FreeOrion

There are a few ideas that have floated around in sci-fi land for races that are individually below the threshold of intelligence, but when a sufficient number of them get together, they act in a 'technologically developed intelligence' manner.

This is something that I've always found kinda fascinating, and it really seems like it could be something that could be rather readily included -- graphically, anyhow -- into the game. Here's what I mean:

There are ant colonies that are capable of building bridges (out of themselves) to cross gaps too wide for any individual to accomplish. There are other species that will cut down leaves off of trees to build rafts to carry their members across rivers a quarter of a mile wide. Now, there's no way in the world that any individual member of these species could possibly comprehend what's going on, but none the less the colony acts in a manner far more intelligent -- in terms of problem-solving -- than any ant ever possibly should.

I think it would be awesome to somehow incorporate something along those lines into the game. I am imagining a, say, species of beetle or beetle-like critter that communicates using sound rather than chemicals (to speed up their collective actions) and has evolved to the point where the colony as a whole can actually communicate intelligibly. This could propagate across their entire line; any graphical representations of them would be swarms rather than individuals. They could be absurdly good at, say, spying (especially w/ late-level technologies allowing sound to propagate across long distances, or even allowing for quantum entanglement to bypass the sound requirement altogether) but would be rather poor at ground combat (lack of raw physical strength, and the overall vulnerability; while the colonies would easily survive, every injury represents lost ability to think; an unintelligent swarm can't point a weapon at an attacker.) (There was a short story I read a long time ago and cannot recall the name of that is the inspiration of this idea; there was a planet that seemed devoid of anything but insect life; and yet the people who tried to colonize it kept going insane. It turned out that the ladybug-like beetles were collectively intelligent and were using the sound they communicated with to give people hallucinations via subsonics as a way of defending their home planet from the evil alien invaders [the humans].)

This could even propagate to their ship designs; rather than building individual vessels, they would operate in a 'swarm' mechanism. (This could be done just by leaving 'gaps' in the 3d models and including some parts that rotate around the gaps, etc; very simple overall.) Because their /species/ would be very 'modular', their ships would naturally be so as well. One could imagine a central power core which would 'beam' power to the various modules one of which would include a warp-drive which builds a field around the 'hive-ship' and keeps everything together. This would maybe give the species a "free" upgrade of the Inertial Stabilizer widgit-equivalent at the cost of, say, a 10% hit on speed or if the game supports it, structural points.

Just to throw some people through a loop, we could even have two sub-races; one of which is 'fiercely independent' -- where colonies do not integrate readily and only suitable to libertarian governmental models (free market economics, etc.) and one which is socially aggregating (where colonies within a certain distance tend to 'merge') and thus naturally falls into the more command governmental models (planned economics, etc.)

Is it too late in the day to be throwing this sort of thing around?

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This kind of stuff is actually very early, though its been discussed a lot, it scheduled for implementation after a lot of other stuff.

I'd love to see the various species run the gamut between extreme individualism to a total collective consciousness. Here's my concept for the basic mechanics. You may have to read from the start of the page for it to make sense.


If you are more interested in discussing this particular species, i'll move the topic to the "story" subforum where all the alien ideas are. If your main interest is hive-minded species in general, then this is the right place for the topic.

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A swarm of ships is probably a bad idea for a hivemind, if they're more intelligent in large numbers you'd want to pack as many to a ship as possible. If they work telepathically then that's not an issue but there's no real reason to assume they'd prefer a swarm of ships, that's based entirely on the hive's personality, not the fact it is a hive.

Also we already have a race that works on these lines: viewtopic.php?p=4489#4489 you have to scroll down a bit, its called George

I'd also like to throw out here, that while the most obvious examples on earth of something like a hive mind are insects, there's really no reason that small, non-insectoid life on other worlds wouldn't have a hive mind.

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also no reason they have to be small

There's no absolute requirement to be small, but it's more likely that way.

Assuming the biology is vaguely similar to what we know, a small individual creature can't support enough brain mass for complex thought, however a bunch of them together might, especially if they were in constant high-bandwidth communication.

On the other hand, if a creature is large enough to support a sapient brain in one individual, the usefulness of a shared consciousness is much less obvious.

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I don't think that GEORGE is quite appropriate to what I was thinking of: I was also contemplating this as a playable race: I was also picturing that each colony would more likely be its own individual. Perhaps total species unity could be one of their end-goals. It also seems, if this race were meant to be playable, it would be more readily implemented than would GEORGE; far less in the way of special coding going on, for an admittedly similar concept.

If the species in question thinks through sound natively, then all the mechanisms we use to communicate over distances could be used to create stopgaps for distance communication: standing-wave transmissions (at a penalty to stealth), point-to-point communications (such as laser-mounts between vessels) and of course entangled quanta for instantaneous communication over distances. (But that'd be much later technology).

Perhaps it's nit-picking; but I would not describe this as a telepathic hive-mind. That gives the idea that there are sentient individuals; rather than the sentience being an emergent property of the mass of individuals. (This could even operate as a limiter on the size of any given colony; too many chefs ruins a pie, after all).

Such eusocial behavior isn't observed in tight-nit groups in any order "higher" than insects; but of course there's nothing saying they //have// to be insectoid, or even necessarily /small/; it is simply more conducive to gameplay (in my mind) if the total mass of a given colony is equivalent to the total mass of a human being.

The reasoning behind the idea of 'swarmed' ships was more an extrapolation of the species itself; since as a species they would travel and manipulate objects through the use of specialized individual members of the colony, it would seem more 'natural' for them to operate in such a manner. Really, we humans do the same thing with our eusociality; here I'm thinking of the combat-effectiveness of aircraft carriers over any other kind of maritime war vessel. Since they would have the technology to build such vessels in the first place, and (at least in my imagining) they are communicating via sound, setting up "repeaters" in each vessel would seem a trivial effort.

As to hive-minds v. specific species; I'm kinda somewhere between the two, I guess. I think it'd be better to get the "mechanics" ideas out of the way and see if people agree or get new ideas. I did see elsewhere that people wanted to make sure that the aliens in this game weren't just "rubber ridges and funny names-ians".

I /suppose/ I could derive a story-arc inclusion for these guys. But right now //I// am thinking more in "mechanics" terms.

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I expect Tortanik mentioned "George" simply because it was the most similar creature in our catalog, so it's something worth being aware of. There's no reason to only have one group-mind species.


I don't know if you mean space colony, or a hive of these creatures.

Generally, a whole planet is the smallest unit of civilian population the player deals with. So if you have any sort of collective consciousness that gets no bigger than a single planet, then there is no direct impact on how the creature plays in game. It's fine either way. I can't think of anything but the flavor text and possible graphics that would need to be different for any sort of collective mind compared to a "conventional" being like ourselves. In other words, it's up to your imagination.



Just to be clear, what exactly is your definition of "eusocial"? I have:
This discussion is getting a little clumsy because i think we all aren't using words to mean the same thing.

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I can think of a couple: a colony or ground army's effectiveness might grow faster than its population to represent every individual "body" becoming more effective in a larger, more intelligent, hive. At the extreme a newly formed colony might not be sentient for a few turns, with a military invasion just assume the army is defeated when they loose sentience.

We'd probably need a different model for morale too, George's one is a clever solution for an interplanetary uni-mind but a per-planet hive mind will probably work differently. It might for example have an arbitrary cut-off point, below its at 100% effectiveness, above its a total rebellion. There's probably a better idea if you think about it for more than a few moments.
Sub planetary hive minds (As in instead of 6 billion humans, your planet is filled with 60 million hives each is one "individual") will probably work like normal but we might want to draw the line somewhere before we have too many verities of hive minds.


I'm not sure where you got that idea from, George is a single individual with many bodies not sentient individuals, although not all telepahtic hives have to work like that, one where everyone lives in some collective mental space and treats bodies like timeshare-cars would be interesting.



Some hives will work like that, however there's no reason you couldn't have a hive built entirely out of generalists. As I said ship design wont automatically be the same for all hives.

I'm not saying that you cannot think up special rules for a collective being. I'm just saying it has no special requirements. Collective beings have no greater need for special rules than any other sort of alien... with the possible exception of moral...


You understand that part? I can't make any sense of George's moral description.

Moral and rebellions are the one part of hive-mind/collective/whatever creatures that i don't think i've wrapped my mind around, so i'd be especially interested in descriptions of how this might work.

Initially it seems to me it needs no special rules unless its a creature like George with maximum unity-- i.e. a multi-planet consciousness, or at least super empathy.

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For sake of ease of reading, I will from now on differentiate between colony: A planetary colony and superorganism: a discrete "unit" of eusocial creatures.

I wasn't necessarily contemplating a planetary hive-mind, so much as I was the idea that each citizen would be comprised of a separate superoganism; a planet's population would then be a count of how many superorganisms there were rather than discrete individual entities.

Mechanically this would work out identically to other gameplay and thusly be purely cosmetic. optionally, we could include a special tech available to hive-species (based on FTL communication of some sort) which allows for planetary- and perhaps eventually civilization- unity.

A simple work-around for accomplishing these is: we already, I assume, plan to average out the total 'happiness' (whatever) score for a given planet to determine its productivity or likelihood of rebellion. Here I'm thinking of MoO II's morale modifier score. The planetary unity tech would create a morale modifier based on the economic model of the government chosen. (Liberalized market = lower morale due to disunity; command = higher morale due to unity). What we can then do from there is 'cheat' and include in the game stats the averaged "happiness score" (Here I'm thinking of Civ's Demographics; I don't know if any such 'record-keeping' is being done in this game -- it would be good for us metric-happy folks like me). The civilization-/galactic-unity tech would then override the planetary happiness score with the civilization's happiness score (since both are already recorded; this would be implementing a change in which record is called up for calculations on the impact of morale).

As to military units and the like; leave those in the hands of the player, to operate normally (for mechanics). The 'flavor-text' would instead be how many specialized warriors are being bred.

Because I was already planning on having superorganism-race be very poor ground-fighters, perhaps the special techs also provide ground-combat bonuses by averaging out the combat experience of the race? That might be //way// too much coding just to implement one 'type' of race, though.

While the idea of hive-ships being unitary rather than clustered is certainly readily implemented, I feel that -- especially since it's just going to be a cosmetic feature -- it would be a better idea to have the ships be reflective of the race in a way that's readily identifiable.

The only other area it would really come up would, of course, be the diplomacy screens.

Of course, it's not like I have //any// control over anything. I'm just some fan who can't even play the game right now.

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whoops, misunderstood you. I agree with the above.


I thought it was really clear myself, perhaps I can explain it better than the original.
1) work our the mean average unrest for all George population. (No special rules for the causes of unrest)
2) work out a productivity penalty based on the above and apply it to every colony.
e.g. if half of every George population is unhappy every George population works at 50% effectiveness.
Also if George is unhappy on one world it won't spread via empathy, think of it like this: if your right hand hurts your left hand won't start hurting in sympathy.


I think you'll need multiple methods depending on how the hive works, a species with lots of individual superoganisms one colony* will work differently to a species with one superoganism per colonoy, or species with just one individual. I'm fond of George's style but I'm sure its not the only solution so I'm going to think about this, I'll post if I come up with anything.

*They could gain unrest like any other race.

Well you could have a few ways of doing it.

George/Total Empathy is the extreme possibility

The next "level down" is planetary hive minds with degrees of limited connectedness. (which can probably be modeled with increasing empathy)

The bottom is "normal" ie there is really no distinction between a planetary hive mind and a collection of individual minds, with our current model... but some type of thing that indicated increased "unity" on a world that would definitely be possible (planetary hive minds would have max unity...probably.. you could have a conflicted individual... rebellion would be the equivallent of a psychological breakdown)


I could see modelling George (or any other interplanetary hive-mind) with an extreme empathy... in the sense that if your right hand hurts, your "self" feels bad, and reacts accordingly.


"Hive Mind" species having the ability to 'expand the hive mind' with technology is interesting

so having a 'natural' state of the race

No hive mind (humans)

Limited hive mind (intelligent ant colony)* no significant difference from 'no hive mind' except for technolgical ability to reach the next level.... each individual grouping could be as individualistic as a singleminded individual

Planetary hive mind * minimal significant differences needed with current models... perhaps some model involving 'unity on the planet will be present' then they just need planetary unity.

Interplanetary hive mind (george): Special rules needed, extreme empathy might be one possibility, opening up certain government options that would otherwise be closed is an additional option, production penalties insted of revolution. Or just explain revolutions as psychological breakdowns.

and then techs that allow extension to a next higher level

(note: any one of these levels may not like the idea of going to the next higher level... each planetary hive mind might hate the idea of being linked as much as your typical human would)

Also if the Government changes, either through player decision OR a new empire taking over, then technology induced mind unification can be removed, 'natural' mind unification can't.

The idea that planetary type hive mind organisms may not be sentient at low populations is interesting, but I think that doesn't really help... 0.0678 humans is also nonsentient, and the population numbers are vague concepts anyways.

that's a good term. In other words, all members of a single superorganism would together consider themselves to be a single "person".


Opinions differ, but i think it unlikely that we will have special, species-specific techs.
However, i do think it would be interesting include an advanced tech which functions as species-wide or empire-wide absolute unity.



Here's an explanation i put together of how it could work.




I don't see the need for any special rules as long as the superorganism is no larger than a planet. Riots, and rebellions make just as much sense if they are one (really big) individual fed up with the ruling empire or a billion individuals who feel the same way.

Even riots aren't too hard to make sense of in a multi-planetary superorganism (or group mind, collective consciousness, whatever). I would explain them as something like a temper tantrum. The trick is to figure out where they should be located. With riots it would be simplest and make sense if all planets rioted when the superorganism's happiness dropped below the threshold. This would be the consequence of being generally resistant to riots. When they hit, they are terrible. But that doesn't work with rebellions.

But if we have something like George (multi-planetary superorganism version)-- and George is the only species in the empire-- the separation between planets/citizens and the ruling empire no longer makes as much sense. In George's mind there is no difference between the government and the governed. It's just all him. Kricktone's suggestion of understanding "allegiance" as "mental health" in George's instance, and thus rebellions and a psychological breakdown fits the mechanics well.
But again, which planets rebel? Making all planets rebel would essentially be "game-over".


To Clarify:
"Unity" as i describe it here in it's high levels isn't necessarily the property of some sort of superorganism. It could also belong to an extremely altruistic species.

I don't think there are any planned mechanism that would make talking about unity (or the lack thereof) on a sub-planetary level meaningful as anything but flavor text... but possibly something under "Government" will change that.

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Something about the way that's worded makes me feel like there's a gap of understanding here. So I'll try to rephrase and see what comes across: Rather than say that all members of a single superorganism together think themselves to be a single "person", the "identity" or "me-ness" of a superorganism is an emergent property that comes from the group. A single member would no more think of itself as part of the group than does your hand "think of itself" as being "your hand".

Ants in an ant colony, for example, are far too simple as organisms to conceive of the river the superorganism-hive is crossing. Yet the hive as a group accomplishes exactly that. What impact that would have in game mechanics, I couldn't say. Most likely none at all.

Well, I only offered the idea in terms of the species-specific "approach to ascension". I seem to recall that this was something that would be a good story-level accomplishment.

Allowing for at least /part/ of that to be done as through a tech-approach would be an interesting ( at least, to me ) way of going about it. Maybe it would just be a species-specific implementation of social techs; the government models, etc.

Here I have an actual suggestion. In Civilization:CTP, there was a late-game wonder you could build which was a mind-controlling AI that fixed every citizen's happiness at 75% regardless of other influences. It had a fixed 5% chance of rebelling every turn, and any city which was connected to it's city via trade networks had a 50% chance of rebelling with it. How, then, would we apply this to the setting? You take the number of unhappy planets vs. content planets, express that as a ratio. You then give each planet that is content or lower that percentage of a chance to rebel whenever a rebellion would actually occur based on the civilization-wide rebellion chance. (Happy planets would be 'bastions of sanity' in this sense.)

Rebellious planets would re-integrate instantly with "the body" as soon as re-conquered.

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