Interspecies conflict in sci-fi campaigns

[fuindordm]

TL;DR: This thread is asking you to contribute new reasons for mutiple alien species to come into conflict with each other in a hard science fiction setting.

I'm juggling ideas in my head for a new hard science fiction campaign. I want the PCs to be protagonists of a story involving multiple alien species/empires, and I want the setting to include a compelling and believable reason for the aliens to come into conflict with each other. On the other hand, once a species achieves easy space travel, I find it hard to believe that any mundane resource (e.g. naturally occurring elements/chemicals, energy) is rare enough to drive conflict--it just doesn't make sense to risk damaging a starship over anything that isn't of equally high value.

So why would alien species bother to fight/negotiate with each other, instead of sitting on their own planets and sending interstellar e-mail? What stakes are important enough to risk losing the resource of a starship, which might cost a planet an entire year's worth of economic output to rebuild? The answer to this question will affect everything else in the setting--it is the "big question" of sci-fi. Here's what I've though of so far. Any and all other ideas are welcome.

1. A scarce resource is absolutely necessary for space travel or species expansion
1a. The spice enables advanced mentation and navigation through hyperspace (Dune). But there needs to be a reason that it is impossible to synthesize. All species have a vested interest in the place(s) this resource is produced.
1b. Habitable worlds are extremely rare AND there is only one chemical path for complex life, so nearly all species are looking for the same kind of world (various alien invasion scenarios)
1c. An extremely rare but unsynthesizable naturally occuring resource is necessary for space travel, such as magnetic monopoles. It can be found anywhere, but you know your neighbors have it too. Hence, piracy, smuggling and invasion are common and profitable.

2. Long-distance space travel is possible only at limited locations
2a. The galaxy has a wormhole network, possibly engineered by an ancient species. Species fight to control the entries/exits, if for no other reason than to collect taxes. This sort of setting requires at least a weak FTL technology to reach your local entrance is a reasonable time. (Contact, Mass Effect)

3. Other rare resources enhance the power/prestige of a species.
3a. Presapient species can be uplifted to become a slave race, so there is fierce competition for patronage rights. (David Brin)
3b. Progenitor technologies can be found anywhere, may be worthless or yield real technological advancement.
3c. Progenitor megastructures (e.g. Ringworld) are a mix of 1b and 3b, and again a natural meeting point for multiple species.
3d. A rare, naturally occurring and unsynthesizable substance/species is considered a luxury good by multiple species.
3e. Each civilization has one or two unique technologies that they jealously protect, so industrial espionage is a possibility.

4. Universal/existential threat brings species together (this feels like science fantasy territory)
4a. Self-replicating machine species out of control. (Berserker)
4b. Unexplained dark force corrupting/infiltrating all species (Pandora's Star)
4c. Progenitors have returned, aren't happy with you. (Babylon 5)
4d. Galactic empire has a superweapon that can destroy planets, no defense possible. (Star Wars)

5. Cultural imperatives
5a. Xenophobic species wages war even though it hurts them economically.
5b. Gregarious species invests heavily in cultural contact and exchange even though it hurts them economically.

6. Commerce
6a. A variety of alien goods might be profitable enough to import but not profitable enough to justify manufacturing at home, if it requires creating infrastructure to do so (probably goods with a high price, but a small market). This assumes no transporter/replication technology, of course.


Please help me extend this list!
Thanks,
Ben

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

My ideas:

1) Energy actually is limited, due entirely to the amount of time and energy it takes to build infrastructure. While the power sources could provide theoretically-limitless energy, they can do that only after they're built. As such, worlds that are ripe for less powerful, but much easier-to-use forms of energy generation tend to be prizes for any race.

2) Boredom. I think there's been a few real wars in human history inspired by this. And there's only so long people will be happy with public entertainments.

3) First contact gone horribly wrong. It could be a gesture of respect was misinterpreted as a threat (Minbari vs. Humans in Babylon 5), one race discovers something about another that is blasphemous to them or even proves their entire religion is a lie (Covenant vs. Humanity in Halo series), a serious mistranslation, unexpected cross-species infection being mistaken for assassination, or any number of reasons. Maybe even no one knows what happened, just that everyone who was negotiating ended up dead and both races started pointing fingers at each other.

4) One race accidentally invaded the territory of another and no one realized it until that race was entrenched. One race is fighting to protect their territory against invaders, the other is fending off what they see as unwarranted attacks.

5) One race is about to do something very, very dangerous and another is willing to accept the loss of life that war brings than allow a potentially-worse outcome (Turians vs. Humanity in Mass Effect series).

 

[Celebrim]

1b(b) - Your original formulation implies most or all space faring species are looking for colonial worlds or value colonial worlds. I find this unlikely in a hard science fiction setting and is more a trope of space opera or space fantasy. But that doesn't mean that they could not come into conflict over resources, even ones that aren't scarce or hypothetical. Imagine two different 'slow ships' arrive in the same system within a century or so. Both want to harvest resources from the system in order to resupply and reproduce (make new slow ships). Each has been travelling for centuries, and one arrives not to the relief and excitement of a new settlement, but to find that the other has been spending the last 5 years staking claim to the best low-g easily harvestable resources and now they are going to have to start prospecting while the other has a head start in gearing up processing and production. That's going to be an intense situation even if neither side particularly cares about the high-gravity worlds. Or conversely, maybe one side did want to settle the high gravity world, and even if the other ones shrugs and says, "Ok you can go back to being animals, why should we care.", the ones that are colonizing start to realize the new comers are monopolizing/stripping the system of all the best low-gravity resources that are necessary for starship construction.

Actually, most of your examples seem like they come from 'space opera' and not 'hard sci-fi'.

And I'm a bit surprised by the fact you've not mentioned what would probably be one of the leading factors:

6) Xenophobia: One or both races find the other mutually disgusting for inherent biological reasons (one race practices child cannibalism, the other finds this disgusting/taboo; each race looks like an animal the other finds disgusting; each race has a dominant religion that reminds the other of its anti-religion, that is, each considers the other 'Satan worshipers'; each race uses a mode of communication that the other finds difficult to understand such as one using sound and the other using a combination of changing coloration and body language leading to extremely poor communication and misunderstandings).

However, if you are really going to do 'hard science fiction', you are right that the length and expense of inter-stellar travel makes a lot of the tropes of soft science fiction, namely 'space empires are just terrestrial empires but bigger' not make a lot of sense. Commerce? Not if it takes billions of dollars and centuries to travel between locations. And if there is no commerce, what is there to fight over? And if you do fight, won't you quickly hit the problem of its so much vastly easier to destroy things than build things, that both sides will soon be reduced to throwing sticks at each other - losing the economic and possibly the technical capacity to wage an inter-stellar war.

A lot of the answers here look like the technology you adopt as reasonable. Star gates? Warp drive? Slow ships? Can you communicate faster than light but not move faster than light? Can you move faster than light but not go faster than light? Do you have anti-grav or some sort of very high impulse reactionless drive or do you need to expend massive amounts of energy to get out of a gravity well?

 

[fuindordm]

Good questions regarding the technology... let's say Star Trek level for the sake of argument.
A typical civilization can:
* build starships with crew complements ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred people
* build artifical habitats the size of cities
* efficiently mine sterile planets for raw mineral resources
* efficiently synthesize chemicals and materials
* produce enough clean energy to sustain all of the above
And also might possess one "next-level" technology, such as:
* ship-scale cloaking device
* improved FTL
* replication technology

Both of you mentioned cultural conflict as a possibility. A species might desire vengeance upon or extermination of another species for a variety of reasons, even though the economic cost of waging war is enormous. We might find such a war completely irrational but an alien species might not.

Another possibility is technological espionage. Even if all species have the baseline tech I suggest about, which seems like the minimum required to begin building an interstellar civilization, the scientific advances possessed by other species might be considered valuable enough to risk starships on.

Commerce is interesting but likely only a side effect of a more important reason for two species to engage. Once a trader brings back the first shipment of authentic Rylaxian smeegle, then I think civilizations on this scale will find it trivial and much more profitable to reproduce smeegle at home, if there is a market. There will always be a luxury market catering to those who think only authentic smeegle will do, but it will be a small one.

Anyway, thanks for your input and I've added a couple more items to the list.

Ben

 

[Celebrim]

Good questions regarding the technology... let's say Star Trek level for the sake of argument.

I'd rather not...

For one thing, Star Trek is not a hard science setting at all.

Star Trek trends very closely toward 'sufficiently advanced technology' that appears to have 'power of plot' and is very inconsistently presented within its own media. It doesn't really define its own limits, is very inconsistent in what sort of advances it allows (with some near term 'easy' advances not part of the culture and some very hard nearly impossible stuff being taken for granted) and like a typical comic book, doesn't really worry itself with incorporating its own claims within the story in any sort of consistent fashion. It also allows magic, such as Vulcan mind melds and telepathic species.

If you must go 'Star Trek' level tech, you'd be much better off with Iain M. Bank's 'Culture' setting or even better (much 'harder' science) John C. Wright's 'The Golden Oecumene' trilogy. Those settings do a much better job of incorporating what they assert into the setting. But really, that much tech is so far outside of what we understand, that its mostly going to be technobabble and might as well be magic. The further you ramp things down, say to the level of James S.A. Corey's 'Expanse' setting, the easier it will be to run the game.

Another possibility is technological espionage. Even if all species have the baseline tech I suggest about, which seems like the minimum required to begin building an interstellar civilization, the scientific advances possessed by other species might be considered valuable enough to risk starships on.

A 'war' to steal technology would likely go on almost entirely in 'cyberspace' between viruses and so forth. Depending on your tech level, this could be very destructive.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

Both of you mentioned cultural conflict as a possibility. A species might desire vengeance upon or extermination of another species for a variety of reasons, even though the economic cost of waging war is enormous. We might find such a war completely irrational but an alien species might not.

Why would we find it irrational? Humans do such all of the time, and there are several conflicts right now spawned by that motivation.

Another possibility is technological espionage. Even if all species have the baseline tech I suggest about, which seems like the minimum required to begin building an interstellar civilization, the scientific advances possessed by other species might be considered valuable enough to risk starships on.

I would say it depends on the tech. Advances in farming tech would probably be the biggest items people would use espionage over. Advances in weaponry... not so much. If a weapon is old and easily built and maintained, but still has the power you need, you're not likely to phase it out fully and will find internal resistance to getting rid of it. The M1911 is a prime example of this.

And, trust me, your tech level is not the minimum required for an interstellar empire. A more feudal system is much easier to maintain at a lower level of tech, and more likely to pop up in the real world.

And even then, I doubt they'd risk starships. If anything, small strike teams or spies that know how to infiltrate a culture would be used.

Now, note I do disagree with the idea the wars would be fought in cyberspace over tech. That would happen only if the system was, and please forgive me for the bluntness of this, designed by people who should never be allowed near anything top-secret. Any civilization with a clue about cyberspace is not going to have their advanced research computers with an internet connection. It's much more secure to keep those offline and have the labs send out couriers with the physical prototypes. Yes, it's much less convenient, but if it's a high-enough priority that you're worried about some alien race stealing it you're not concerned about convenience.

Commerce is interesting but likely only a side effect of a more important reason for two species to engage. Once a trader brings back the first shipment of authentic Rylaxian smeegle, then I think civilizations on this scale will find it trivial and much more profitable to reproduce smeegle at home, if there is a market. There will always be a luxury market catering to those who think only authentic smeegle will do, but it will be a small one.

That's assuming anyone at home is interested in investing the resources to make it themselves. Amazingly, this doesn't happen in real life, despite modern-world technology being advanced enough that there really is no reason why nations with modern technology should be trading with each other for food. Of course, that's because the infrastructure of most modern nations won't allow it.

The main issue with this is you have to consider infrastructure. That is everything to a civilization. What foundations are the cities built on? How did the cities grow? How did the small towns grow? How did shipping grow? If the infrastructure of a civilization doesn't allow them to produce smeegle domestic, it doesn't matter that the tech exists to do so.

The main suggestion I'm going to make: Either don't explain how the FTL works, or make it dependent on physics we've not discovered yet. But even if you go with the second, don't explain it. The players don't need to know how most of the tech works. People in the real world don't know how most of modern tech works, so there's no reason why a future culture should be any different.

 

[fuindordm]

Why would we find it irrational? Humans do such all of the time, and there are several conflicts right now spawned by that motivation.

I'm assuming that the economic losses from destroying fleet-class starships and other major space-based infrastructure are much higher than the economic losses from destroying a modern army (relative to the civilization's production). I'm aware that this is only an assumption, and that it could be changed. But it sounds reasonable to me because (1) FTL might require exotic ingredients and/or extremely difficult-to-build components; (2) a civilization probably doesn't have so many FTL-capable starships that losing one doesn't hurt; (3) the time required to build a new one is very long. And yes, these assumptions reveal a personal bias towards the kind of campaign that I think I'd like to run.

And, trust me, your tech level is not the minimum required for an interstellar empire. A more feudal system is much easier to maintain at a lower level of tech, and more likely to pop up in the real world.

Like Dune? If FTL communication were cheap and easy but FTL travel were expensive, then I could see such a system forming. You send a battleship once every 10 years to collect taxes and keep the vassals in line. But there has to be something worth collecting, that the Empire needs and can't make at home. And the Empire has to be capable of protecting the vassal world. On the other hand, if the vassal doesn't need protection then why pay the Empire? It's an interesting idea but too dependent on small-scale details that I haven't started thinking about yet.

That's assuming anyone at home is interested in investing the resources to make it themselves. Amazingly, this doesn't happen in real life, despite modern-world technology being advanced enough that there really is no reason why nations with modern technology should be trading with each other for food. Of course, that's because the infrastructure of most modern nations won't allow it.

The main issue with this is you have to consider infrastructure. That is everything to a civilization. What foundations are the cities built on? How did the cities grow? How did the small towns grow? How did shipping grow? If the infrastructure of a civilization doesn't allow them to produce smeegle domestic, it doesn't matter that the tech exists to do so.

This is a very good point; a manufactured good might be desirable enough to make a profit when imported, but not desirable enough to justify investing in a factory to make it. There is probably a sweet spot there that would make large-scale commerce in certain goods economically viable, if FTL itself is not too expensive.

People in the real world don't know how most of modern tech works, so there's no reason why a future culture should be any different.

Call me a utopist, but I hope that citizens of the future will be better educated than those of today. ;-)
But you're right of course, these are the kinds of details that will be important once I get to the stage of designing species and cultures.

Thanks for the input,
Ben

 

[Capn Charlie]

If one wishes to ensure a good reason for spaceships to exist, and move around, eliminate any FTL communications technology. If "mail ships" have to make a circuit between distant hubs of exploration or colonies, the tech will exist and be developed. In addition, if patents can exist, well, then there has to be economic activity between worlds, since when some fantastic new (enforceable) patented technology is invented, it will have to be distributed.

In my setting, I upped the ante by requiring biological life to come along for the FTL tech to even function, thus there has to be people going out into the dark if we want to explore, expand and exploit. I wanted human habitation of alien worlds and an excuse for trade, and found it in the ponzi scheme. Dissidents want to leave their current world, initially earth, and pay extravagantly for the privilege, colonizing an alien world, and continue to squander their wealth purchasing goods, technology, and machinery from their parent world struggling to become self sufficient, and once they finally are, they want to be able to sell machinery and supplies to other worlds, to cash in on their new status as a thriving independent world.

But you can't sell much to your founding world, they created and established your world, so you need other emerging worlds to sell necessary material and equipment to... suddenly the rationalization for subsidizing and encouraging colonization makes a lot more sense. Humanity just grows cancerously, pointlessly, through the stars, scooping up habitable worlds, utilizing useful resources, and just generally... human-ing.

Now, you throw some aliens into the mix, and all of a sudden you have possible new markets. Find one less advanced than you are, and you can sell them your stuff, surely they have something we want even if just as a curiosity. And if they have things we don't, we try to trade for them, or take them. If we take what they have hard enough we might reduce their society a few steps, then they will want our stuff for sure, since we blew all their old stuff up.

Simplistic, but... I imagine humanity sailing to the stars a bit like the vikings, trading with people strong enough to fight us and win, demanding tribute from those too weak to offer resistance, and conquering the ones we think we can beat.

 

[Razjah]

In a hard sci-fi setting, conflicts occur for all the same reasons they occur now. Why aren't all conflicts solved over emails and diplomats?

Resources are the biggest. Could be for mining, colonization, establishing bases, jump gates for your ftl, food. Things are scarce, multiple peoples want them.

Political alliances; different species create trade deals, "fly over" laws, no fly zones, and political alliances against other factions. When an ally is harmed enough, the others may need to step in. You can mix in rampant nationalism and growing tension between powers (WW1 style in space).

Religious differences; if a planet is a religious site for multiple species or is valuable to one faction for resources and another as a major route to a holy site then you can expect conflict.

 

[Jhaelen]

Do you really feel you need to collect even more reasons for interracial conflict?!

Considering the real-world, every reason, no matter how ridiculous or unfounded, is sufficient.