherwise might have in exchange for a mineral-rich moon is reasonable. It would make things much more difficult for you while you're in the animal stage and for some time afterward because it won't stop evolving in the event you've developed a counter, but if you can get the support for it that's perfectly acceptable. An example of the extent of an explicitly superpredator perfectly adapted to hunting the species as you're talking about would be a rare variant of bengal tiger that prefers human-shaped prey and happens to have a chameleon-esque hide and a fast-acting paralytic venom. Not impossible for stone-age humans to overcome but far, far from trivial.

[piratejoe]

I quite like the idea of super soldiers, but I want an actual, you know, home system that's more than just our little ball of dirt. This plan can best be described as just trying to put us in the best position we can possibly be in without leaving our home system once we get into the space age...

Also may as well just stop lurking and actually get involved.

Plan Super Soldiers with the resources to do it.

Thin Atmosphere
Oxygenic Atmosphere + Crowded Star Region
Packed Home-System + Frequent Meteorites
Asteroid Belt + Thin Immaterial Veil
Cavern Networks + Sporadic Orbit
Mineral Abundance + Exotic Phenomena

Barren Planet (Warm, closer to the sun than us, yet its surface is empty, filled with naught but sand. 1)
Home Planet (It is our home, with our one moon.)
Mineral Planet (Cold, but not too far. Our 'neighbor' behind us. Taunting, with its bounty. 5)
Rocky Planet (Within the rings of the belt of asteroids that surround the harsh star is a particularly large and battered rock. 3)
Ringed Gas Giant (Far in the distance, a mass of green forever spinning. While the ring itself is thin, their are many larger rocks in its orbit worth harvesting.
Rocky Planet (A moon of the large swirl of green. Richer than its smaller kin by mere size alone. 3)

[Nirur Torir]

I quite like the idea of super soldiers, but I want an actual, you know, home system that's more than just our little ball of dirt. This plan can best be described as just trying to put us in the best position we can possibly be in without leaving our home system once we get into the space age...

Exotic Phenomena

The more I think about it, the less I trust Exotic Phenomena. It's an unknown ticking time bomb, and I don't think it fits with making our home system as good as we can.


I'm revamping Plan Soldiers, swapping the acid oceans to remove some neighbors, and taking the trade to make our moon rich and give us superpredators. It will hopefully be enough to jump-start our space industry.

Thin Atmosphere
Oxygenic Atmosphere + Empty Home-System
Warp Route Nexus + Thin Immaterial Veil
Cavern Networks + Sporadic Orbit
Rich Moon + Superpredators

[Powder Miner]

I will say, while I had my whole thing about “aliens isolated in their caverns looking out blah blah blah poetic” I find myself the most attached to Lack of Warp Routes, Thick Immaterium Veil, and Cavern Networks in particular; the factions that build tech to get around that ISN’T just warp drives I always find quite cool indeed, and building up a tech base absent the immaterium and watching it slam into a universe full of it sounds very cool to me. Like the Tau, or Necrons.

Also, I really do like the thought of sequestered cavern people, at least early on before they start heading out into space.

[mightymushroom]

Of the twelve bonuses and drawbacks, there are seven that are sliders:
Isolated <-> Crowded Star Region
Packed <-> Empty Home System
Abundant <-> Scarce (Home) Minerals
Warp Lane Nexus <-> Warp Lanes Lacking
Thick <-> Thin Veil
Thin <-> Ideal Atmosphere
Oxygen <-> Exotic Breathing

- The ease of spread from breathing Oxygen probably should not be underestimated, even if the other possibilities increase our defensive rating.
- I'm personally in favor of a more interesting sky.
- I wouldn't mind a psyker oriented path, but I'm not going to insist on it. I'm willing to go material if it means a larger consensus.

The other five selections in each category are more like standalone features. They're a bit harder to quantify but that just makes them more interesting.

Oxygenic Atmosphere
Packed Home System + Crowded Star Region
Cavern Networks + Electromagnetic Storms
Geothermal Activity + Sporadic Orbit

[[Option: Dense Immaterial Veil + Lack of Warp Routes]] "lead us not into temptation"

Home Planet (~ .8 AU)
Habitable World (Cost 10; ~ 1.5 AU, similar to Mars: with a slightly larger ball that retains more atmosphere it could still be considered the cold side of Goldilocks)
Gas Giant (Cost 5; ~4.9 AU, about Jupiter at perihelion)(we have just one, let's make it superjovian)
Mineral Planet (Cost 5; ~4.9 AU, somewhat improbably at the leading Lagrange point)(probably gets name Herald or Harbinger or whatever local deity)

Few evolutionary advantages, but not much to slow us down either. The worst is probably sporadic orbit, but we're already hiding from the intense radiation of our sun so we'll take it in stride. Once civilization and technology develop, we have an abundant energy source to help us punch through the electromagnetic storms; material resources are not extra abundant but what exists is well exposed by the fractured crust.

Assuming we make it into space instead of cowering underground, a second habitable world awaits, rather on the chilly side but also with quite a bit less ionizing radiation thanks to inverse square law. Between that and the caverns, we have quite a bit of room to spread out.

Farther out yet we have rich sources of both minerals and gases to feed interstellar efforts. Since the evolutionary phase was (hopefully) straightforward we have only the problem of shielding our high tech to really slow us down. And a cultural penchant for heavy shielding will serve our spacefaring mole people quite nicely when they find out they are not alone.

I prefer having a system that has 2 Habitable planets, I'd probably replace the Immaterial for Oxygen, but oh well.

I will say, while I had my whole thing about “aliens isolated in their caverns looking out blah blah blah poetic” I find myself the most attached to Lack of Warp Routes, Thick Immaterium Veil, and Cavern Networks in particular; the factions that build tech to get around that ISN’T just warp drives I always find quite cool indeed, and building up a tech base absent the immaterium and watching it slam into a universe full of it sounds very cool to me. Like the Tau, or Necrons.

Also, I really do like the thought of sequestered cavern people, at least early on before they start heading out into space.

Got you both covered, I think.

[Ardent Debater]

Spoiler:  GM Note (click to show/hide)

This is somewhat awkward to ask, but could someone fill me in on how to hyperlink to a specific post, as in the Votebox below?

Powder miner plan (4): Powder miner, Andrea, Kashyyk, Madman
Nirur Torir plan 1(1): King Zultan
Glass plan (1): Glass
Kilojoule Proton plan (2): KJ proton, SC777
MetalSlimeHunt plan (1): MSH
Naturegirl1999 plan (1): Naturegirl
Nirur Plan 2: Superior Soldiers (1): Nirur

I'm trying to come up with a tally to post for the reference for future reference and anyone considering pitching in/changing their mind, but I'm not quite sure how to get the line of data from the post itself which goes into the hyperlink, which is similar to but distinct from the same in the quote. It'd be no problem to do a conventional tally, but a little ill-considerate toward andrea, who was the first to post it, and everyone else that's added theirs to the count. That, and the function could be handy later on when you're hopefully managing an expansionist space empire, or failing that, a nomadic fleet/isolationist bulwark, or, failing that, any one of a dozen possible near-extinction scenarios; a distant colony that survived a collapse situation, the battered remnants of a once-proud civilization thrust into servitude, a splinter faction of inexplicably (or terrifyingly) subtle infiltrators that's lost contact with the home-system, etc. The spacefaring stage is going to be a lot of fun, and I mean that in both definitions of the term.

Getting into and developing the alien (or shockingly/treacherously human) mindset from the start up until breaking out of orbit is going to be great too, don't feel pigeonholed into the grimdark warmonger/xenophobe ethos, there's no reason not to reject that and carve something else in your region of the galaxy, if not farther. Evenhanded diplomacy is possible, rarely successful in the long-term, but if the Tau have done it, there's nothing saying your species can't. That said, embedding intense instinct to default to paranoia, aggression, opportunism, or something sinister and stranger into their genes is perfectly valid too. Not to mention the prospects of doing both at once, to any extent.

[mightymushroom]

Spoiler: Answer (click to show/hide)

The subject line for an individual post has a link that you can insert to jump to that post.

[piratejoe]

The more I think about it, the less I trust Exotic Phenomena. It's an unknown ticking time bomb, and I don't think it fits with making our home system as good as we can.

Considering this, I think I've made something a bit better. This now is more of a local Turtle style game. Lack of warp routes helps us as much as it hurts, after all, there's only so many ways our enemies can come at us...Also if you don't mind I'm stealing that last bonus and penalty.

Plan Baton Down the Hatches.

Thin Atmosphere
Oxygenic Atmosphere + Crowded Star Region
Packed Home-System + Frequent Meteorites
Asteroid Belt + Thin Immaterial Veil
Cavern Networks + Sporadic Orbit
Mineral Abundance + Lack of Warp Routes.
Rich Moon + Superpredators

Barren Planet (Warm, closer to the sun than us, yet its surface is empty, filled with naught but sand. 1)
Home Planet (It is our home, with our one moon.)
Mineral Planet (Cold, but not too far. Our 'neighbor' behind us. Taunting, with its bounty. 5)
Rocky Planet (Within the rings of the belt of asteroids that surround the harsh star is a particularly large and battered rock. 3)
Ringed Gas Giant (Far in the distance, a mass of green forever spinning. While the ring itself is thin, their are many larger rocks in its orbit worth harvesting. 8 )
Rocky Planet (A moon of the large swirl of green. Richer than its smaller kin by mere size alone. 3)

[Ardent Debater]

Spoiler: Answer (click to show/hide)

The subject line for an individual post has a link that you can insert to jump to that post.

Spoiler:  GM Note (click to show/hide)

Thank you, I appreciate the response. As near as I can tell, this is the current state of the votes:

Glass's Plan: (1) Glass
Kilojoule Proton's Plan: (2) Kilojoule Proton, Shadowclaw777
MetalSlimeHunt's Plan: (1) MetalSlimeHunt
Nirur Torir's 1st Plan: (1) King Zultan
Naturegirl1999's Plan: (1) Naturegirl1999
mightymushroom's 1st Plan: (0)
Powder Miner's Plan: (4) Power Miner, andrea, Kashyyk, Madman198237
Tyrant Leviathan's Plan: (1) Tyrant Leviathan
Nirur Torir's 2nd Plan: (0)
IncompetentForteessMaker's Plan: (1) IncompetentFortressMaker
piratejoe's 1st Plan: (0)
Nirur Torir's 2.1st Plan: (Super Soldiers): (1) Nirur Torir
mightymushroom's 2nd Plan: (1) mightymushroom
piratejoe's 2nd Plan: (1) piratejoe

Powder Miner's Plan is in the lead, closely followed by Kilojoule Proton. Because it's somewhat close and the results are important in the long-term, I'm going to give you two more hours to decide. Then I'll tally it again and we can move on to the second stage: figuring out what life defaults to on the planet and where the species' evolutionary ancestor falls in it.