Our mission is to debate and speculate within the bounds of the details of published Arkadian documents found in the "Chronicles of Arkadia" or Ingame info released by Arkadia! Lets try and use all the information provided by Milton lee, the IFN, sanctuary cove security force, and to maintain academic neutrality the smugglers, in order to figure out if the ortan are still a major threat, what happened after they conquered the Arkadians? What other secrets could the info we have unearthed reveal!
I think their behavior pattern is consistent with a hive type species. In most hive type species the "excess" units tend to be left behind when the main group moves, and either die off or survive on auto-pilot within their bounds. We have yet to get any solid data on their production process, but in one log from a scout team a female was taken prisoner rather then killed immediately. Was this an indication that they breed in a similar way to mammals? Or were they thinking to take her to a "thinker" type for interrogation? This particular event raises a lot of questions and due to the lack of our ability to interrogate the ortan leaves to many open doors for real conclusions to be drawn. My stance is his - The ortan are a nomadic hive like species that conquered arkadia long ago, how long we are unsure. But I believe their "thinking" types left with their fleet leaving behind a few warrior types that over time and an unknown reproduction process repopulated arkadia and behave based on genetically programmed behaviors. A lack of communication devices with the ability to swarm multiple bases with some form of coordination in timing indicated some kind of natural communication. However with this in mind a lack of strategy doesn't indicate a lower IQ since they were able to work a teleportation device, perhaps it's a time thing or how much data can be processed and resent to the rest at once? The hive mind or possible controller isn't capable of adjusting so many ortan to incorporate strategy other then sneak up, and surround. Or maybe it is just a hive mentality with no controller, but whatever form of rapid breeding they have has caused them to evolve to genetically favor a war of attrition without considering it's tactical application. My curiosity and greatest worry is that we are only dealing with those left behind after the looting fleet sacked Arkadia and left long ago. If that fleet does exit is it receiving information from the ortan on Arkadia?
The Signal is fully decoded ref: section 2.8: (page 46) "From starting, the beings whose name they gave as Oratan, came to this world. Sought not they to trade or learn. They did seek only to steal and kill. We met with them above the skies. We met with them on the land. Unlimited numbers had they. But led by the Knights, with technology of Arkadia superior, the people did hope. Then did we learn to target the Olatar, to exterminate them. With the Oratan leaders gone, likely was victory to at last happen after many solar cycles. The hope of the people did seem real." It doesn't outright state a hive mind is the case. So I'll also suggest Oratan could be a creature that's acting somewhat similar to wolves and a leader is a larger alpha wolf so to speak. (For those who don't know: a single wolf isn't a huge threat they are like a dog just maintain eye contact and bop their nose if confronted. But a wolf pack is deadly and can take down anything, even a healthy moose or bear.) So there's no doubt the Oratan came to Arkadia from space. The Signal indicates the Olatar were all killed on & around Arkadia, hence the massive amounts of ship debris in space. There is no indication the Oratan fleet ever left Arkadia. How many fleets are there? How much more advanced would a fleet be after thousands of years of looting other civilizations technologies? Vastly advanced or too much doesn't make sense, so let's rule this out. Oratan like to cluster, so its safe to assume that whatever ships the Olatar took over would swarm together going from planet to planet and made it to Arkadia. The storyline made it very clear that there's more ship debris around Arkadia then you can shake a stick at. Oddly it doesn't state that any attempt to salvage ship parts was made. Oddly no attempt to find any bodies in space either, and space is great for preservation. Most likely IF any Olatar are found then they'll be released when our people find an escape capsule/stasis field on, or nearby, Arkadia... And I strongly favour this because our people are apparently still searching for the source of The Signal. Also the strange energy spikes that Milton Lee wanted to research just before his death wasn't explained/investigated either... But perhaps the strange energy was simply the Oratan's version of teleport pads being used in some undiscovered caves underground... Ultimately, the story will be made to fit whatever the devs put into the game.
Things that really have me hung up still are 1 - no more space flight, even if the ships were destroyed they should be built again. And if you can build a ship you can build a gun, and ortan on arkadia seem to have no original technologies. Makes sense if this happened thousands of years ago, their gear would have broken and they would be constantly salvaging arkadia.... but only if they lacked the intellect to make their own. 2 - ortan suicide missions of small scout parties for no apparent reason. If none live who brings the info back? 3 - as suggested in the story they learned to target the Olatar because that gave them their best chances of survival based on experience. At the moment their strategy is fairly basic, and their "own made" technology like living quarters and lighting structures are extremely primitive. Which to me means were facing a really dumbed down version of the enemy at the moment. So over all personally I still think it's something like a hive mentality, and the Olatar left the loose change after getting to essentials. Maybe like an ant colony for good and the worker/warrior castes left are just doomed, or maybe they use conqured planets as breeding grounds and we just haven't been around long enough to be noticed if they aren't currently drawing troops from the planet. I dont know though, lots of if's and I'm really excited too see the next chapter soon
Interesting reads, thanks for all the info & reports given! I believe we have to find the answers to other questions first before we can answer what the Oratan are. 1) What was the Oratan Society like before the Invasion of Arkadia? 2) Did the Arkadians succeed in destorying the Olatar and in wich fashion? 3) What caused the downfall of the Arkadians? I try as good as I can to answer these questions. 1) I believe that the Oratans had a very complicated Society structure. A bit like insects like ants with workers, warriors & the queen, yet with at least double the classes. Today we encounter five: A) Prospector, the mining or working-class. B) Slasher, the common warrior-class. C) Axe, some kind of Slave-class. D) Lancer, a Leaders-class. E) Oratan (no class), some kind that doesn't fit yet into the other classes. 2) My believe is that the Knights of Arkadia almost succeeded. Good enough to let the Olatar not take full controll over the Oratans. Not good enough to completely destroy all their influences. I explain later why I think this is so. 3) The Arkadians might have done one desperate attack on the Olatars, all or nothing. Because I first think that the Knights failed, it then stands to reason that the surviving Oratan Army could take on the now defenseless Arkadian cities. The following is very much speculation: The Oratans are left crippled, they no longer have the power (either by intelligence, will or coöperation) to swarm the stars and take what they need and kill who oppose them. I think that the Oratans, just like ants, are ruled by a live-giving Queen. She gives birth to only four kinds of classes: Axe (slaves), Oratan, Olatar and Females. The Axes develope no intelligence. They work as slaves and only do what they are told by the others. The Oratans are more intelligence, yet they can only use technology and not recreate it themselves unless told how to. Depending on their level of intelligence they either become A) Prospector, B) Slasher or D) Lancer. The E) Oratan (no class) is a yet undeveloped individual and it should henceforth be wise to kill them before they mature into a Lancer. The Olatar were the Ruling-class. They could figure out how to recreate technologies given to them from the common Oratans. The could plan ahead and coördinate a battle-plan. They control the Oratans and Axes. I think that the Knights of Arkadia succeeded in killing the mature Olatars, yet not the infants. Thus the Olatar Ruling-class remained in place, yet now without their previous leadership and experience. This explains why the Oratan Society has not fallen apart (no internal strive suggestion a common leader). It explains why they haven't yet been able to reproduce technology (a setback thousand years left them unable to regain the knowledge of their elders). The Females are there to take care of the young and when the Queen is at the end of her live and new darling Princess will take her place. We can hope that such a change might also cause a bit of internal strive in the ranks of the Olatar, Oratan and Axes. In closing, I think that the Smuggler's, under the leadership of the former IFN battlegroup-leader Ned, discovered the Olatar and made contact with them (the Olatars are the ones who are capable of communication with other sentient beings). They have formed a thruce (right word, sorry non-native English after all ... I mean that they agreed not to fight each other) and Ned feeling left alone by the IFN deceided to form his own group, the Smugglers. Beware, the Olatar are out there. Just my thoughts.
Interesting... I was thinking that Knights tried to assault Olatar but that their attack failed. Now, when re-read that part maybe their attack was successful after all. If Oratan was able to build spaceships (even if they are just transport ships in large numbers) they would need some resources for it. If we consider them as scavengers, who invade planets, steal their resources and knowledge, even if they used slaves of conquered planets to collect needed materials, build ships for them they still need to supervise shipbuilding to stop any sabotages and delays. So, they must have some kind of scientist of their own who would combine acquired knowledge of defeated species with existing Oratan technology. With each planet conquered they should have more and more technology, and technology itself would become more sophisticated. So, some kind of Academy to train pilots for ships would be needed, I doubt Olatar would allow slaves to operate ships. So Oratan should have warriors specialized in piloting, operating ship systems, weapon systems, hyper drives... That means on their homeworld they must train warriors that can use existing technology. Based on what we found on Arkadia I think that after conquest Oratan fleet has moved to find another target. My assumption is even if they have unlimited number, number of skilled experienced warriors (some kind of elite troops) is limited. After they conquer planet they leave large number of lesser warriors, like one we met just to maintain their rule upon defeated world. In time those untrained less intelligent Oratan had multiplied in numbers. What do we not know is how they multiplied because so far we have not encountered Oratan queens of any kind or Oratan infants. Maybe main Oratan fleet has left some technology well guarded in Oratan controlled areas that is able via genetic engineering to produce more of these warriors populating Arkadia. But even that technology would need some resources, so maybe its that reason why Prospectors are mining planet surface and collecting materials. Those materials, I guess, are transformed in some kind of materials Oratan technology installed on Arkadia can use. Olatar could have position some kind of engineers on Arkadia who have job to maintain this technology. They should teach new generations of engineers their knowledge or sleep in stasis chambers until their services are needed. Anyway, so far they should be aware that some foreign power has landed on Arkadia and challenged Oratan rule. Maybe they have already alarmed main Oratan fleet and we should expect state-of-the-art Oratan fleet to arrive and engage fleet Arkadia. We do not know at which level of technology Oratan fleet is now and if we would be able to resist. We can hope some other alien power more advanced than Oratan has defeated them, but that is just a hope, we can't be sure. There is a lot of things that I missing in this theory. For example, if Oratan are indeed just a scavengers, why would they leave anyone on world they already plundered? If resources are renewing at decent rate Oratan would need some mean of transport of those resources to their homeworld. If troops remained on Arkadia has duty to collect this renewed resources. They don't have any ships currently on Arkadia, so maybe we should expect Oratan fleet that have job to transport resources soon or they are using some kind of portals between Arkadia and their homeworld to transport goods. I hope its not that portals are in question because it would be really tough to have infinite number of Oratan warriors coming to Arkadia trough portals from entire galaxy. And if they stockpile resources and waiting ships to transport them we should encounter some kind of Oratan structures like warehouses and military structures to protect those resources.
I re-read the signal, and my view is that Olatar were on a different level than the Oratan we see. Olatar were intelligent controllers, while "our" Oratan are (almost) mindless brutes. Maybe this is a result of breeding or genetic engineering (like in Brave New World), or maybe they are even different species. In any case, the end of of Olatar control has left Oratan as primitive prehistoric society. Sort of like the Zerg/Tyranids revert to basic animal behavior when controlling influence is gone. Occasional coordinated attacks might be due to some of Olatar surviving in hiding, or some Oratan evolving thinking and control. More generally, I see two plot holes in the StoryLine: 1. If human colony wants to recover the technology of old Arkadians, why dig on the planet when there is whole lot of spaceship debris in orbit? Surely spaceship technology is as advanced as anything used planetside, and it is better preserved and easier to find. 2. Why so much focus on Arkadia technology when we know it could not protect them from Oratan? Shouldn't the first priority be to find out how the Oratan reproduce, and break the cycle? I do have a theory about #2, again inspired by a WH40K universe, namely Orks: - they reproduce through spores, hence no queen - they are drawn to fighting, or breed more when they are killed (like in Monsters 2 movie) - as their numbers grow, more advanced "classes" are being born (workers-> soldiers-> engineers-> leaders)
What if the Oratan are, more simply, a slightly less evolved sentient species (like Homo Habilis or Homo Erectus) who were enslaved and imported, from another world, by the Arkadians? It would explain the adeptness with which the Oatan learn to use technology and, at the same time, why they don't move forward and develop technology. It would explain the primitive building techniques observable in Arkadian ruins (given that these were built according to techniques known to a less technologically advanced culture) and it would explain why the Oratan decided to wipe out the original Arkadians (while neglecting to include the rest of the universe in their purge). It's also suggestive of the likelihood that the Oratan turned Arkadian revive technology to serve their own purposes - which would explain how they seem to keep coming back and aren't particularly bothered by yet another glorious death in battle. And if the Arkadians were using them in all their ships, those would probably be the first thing to go once the slave revolt got going...
Why would Sal'diresh lie about this then? In the Signal he said that the Oratan didn't want to trade which is hardly something you would want to do with slaves. He couldn't have known that humans will pick up the Signal. It might as well have been picked up by someone who would be more willing to crush a slave rebellion than help repel an alien attack.
Let's just back up a little and look at what's going on. We have a signal coming out of a, putatively, war-torn planet seeking military assistance against a purportedly "evil" enemy. Ring any bells? Let me drop the hint by pointing out that, in this situation, the story's always the same and both sides always lie and exaggerate their own righteousness and the other side's malice. After all, "All warfare is based on deception", Sun Tzu, Art of War, 1:18 Of special peculiarity is the fact that we haven't heard the Oratan's side of the story. It's as if the Oratan only want us to hear what's in the signal because, if the signal communicated something the Oratan found inconvenient, surely someone would have something to say about it. So, looking at the signal, in context, we are faced with certain mandatory questions. Firstly, how can we be sure that Sal'diresh is not just an Oratan sock puppet devised to lure well-intentioned civilizations into an ambush – for the purpose of piracy? How is it that we see no architectural evidence of indigenous space-faring civilizations? The surface ruins, if you look closely, exhibit block on block construction techniques typical of a bronze-age civilisation and Aakas sports the remains of a shrine dedicated to an apex predator. The only evidence of space-faring civilization is in space - at least according to the accounts of the first fleet to arrive. Looking more closely at the Oratan themselves, they appear to wear some kind of breathing apparatus. It could be, perhaps, some ritualistic decoration or it could be evidence that the Oratan are not from Arkadia, such as breathing apparatus or even a pneumatic restraint. This does not resolve the first question regarding the existence of Sal'diresh. If we determine the presence of breathing apparatus on the Oratan, all it establishes is that they did not evolve on Arkadia. Should this be the case, it raises a couple of possibilities. Were the Oratan brought to Arkadia as slaves? If so, where are the remains of their former, evidently space-faring, masters? Where are the slave pens? What if the Oratan are exiles and Arkadia is where they are stranded – perhaps by long range, one-way teleport? It would readily explain how they are so regularly restocked, why they do not seem to develop technology of their own and would suggest that, in order for them to escape, they would have to acquire access to spaceships. So, how would a bunch of interstellar convicts, stranded on the space-faring equivalent of colonial Australia (without the governor and his red-coats), conspire to get their hands on a suitable means of transportation off this somewhat more inhospitable rock? Well, a suitably heroic fiction, such as Sal'diresh of the Signal, would probably make a very good siren call. The readiness with which the Oratan adapt to “new” technology may be suggestive of a former familiarity with it. The incident with the teleporters is a good example, here. Moreover, had Milton Lee not been so devoted to covering up his own mistakes (even in the face of death) then, perhaps, it might have been IFN ships that got hijacked by the Oratan and, as for those which successfully resisted, perhaps their remains would have added to the accumulating space junk in orbit while the rest were flown to more hospitable climes by the Oratan hijackers. This idea that Arkadia is a place of imprisonment for Oratan exiled from their home may well seem more complex, but I think it fits the facts better than the story carried by the signal. Of course, one of the delights of life is the tendency of emerging facts to force the modification of ideas into new and interesting variations.
This is a very good point, but if the Oratan have such advanced technology to create the Signal, why didn't they just build a spaceship, or anything else for that matter (their villages are just tents). Unless their apparent primitiveness is a part of a very clever trap... It would definitely help to find the source of the Signal. Also, according to Sundari the ruins we found are thousands of years old. It would be a veeeery patient race to wait thousands of years to hitchhike a ride out of a planet they seem to flourish on. I think the most important question is what Milton Lee found in the caves? That's when the real problems started and it should have been easy to find out once Fleet Arkadia arrived. It seems that until then the Oratan were somehow subdued.
I'm going to come back to the Oratan question in my next reply here. I would just like to ask why we might think that the signal is so advanced? We have the basic conceptual components all mapped out in the academic journals; "evolutionary" programming, heuristic models, linguistics, etc. I think that the only reason we don't have anything like "the signal" is that we don't have a compelling need to develop it.
Perhaps we could make a sort of signal, but could we make it in such a way that it would transfer itself over unknown communication means and understand language that we have no notion of? The potential rescuers could be using vastly different technology and I'm assuming whoever created the Signal wanted to get their message across to everyone ideally. In other words, could we prepare a piece of code that could communicate successfully with an unknown object in space, hack a totally unknown encryption, then take over that object, force it to transfer that piece of code, and then learn a whole alien language? Remember we could be talking about vastly different ways of thinking. Anyway, for the sake of the story, I'm willing to accept that when the protagonists say it's advanced, then it is advanced. Plus it definitely seems way beyond the capabilities of the Oratan.
ned is the hive mind the arkadians destroyed the fleet they rode in on and there own to trap them. Current oratan are whats left of the arkadians. And the signal came from the oratan when they picked up our communications cause they need a way off the planet and fresh stock of meat suits. probly not really but its what I think.
Definitely a yes. That self-building "evolutionary" approach to software development against a predetermined testbed is how a piece of software could be set up to self-adapt to any hardware architecture or operating environment. The trickiest part is how to make it tippy-toe around all the security-related eggshells. If you want to open communications with a new contact, it's important to not do anything to antagonize the other side and, thereby, terminate your attempt to open negotiations. So revealing anything which confirms hacking any encrypted data is a definite blunder - and is also a very reliable indicator concerning your attitude. When, during the process of opening communications, you start breaking encryption, your invasion of the other side's privacy clearly communicates contempt and, ergo, hostile intentions - and I'm yet to see a single, solitary historical example which demonstrates otherwise. Thankfully, another language, in "plaintext" is not an example of encryption. If it were encrypted, there would be no possible way to break the encryption without, first, learning the language from a statistically significant, unencrypted sample and then developing a detailed linguistic understanding of structure and key statistical distribution of common linguistic elements. So while data acquisition may well include encrypted streams, the analysis works from the streams which are not encrypted and it is necessary for that analysis to be anchored in the real world, perhaps by statistical association of words with pictorial elements. In point of fact, this approach to developing an understanding of newly encountered languages is independent and wholly unrelated to "ways of thought" such as they may present themselves in another culture. The idea that language is related to cultural "ways of thought" (as opposed to communicating a universally present variety of "ways of thought") is a modern superstition originating from our own cultural tendency to attribute supernatural predictive powers to logic and probably not helped by our tendency to presume that any explanation is better than no explanation (probably related to economy of pedagogy - but that's a whole other article). A "way of thinking" as an evolved mechanism, however, doesn't have nearly as much potential for variation as people may think. Basically, "ways of thinking" are evolved to serve universal psychological needs which are meagerly a product of focus on basic ecosystem elements such as victuals, mobility, predators, symbionts (including mates), shelter, and maybe one or two other things. All in all, these things are universal to functioning ecosystems and, just as life strategies revolve around a focus on any given element of this limited set, the number of "ways of thinking" is likewise limited to the diversity of demands imposed on the organism by the environment. In other words, a "way of thinking" is meagerly an extension of one life strategy or another - and the number of possible life-strategies is limited to the number of possible demand types present in a functioning ecosystem. Essentially, the number of possibilities is limited by optimization, just as the number of useful solutions to a mathematical problem are limited to those solutions which are both correct and applicable. We live on a planet with great cultural diversity, for example and, yet, in the broader sense, we can observe only two approaches to the development of writing; Representing complete sounds (syllables) with unique symbols (e.g. Korean, Ancient Minoan, etc.) and Representing sound components ("letters") with unique symbols (e.g. Farsi, Latin, etc.) The reason there are so few surviving approaches to the conceptualisation of written language, on this level, is because these examples represent the naturally selected pinnacles of optimization as they apply to written language. System optimization tends towards the top few system varieties and, thus, however diverse the species, the functioning system of the organism, for example, remains the same throughout the species and retains an overwhelming proportion of overlap throughout genus, family, order and class. This is because increasing entropy shifts complexity from systemic diversity to systemic intricacy as the work potential, or usability of energy, steadily decreases. Ultimately, lower use-thresholds for the conversion of energy from higher potential (e.g. heat accumulated from direct sunlight) to baseline potential (e.g. ambient air temperature), limit the number of viable niches for systems to operate in by raising the necessary minimum complexity of systems capable of operating under those conditions. Likewise, as individuals participate in community dialogue, "ways of thought" on a social level will ultimately evolve towards the single approach which is most robust and reliable with respect to the objective of engaging in dialogue. This process of not-so-natural selection reduces the number of "ways of thinking" until, at a high degree of civilization there can only be one "way of thinking"; namely, the most reliable. It is a safe bet that the prerequisite for interstellar space travel is a level of thought which, for example, is entirely intolerant of superstitious elements of thought such as belief (as opposed to acceptance of the fact that whatever is uncertain is, quite simply, unknown), status-obsession (i.e Jack's got 29 Ph.D.s and Jill has only 28 Ph.D.s and a Masters degree - therefore jack must be right), sheep-syndrome (i.e. consensus "thinking", e.g "100 scientists against Einstein" etc. Ad Naseum) delusion (e.g. "theories of everything", Ancient Greek fantasy that everything can be anticipated by logic alone, etc.) Ultimately, what we are missing, in order to reach the next star system, is counter-intuitive (i.e. "illogical" with respect to our current perception of the world) and, quite possibly, contradicts something which lacks confirmation but which we assume is true because of the numbers and status of people who endorse the idea and the fact that the idea explains so many things so nicely. Luminiferous aether was one such example. And I use the past tense loosely because, in spite of all too many denials issuing forth from academia, the idea survives to this day in the mechanics of nearly all computer games portraying space - including Entropia Universe. This is an example of the kind of little problem which prevents us from making the next discovery about the real world. The bottom line is, as far as systems diversity goes, there's not exactly a lot of surprises in store. A language is always a standard of communication and standards of communication always depend on the same old set of specific elements which are universal because the difference between for example, being and doing, is universal. So the problem addressed by the signal is much simpler at a systemic level than it appears to be on the more superficial level of vocabulary, etc. Moreover, determining how to operate within an unknown machine architecture is exactly the same problem as determining how to translate into an alien language because the solution is, in both cases, the compilation of the applicable standard of communication. So, "the signal" would be a lot of work in development, but it's eminently doable in terms of late 20th century methodology currently in print. You'd need a good project manager (not a yes man who'll lead you in circles until the project funding runs out) and you'll need capable generalists rather than qualified specialists because the key solution is systemic or methodological rather than being specifically linguistic, mathematical, programmatic or statistical in nature.
There were times when I have wondered why the Australian Aborigines didn't just build aircraft and come visit us when we were still living in caves. I dare suggest that the answer is similar too. The variety of boomerang used as a children's toy depends on precise aerofoil design to allow it to swing back, in flight, and return to the user. The same concept of lift is what separates the modern glider from the primitive efforts of the Wright Brothers. Just because a people aren't as wealthy as we are doesn't mean they're "primitive". Evidently, the Australian Aborigines had the aerofoil for thousands of years before we even started to think about such things. However, unlike toy boomerangs, aircraft require lightweight structural materials which, in turn, require a tremendous amount of infrastructure development and upgrades before production is viable. You can't "just build" modern aircraft, much less spaceships, without precision machine tools and presses aluminium and titanium or, chromoly (lightweight, highly fatigue-resistant steel) lightweight engine and compatible fuel economical, large scale, high power energy production large power market to make industrial-scale power production economically viable And that's just your top end manufacturing infrastructure. To make any of this possible, you need to develop many, many more levels of manufacturing infrastructure across an incredibly broad and diverse production base - and this generational city-scale building doesn't come out of thin air. Someone has to pay for it and a lot of people have to do the work. By comparison, the Pyramids are not much to wonder at. An interesting challenge, if you ever have the time and money, is to take a group of willing participants out into the bush, "Survivor" style. Bring nothing with you other than your knowledge of how things work. Now, in the process of establishing clean water sources, receptacles for water collection, reliable and safe food, tools for acquiring and processing food safely, not to mention making and maintaining clothing and shelter appropriate to the local climate; just try to smelt some iron from the local materials and find out for yourself, just how difficult it is. If you succeed, then the end product is likely to be identified as mild steel instead because, thanks to the difficulty of keeping the smelting process clean, iron requires much more advanced production techniques than mild steel. In short, it doesn't matter how much you know, it still takes thousands of years to build and utilize and upgrade all the generations of production infrastructure necessary to go from pre-stone age crafting to semi-conductor era manufacturing. In the meantime, the most urgent concerns are breathable air (in the case of the Oratan), water, food, shelter (in the case of Homo Sapiens), medicine, not to mention sufficiently advanced social management systems to keep people of different temperaments from trying to burn eachother at the stake for "witchcraft" and other superstitious rationalizations - instead of bending to the task of "progress" from which most of them will not benefit in their lifetime. Now, if the Oratan had ships with which to meet the Arkadians in space, where's the reserve fleet? Where's the constant steady stream of supply, troop transport and command vessels - or freight vessels assuming they've won possession of the planet? This is where the whole Oratan invasion-force theory falls on its head. It could get interesting if we consider the use of interstellar teleportation devices. An advance-fleet might deploy only once in order to establish a secure beachead where the infrastructure of an interstellar teleporter is set up. From that point, the space fleet becomes redundant because teleportation channels between worlds effectively merge both worlds into one in every logistical sense. However, in the context of the physics of Entropia Universe (replete with it's very own luminescent aether to provide drag and turbulence in space), interplanetary teleportation is a bit of a stretch whereas interstellar teleportation? This brings us back to the options we are faced with if we ask ourselves why we should believe just anything we read or hear? And, in case anyone thinks that this level of thinking is beyond the scope of computer games, I would draw your attention to the fact that it is a theme which is, very much, front and centre in the 2013 game, "Shadow Warrior". After an overly credulous answer to some dialogue involving an improbable claim, the immortal words "I have found The One; The One who will believe anything" is just earth-shatteringly funny.
Wow, you went all out on this As for hacking encryption, I was referring to the fact that the Signal hacked the Celeste probe's encryption to send itself to Earth without any prior information about us. I still find it hard to believe that we could automagically communicate with aliens when we can't translate texts into human languages even though we have people actually using those languages and translating them manually (granted, machine translation is getting better, but still not that good). In fact, I'd say that, if possible, we should create our own Signal and blast it at every corner of space. That sounds like a very efficient way to contact any aliens there might be out there. The problem here is that we have no experience with beings other than humans so we can only speculate how much of a difference there would be. Even "simple" differences could be problematic, like representing numbers (think roman vs arabic). Ways of thinking can be grand or simple. A specific program can be written in many ways and if you're not the author, you have to understand how the author thought it out if you need to modify it. If humans were only using approach to writing #1, would they be able to decipher anything written using approach #2 without any context? The Aborigine example is off mark IMO. Remember that both the Arkadians and the Oratan had spaceships, so there must have already been the infrastructure needed to construct them on the planet and the Oratan did, in fact, have thousands of years to do it anyway. All that said, not all stories have to be scientifically accurate. Remember we are here for entertainment and if you suspend your disbelief, it gets much more enjoyable
We gotta keep this thread going. Here is one thing I noticed about Oratan - you cannot sweat them. Even though you can sweat other "humanoid" mobs like Zadul. So maybe Oratan are not true living beings - maybe they are undead, or clones, or some kind of cyborgs or bioengineered constructs. All of which could explain their disregard for own safety, and ability to reinforce their numbers fast.
