# Alien mindsets
**URL:** https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172
**Category:** Society Stage
**Created:** [November 22, 2020, 9:47pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172 "2020-11-22T21:47:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Deathwake](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Deathwake)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2020, 9:47pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/1 "2020-11-22T21:47:52Z")
I was thinking about how aliens might think differently, and I realized this is very relevant to Thrive. The awesome website xenology.info mentioned that a olfactory aliens might have a different perspective of time, and find linear grammar alien due to the fact that pheromones linger. This got me thinking about how other senses would differ from humans. Humans ourselves are visual critters with a grasp of the auditory world. Other examples of similar intellects are the corvids, ravens and crows, who, like humans, have exelent vision. Ants, who domesticate, enslave and wage war like humans, not only view the world through a different primary sense, or at a different scale, but have utterly alien social structures. They don’t seem to have a sense of individually. They don’t have a storytelling instinct, and they dont from friendships. These aliens in our backyards are a great example of how truly alien entitys would govern themselves. They don’t have a ruler, or any voting, and yet they are more organized them any human civilization. They just found a set of rules that forms a powerful civilization as an emergent property. I have mentioned olfactory and visual intelligence, but what else could arise? Any comments? What civilizations would arise? How can the devs address issues that arise? What issues _would_ arise?
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### Author:  [@The\_Void](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/The_Void)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2020, 10:38pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/2 "2020-11-22T22:38:38Z")
Finally! Someone else who seems to regularly recognize alien psychology of any sort would be drastically different than humans, even in earth like worlds! For example, if we uplifted octopi, it may be possible they would construct games with themselves, for example a ball game of 1 arm vs the rest of the arms since the neural system is a net centered around the arms making each one a sort of individual. This essentially means the arms can almost play with themselves. Now imagine all the weird possibilities in other planets with even slight variation. Perhaps aliens that enjoy labor or pain, or aliens that refuse to consume things! Or even aliens that have this odd biological obsession of making teapots and not using them at all! However, the problem is that any psychology in thrive may _have_ to be human based since both a human is behind the screen and it’d be hard for players to sympathize with the motives of other aliens if there is no connection or relation to make. Also it’d be pretty hard to procedural generate any sort of psychology if not preset, and most of them may still be human based like in spore. I guess you can take traits like in stellaris but make them visually apparent and significant as observing or interacting creatures?
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### Author:  [@Deathwake](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Deathwake)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2020, 11:15pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/3 "2020-11-22T23:15:29Z")
> [@The\_Void](#):
>
> Perhaps aliens that enjoy labor or pain
Yeah that already exists on earth. Also I think we can design a way for this to work! Traits that aren’t original all add up to truly alien intellects.
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### Author:  [@lastwitchofillyrith](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/lastwitchofillyrith)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2020, 6:54am UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/4 "2020-11-23T06:54:38Z")
In general, it should also be the starting point of the later stages of the game. No anthropocentric stuff that’s built on loosely modelling politics like I see in other threads and games like Stellaris pls. Start with defining the basic outline of their psychology and needs, and then how the society is built around those.
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### Author:  [@Sentiant](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Sentiant)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2020, 10:49am UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/5 "2020-11-23T10:49:14Z")
IKR I see people in other threads trying to classify aliens based on if they’re ‘left’ or ‘right’, and I’m thinking if an alien knows what the ideals of the left are is it really an alien? I don’t see the blipdoodleploop from Sagittarius III, who eats his wife after mating, being adequately represented by ‘ LeFtIST, becaUsE hE’S FOr abOrtIoN’.
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### Author:  [@The\_Void](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/The_Void)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2020, 3:15pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/6 "2020-11-23T15:15:09Z")
You guys aren’t wrong but the problem is how do we add in something that the human brain has no mental integrity to understand in terms of motives, and how will the fundamentals of what humans have thought up lead to anything tangible in any visual or playable sense what so ever? Faking it seems like the only option for that (I hope you guys come up with something better), or just dropping it since it won’t control most of the game. Speaking of which, I’m not sure if the behavior tab will do much based on the way it’s described.
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### Author:  [@blackjacksike](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/blackjacksike)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2020, 3:25pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/7 "2020-11-23T15:25:15Z")
Communism wouldn’t work in human culture. Ants and bees might have the closest psychology to allow that (“Hive mind”?).
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### Author:  [@hhyyrylainen](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/hhyyrylainen)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2020, 3:48pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/8 "2020-11-23T15:48:23Z")
Hang on.
Unless you want to really do a [No true Scotsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman) fallacy, there have been communist countries on Earth, that haven’t collapsed immediately.
So a hive mind is not required for communism.
Also let’s _not_ get into Earth politics here.
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### Author:  [@The\_Void](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/The_Void)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2020, 4:10pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/9 "2020-11-23T16:10:38Z")
I really think it’s just smarter to have predefined traits you can assign to behaviour, but it might just turn out into some cheap version of spore so I’m a bit worried. However, you developers seem to know what you are doing and are very good at it, so there is hope.
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### Author:  [@Deathwake](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Deathwake)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2020, 5:23pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/10 "2020-11-23T17:23:03Z")
Well, spore didnt have any behavior so that’s an improvement. Also I think we as humans should be able to grasp the basics of alien psychology, to the point that we can make some traits. I think it might be better when designing instincts to write them in a simplified coding language like [Scratch](https://Scratch.mit.edu), and these can evolve into mental predispositions. Now if anyone has anything else to say about implementation, go ahead. Otherwise let’s talk about weird aliens to amuse ourselfs.
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### Author:  [@Scyobi\_Empire](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Scyobi_Empire)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2020, 7:42pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/11 "2020-11-24T19:42:28Z")
Would aliens even call xeno’s aliens? For all we could know Antpersonus could see humans as a caste that was separated.
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### Author:  [@Deathwake](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Deathwake)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2020, 7:43pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/12 "2020-11-24T19:43:08Z")
Whoa. Weird. I love that idea.
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### Author:  [@hhyyrylainen](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/hhyyrylainen)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2020, 7:57pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/13 "2020-11-24T19:57:12Z")
That’s very far fetched. I’d say that’s on a similar level than the way too common scifi trope that somehow there are human looking people all over the galaxy.
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### Author:  [@Deathwake](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Deathwake)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2020, 8:34pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/14 "2020-11-24T20:34:54Z")
I hate that trope. It may be far fetched but it still is interesting.
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### Author:  [@The\_Void](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/The_Void)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2020, 10:26pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/15 "2020-11-24T22:26:55Z")
Aliens that love sticking stuff in the ground. Example: These aliens are nest builders and have adapted an urge for building things for their society and offspring to survive better, and so once they have gained sapience they’ve constructed a game of going to the most random places and building something utterly useless yet a bit expensive there. This has lead to monoliths being placed in the most peculiar of places of many shapes and sizes. They can place a metal plank here on earth and it is likely no one would know, and if someone did find out they might not think much of it.
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### Author:  [@Deathwake](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Deathwake)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2020, 11:36pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/16 "2020-11-24T23:36:27Z")
I love that. What about a creature that hated sunlight? How would they explore the univerce? I’m thinking they’ll obsess over rouge planets.
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### Author:  [@The\_Void](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/The_Void)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2020, 11:51pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/17 "2020-11-24T23:51:38Z")
There could be creatures that are what we see as the perfect society. No one craves power, only progress, no short term shenanigans just all types of benefit. They do things for no reason in hopes of finding something new. Maybe they endorse through pain as long as it is for the better. They’d want all forms of recreation to advance with them and preserve the beauty and originality of planets and celestial bodies (no terraforming, just regular hab domes or ring cities). They’d have no tribalism but probably something opposite. I bet these are autotrophic so they wouldn’t have need to kill, only need to preserve their energy source (which is why they preserve planets maybe?) and crave for power would have no need if the energy source is somehow always evenly distributed. They possibly evolved a mindset to do anything of preservation in the future, this way future generations could survive better. Any thoughts on this perfect race?
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### Author:  [@The\_Void](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/The_Void)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2020, 10:03am UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/18 "2020-11-25T10:03:05Z")
> [@The\_Void](#):
>
> This has lead to monoliths being placed in the most peculiar of places of many shapes and sizes. They can place a metal plank here on earth and it is likely no one would know, and if someone did find out they might not think much of it.
(Edit: Uh oh [https://youtu.be/VTnMA917itc](https://youtu.be/VTnMA917itc)
I’m sorry for double posting, I couldn’t resist. I know it is a practical joke or something (what are the odds that aliens design screws) but still a funny connection.)
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### Author:  [@blackjacksike](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/blackjacksike)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2020, 4:27pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/19 "2020-11-25T16:27:44Z")
Their brain might have a different morphology than ours? That would explain why they behave differently from humans.
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### Author:  [@Deathwake](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Deathwake)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2020, 6:31pm UTC](https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/alien-mindsets/3172/20 "2020-11-25T18:31:52Z")
On this idea of the perfect society, why would a primary producer need brains? Maybe they evolved from an autotropic slime mould, or a lichen that had to follow sunlight or chemicals, and quickly were selected for behavior. The only reason I could think is that heterotrophic critters existed and hunted them. I thought of a tenticaled critter that dwells in humid climates and hunts rocks high in chemical energy, reacting them with water or air and sunlight to form glucose or something and hid itself by manipulating it’s environment. This manipulative ability merged with it’s situational analysis it gained for cost to benefit analysis to form tool use. These could work and I’m sure other ideas exist. Thanks for hearing my ranting!