A way to differentiate humans in space settings

So what do the other races that don't throw shit do for their warfare?

Are they all melee all the time? Did they develop missiles?

how do you fight a war without ranged weaponry, and what advantages and disadvantages does that present?

What happens when those other races have a targeting algorithm that works better than we do anyway? Or is cheaper than we are, even if it doesn't work as good?

Humanity, while technologically advanced enough to achieve space travel, is still fraught with infighting and tribalism.

While each other space faring race is politically united, humans are the exception. The various governments of Earth still maintain their sovereignty, represent their individual interests, and carve out their own destinies in the stars.

It's absolutely mind boggling to other species that they can't just deal with "the Humans", they have to deal with "the Humans that call themselves Americans", "the Humans that call themselves Russians", and "the Humans that call themselves the Chinese", among various others.

Presumably it would be pretty melee oriented. The real question is would they develop bows. Because the thing is most battle field applications of bows didn't actually rely on accuracy, they relied on massed numbers, and even if they didn't evolve to throw shit that would work for them, but if developing a bow doesn't help them hunt or improve their survival odds like it did for us since they would presumably not be able to use it in the same fashion we do would they develop bows?

Would species with more formidable physical features develop tools in the same manner we did?

I honestly couldn't say how each species would view warfare. I would assume however that while the idea of conflict between two groups over resources or ideology would be universal, how they pursue it would likely vary depending on how the species evolved and what route their tech took, so I can't make generalizations but if we talked some theoretical species maybe we could work something out.

If they had a targeting algorithm that works better than we do, and can be miniaturized to fit in a personal weapon, well then they get some damn effective troops. If they get something cheaper, then presumably they get a lot of troops. In the first case we exist as a sort of budget option out on the fringes or lower levels of society. Yeah we aren't the best option available, but presumably that would be military hardware. Not everyone can get military hardware, but maybe you can find a human willing to work for you. In the second case, training and good gear to try and offset the quantitative advantage of the opponent with quality, or we fill the niche of really specialized roles like special forces rather than general purpose infantry.

Addendum

I would believe that they would develop some manner of ranged weaponry and missile technology for much the same reason we developed powered flight and sailing, because they would need answers to problems they couldn't solve with just their hands/paws/prehensile grabbers, and they would experiment and observe effects in nature and attempt to replicate them until it works assuming they are just as intelligent as we are. The application would be different than our own application, but I can't imagine they would be completely unable to understand the benefit of killing at a distance even if they went about it differently.

...

Because genocide is a great idea, but then you get going on it, it's been a week or two, and it just gets boring. Then we kind of wander off to do something else.
Humanity's attribute is boredom.

I'd say less boredom and more that it's just really fucking hard to actually pull off a Genocide.

Not really hard, just tedious. You have to check EVERY fucking attic, ditch, hut in bunga bunga land, chuckee cheese tube maze, movie theatre projector box, high school gymnasium, and so on for that last handful of paranoid and lucky types.

Captain Contrarian has arrived!

Is thst our hat? Being contrary for the sake of being contrary?

That's...huh.

no

Would the human driving ability extend to being more capable of driving starships? Even if it's not as near universal as with cars.

>I don't think anyone would just eyeball a missile trajectory

They would if humanity was all about >scramble everyones trajectory technology by making our fighters loaded with like, 50% guns 50% flares and 100% chrome ultra-reflective coating that bounces almost any kind of signal off of it, while also acting as pretty sick visual camouflage
>everything is analog on the ship, the scrambling technology embedded in human fighters is too strong for us to even shield against, any given frequency would have upwards of a hundred different programs all scrambling it in a different way with different kinds of technology
>the only time you can talk to the rest of your flight was if you switch off the jammer, so if you were ever the last man you'd be playing a game of cat and mouse that went
>switch radio on, auto deactiviating the jammer tech
>you're immediately locked onto
>mayday mayday
>radio off
>dump flares
>jammers on
>evasive maneuvers
>repeat, saying another 2-3 words before you had to cut comms and dodge

and boom, you get to keep that top gun badass aesthetic with your space pilots being fucking nutjobs that bank on always having at least one flyboy still with them to keep the jammers up while he calls for backup

you could incorporate the fact that that means that there would definitely be more advances species who found it easier to leave earth in larger ships with looser tolerances on what they could bring into space because getting on and off world was ezmodo in comparison to our planet

maybe all of their tech is fragile as shit, coming from a world with loosey goosey density properties that made it easy to slip out of its gravity, but also it means that their hardiest tech (barring like, their equivalent to ceramic plating on space shuttles) is about as rough and tumble as the tupperware you could pick up at walmart

>humans are the only species with a crab-in-bucket thought process
>everyone else just says "oh right, that would benefit you and not do any harm to me so I'll encourage you, and hopefully once you reach a higher social status you'll bring me with you, attributing your success to me" while humans are still petty as fuck 24/7 trying to undermine anyone else getting ahead of them because they think it should be THEM getting promoted, and THEM being engaged and buying a house at 25
>we're also simultaneously the apex species of the galaxy, but only because we've tapped into the infinite energy well of spite and pettiness to unlock levels of competition that you cant achieve when you're ultimately okay with your opponent winning

Humans are Orks. Primitive savages. Aggressive, reckless looters, mad and untrustworthy, just as happy fighting each other as their enemy. And worst of all, fast learners. Too fast.

Good God those books were dumb

If I was a military leader I would be looking to employ humans to make my army mobile.

>The real question is would they develop bows.
But, bows developed people.

But would a species that can run 40mph and has claws, or a species thst flies, or a species that's more jacked than a silver back need bows? Would they use them the same way as we did if they did have them? Would they be capable of doing so?

Tools, we're were we're at today because we are the master of tools.

>Step 1) Humans should be for the most part, the only humanoid race.
If every race is "humans but special" as it so often is, especially in fantasy games, then humans will only exist as a means of measuring just how special everything else is.
>Step 2)Humans do their thing.
>Step 3)Human stuff is humanocentric
If other races aren't just humans with X, this means that human stuff can only be used properly by humans. Other races might be able to use human equipment, but they'll never quite be as good.
>Step 4)Make humans the most populous race
Now humanocentric human tools made by humans for humans are considered the default. Other races cannot rely on the gear list without paying out the nose for something imported/special made, and must instead rely on whatever makes them special as a race.
>Step 5)Enjoy
Humans are still the grounded in reality, relatable generalists people expect from them, and regardless of player mindset non-humans become special and will play significantly different than humans. Forcing players who want to be special to actually get creative with how they tackle problems.

Hmmm... What if humans are transhumanist race? We have been crudely replacing lost limbs for centuries and dental fillings were found in mummies from pyramids. We have stories about magic potions that give strength or long life and it is not that different in intent from eating nanobots to fix you up inside not to get old or ill. Humans were on the way to being cyborgs since we started wearing clothes. If other civilizations have a unified ethical block against augmentations we could be those people who have even civilians as gene modded cyborgs with lightning fast reflexes, centuries of experience and a mind backup for taking risks.

Humans would be the space gypsies. We'd a species driven by our need to explore, to the point that other species would think us rootless space vagrants.

For added effect, just assume a future where we killed earth off, and this could be true.

I wonder what the HFY crowd would do with a setting in which the humans legitimately just aren't good. Not "actually a jack-of-all-trades, our mediocrity is our greatest strength!", not the most varied, not the most "crazy", not the most determined or anything like that. Just... not very good. We drew a cosmic hand and it was meh. Some races are just legitimately better than us at everything.

>We're pretty much the only thing on the planet that can.
That's mostly because we have opposable thumbs, which is generally a requirement if you want to throw things.

If you consider the same basic cognitive function of leading a target with a ranged attack, then the Archer Fish is even better, since it can shoot down a flying insect with its spit from underwater, not just leading its target but also compensating for the way the surface of the water bends light.

No one would be interested desu. Being humans ourselves, we'd want to see a setting with human characters to latch onto. Making humans shit at everything would just turn 90% of people off.

You don't have to go full HFY, but you also don't have to go to the opposite.

You'd wind up with some funny Eclipse Phase scenarios. By the time they finally meet the 'Human' who has been helping them out, they find it's a brain in a jar in a terraforming machine that rivals Spirit of Motherwill.

You'd have more than a few people taking ANY offer to leave. If the Reptilians or the Fishies offered to take Humans and the pay was three square meals a day, they'd run out of application forms. Plus, there would always be people who just want to explore while having a frantic Human Alliance officer trying to track them down for an unpaid ticket.

Any setting with a race that is 100% inferior to others in every way is poorly designed.

Or 'human' might be full on digital inside a giant computer encompassing a star. Terraforming is overrated anyway. Building megastructures and huge habitats is way easier. Also funny enough an average sized asteroid usually contains more stuff you can build ships from than most popular sci fi navies can field.

>everybody would rather talk about other ways to make humans unique than the idea on the op.
I for one think it's an interesting idea.

Well this thread got really dumb really fast.

Here's the boring fact of the matter: natural selection will always select things that are similar to fill the same niche, and that's just not that fun for fiction. You don't even need to go into the wilds of evolution for this, just look at fighters.

In fighting games, combatants of all different styles are brought together. Hugely variant phenotypes, styles, and weaknesses are present. Compare that to reality, and it gets boring really fast. Most fighters irl share the same build, and if you're not really that into combat sports you probably can't even tell the difference between different fighting styles.

SO if we posit multiple interstellar cultures that evolve in a manner similar to how we expect we will, then the only thing that you'll get is going to be offbrand humans.

You'd have to come up with multiple evolutionary histories to be able to specify how they are unique, rather than just a vague "how are humans different than generic aliens?"

>But would a species that can run 40mph and has claws, or a species thst flies, or a species that's more jacked than a silver back need bows?
No. They would never evolve the intelligence to be able to make them anyway

I prefer this myself.

'Humans evolved as pursuit predators. They would follow their prey for days until it could not even stand.'

'Next to that, sitting in the driver's seat of a vehicle all day is almost luxurious. Sometimes they will even ARGUE over who gets to drive.'

This is Star Trek. Ever notice how Federation ships are the ones malfunctioning in weird and universe-breaking ways? They're packed with mad science.

so the whole species is just that 'if we dont know what we're doing the enemy cant predict our future actions' quote from ww2

Do you have the star trek screen cap?

A significant portion of our intelligence evolved do to complex social interactions and the development of language. A pack animal could develop in that manner even if they had claws. There just needs to exist conditions that push them towards more complex social structures, which in turn reward intelligence.

Sort of, but it's more that we are willing to do shit others won't touch with a ten foot pole. For instance super smart species A may be smarter than us, but they aren't as willing to risk and push boundaries testing frankly ludicrous ideas, because doing stupid dangerous expensive stuff that probably won't work anyway is stupid. And most of the time they are right, but sometimes we get lucky.

See something similar with warrior race guys etc etc, its not that we are really good at anything, its just we are willing to do things no one else is and go to extremes beyond those most will consider.

What sort of shitstorm would there be if a non human won a big race?

>'Next to that, sitting in the driver's seat of a vehicle all day is almost luxurious. Sometimes they will even ARGUE over who gets to drive.'

...

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Found the actual thread

beka-tiddalik.tumblr.com/post/150425828285/roachpatrol-deadcatwithaflamethrower

Well, there are animals like spitting cobras or, more impressively, archer fish.

yeah but those are all niche examples, but I suppose if they so happen to become the dominant species on their planet

the fish is out though, you're not going to invent fire and cook meat to unlock that joocy protein underwater

and the cobra doesnt have arms, again, hard to cook and use tools like bows with just a mouth and tail

us with our thumbs and cooked meats AND ability to throw shit, are unstoppable

My point is that the ability to plot trajectories and launch projectiles effectively is not a uniquely human trait, and as such there's no reason an alien race couldn't be as good or better without necessarily the same environmental factors.

I guess not, but it should still be an outlier thing, maybe most species hunted with the spear and bow the same way the archer fish does where it looks like it has to be perfectly still shooting at other still shit, but cant really hit moving targets so a lot of their later warfare was all melee until tracking computers were invented

humans are the only ones who had a knack for hitting moving targets though, along with maybe another warlike species that is lauded for its ability to eyeball shit like that.

I for one support the team "can we make awesome stuff, more awesome" interpretation of humanity

'What do you know about humans?'

'They're just a bunch of primitives, aren't they?'

'Alright, how far can you walk in a day?'

'About fifteen or twenty kilometers.'

'Well a human can run fifty kilometers, AND fight a battle at the end of it.'

With the level of technology you need to get into space, you can build robots. A robot that can actually move around and shoot at shit is probably way better at doing that than a human could be.

It doesn't guess with its eyes and muscles, it knows. It knows how to get a bullseye every time. Not the general process or the technique, but specifically how to hit any target you put in front of it, within acceptable parameters.

>A way to differentiate humans in space settings
by not having them.

In my setting, Humans are just really, really lucky. Things just seem to work out for them, and it pisses everyone else off.

Looks like I have to post this again:

Kin lay in her bunk, thinking. She thought of how attitudes to aliens got stereotyped.
Kung were paranoid, blood-thirsty and superstitious. Shandi were calm, blood-thirsty
and sometimes ate people. Shandi and kung thought humans were blood-thirsty,
foolhardy and proud. Everyone thought Ehfts were funny, and no-one knew what Ehfts
thought about anyone.
It was true that, once, four kung had boarded a grounded human ship during the bad
old days and killed thirty-five crew before the last kung went down under the weight of
Clipe needles. It was true that on certain diplomatically forgotten occasions shandi had,
with great ceremony, eaten people. So what? How could you evaluate this unless you
could think like an alien?
We dismiss each other with a few clichés, she thought. It's the only way we can live
with one another. We have to think of aliens as humans in a different skin, even though
we've all been hammered by different gravities on the anvils of strange worlds. . .

Almost nothing is truly ~unique~ to humans or any other terrestrial lifeform, but there are several other traits which distinguish us from other, similar species with a comparable environmental niche.

True, those traits could hypothetically be surpassed by other sentient lifeforms, but that's not uncommon even when you're speaking about an alien's personal gimmick. Star Trek had aliens that were stronger than Klingons or smarter than Vulcans, but those are still part of what defines those two species compared to each other.

Been done to death.
Usually the superior aliens are called 'elves'.

>We have to think of aliens as humans in a different skin

THIS SURELY WON'T END POORLY

WE TREAT OUR COMPATRIOTS OF DIFFERING HUE WITH PERFECT AMITY

Actual space ships will be 99.99% automated

Ah, it's a /pol/ shitter. You should read the book.

That's a common claim that drives thousands of dime-a-dozen "subversions" of this alleged trend which treat the "superior" race as a basically worthless strawman for whatever the author doesn't like about aristocrats/intellectuals/moralizers/whatever other group is about being "better" in some way, while the Good Old Humble Common Folk are constantly outdoing them to prove how it's actually them who are superior in all the ways that "really" matter.

That's how I like my sci-fi, and it's even worse. Because you have tons of colonies that don't affiliate themselves with any Earth nation, or with Humanity in general. They fucked off to do their own thing and started their own nation.

I was more talking cars.