Being Gbaba

ETathome wrote:I had a thought as well. It kind of follows what others have posted. What if the Gbaba are not curious at all. What if they learn new things from exposure of other species. If they are a predator species that can't innovate and the idea of peacefully co-existing is almost as foreign. Wouldn't the tech level be at the highest of societies they have destroyed?

HamsterDesTodes wrote:

ETathome wrote:I had a thought as well. It kind of follows what others have posted. What if the Gbaba are not curious at all. What if they learn new things from exposure of other species. If they are a predator species that can't innovate and the idea of peacefully co-existing is almost as foreign. Wouldn't the tech level be at the highest of societies they have destroyed?

If that's the case, how did they get off their first planet at all? Unlikely scenario IMHO.

My guess would be that there are no Gbaba.
They had a nice little civil war, with plenty of biological and nano warfare, while the space combat was either wholy or at the very least partial robotic. The biological/nano part wiped out all living Gbaba, and all thats left of them is said robotic war machine. Or perhaps even several different ones if their programming was restricted enough. "Defend system XYZ and pursue any attackers" or something similar could leave quite a few timebombs lying around. With wildely differing tech levels due to different combat damages during the civil war if we want to make things a bit more interesting for our intrepid safeholdian explorers to come *fg*.

If not even higher AIs survived, only tactical ones like OWL when he woke up, we would have an explanation why there's no technological improvements and why the Federation never managed to catch any Gbaba or even find any bodies.

HamsterDesTodes wrote:

ETathome wrote:I had a thought as well. It kind of follows what others have posted. What if the Gbaba are not curious at all. What if they learn new things from exposure of other species. If they are a predator species that can't innovate and the idea of peacefully co-existing is almost as foreign. Wouldn't the tech level be at the highest of societies they have destroyed?

If that's the case, how did they get off their first planet at all? Unlikely scenario IMHO.

My guess would be that there are no Gbaba.
They had a nice little civil war, with plenty of biological and nano warfare, while the space combat was either wholy or at the very least partial robotic. The biological/nano part wiped out all living Gbaba, and all thats left of them is said robotic war machine. Or perhaps even several different ones if their programming was restricted enough. "Defend system XYZ and pursue any attackers" or something similar could leave quite a few timebombs lying around. With wildely differing tech levels due to different combat damages during the civil war if we want to make things a bit more interesting for our intrepid safeholdian explorers to come *fg*.

If not even higher AIs survived, only tactical ones like OWL when he woke up, we would have an explanation why there's no technological improvements and why the Federation never managed to catch any Gbaba or even find any bodies.

ivoSF wrote:some things i recall.

the gbaba atackes with no real regards for losses, they also have no regard for human prisoners, i think this shows something of their attitude.
throwing enough stuff at a problem until something brakes comes to mind.


it was said it was espected that the gbaba will eventualy expand until they meet safehold.

to me this give an idea of a slow but steady idealogy.

basicly
"if it aint broken dont fix it"
"quantity has a quality of its own"

since it works why chance it? repeat for a few milenia

yatesps1 wrote:Long time lurker, first time poster in a while.
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What if the Gbaba had a tremendous Antigerone breakthrough? Textev shows that the Terrans had extended life to approximately 3 centuries. That required continuous shots of nano, but still.
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What if the Gbaba were a naturally long life species, say for multiple centuries. What if they then had some sort of breakthrough that enabled them to indefinitely extend that period. Maybe its gene therapy, nano-tech, cloning, or some combination therein. What if they lived forever, for lack of a better word. If the lives of average Gbaba were measured in hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years. If indeed they had to die at all. If that were the case, the powers at the very top of the social structure would want to preserve the status quo. Even the average life of the average citizen would be pretty good.
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If they had started out as a long lived species, then they would naturally have had a very low birth rate, because it wouldn't have needed to replenish its species. If such a species evolved with no natural predator, and a low birth rate, it would have a slow development cycle. Once it reached what the PTB considered a pinnacle of civilization, it would grind to a halt.
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I imagine the GBaba were long lived, apex predators, with low birth rates. Who never suffered a mass extinction event. Once they had FTL travel and FTL communications, they probably didn't see any need to adapt further. Indeed, for the powers at the top of such a system, adaptation would threaten the power base of those rulers. Combine that with the very natural fear of AI uprising, and you have a stagnant society.

tinfoil wrote:
So the pending Gbaba wars may look more like the 'Stars at War' bug wars once they get rolling.