It would be interesting to find alien values

[LienRag]

What would be interesting would be to find some really Alien ones...
Since I'm not an Alien myself it's difficult to find good examples, but let's say Watery/Dry or Anionic/Cationic or Occlusive/Explosive or whatever.
Of course the difficulty is then to justify why some type of war is "watery" and some other is "dry", or which Policy is Anionic and which is Cationic...

[Ophiuchus]

What would be interesting would be to find some really Alien ones...
Since I'm not an Alien myself it's difficult to find good examples, but let's say Watery/Dry or Anionic/Cationic or Occlusive/Explosive or whatever.
Of course the difficulty is then to justify why some type of war is "watery" and some other is "dry", or which Policy is Anionic and which is Cationic...

Having such alien categories has the upside that we are mostly free of putting effects in any of these (fluff is flexible). A downside is that there is no reference for new players what means what. I like this for its narrative opportunities, so I would be happy to see if one can sketch something up. Could you do that? Maybe a spreadsheet where you assign all species to one of the categories (and maybe add extra likes/dislikes as comment where appropiate) and one tab where you assign likes/dislikes to the categories.

And no, there was no consensus (which means that everybody agrees) that we should have a species value system. And there was strong opposition/doubts that such a system should be symmetric.

[LienRag]

Having such alien categories has the upside that we are mostly free of putting effects in any of these (fluff is flexible). A downside is that there is no reference for new players what means what.

Well, yes and no.
The idea would be to find some weird coherence that would be understandable by players, even non-alien ones.
There are a lot of semi-sensical ways of thinking in mythology and art (and if they're successful it means that they speak in a way or another to the human psyche) so my guess would be that we probably can use some of them as "alien thinking" proxy (at least until we get contributors from other planets).

Could you do that?

Alas, no, I don't believe that I have the talent required.
But I could ask for it on Contribulle (which alas has no real reach, there was only one proposition - for audio - whose author is too busy right now since I created all the Contribulle requests), or, with more chances of success, on the Fediverse if you (the core team) allow me to create a semi-official FreeOrion account on it, like I already offered (in a similar way that you Ophiuchus maintains the semi-official FreeOrion snap).
No guarantee of success of course, but there are a lot of SF fans and some writers there, maybe they could find interest in that endeavour.
Of course I can then (or we can all) manage the translation from writers' concepts to game mechanisms.

And there was strong opposition/doubts that such a system should be symmetric.

I also am not certain that the system should be entirely symmetric.
The good thing is that with Alien thinking fluff, it's quite easy to explain that some are symmetric, some would be tri-dimensional, and some would just be one value without an opposing pair.


edit : corrected grammatical mistake

[Oberlus]

LienRag, I have the impression what you are looking for here doesn't exist (at least to our limited human consciousness).

[LienRag]

Obviously, so the question is how good of a proxy we can build.
It needs to be convincingly alien to all players, that'll be good enough for immersion.

If you've travelled enough (either physically or through literature - or, I guess, through psychedelic experiences, but I confess that I never had those) you probably know that on this earth there are already ways of thinking that are extremely different from what we are used to.

[Oberlus]

I could ask for it on Contribulle

If you can't do that yourself, someone involved in the game and with interest on doing it this or that way, asking for someone else in a place not related at all with FreeOrion or social values or worldbuilding, etc., what are the chances it will be more useful than your previous petitions in that social network? I wouldn't bother.

on the Fediverse if you (the core team) allow me to create a semi-official FreeOrion account on it, like I already offered

What did the core team reply the last time you asked?

[LienRag]

I could ask for it on Contribulle

If you can't do that yourself, someone involved in the game and with interest on doing it this or that way, asking for someone else in a place not related at all with FreeOrion or social values or worldbuilding, etc., what are the chances it will be more useful than your previous petitions in that social network? I wouldn't bother.

Very low, I reckon.
But very low is not "naught" either.

on the Fediverse if you (the core team) allow me to create a semi-official FreeOrion account on it, like I already offered

What did the core team reply the last time you asked?

That they doubt they'll use it.

[LienRag]

Some afterthought : one part were it could work very well is with Policies compatibility.
It seems obvious to us that Liberty and Terror Suppression are uncompatible, but that's because we're all humans¹.
Maybe Laenfas consider that it's actually a "really wet" idea ?
And Ssliths would consider putting together Liberty and Artisan Workshops "bloated" but Phinnerts would consider it "floating".


¹ If someone isn't, please reply and I'll apologize for my assumption.