More difficult means that they'll be edged out by a terrestrial creature, though.
Aquatic races
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In Star Wars the Mon Calamari are mostly aquatics, and they are known for been some of the best shipbuilders in the galaxy, and have probably the best shield systems. There are some others races in that "universe" that are mostly aquatic and travel in space with tranquility... but they not build some of the best battle cruisers in the galaxy like the calamari.
As some others say, yes, is difficult that aquatic civilizations jumps into space, but from a Stallaris point of view, we start from the point of wich our aquatics beings have already surpassed the limitation of the atmosphere and early FTL travel... so, why not have some Sharks, Dolphins or Killer Whales as phenotypes? (of course the Whales and Dolphins added as mammals... )
As some others say, yes, is difficult that aquatic civilizations jumps into space, but from a Stallaris point of view, we start from the point of wich our aquatics beings have already surpassed the limitation of the atmosphere and early FTL travel... so, why not have some Sharks, Dolphins or Killer Whales as phenotypes? (of course the Whales and Dolphins added as mammals... )
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I was bitchin' about this too, but I feel I should make you aware that Wiz enabled asymmetrical starts now so we don't have to live in a bizarro-world where 44 civilizations hundreds of light years apart all invented the same tech on the same day.
Suspension of disbelief: recovered!
Yeah, that's right. I mean, humans are totally edged out from using the seas by fish and edged out from using the sky by birds.
Octopuses are actually exactly what I was referring to when I said aquatic animals didn't teach their young, which I guess was unclear. In most octopus species, the male dies after mating and the female tends to the eggs, before dying when they hatch. As a result, without a major change in the octopus life cycle, it is impossible for knowledge to be passed down between generations like they are in humans or even animals like chimpanzees or crows.
Such changes do happen; it can be seen in viviparous sharks and snakes and in non-metamorphic frogs. But there are clear evolutionary incentives for the status quo. Part of the reason for this is simply that octopus young are extremely small and numerous, so there is little incentive for the parents to take care of them once they disperse. But even if they did not, the adult octopus is also vulnerable to larger predators, which would cause knowledge loss and thus reduce the incentive to pass down knowledge.
While it is certainly not impossible that under the right conditions, they would have developed intelligence, you have to also recognize that they face all sorts of evolutionary obstacles to developing intelligence that terrestrial animals do not face. And while these obstacles can certainly be overcome, if we assume that alien life is at least vaguely reminiscent of earth life, we would come to the conclusion that intelligence should at least be much more common in terrestrial animals than sea animals.
Hopefully they'll be added sometime after launch, I find the idea that it's completely impossible to reach space from the water frustratingly constrained. It's a reeeaaallllyyyy big universe and I know it's hard to imagine a world that isn't analogous to earth (to some extent) achieving something similar but... seriously. Reeeaaaallllyyyy big.
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More common? Certainly.
It's just that how strong an animal is depends entirely on it's competition. Obviously octopuses aren't about to form a civilization right now but a differently evolved version of them could have been, especially on a not-quite Earth.
If they get to live long lives because they don't get killed all the time, possibly even because they evolved a social defense, then there'd be nothing stopping them from forming a civilization. This theoretical creature could even be smarter than humans, perhaps partially compensating for a lack of socialness.
Caring for their young is quite irrelevant if they do exchange ideas with the adults. They don't even need to be all that social, as long as they are just very intelligent.
...and in a distant part of rural Honshu, a cold shiver just ran down the spines of every student in the Mishuzumi All-Girl's Secondary School.
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I wouldn't say it is impossible, I would say it is beyond our current understanding. It is incredibly unlikely that the path of human technological evolution is the only path. I would say it is very possible to underwater organisms to have developed technology, along a path that is nigh impossible for us to think of because it relies upon aspects of physics that would never occur to us to use. It would be arrogant to assume we know everything about technological progress after all.
That said I am not disappointed that Stellaris doesn't include aquatic life, because there is the big question of how they advanced to this level of technology, and the fact that their technology decks would be very different from a standard walking, opposable thumbs race. It would be interesting to see in a DLC, as would energy beings, gas bags that live 'on' gas giants, native void species.
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Not if they are 10k years older than their terrestrial counterparts.
There is already portraits which can be very adapted to oceanic worlds: turtles in reptilian, the abys fish like in reptilian archetype, the jellyfish and some on the mollusquoid archetype, the otter and platypus in mamalian archetypes, the crab one in artropods...
Maybe if they add the plant race too we gonna to have some algae portraits too.
They don't need new mechanics. Don't forget that all earth life has started to grow in seas.
Maybe if they add the plant race too we gonna to have some algae portraits too.
They don't need new mechanics. Don't forget that all earth life has started to grow in seas.
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out there is so much water, its believable that somewhere is intelligent life in form of a fish 
. i think stellaris (vanilla) is not capable to bring us such species into game, this would require lots of changes in the game. i think stellaris is a game that bring us so much expansions, likely with new lifeforms like fish people or rock/crystalline like lifeforms. Maybe plasma lifeforms. Ok we have this already as spacemonsters, so why not as species to play with? maybe later in some expansion? i would love this.
. i think stellaris (vanilla) is not capable to bring us such species into game, this would require lots of changes in the game. i think stellaris is a game that bring us so much expansions, likely with new lifeforms like fish people or rock/crystalline like lifeforms. Maybe plasma lifeforms. Ok we have this already as spacemonsters, so why not as species to play with? maybe later in some expansion? i would love this.
It's completely logical for humans to think that intelligent life has to be human-like, and that there is only one way to progress. The problem is the speculative nature of xenobiology : we have to rely on our imagination and on our very little experience of evolution (so little in fact, that is it probably negligible). I could try to answer your questions, but the truth is simply that nobody has them. You can find various theories about how intelligent life is or isn't possible without thumbs, a large brain, or fire (and it's true that you don't necessarily need fire to cook food, there are other sources of heat) etc... I find the theories about aquatic intelligent life more convincing, and also more interesting, because it seems a bit biased to consider that intelligent life has to be so close to ours - and usually things are beyond what the human mind can imagine.
About life in the universe : of course there is no goal to evolution. But we simply don't know how "life" works. Maybe life is a common thing in the universe. Maybe intelligent life is just one more ecological (some very serious scientists believe that if dinosaurs lived a bit longer, some species could achieve the same level of intelligence as ours). Or maybe not. Maybe intelligence is indeed rare. Maybe complex life is also very rare.
I think that overestimates the possibilities. An "upcoming" species would have to work with similar materials that humanity also used. There are no more elements available that we don't have on earth as well. Maybe they will have more of some, less of others, but they would also need stuff like metal work, a form of energy source like coal (the easiest to get and handle for an early industrial civilization) and so on.
The fire was absolutely crucial for our development and I don't see any species to develop a modern society without it, let alone get into space. There is just NO substitution for it. That doesn't mean there couldn't be intelligent life on an ocean world but intelligent life doesn't have to develop in a modern society like we have. There are areas in the world that probably wouldn't have never changed out of their tribal life style if their culture wouldn't have been infringed upon by Western civilization. We also saw numerous civilizations that pretty much stagnated even if they reached a certain level and would have never developed beyond that without influences from outside. The believe that evolution AND our civilization will inevitably develop further and further doesn't hold up. There has to be very specific circumstances for both the development of intelligent live and the development of a modern society to happen.
And I think you are underestimating the possibilities. Why would they have to work with fire and metals? Corrals can be very strong (or very weak) and grow naturally, some species with a penchant for genetic engineering (which, to note, does not mean playing with genes under a microscope, breeding dogs for various tasks counts as genetic engineering) could breed coral for specific tasks/shapes. It is no more strange for aquatic life to do this than it is for Tyranids to have evolved into a 0% electronic technology space faring 'civilization'.
Exactly, their society would be different. It might get to space a different way: they might develop technology like the Star Gates (or the Star Trek equivalent, it appears in some TNG episode) that allows them to transit planet to planet without even entering space, or they might be very similar to us, but using water compression techniques instead of melting to form metal structures. I think it is naive to assume that because humans needed fire makes fire critical to any civilization evolving to the point of interplanetary travel.
Again, though, because of this I am not disappointed in the lack of Aquatic species at present, because they should have unique mechanics to represent the fact that their technological progress would be very different from a terrestrial species.
I'd also easily believe that even a very intelligent aquatic species could well get stuck at renaissance levels of technology (which is definitely achievable..) for thousands of years. Yet it's not like any animals can evolve past them once they have supremacy. Odds are nothing will disturb them.
They have millions of years for their society to reach our modern tech levels, maybe they would eventually work out how to manipulate the surface world. Or not. I do think it's possible though..
a) Vulnerability to larger predators sounds like an excellent incentive to develop social relations and intelligence. Octopuses could cooperate to create huge ink clouds for example, or they could snatch stones from the beaches and build obstacles protecting them from sharks.
b) This 'octopuses vs. huge predators' struggle is something happening on Earth. It doesn't necessarily happen on Planet X. For example, oceans there are very shallow, making it impossible for sharks to exist. Actually, in any case, it's way more realistic to say that ecosystem of Planet X is drastically different from one of Earth, than to assume it's the same.
c) Also, think about gravity. The life on a planet with enormous gravity would only be able to walk on the ocean floor, and reaching the surface would already require some technology. (escaping the planet, compared to that, would be trivial - same as flight vs. spaceflight for humans)
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What else would you use for all kinds of machinery? And what kind of engines would you later use, when you can't have steam, electrical or combustion engines? Again: there aren't just some materials or elements that we don't know that they could use. We know ALL the elements and what they do. Corals are no substitute for a material that is stronger and/or more elastic and that can be freely cast or forged.
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