Aquatic races
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There are many plausible mechanisms by which an aquatic intelligence can accumulate energy from natural sources, practice the chemistry needed to transform, concentrate, and control it. Therefore the answer is yes: an aquatic civilization could conduct space travel.
It may have been a very different experience then our own. Maybe relying on organic technologies more then inorganic. Or a combination of the two!
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if we are talking about creature that can't leave the water even for short time (like a fish)
they can't melt metals, most of the chemistry we know won't work underwater, and they can't use electricity (how will they even discover it?)
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If not fully aquatic then there should at least be room for amphibious species.
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Hardly possible, specially not in the early forms when finding all this would only happen by chance as it likely did for humanity. Maybe a high developed species could do it, but first has to get their and that wouldn't happen "under the sea".
Intelligent species are highly unlikely to develop and reach space as it is.
Aquatic species reaching space is highly improbable, for the reasons stated above, and the debate around why it is so has been quite fascinating. It would be, at best, a gratuitously long, winding, difficult road that would make space travel far less inviting.
But I'd also like to point out that we're talking about a fictional universe where ~1/6 of all sentient species can be expected to be sentient fungi. Aquatic species, I think, hit the same region of improbable-but-cool.
But I'd also like to point out that we're talking about a fictional universe where ~1/6 of all sentient species can be expected to be sentient fungi. Aquatic species, I think, hit the same region of improbable-but-cool.
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Keep in mind that there are several pretty intelligent species on our own planet that live their whole lives entirely in the ocean, yet they still breathe air. So just because a species is aquatic doesn't necessarily mean they have to fill their ships with water.
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Yeah, I would't be against putting aquatic species into the game. The game isn't that realistic in the first place...like...by design.
An aquatic species lives underwater. If they can live on both the surface and water, doesn't that make them amphibious?
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or a fish-like race that use eels as energy source in power plants?!What if they're highly evolve descendants of the electric eel?
my god, the hamsters running wheel power stations look so primitive now
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They'd need an enormous setup on land to be able to launch a rocket. It seems incredibly inconvenient to have to do so much fine, detailed work with them wearing the equivalence of a space suit. Not to mention the issues that would result from needing to provide at least some sort of aquatic breathing apparatus on the ship.
Play as amphibic, you come out of the water only to speak to this weird-dry-air-breathing aliens
Another thing that should be considered is that the vast majority of life on earth is in the water, but the most intelligent species on earth lives on land, as do the majority of tool-using animals.
While the sample size is pretty small compared to life overall, this does suggest to some extent that intelligent life is more likely to develop on land than in the ocean.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the reasons why this might be. While human technology is impossible underwater, a hypothetical aquatic civilization would have very different technology, and in any case humans evolved modern levels of intelligence long before developing anything recognizable as technology. However, it may be that there is less evolutionary incentive for intelligence in the ocean; almost all tool-using animals are animals which take close care of their young, teach them how to use tools, and which maintain permanent or semi-permanent nests and homes. Both of these tasks are far rarer among aquatic animals, probably due to ecological concerns such as the enormous sizes of marine predators (who themselves have little incentive to develop intelligence when they are already dominant predators) and the lack of good nesting sites outside of coral reefs and kelp forests, both of which are too confining for organisms large enough to support sentience.
While the sample size is pretty small compared to life overall, this does suggest to some extent that intelligent life is more likely to develop on land than in the ocean.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the reasons why this might be. While human technology is impossible underwater, a hypothetical aquatic civilization would have very different technology, and in any case humans evolved modern levels of intelligence long before developing anything recognizable as technology. However, it may be that there is less evolutionary incentive for intelligence in the ocean; almost all tool-using animals are animals which take close care of their young, teach them how to use tools, and which maintain permanent or semi-permanent nests and homes. Both of these tasks are far rarer among aquatic animals, probably due to ecological concerns such as the enormous sizes of marine predators (who themselves have little incentive to develop intelligence when they are already dominant predators) and the lack of good nesting sites outside of coral reefs and kelp forests, both of which are too confining for organisms large enough to support sentience.
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It should also be noted that we have space amoeba traveling between systems faster than the speed of light, so realism might not exactly be the biggest issue, at least when it comes to the biodiversity of the game.
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More difficult doesn't mean impossible. First they'd need to colonize land areas, then slowly they'd learn about how stuff works groundside. Possibly over thousands of years, but there's time.
Also some aquatic species can survive briefly out of the water. Maybe they'd just need a mask and regular showers. Heck, whales are aquatic, and they breathe air.
Octopuses are pretty damn bright and excellently equipped to use tools. They are an aquatic race yet they can survive for a short period on land. It wouldn't take a great leap for them to have been just a bit smarter. They do copy each other and learn, they could have been more social.
Under different circumstances I don't see why they couldn't have formed a civilization (if they'd evolved slightly differently of course).
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Aquatic races would have a pretty hard time of things but it would not be impossible assuming a head start. They would have some major issues with metal and the likes but in general there is always things that could happen on a world to make this more probable. Life on earth was created by a couple of billion to one odds occurring in secession and they would have a few advantages. Likely a better understanding of distance and 3d movement and they would likely have less issues from meteor extinctions due to living underwater.
Some thoughts from Robert A. Freitas Jr., Xenology: An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, and Civilization
"Plenty of natural energy sources occur in our own oceans such as super heated underwater volcanoes -- these exist in great numbers on Earth’s ocean floors and should be even more numerous on larger, more massive pelagic worlds. Sub marine oil deposits may be found in sedimentary strata. Natural gas and other combustible vapors up welling from the planetary interior could be trapped in special containers and burned using oxygen imported from the surface. Lacking combustion, bubble wheels could be erected over regions of submarine helium gas effluence and the rotary power used to turn mechanical flywheels.
Plenty of resources in our ocean possibly more in an alien one. Clay's and mud are available for ceramics and pottery, sand for glass, and there is a tremendous variety of organic materials available for chemical industry -- dyes, acids, drugs, etc. Stone masonry is quite possible, since concrete can be mixed that can set underwater. Nodules littering the continental shelves and ocean floors could be harvested for their nickel, cobalt and manganese. Fantastic quantities of metals are afloat in seawater itself. For example, a kilogram of iron can be harvested by filtering 50,000 m3 of ordinary seawater past a simple magnetic lodestone. (The liquid volume involved is only about as much as a single shark breathes in a month.) Marine lifeforms could devise an advanced biological technology including "cold light" streetlamps using luminiferous bacteria, architectural coral, and "slave fishes."
There is no bar to the full development of electrical power generation. Electric eels could be domesticated for this purpose, or simply cannibalized for their organic batteries. Alternatively, marine extraterrestrials could build their own batteries using pieces of carbon, tankards of seawater and some other electrolyte, and a small bit of metal. The electricity thus obtained might then be used to perform electrolysis on water, splitting each molecule into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms. This gaseous mixture is a potent fuel, and could conceivably be used to power smelters, streetlights, 2800 °C oxyhydrogen blowtorches, turbines and jet-propelled devices, and even rockets."
I see no reason if an aquatic species developed an advanced civilization they wouldn't be able to eventually explore the stars.
"Plenty of natural energy sources occur in our own oceans such as super heated underwater volcanoes -- these exist in great numbers on Earth’s ocean floors and should be even more numerous on larger, more massive pelagic worlds. Sub marine oil deposits may be found in sedimentary strata. Natural gas and other combustible vapors up welling from the planetary interior could be trapped in special containers and burned using oxygen imported from the surface. Lacking combustion, bubble wheels could be erected over regions of submarine helium gas effluence and the rotary power used to turn mechanical flywheels.
Plenty of resources in our ocean possibly more in an alien one. Clay's and mud are available for ceramics and pottery, sand for glass, and there is a tremendous variety of organic materials available for chemical industry -- dyes, acids, drugs, etc. Stone masonry is quite possible, since concrete can be mixed that can set underwater. Nodules littering the continental shelves and ocean floors could be harvested for their nickel, cobalt and manganese. Fantastic quantities of metals are afloat in seawater itself. For example, a kilogram of iron can be harvested by filtering 50,000 m3 of ordinary seawater past a simple magnetic lodestone. (The liquid volume involved is only about as much as a single shark breathes in a month.) Marine lifeforms could devise an advanced biological technology including "cold light" streetlamps using luminiferous bacteria, architectural coral, and "slave fishes."
There is no bar to the full development of electrical power generation. Electric eels could be domesticated for this purpose, or simply cannibalized for their organic batteries. Alternatively, marine extraterrestrials could build their own batteries using pieces of carbon, tankards of seawater and some other electrolyte, and a small bit of metal. The electricity thus obtained might then be used to perform electrolysis on water, splitting each molecule into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms. This gaseous mixture is a potent fuel, and could conceivably be used to power smelters, streetlights, 2800 °C oxyhydrogen blowtorches, turbines and jet-propelled devices, and even rockets."
I see no reason if an aquatic species developed an advanced civilization they wouldn't be able to eventually explore the stars.
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Aquatic Races would be interesting, would imagine ship costs for them would be high as they would need to fill there ships with liquid I imagine, but at the same time they would have a better understanding of space combat as there entire race would be used to live in a 3 dimenstional world so to speak.
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