With both megastructures like the dyson sphere and more advanced biology tech going into the game, it seems strange that the only practical application of this biology besides becoming ubermenschen that was announced is making slaves delicious. If you're going to use advanced genetic engineering to solve food issues, why not also use ecology to make the whole thing more efficient?
Like, a single planet is a closed biosphere. That means if you get it set up running, ecologically, how you want, the amount of interference with that system is going to be minimal. Taking that into account, why is it that the best food worlds will be those with loads of sentients on them to do labor? Why not set up a system where you have only one or two trophic levels? All you need is something that efficiently converts solar radiation into usable energy (eg sugars) and hopefully incorporates some nutrients, and something that transports this energy to an extraction point. That can be one level, in fact, if you have photosynthetic animals or ambulatory plants, but even if you stick to the taxonomic stereotypes, you don't need sentience in the higher level, just a coded desire to, presumably at a certain stage of life, report to the space elevator for extraction and consumption. In other words, a world of nothing but grass and cows who march to the butcher's themselves.
Mechanically, doing this might involve converting a habitable* planet into a non-habitable one using society research and energy, but giving it a yield of a whole bunch of food that can be extracted with a station. Presumably you'd pick a world not habitable to your race specifically. With the megastructures going in, it'll be less necessary to terraform these even if you've already got them in your space.
Like, a single planet is a closed biosphere. That means if you get it set up running, ecologically, how you want, the amount of interference with that system is going to be minimal. Taking that into account, why is it that the best food worlds will be those with loads of sentients on them to do labor? Why not set up a system where you have only one or two trophic levels? All you need is something that efficiently converts solar radiation into usable energy (eg sugars) and hopefully incorporates some nutrients, and something that transports this energy to an extraction point. That can be one level, in fact, if you have photosynthetic animals or ambulatory plants, but even if you stick to the taxonomic stereotypes, you don't need sentience in the higher level, just a coded desire to, presumably at a certain stage of life, report to the space elevator for extraction and consumption. In other words, a world of nothing but grass and cows who march to the butcher's themselves.
Mechanically, doing this might involve converting a habitable* planet into a non-habitable one using society research and energy, but giving it a yield of a whole bunch of food that can be extracted with a station. Presumably you'd pick a world not habitable to your race specifically. With the megastructures going in, it'll be less necessary to terraform these even if you've already got them in your space.
