what is the alternative though?
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i do not know.
it could be something that is only on their planet or a creature that has some byproduct (like trees with wood) that they can use as a substitute for metalworking.
so, only 0.0001% of sentient aquatic creatures would be able to go to land (i made that number up, but still, the point stands)
this means underwater civs arent gonna work at all unless they get something special in their planet to help them
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yes they could use something that they have but we do not in order to substitute metalworking.
or just enough until they develop gear to go on land and start to smeltal the metal.
so underwater civs arent gonna work then
also they need fire more than they need metal
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i just said that they would.
Having underwater species be possible by their planets having handwavium resources, is not good.
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This boi is the best at underwater metal(ore)working: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaly-foot_snail
I’m surprised people keep bringing up hydrothermal vents for heat (not very significant to any metal but tin or lead, if good enough for boiling) but aren’t bringing up sulfuric acid for leaching, at least very often? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaching_(metallurgy) ) Acid/toxin management and various sulfur compounds are part of life around a vent, and it would presumably already be pressurized … definitely other challenges to working with solutions underwater, but having salt + sulfuric acid + pressure + boiling water + chambers to keep your stuff in one place seems possible, and might at least change metal into a usable form. (Remembering precipitating silver from a solution now - results were pretty neat.)
If you did develop advanced-ish tech in an underwater, non-amphibious civilization, I’d guess that sulfur (and things like sulfuric acid) would have to be the key to do things we’re used to doing with fire, but can do with sulfuric acid and other sulfur compounds. (And vents being one of the richer sources of ores on the seafloor.) And the methods wouldn’t be very accessible to creatures that didn’t evolve along the vent, due to heat, toxicity from both vents and leaching methods, and pressure.
Tech tree might be a little too divergent from the fire-based one to make it easy to fit into the higher priority tech path, but hydrometallurgy is perhaps a better place to start than pyrometallurgy for underwater civs for anyone who wants underwater civs badly enough to program or mod something.
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Could a breath-powered smelter work? If the creature was big and had a large gas-bladder (Or had trainable livestock like that), then they could build a smelter, put in coal, cover it with a temporary waterproof cover, pump out the water, let the coal dry, and then use their/their livestock’s breath to provide oxygen to the smelter
Never forget one of the main reasons underwater metallurgy won’t happen is not because it’s physically impossible.
It’s because discovering it would just not happen. A creature would have to:
- build an air-proof smelter and fill it with dry, flammable material
- domesticate a land-dwelling species and build a sort of funnel system to somehow get them to breathe in above water and out into the smelter
- light it
All purely because the creature just wanted to see what would happen? Each of these steps takes more effort than the last, and requires the creature to know more than the other.
Also remember that it took centuries for us to discover how to make fire, even after having used it for those centuries. If a species that has natural access to fire (wildfires) and knows enough about its uses to have literal firekeepers whose sole job it is to guard the fire and not have it go out (since then they’d have to find more natural fire) still takes centuries to find out how to actually make it themselves, why would a creature that would never even naturally encounter fire figure out how to make it?
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Sorry if this theory is redundant, but I would like to give my two cents. Suppose a race of human-smart squids is used to warm kelp forests and coral reefs. Then comes an ice age. The poor critters are cold, barely having a home as half their reef is now above water and took with it half the kelp. The dudes hide together, using penguin tactics to stay warm, and then comes a big boom, the dried kelp above water begins to glow. ‘This is the end’
they think as the light comes to get them. But even as it moves, the killing light stops at the water. And brings warmth. It still hurts to touch, but this “fire” is warming the chilly water. Following human fire use patterns these squids continue to maintain wildfires for warmth, finding them usefull even on the best of days as the coral spears only get harder when exposed to heat. Then one day a random guy using a floating construct lights a fire. This tinkerer gains regard as floating strutures get fires fueled by inedible old kelp stoked on their tops. Of course why do they make metal stuff with this tech? Ever sence the use of fire as a spear harder was found the squids have been sticking things in to test them out. And one thing leads to another and they make metal gear. Ta dah.
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Breath-powered smelters may start as bellows-powered hydrauliphones. Some individuals may start to blow air through these hydrauliphones to show their strength and power. They may then discover some sort of flammable but waterproof substance, which could be put in these instruments to produce fire. This fire-pipe could be changed for different purposes, until it would be usable for smelting ore
If the limit is that the creature would never discover how to, then why is it restricted to thrive? A game where you, the player, know beyond any current creature there. Also, in the events you have listed
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The experimentation of bubbles
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Studying thermal applications in non-marine spaces
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Observe different materials in these non-marine spaces including metals
Enjoy your smehtal. The applications are harder progressively, but you can apply progressive difficulty to anything you are trying to advance. It is sensical for a smart underwater creature to eventually experiment with removing water from an area. From this experimentation will come all sorts of new tests, one of them probably a heat test. The main problem I see with all these designs that I’m not sure of is oxygen. How do you filter a bubble to make it purely oxygen?
An aquatic newt-like creature (life-cycles include an eft-stage) could easily smelt metal by sending their efts to land to do it for them. A similar method would work with fully-aquatic creatures enslaving amphibious creatures for the same purposes
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Its good, but not better to just go to underwater-volcano or highel active tectonic fracture, like the north-atlantic tectonic fracture? like they hot stuff? like make a completely sealed vessel, send it to a hot spot, and open it to a casting surface? I Just throwing.
I really don’t want to get involved in the underwater discussion, but…
How would they enslave something that needs to be at least close to their intelligence? Also wouldn’t the amphibious species be able to really easily repel with the new metal stuff they are forced to make? Using slave labour to manufacture guns seems like an apt comparison.
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The amphibious creature only needs to be smart enought to smelt metal, which could make them far less intelligent than the aquatic species. The aquatic species could also be more powerful; not even all the weapons in the world could protect a few small amphibians from an army of sea-monsters
Are you suggesting they use… hydrothermal vents to smelt metal? You know, the most memed and disproven suggestion about underwater civs?
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I dont have any better idea, one how doesn’t break reality XD. In true, its need a lot of heat to smelt something. the problem in underwater heat its the water itself, a natural cooling . if isolated the metal from water, its maybe melt faster. but I the end, its the best opsin, if u cant make a fire in water (if u have a Greek fire…), its magma, a dangers one, but the only way to do it, or wait to a asteroid to hit, its will make a lot of heat 