NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eltab" data-source="post: 8179627" data-attributes="member: 6803337">One empire's dominant race can - or did in the past - eat members of another empire.  Or (a la Alien) uses host bodies to reproduce.  They promise to be nice now but they weren't then.Space is big but resources can still be scarce.  If a system with easily-mined deposits of the valuable but normally hard-to-access mineral Unobtanium happens to lie on / near the border as of First Contact, possession of that system will become a point of contention.  And may remain so even after the easy-to-access deposits are exhausted and it becomes just as hard as anywhere else to mine the remaining deposits. The "Rare Earth" hypothesis is true for one race in question: getting the physical requirements for their 'habitable planet' ideal is statistically unlikely or requires just the right combination of independent factors.  So every habitable (as they see it) planet claimed / occupied by somebody else is a significant crimp in their galaxy-spanning destiny.(The old game Starfire: Empires had an Atmosphere Chart where one possibility occurred exactly once out of 36 options.  Guess what I rolled for my 'homeworld'?)IRL political philosophy: is the Individual or the Group the fundamental unit upon which Government is built?  This argument underlay the Cold War which lasted 40 years.  Two space empires that cannot Mutually Assured Destruction each other could keep the arguments / actions going for generations.Diplomatic misunderstanding: Nation C makes available its good offices to mediate a quarrel between Nation A and Nation B.  This is interpreted as interference or taking sides in the quarrel, and results in suspicion / resentment between A/C or B/C (or both!) that did not previously exist.Dysfunctional culture: Any government that OKs slavery and the slave trade - especially slave-taking raids - will be surrounded by hostile peoples with ongoing grudges against the offender.From a metagame perspective, "free the slaves" is a great way to attract player interest in the adventure; conversely "slaveowner" = "enemy".</blockquote>

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