>>4260389
Bees. They pollinate our world and feed us delicious honey of knowledge and culture? But they're all asexual females.

keep going, i like this idea.

>horrifying to uneducated characters

bees = hive = COMMUNISM

Viking spiders.

>>4260427
And they're barely-conscious, communicate by dancing and have an average life expectancy of about a year.

maybe we saved them from extinction somehow. like how the honeybees are dying off from that bee std in the wild right now. we meet on their planter or they meet us here and we cure their shit, instant heroes and the hive mind never forgets a friend

Bees

BEARS for a laugh..

Beemen
Olms
Dogs
POSSIBLY BY EXTENT, KOBOLDS

I like the kobold think. The whole skulking deal is awesome, you can set some racist under-tones.

Woodlouse aka the one with a million local names.

They just seem so inoffensive unless you pick up a rock or something a huge pile of them scurry out in fear of the light.

>>4260440
moar of this

Super intelligent slimes.

A collective of bugs who keep an unspeakable at bay in the outskirts of the galaxy. Their grunts are mindless and disgusting, and this leads to their extermination by humans whenever they're encountered.
And humanity is not aware of their reliance of the bugs so in reality they are killing off their only allies against this looming threat.

>>4260458
>bees
>bears
Beears

>>4260456
Sounds like a Dr Who plot.

>>4260435
bees = 1 queen, thousands of drones = COMMUNISM?
pic related

>>4260456
Free gooey sugar-coated beegirlsex for everyone.

>>4260444
That being the teeny-tiny non-alien bees. The alien variety may be quite different

>>4260444
Also, they're all on ecstacy.

* * *

Fat aphid bastids who are fed by an underspecies of "only intelligent in a group" units, and shit milk for the underspecies to eat.

* * *

Cephalic moths. Fragile as dust, but insightful thinkers who unify science and maths in a total-philosophy that appears religious to an outsider, and based more around cultural-mythic tales than "human ordered knowledge." The brightest humans in fields such as commerce, economics, science, literature, theology, history all scrape for flecks of wisdom that strike them dumb. The moth-culture is so supreme that the meme itches the human mind apart, but bright burning students flock around the moths, trying to dance the mind itch without being consumed.

BEE BEARS!

>>4260477
Yes, that's exactly it

>>4260474
believe it or not but, I have never seen an episode of Dr Who in my life. and after meeting hardcore Dr Who fans I never want to

>For one thing, the bugs are humanity's oldest and closest ally.
Non-cliched but not entirely new; the thranx (basically big locusts) in the Humanx Commonwealth novels by Alan Dean Foster are just that.

>>4260500
Staling was this large.

Man, I used to have a toy of that thing - it was huge

It'd make a great Biotitan

Two answers for you:

They are a hive species, and our leaders have communicated with their leaders. However, they don't think like we do, so we do not know how stable the relationship is. All the workers (not the queens) are mindless, so we cannot communicate with them, and anyone trying to communicate with a queen that is not a planetary leader is killed, as the queen sees them as just an expendable drone who is malfunctioning.

The bugs do not have intelligence of any kind, but seem to evolve through some kind of collective rapid evolution. We don't "communicate" with them: We have developed a series of synthetic pheromones that disguise us/control them. Soldiers pop out a scent tube, break it on the ground, and the bugs start swarming the enemy.

The twist is that while the adventurers are fighting the insects, they discover that in fact, no you ARE THE INSECTS
And then the adventurers are spiders.

>>4260511
Its a little known fact, but Stalin was 100 meters high. Later in life Stalin grew Distant from the Soviet People, despite his essential dialectical materialist advances, such as the Short Course History of the Communist Party Soviet Union (Bolshevik), and "On Linguistics". He stopped wearing clothes. His penis was giant. And red. Through mind lasers he threw back the Nazi hordes at Stalingrad.

Each member of the race is born into a specific caste and their society is devoted to the betterment of their race as a whole, but they all have individual personalities. They're ruled by a vast hive-mind composite conciousness but they influence it, not vice versa. They have a hand in every decision, because their over-mind has a little bit of all of them within it.

In terms of looks they vary based on role. Their diplomats are the least monstrous looking as they have been specifically altered to put us at ease.

Conversely their warriors are often tailored to look particularly monstrous to the specific enemies they are likely to battle. A swarm dispatched to aid earth in dealing with rebel humans would be designed to prey on human fears.

>>4260503
There is a GURPS Humanx book, btw.

>>4260547
Sounds awesome

Did nobody like my moths?

FUCK YOU. MOTHRA WILL AVENGE ME.

The bugs from the Ender books.

>>4260561
i liked your moths

>>4260565
Seconded, that's immediately what I thought of.

All bugs are highly intelligent, and like to drink port and smoke pipes while they discuss the latest intergalactic news.

>>4260561
Moths are good, stop crying.
It's Easter in America.

>>4260561
>>4260569
I liked Luminoth. They were kinda cool.

This is an excellent time to break out the MANTIS SHRIMP but you're totally wasting this opportunity to use MANTIS SHRIMP. Keep in mind that you may never utilize MANTISH SHRIMP in this K.O.ntext again.

Spiderpeople from A Deepness In The Sky?

>>4260569
<3

Do you think humans should be able to survive exposure to moths without destruction, surviving with some insight, but not a great one. Or should any contact lure humans closer and closer to the unknowable essential and drive them crazy like in the movie ∏?

Also, the moths should be very long living.

>>4260547
might cut out the idea that they can change what they look like so that they're all bug-like and intricately horrible xenomorphic nightmares... that way they keep the OP's "initially horrifying" stipulation.

other than that this idea seems good... i imagine them being suprisingly like humans when you get to know them and if you can get over the fact that they have a mass-conciousness which ISN'T evil.

What if they could introduce other races into their collective... Like the borg if the borg offered races the choice instead of taking them by force.
You could have humans that have been assimilated into the swarm (by their own choice) being noticeably... changed... but being perfectly happy with it.

>>4260494
>>4260547

Moths as the original designers of these sound kickass!

Cicadas.

Once every fourty years or so OMG! THERE'S FUCKING GIGANTIC BUGS EVERYWHERE! PREPARE THE SPACESHIPS WE'RE GOING TO WAR/TERRAFORM A BITCH PLANET WITH THEIR HELP!

>>4260511
Why did Russia sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? Because the were Staling for time. Get it? Haha. Seriously though, spell it right.

>>4260596
Oh, they still LOOK monstrous... but they SMELL and SOUND simply FABULOUS darling.

>>4260589
I like the "great insight at the risk of total mental destruction" idea... there'd probably be a black market in moth-dust as well

>>4260602
Or something akin to Peter Hamilton's Ly-silph, a bunch of plant-based lifeforms living on the moon of some huge gas giant that go through several stages of life ultimately ending in ENERGY BEINGS.

One of whom inadvertently cause the BIGGEST FUCKING CATASTROPHE IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY

>>4260596
Moths could be a part of the other ones society. They're the mad thinkers of the swarm as the hive-mind recognises that the logical intelligence of their science-bugs can only get them so far... they need the spark of creativity that the moths bring to allow them to try new avenues of research and to think outside the box when it comes to new problems.

And yes, the Moths would probably end up being responsible for the design of new castes with the help of psychic research-bugs, a network of psychic caterpillars which are used to try and discern what might scare or calm various species. The caterpillars could be the larval form of the moths.

>>4260494
and
>>4260547

Are great. Hell, this is sci-fi, you can easily have both the thinker-moths and the hive mind going. You absolutely need the hive mind, though. If you're going anti-cliche, it's a must since the evil bug hive mind is one of the BIGGEST cliches.

>>4260547

I like this one, myself. An offshoot from the typical hivemind bug race, and they're intelligent enough to make some effort in diplomacy. They probably need some cultrual things to make them still alien, like they place value in things that seem odd or downright disgusting to humans.

>>4260656
If you're going tinkerer moths, go look up the Luminoth. They look like tree-hugging hippy elf analogues at first, but they also have insane supertech.

Also Quadraxis.
Holy fuck.

>>4260624
I thought that the point of Commonwealth saga was, that the Invasion of the dead thing happens to every civilisation, it's just that the human had the terrible misfortune to have to face it before they were really ready. On a universal scale of things, though, it was barely a blib.

Op here, thanks for all the ideas!
Okay, let's try to get shit done:

When we went into space, we expected to find apes or angels, or at best little grey men. But then we found the bugs - and they are kinda nice, really.

The Bugs are divided into several castes, all tailored to a specific function, although all Bugs may undergo sweeping body modification (such as adding additional arms or enlarging the brain.
They are connected with a collactive hivemind, much like humans connect to their machines, only biological and on a vastly larger scale. How it can effectively communicate over lightyears is at this point in time unknown.

Known castes include cephalic moths (which are thought to be the original designers of the various bug species), workers (almost mindless drones), warriors (freethinking individuals with a body design that is made to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies), diplomats (they were designed to make us look at ease, but looking like a bug-human-hybrid does not have that effect at all), and freelancers (travellers and explorers, their bodies vary a lot).

The bugs can and have in the past "uplifted" humans into a sort of bug-hybrid (which still look nothing like the diplomats). It's unknown why they offer this, although maybe it is their way of learning about us.

>>4260663
The obvious one for that would be excrement and other waste as they are bugs anyway... but that's possibly edging too close to the aliens in the latest Dr Who.

>>4260680
> may undergo sweeping body modification

i like the potential for this being both useful modifications for the bugs particular role and personal modifications based on tastes in the same way a human would have a tattoo or piercing. sounds like that would be most apparent in the freelancers.

>>4260680
Serenity Bug Edition.

>>4260680
I like it!

http://galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Thalan_Empire

In the early days of interstellar travelBees were geneticly modified to build giant honeycomb spaceships complete with planet terraforming options.
Any human that wants can get a place in a cell where they are nourished by royal jelly, kept safe, healed from all diseases and also changed slightly to better fit the rigours of colinisation.
When enough people to create a breeding population have embarked the space hive will swarm to the nearest unclaimed planet It will take many centuries to reach this. woe betide colonists who have travelled by other means including FTL or warp and have not invested in a pheremone emiting satelite as you guys are just biomass untill the colonists are woken in their new homes

>>4260636

So the bug version of Space Guild Navigator: "We cannot fold space without projecting dimensions. Alas, everything goes better on a full stomach" "They're asking for dinner, sire"
>>4260547
Why not semi-independent, like ants? Ants know the task they have assigned, and try to accomplish it on the go, changing orders when problems arise. This would make them great tactical, spearhead, flexible and guerrilla fighters, but poor strategists with somewhat unsecure logistics.

And then you get things like anti-air bugs being ordered to capture rebels because until the right bug reinforcement arrives.

The bugs like us, they really really like us. Generally they prefer to trade for the vast variety of human culture, having long overcome insectocentric imperialism within their own socio-economic unit. This is a general feature of their life, they greatly enjoy the finer things in life. Specialist human micro-production is highly valued in all spheres, and, if anything, they are willing to support craft mentality by providing bulk industrial goods and technological exchange.

The bugs, in short, wish to be our symbiots.

>>4260764
The moths generally enjoy research grants, travel funding, research retreats, not having to teach younger moths / humans, and trying to mate with younger moths. If left to themselves they grow corpulent and set up semi-monastic institutions, with heavy wool carpeting, dark lighting, and lots of non-fragrant woods.

While libraries and search engines do exist, for traditional reasons they prefer long chants.

>>4260764
>Why not semi-independent, like ants? Ants know the task they have assigned, and try to accomplish it on the go, changing orders when problems arise. This would make them great tactical, spearhead, flexible and guerrilla fighters, but poor strategists with somewhat unsecure logistics.

I like this idea: it gives a great place for humans to bond with the hive. We are welcomed with open arms into the empire with our lateral minds, mental independence, organizational micro-management skills and supporting technology. We're the best advisers, middle-men, diplomats, accountants, traders and mid-ranking officers; in essence our presence within the hive makes up for it's failings and increases expansion.

how about i include some of the HUMANS FUCK YEAH! thread from the other night?

This was Heinlein's greatest lesson - Mankind always wins because mankind is the baddest of asses., HUMANS FUCK YEAH!. Human Pride niggaz. We're hard as fucking nails.Aliens can suck on our terrifyingly rigid genitalia.
humans are Rorschach in SPAAAAACE. They're the fuckers who hid in your cryo-compartment and then twist off your mandibles.
Humans are so fucking hard-core that we make the other alien races piss themselves with fear at thought of us turning on them. humans breathe oxygen, one of the most poisonous materials in the universe. It's the same fucking thing that makes FIRE. It fucking kills METALS, and we need it to BREATHE.Humans cook their food by blasting it with microwave radiation. Even our cows, which we eat, are FUCKING MONSTROUS. An alien will shit himself if a cow moos at him, it's a fucking 500kg slab of muscle and fat, capable of crushing a man to death. We made an industry of killing , eating, and using their bodily remains.

This is why the bugs like us we are the baddest badasses in space and we are their badass buddies

cont
Look at what else we do!
We take our own violent nature, and turn it into entertainment. Action movies, violent video games, even sports like martial arts or fencing are all derived from actions which, in the end, are intended to end the lives of sentient beings. and we enjoy them in our spare time.

We roll POISON into little cylinders and SMOKE IT TO RELAX! We expose ourselves to harsh environments with nothing but nylon for shelter for pleasure! Some countries even allow Everydayman Pissant to carry around death dealing projectiles.

OF COURSE BEING HUMAN MAKES US AWESOME!

The bugs and humans have little in common and don't really like each other. However they have a common enemy, a Sentient AI machine race that seeks to eliminate Biological threats.

Humans need the Bugs because the bugs can produce troops faster than the machines, the bugs need the Humans cause the Bugs can't understand technology (they use organic based stuff) and have trouble comprehending how the Machine race thinks.

cont
WATCH OUT, YOU ALIEN MOTHERFUCKERS, I'VE GOT A BRAINCASE AND I WILL USE IT TO BEAT YOU TO DEATH. We poison our air and water to weed out the weak. We set off fission bombs in our only biosphere. We nailed our god to a stick. Don't fuck with the human race. We drink poison too, and derive enjoyment from the temporary malfunctioning it causes in our higher brain functions. The higher the toxin level the greater the beverage; diluting the toxin with water is severely frowned upon. Entire sectors of the Human leisure industry are dedicated to the production and sale of liquid inebriants which damage the body's internal organs and cause dehydration. Humans sometimes make a GAME out of consuming these inebriants. We synthesize chemicals that are put into our brains to trigger chemical shock for the EXPRESS PURPOSE OF HALLUCINATING!

We are FUCKING HARDCORE!

>>4260807
So humanity is the jews?

cont
Humans are actually ambush predators par excellence. Pursuit and all that? Not so much. But Jesus Christ we will fuck your shit up in a surprise attack with everything we have. Humans are The only species willing to strap explosives to themselves, infiltrate a public facility, and kill or maim an untold number of innocents to prove a point. Many believe that they will be rewarded for detonating garments packed with explosives in public spaces whilst still maintaining that the deity is benevolent. The belief that a deity can be glorified through the detonation of crude explosive devices has been present in almost all sects almost since the invention of explosives. We're willing to purge entire subsections of our species on the flimsiest of ridiculous and completely nonsensical justifications. Humans took a long time to fully develop methods of preserving history, and so much of their past is only remembered by what methods of war were currently being waged and what ores were in use for weapons. FUCK YEAH HUMAN WARLUST. IT'S FUCKING ON, NOW.

>>4260828
>bugs can drain the Mechanoids of energy

FUCKING ANGEL

cont
Humans are so hardcore their first innovations were ways of making killing easier.we tested the A bomb when several people WHO BUILT IT said there was a chance that it would END ALL LIFE AS WE NOW IT. And now we're firing up the LHC which MIGHT make a black hole.One Human can be bad enough, but get a few of them together and you better watch what you say.Fuck your scything space-lasers. We've got men with future-shotguns slamming into your hull AND THEY ARE GOING TO SKULLFUCK YOU WITH MAGSPIKE BOOTS.
We are ALL crazy motherfuckers.Humans can make implements of death out of ANYTHING, despite lacking any built-in weapons.

>>4260814
HARD BOILED TALES OF SPACE WARRIOR-CASTE HUMANS!

SERGENT HUMAN IN SPACE!

Last transmit-dance you watched the tale of how HARD THORAXED, UN-PRE-DIGESTED EATING, SIDEWAYS THINKING daredevil of the six to the sixth power plus two Leg-Warriors SERGENT HUMAN stowed aboard a warm-furry-wrong-species SPACE SHIP despite CRYOGENESIS which would freeze a hot loving insect like you or me but to SERGENT HUMAN just meant he needed MORE FOOD.

This Episode, SERGENT HUMAN acts without group assistance to single-manipulator DEFEAT and EAT the horrible foreigns attacking the insecto-human dyad in the two times six to the power of three plus four quadrant!

>>4260831
were the bug crazy pitbull friend? they like us but we also terrify them into venting ammonia whenever we make a noise.

cont
Don't mess with homo sapiens sapiens. It took more than 50 years from the invention of the "motorcar" before laws were passed to ensure the use of safety restraints in said vehicles. Yet weapons were mounted in said vehicles almost instantly. Humans are constantly conditioned almost from birth to regard lethal violence as valid entertainment, and are taught to revere those who choose to kill other humans as a career. We routinely bombard ourselves with high amplitude sonic vibrations as a recreational activity. The more intense energy output used in this activity, the better the experience.
ROCK ON HUMANITY!

WE'RE COMING FOR YOU NEXT, ET. ALIENS YOUR GAME IS THROUGH COS NOW IT'S TIME TO ANSWER TO HUMANITY, FUCK YEAH!

its like having a semi tame begbie for a buddy no one will fuck with you in fear of thier asses and lives

>>4260862
no they got over that along time ago. they know they are safe withh us and vice versa, we`re family for lack of a better term. but if someone else starts shit we got each others back.

>>4260680
>But then we found the bugs - and they are kinda nice, really.
>all tailored to a specific function,
>They are connected with a collactive hivemind
>How it can effectively communicate over lightyears

... you just described the plot to Macross: Frontier. The Vajra bugs kinda look like this

Space Roaches.

They're everywhere. High breeding rate, high resistances to toxins/radiation. Basically, anywhere where humans go, the roaches are either there already or show up eventually. They prefer food that's been "pre-digested" due to fermentation, so roach cuisine always smells like rotting garbage to humans, and the smell pervades their camps/settlements. They're merchants and opportunists, and tend to set up business on the fringes of human settlements. Junk collection/scrapping/recycling, sewage treatment. Janitors and landscapers.

Individually they're actually fastidiously clean, well-spoken, and friendly; but many humans avoid them both for their resemblance to "Earth roaches," and the stigma of being an underclass race. Their high breeding rate and short lives also makes them rather sanguine about death; any individual roach will probably have hundreds of siblings, dozens of whom die every year or so. The short lifespan, despite their mechanical aptitude and general intelligence, helps preserve them as a "second class species," since few roaches can afford the years of education and experience required to become inventors, scientists, engineers and so on. A roach will fix and tinker, but rarely manufacture.

>>4260914
They like ice cream

>>4260922
Why don't you take Unit 01 out to an Ice Cream Parlour and get a nice Float?

>>4260933
Ya know, if you wanted to tell me to GTFO, you could have just said it. Either way, I'll post just a few more concept art of them space buggers

This thread was good until this nigger arrived
>>4260814

Some great ideas here though. Especially with some peopel going to merge with the bugs for whatever purposes. Imagine the opposite, not all the bugs enjoy their communal mind and are fascinated by human independance, in human lands you will find bugs that have shut themselves off from their kin and strive to etch a living of their own in the towns or even as adventurers. Imagine the help to a settlement a soldier bug would be? ants can lift 10 timestheir weight, one the size of a person could win the whole place's admiration and respect.

>>4260957

>>4260963
>ants can lift 10 timestheir weight, one the size of a person
For this statement to be true, you'd have to ignore the square-cube law. Which, if you have giant space bugs running around, may not be too ridiculous, but it might stretch too many people's suspension of disbelief.

>>4260963
They wear full-body latex pheremonal regulators / aspirators to keep them in independent mode.

>>4260986

Bug culture as moving colonies. They are all life carriers in some way or other that grow with age by caste (space, air, land, hot, cold...) and are very intelligent, with more knowledge of spacefaring, ecology and astronomy than any rule and equation can give. If the planet needs push to be healthier, you will find bugs herding animal and vegetal populations.

Humans befriend them, because they are the best spaceships in existence, and a fleet of them can conduct awesome terraformation projects better than us. Otherwise, the bugs just chill and take their share of whatever they end up transporting. Humans bought them with videogames and architectural habitats.

>>4260990
And erm... giant multi-kilometer-long bug battleships? Fuck yes

>>4260963
this thread was fail till i got here

>>4261003
No.

>>4260963
I like humanity fuck yeah threads but this is more of a why are we allied with an alien species thread.
With soldier bugs I think their advantage would not be strength, due to science. but in their numbers and organisation.
How much more productive would a human village be if bug farmers traded a surplus with them?
In war the bugs might be better at recieving orders over long distances without radio, due to pheremones or high pitched noises. maybe they are fast like mantis shrimps?

>>4261003
have some Xenos loving

Building on the evolved castes and human/bug relations, imagine fembugs designed to be attractive to the human eye working as both ambassadors and in well connected areas, brothels of sex bugettes, previously perversion is something bugs had never experienced not only is it interesting, it's highly profitable. Humans are willing to pay quite a bit for some fun.

Ok, an empire wide psychic link would be hilariously ineffective in a sci-fi setting, by the time humans would discover the bugs they would be post-singularity. I don't think I need to point out the absolute superiority of transhuman civilization in comparison to bugs, our minds transferred to impossibly complex quantum computers, using the very fabric of space time as a computing medium. By the time bugs are producing a space going civilization using meat-computers and psychic mumbo-jumbo we would be boring tunnels between universes and encasing supermassive black holes in buckcarbon reinforced reactors.

I wish i was a drawfag... i'd love to draw a street-scene of some various castes of bug going about their business in a bug-planet road with semi-organic objects and buildings while one lone young bug stares at a poster growing out of the wall for CAPTAIN HUMAN.

But i'm more of a write-fag... so... i might write it... the bug gets obsessed with Captain Human and eventually a human friend of his, who has joined the collective, will say something along the lines of "If i'm possible then why can't you be the opposite"

At first the general reaction to the idea from other bugs is negative, they find the idea abominable... but certain members see the merits in the idea and speak on behalf of the young bug... eventually it comes down to the hive-minds ruling on the matter and all the bugs "plug in"...

Beyond protective fumes and ceramical husks with a hell of a ram, they are pretty undefended. They rely on their kinflock of smaller carrier to vandalize threats.

Humanity put railcannons in them and seeker missiles. Humanity is at a loss as to how implemnt stealth into them, their biosignals are fuck complicated.

Variant Mode: their was a highly evolved Insectoid race until recently but a galaxy wide plague wiped the mainstock out. Now only a handfull of the corehive survived, begging the human race to watch over their three last(loli) hive queens, which will mature in 50 years. As gifts they give their workers, moths, centipede - subraces to humnity, before kicking of.

>>4261016
all im saying is the bugs are the only ones that arent on the fuck yeah humans shit list

>>4261016
>>4261030
Lets not forget, OP made a point about the fact that these Hive bugs can biologically communicate across vast distances at rates which are not understandable by humans. This obviously must be of interest to more than a number of factions.
Macross Frontier uses this as a plot device; the big bad wants to harvest this ability to communicate faster than the galaxy-spanning civilizations in order to dominate them. Another wants to use this ability to find a legendary long lost idol.
Pic related: the Big Bad

>>4261016
the point of my post was what was my point? umm oh if the fuck yeah humans best good friend was the bugs no one would fuck with them

>>4261043
Sorry to say, buddy, but Humans do have the tendency to be overly superstitious. After all, when the LHC started up last year, there were a loud minority claiming it was witchcaft and it'd spawn demons and whatnot.
While that's decidedly more awesome than what did happen (it kinda broke), it's also telling; despite technological advances, humans themselves can still be quite backwards. Of course, we don't know if OP's going for this sort of thing

>>4260456
>hive mind

He's trying to do away with retarded clichés

>while one lone young larvae stares at a poster growing out of the wall for CAPTAIN HUMAN.

fixed.

>>4261081
Tachyons!

>>4261043
...you speak as if the singularity is definately going to happen and every sci-fi must include it.

>>4260602
I like this idea

>>4261112
Well, this is true, but superstition in this day and age does not seem to significantly hamper scientific progress much in the Western World (which will probably be the midwife to transhuman civilization, alongside Asia). In a transhuman world, there is nothing preventing people who have religious strictures from opting out of 'ascending', it would be pretty much optional. So the superstition argument, while interesting, probably wouldn't apply unless the entire world fell to Wahabbi Islam or something absurd like it.

OP: other than bugs, which cliches are you trying to avoid?
We can probably help with those, too.

>>4261136
It will happen because every other alternative is absurdly inefficient.

>>4261148
>superstition in this day and age does not seem to significantly hamper scientific progress

Well, hamper? Not really, you're right. Exist in such a way as to make rational people want to give up on all civilization? Very much so

1)People suing the LHC because it "supports catastrophic research"
http://lhcdefense.org/lhc_takeaction.php
2)A voting machine manufacture suing people checking to make sure the voting machines work:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5814
3)House bills to change the value of Pi:
http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/Localgov/Second%20Level%20pages/indiana_pi_bill.htm
4)Suing scientists because they said that water wouldn't cure AIDS
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15521011.900-memory-man-hits-out.html
5)Vitamin company saying vitamins will cure AIDS, and then suing anyone who says otherwise:
http://www.badscience.net/2008/09/matthias-rath-pulls-out-forced-to-pay-the-guardians-costs-i-think-
this-means-i-win/
6)Petrol companies not allowing Polar Bears to be on the Endangered Species list because, "It hurts their business."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/30/AR2008083001538.html
7)Astrologist suing NASA for $300 million US because they blew up an asteroid, citing, "moral suffering"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8474735/

Need I continue?

>>4260771

In a deepness in the sky the main aliens were these giant spider things. As adults they had multifaceted eyes that gave them near 360 degree vision. In their larval stage they have a pair of forward facing eyes, that gives them a range of vision similar to humans.

As a result humans look like adorable giant overgrown babies too them. They still look like giant freaky spiders to us.

Something like that might be worth looking into.

>>4261160
Absurd inefficiency has worked fine so far.

>>4261196
That's it, i'm jumping off a bridge.

Sure, they are scary. And they will eat people. But they aren't evil and can just as easily accept humanoids as friends.

>>4261151
The setting is supposed to play in a galaxy far, far away, 3000 years after the planet Earth in the Milky Way was terraformed by an alien AI with a logical flaw (it's been terraforming planets all over the Milky Way, but never gets to finish the process and send the colonists on the planet, leaving the planets with large, alien megafauna). Humanity was helped evacuate by a race of sentinent solar energy, which resides in large metallic spider bodies (one of the abundant machine species which was dumb enough to try to harvest them). One of the colony ships (housing twenty million humans) was lost during the travel and ended up in NG 4414, where their ship dumbed them on the next best available non-hostile planet.
2500 years later, humanity has gained sufficiently enough knowledge and numbers to terraform and colonise nearby star systems, where they promptly meet the bugs, a proper diplomatic meeting is done a couple decades later.

Flash forward 500 years, The players are supposed to be rough frontiermen from the (benevolent) human empire; explorers but also warriors. By this time, it's known that most organic species in the Milky Way were wiped out by their own machines (or joined them in a singularity), humanity has an near instant-FTL-drive which still needs cartography of space conducted by sublight drones, it's been allied with the bugs and the solar energy beings for centuries, and it's already encountered two hostile (but barely sentinent) AI species which does not exactly bode well for the future.

While the bugs admire human independance and ingenuity and some live among men and they welcome men into their hives, total integration is rare. Bugs are inherantly stable and rarely do they suffer from mental instability, which is almost rampant in humans lowering the number of people able to be integrated into hives or even accepted, though it is by no means an insult. Some people simply lack various facoulties necessary for the union, while others are a downright danger.

>>4261201
If HBO ever turns A Deepness in the Sky into a sci-fi series, they should portray spiders as anthropomorhic spider-people living in anthropomorhphic spider-towns until the final batch of episodes, when both the viewers and the rank and file Queng Ho/Emergents see the live feed from the Southland parliament.
And then... Hello Lovecraft.

>>4261222
No it hasn't the story of human civilization is one of recovering from catastrophic inefficiencies and attempting to prevent them from occurring again, hence Moore's Law. Trial and error is symptomatic of progress, not inefficiency (I think that's what you mean by inefficiency, right?)

>>4261196
reading those articles is unbelievably disheartening.

>>4261292
Mere speedbumps, I couldn't care less about what some silly twits think about the LHC or "anti-AIDS" vitamins.

>It will happen because every other alternative is absurdly inefficient.

It will not happen because reality is always more awesome than science fiction.

kobolds are cool, I was in a campaign where we had to stop a big city head from building over a kobold nest.

>>4260587
I was totally gonna suggest them.
They were very cool, but also very alien once you got past the translation veneer.

>>4260389

The Thranx from Alan Dean Foster's books. They get along with humans because humans can think in ways they find difficult and vice versa. I haven't read enough of his books to know how "horrifying" they might be, though.

Read the something awful articles "that insideous beast" for a good review on questionable and alien allies to humanity. Shits creepy.

Earth government has prohibited alcohol; moth mobsters ("the mothfia") smuggle it to earth colonies.

An alien bug-like race in the middle of a civil war, half wish to remain in the old ways using standard cliche bug bio weaponry, while the others want to advancebeyondthat and rely on their own tools and tech similar to what humans use. Both factions seek human aid, the traditionalists want to use humanity as a cushion of recources and learn from them. The tool users see humans and their technology as an almost ideal or spiritual mirror of what they wish to attain. After all why waste energy and time mutating into what you need when you can simply grab the tool for the job?

Also insect mecha, rather than create monstrocities that would serve little purpose other than weightlifting out of battle, they grow these giant brainless bodies with incubation chambers within them, when needed larva-like things slide out of their more practical bodies and into the entry orifice, once it enters it attatched itself to the circulation system and begins circulating its own fluids and awareness through the body. In a few moments the internal organs begin beating and pumping and the giant thing lumbers out ready for battle.

Every sci-fi setting has aliens that eat humans. But what about aliens that are delicious to humans, but sentient, too?

Would we be able to contain ourselves from eating a delicious alien intelligent race?

>>4261547
I'm thinking of that episode of futurama where they land on a nursury world and start eating babies.

>>4261359

Eh, well, I agree that reality is awesome, but why the disbelief? Everything described in the lead up to the singularity is physically feasible, and is, effectively, in plain sight of us in terms of our knowledge and technology. AI? Nanotech? Improvements in manufacturing and distribution processes? New energy technologies? We have no reason to believe that we won't have these technologies before the century is out.

>>4261621
Remember when Virtual reality was the powerword and we were supposed to have it uh, 10 years ago now and have barely advanced any in those terms?

>>4261659
Is there a Touhou powercard for Virtual Reality?

How about a semi-hivemind. They have individual personality and thought, but can share work strategies through pheromones or something like that.

>>4261471
one of the better jokes ive ever seen on here

>>4261687
Something like the Tines then?

(A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge again)

Considering the hivemind, I'd think that it was originally some form of telepathy engineered by the moths (very high electric brain activity), and is still used on a local level (even planetary).
This is also why there's few non-hived humans living close to them - the energy in the background makes humans tipsy or gives them headaches.

For extra-planetary/extra-spaceship mindsharing, they'd probably use cybernetic implants which replace the electric signal reading by a FTL version.

(Hey, they're post-bugs!)

>>4261659

So, wait, you are essentially claiming a failure of the media as a failure of technological progression? Please do recall that the news is sensationalist, and not necessarily related to reality.

More than that, even if VR had truly and completely failed, it would not be a significant argument. An isolated failure in a long, long, long line of success does not invalidate a successful model. Which, I might add, our current method of science... is.

Again, we have no reason to believe that the proposition is in any meaningful way infeasible; we may not see it in our lifetimes, but we can say, with a very high degree of confidence, that it will occur, provided we don't kill ourselves first.

>>4261716
The Tines were much more alien than the Spiders, actually, on the functional level. On the personal level both were pretty humanlike.

>>4261621

Well for one thing: The singularity's probably gonna be a local thing that'll only happen to the western world and even here not to everyone.

As an example:
Having been a carpenter for a while I can tell you that most carpenter here do not use fully computerized C&C-Machines or anything above C&C with 3 axis. Costs are prohibitive and productivity's not high enough for the sort of work that pays their bills. Talk about digitalized production and customization's all the rage but you don't see much of it yet as it requires a very specific aesthetic to be practical.
There are a few young carpenters working with C&C producing good stuff, but they're up against Ikea and a people who like Ikea. Plainly said the sort of furniture that would actually require C&C-Machines and the demand for it does not exist yet and they're still very much in the process of creating it all, even though the technology has existed for a decade or more now.

I honestly can't believe that nanotechnological assemblers will be any different. Yeah, you can make anything but why bother when you've got other technology that's already running pretty well, costs less and can be outsourced too?

Just make bugs think that we are DAAAAAW adorable. Like little kitens or something.

Warm, kind of cuddly, and with a "sense of humor". No bug ever would be able to hurt a human - we are too cute.

>>4260389

I kind of did this once. Basically, make the warrior bugs biologically incapable of fear, which makes them seem quite alien, but also lets them act heroically and bravely (from a human perspective). Yet, they can still talk to humans, maybe through a voicebox machine thingy, so they're characters that can be really interacted with. It's so common to have a knightly character archetype of some kind in space opera (Jedi, B5's Rangers, Covenant Elites); why not let the bugs take that role?
TL:DR; Samurai Space Bugs

As a hive society, the other groups are selfless, too, in their own ways. The workers will work long, long hours and never complain. They don't really use money in their internal economy; bugs are provided for by the hive and produce as much as they can. It works for them, while communism failed for us, because they aren't self-centered in the same way.
The Queen of each hive (each of them operating loosely independently) is god, mother and queen to everyone in the hive, so she's a major national symbol. Bug hives will have wars with each other, but while they'll happily kill each other for a resource, it's not personal when only warriors die. Killing workers is extremely provocative and killing a Queen is something that happens very, very rarely, and is tantamount to genocide, since a good chunk of the surviving population will kill themselves rather than live on, and most of the rest will spend the rest of their lives hunting and fighting the perpetrators.

I could go on, but these are all ideas I worked in when I ran a BESM space opera game with a bug race allied to humanity.

See: The Tinalíya of Tekumel.

>>4261254
IIRC, there were Thri-Kreen in Space as part of AD&D's ridiculous Spelljammer setting.

>>4261985
Ends in rape

Horrible...horrible rape

>>4262014

the bug will be traumatized for decades

>>4261940

The thing to remember here is that costs go down, mostly due to iterative improvements in production. This isn't to say that advanced C&C products are going to suddenly become magically cheap, but rather, that at some point they will be cheap enough that their cost compared to their utility could make them an attractive option for even a small company.

Actually, considering their production process (which is indicated to be, after the actual set-up, "supply raw materials to assembly") and utility, nanomachines will probably decrease in price fairly rapidly. In the biomedical fields especially, since said devices are likely capable of keeping an individual young (looking) and healthy and as such demand will probably be very high.

Don't really have any argument for your statement on the third world, though; fixing that problem would take a fundamental change in how society works. I doubt a new technology is going to suddenly fix things.

Sorry Xeno lovers, it was just a matter of time before the hand of the glorious god emperor descended upon you in burning wrath. Take these last moments to offer a prayer of thanks that the grace of the god emperor mercifully ends your life now before you have a chance to further stain your souls with the corruption of heresy.

>The thing to remember here is that costs go down, mostly due to iterative improvements in production. This isn't to say that advanced C&C products are going to suddenly become magically cheap, but rather, that at some point they will be cheap enough that their cost compared to their utility could make them an attractive option for even a small company.

I'm aware of that. That's what people currently think the future's gonna be like: dozends of one-man companies producing individual furniture locally.
What still remains a problem is that even the high income/high education-demographics that should be totally enraptured with C&C-furniture's not that interested. They'd rather buy at Ikea.
The other thing is that local production means higher prices as the total sale volumen for every single craftsman's lower. No ammount of technology can change that.

A group of humans stumbled across a dying world during their early exploration of the galaxy. They found an insectoid race dying, diseased/attacked/etc, and the royalty was almost completely wiped out.

In trying to help the survivors, the humans accepted biological modification that allowed them to effectively become the new royal caste and direct the other castes.

Today, they act as go-betweens between the bugs and normal humans. Both sides have benefited immensely from the alliance, but humans can't shake the way their allies disturb them on some primal level. The hybridized humans are a little more relateable, but still creepy, and there are lots of urban legends about what's under their helmets..

>>4260440
I once tried to make a setting with russian spiders as a genetically engineered race to help crew spaceships (webbing/8 limbs = moy manueverable)

While the OP has already made his decision, I had one bug-ally-race that I always wanted to use. Dragonflies, basically. Dragonflies that have become the dominant species on their planet, because they can permanently symbiotically merge with other creatures. When it comes to animals, they simply merge with it and take over its mind, so you have pteradons with insectoid lumps on their backs, or wolves with chitinous spines and giant wings. Initial relations with humans are difficult, since the dragonflies are totally unused to other sentient creatures, and tried to forcibly merge with them. After a while though, the bugs sent out a peace envoy of bonded primates, using crude gestures and a demonstration of the merging, until a human voluntarily merged with one of the dragonflies.

The two species are very popular with each other, since the human body is a versatile form, and the dragonfly wings can grant the human advanced mobility. And of course, the fact that two heads are better than one.

Also provides neat ideas for shock-troopers, by having soldier-bugs merge with dangerous species.

>>4262146

I am somewhat inclined to agree. Of course, it would be ideal if the ease of production was such that individual businesses at the local level could be competitive with the larger conglomerates, but unfortunately the might of an absurd quantity of buying power is not readily dismissed. Still, as long as there are people who've an inherent dislike of the predatory mega-chains, local businesses are likely to remain viable, though it does depend on the quantity of said people in a given area.

READ THE ENDERS GAME SERIES

>>4261975
>>Basically, make the warrior bugs biologically incapable of fear, which makes them seem quite alien, but also lets them act heroically and bravely (from a human perspective). Yet, they can still talk to humans, maybe through a voicebox machine thingy, so they're characters that can be really interacted with. It's so common to have a knightly character archetype of some kind in space opera (Jedi, B5's Rangers, Covenant Elites); why not let the bugs take that role?
>>TL:DR; Samurai Space Bugs

DO WANT

>>4262363
Second. In fact, I second the whole thread.

>>4262348
Isn't that just Harry Potter in Space?

>>4262363
>>TL:DR; Samurai Space Bugs
Samurai Pizza Cats

>>4262408


I wish I could slap you through the internet

>>4261547
humans taste like pork, pork is delicious, we seem to be able to hold back fine

Read Alan Dean Foster's Humanax trilogy. He did it first, and did it best.

>>4262498
Humans are filthy, and take too long to raise.

What would the insectoid music be like if they bothered with it? I'm guessing lots of creepy ambient pieces.

>>4262965
Is human music full of ambient farm noises, or basic farting? I doubt Insectoid music would be like that either.

The Sector General Novels feature a few races of non-hostile insects. as well as a race of non hostile pterodactyls and if i remember correctly sentient elephants with octopuses for heads.

>>4262498
Eh...depends on which culture you go to. Aztecs loved their long pig

>>4262981 sentient elephants with octopuses for heads
Mind=blown.

>>4262965
Classical insectoid music consists of drumming, along with a soft, mellow humming of buzzing sound. It tends to be highly minimalistic, hearkening back to the times when they communicated through vibration more than actual vocalization.

String instruments were developed during their Renaissance period, when the artistic nature of their kind came forth. It was developed when one of their kind watched an arachnid -web-weaver attracting it's mate, lulling her with the plucking of the web. Curious, it replicated the act using a strand of thread and a wooden frame. Before long, the plucked string instruments were created. they tend to be very complex, even in the realm of personal instruments given that they have more hands to work with. Drawn string instruments followed, developed under the vibration theory of music, and have been included in the more current musical preferences.

>>4260435
Communism is actually pretty appealing when you don't realize what an awful thing it really is.

>>4264315

Communism is a pretty nifty idea. It just can only function in communities where everyone knows everyone. Any groups larger than that try to practice it, and it starts to break down. Therefore, any country that tries it is doomed to social unrest, followed swiftly by totalitarian government and a slow decline into fail.

COMMUNISM IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF FAILURE.

>>4262317
No businesses will exist. With the declining rate of profit, capitalism will go into death throws and workers will socialise the means and tools of production under direct democratic control.

Space, space is Communist.

Rather than a racial hivemind, localised hivemind? A bug "individual" is actually a small troupe of various-caste bugs - a prime mentator queen-type bug, a couple warrior-type guard bugs, a diplomat, etc. all sharing the same personality.

Or adult bugs are large, truly alien creatures to us, and our main contact with them is thru their larvae, which are symbiotic or parasitic creatures that are laid in or otherwise infest a host. The bug species might have one or more "domesticated" species that function as hosts, who may or may not be sentient in their own right, but who end up being bodies for the young, who are gregarious and almost xenophilic.

>>4264591
http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm