PsiTech

Crystals are also useful in this kind of a concept as they focus light (for lazors! ) and are often used in Sci-Fi for psychic purposes. Considering the fact that the Advent have the best light based weapons you might say it allows them to fire such weapons better then Vasari and TEC.

Hmmm maybe I could find a way to incorporate the crystals into the implants which can help better explain their psychic abilities. Thanks for the idea!

The lore does state that they're abilities stem from a combination of brain-computer interfaces and neuro-chemicals; the very reasons they were exiled by the Trade Order to begin with.

Some abilities could simply be thought-controlled technology, but that might not be very interesting.  The in-game tech descriptions are clear that adepts have both telekinesis, remote-viewing, and mind control abilities.

It could be that the crystal-based chemicals allow their implants to access dimensions on the quantum level (like the super-small dimensions postulated by string theory) over vast distances.

Of course, such a scientific explanation could be heresy to the more spiritual-minded sects in the Unity, who believe the universe is a single being with matter as its body and energy as its spirit and it is this spiritual level they can access.

If you want to truly understand psi-tech then u have to have watched star-trek and the Borg (The Borg collective).

While there link was a mind control set of instructions governed by the central uni-matrix 0- advent have a will and choose there own destiny. If u watch Star Trek voyager then there comes a time when some of the borg break out from the collective and leave individual lives.

Another example is the new remake of the Tv series V where the queen of the aliens shares a sense of collective with everyone else by calming there thoughts and blocking out all emotions.

PsiTech also takes a chapter out of the series babylon 5 from the race called the vorlons. The vorlons where the masters of telepathy in terms of projection. They could project anything and change peoples perception of how they see them or how people see the world around them. This could be done at great distances just like how some psitech abilities perform in various advent chips: esp:Illuminator- Deceptive illusion.

Advents also do share characteristics to some of the scifi series by having females at the top of ranks:

E.g Borg Queen, Wraith Queen in stargate atlantis.

All telepathic technologies share a common trait regardless whether its mechanical or biological: Mind control

While the Va-sari are the masters of nano technology then i think the advent are the masters of bio-mechanical engineering and quantum mechanics. Its unclear whether the advent also combine super computers in there technologies or turn themselves into super computers but whats clear is there not good at resource extraction-esp crystal compared to the other races which is at the core of many scifi series as the base resource to creating super computers and beam or laser technologies.

The one race that does share more similar characteristics with the advent is the ori in stargate SG-1. The ori where telepathic in nature but there telepaths could be blocked by technology for a period of time before they can overcome it. Thus its true that Psitech can block Psitech in advent terms while for the other races in scifi only telepaths could fight telepaths.

The ori also had a religious belief written in the book of origins and gained there powers from the combined belief or culture of there subjects. I would would think the bigger the cultural influence then the stronger the unity. This can be seen by gaining an increase in shield mitigation in the advent's areas of cultural influence.

The most advances races in the universe are always true telepaths or races that exist in a different dimension immune to the laws of physics of our universe. The vasari come close to this by  employing phase technology but to truly understand the vasari's ancient enemy is to understand that the most advanced race thats got the vasari running is either a robotic collective , or a race that dwels in phase or sub dimensional space or true telepaths. Most advanced biological races also feature biological ships: living ships.

I hope this rambling helped because I now take my bow and go to bed--

AFAIK it's only conclusive in SINS lore that males have weaker PsiTech skills. This being said, there's no reason why the guys of the Advent aren't in leadership roles; IIRC, a popular 'fanfic' on these very forums have a male as the top leader of the Advent.

The Advent make use of significant amount of PsiTech, and very little is referenced in terms of quantum mechanical effects. In contrast, IIRC there's at least one, and probably more, Vasari technologies that reference quantum mechanics on some level.

I'm going to straight up say that 'telepaths' and 'living ships' are NOT hallmarks of hyper-advanced civilizations. For one, Vasari technical excellence is often considered strictly superior in the lore, AFAIK- and Vasari phase missiles, a feat reproducible by no other faction in SINS, are by far the most lethal weapon to Advent ships.

There's also really the fact that the Vasari's ancient nemesis is indeterminate. There's too little information to go on other than that said foe is extremely diligent in tracking down the Vasari.

I will further note that bio-ships being technologically superior is a 'brainbug', considering that an actual living ship would be pitifully vulnerable to concentrated blasts of radiation, like nuclear ordnance (the TEC would like to have a word with you), concentrated laser weaponry (Advent), or the heavy radiation bursts (Vasari pulse beams, perhaps?). Oh, and the wildly-unrealistic Vasari nanotech would tear apart a biological warship.

I've always imagined the Advent as a cross between the Freman of Dune (desert homeworld, potent psychedelic drugs) with the Amazons, with a good bunch of pure vengeance thrown in. Don't think the borg is a good comparison.

Agree with GoaFan77.

I actually did a little bit of theory of how Advent tech worked in it. A little anyways.

Nitpick: it's "Fremen.", not "Freman".

OOOOH.

Please, elaborate kind sir.

I will try but I will have to do some research seems how it is kind of spread through the Distant Stars Lore.

Scifi generalises most advanced races with bio-tech. I wouldn't rule out the possibility but a change is needed than the usual sins ships. On top of that as with most advanced races its highly considered mastering bio-engineering is the ultimate peak in technology terms before transcending to pure energy:

E.g : Dread lords in galactic civilization 2 with their younger siblings the Iconian Refuge.

I don't argue about the fact nano-tech is superior to conventional technology. My favourite race will remain to be the Vasari but one thing puzzles me as to how they could loose at all. Must be something we havent already seen-- bio ships or some freak of nature terrorizing there space. My perceptions ofcourse could be influenced by what i've come to know of many scifi races with the same preferences and also the fact i encounter races like the zerg in starcraft 2.

Well, I think the key here is to seperate how the Advent think their powers work and how they 'actually' work. Start with the practical way, and then layer on some relgiousness.

Seeing as how they have a bunch of neurochemicals in their brain, it's easy to make a comparison to someone on drugs who claims they can taste colors or something. Now, their powers are real, but what sensations are they experiencing?

Practicality-wise, you have only a few things to explain: telekinetics, telepathy, and foreseeing the future. Telepathy is fairly easy at first glance (you have a chip in everyone's head, and it's a cell phone). However, some of the telepathic powers (eg Domination) work on the enemy who has no chips in their heads, so there has to be something more.

The telepathy seems to be the main part of their powers. The foresight stuff is pretty limited, and telekinetics, while seemingly used often, does not seem to be held in high regard compared to the telepathy (I'm saying I think theres more telepathy powers than telekinetic).

Another thing is that they were exiled into unknown territories for a long time.... who knows what they ran into... could even be the Vasari enemy/related to it.

As an example of what I'm getting at with the seperation, perhaps the Advent have lost more individuality to a 'hive-mind' then they think and the group conciousness is facilitated by addictive drugs (and/or the group conciousness itself is addictive). Their society certainly wouldn't see these flaws, but the difference between the two could generate alot of good story, I believe.

I'm going to do this point-by-point, to keep it as easy-to-follow as possible.

1. Bio-tech =! bio-ships. I do not object to the idea that a bio-technological device, consisting primarily/predominantly or perhaps entirely of biological components would not be a fantastically advanced piece of technology, or the idea that a hyper-advanced civilization (there's a difference between that and a 'race', I'll get to that in a moment) could build a bio-tech system that equals the purely synthetic systems of a far less advanced civilization.

However, said hyper-civilization would be far better of building synthetic devices that, with their hyper-advanced state, would be, quite simply, godlike compared to the tools of a technologically-inferior power. It is, simply put, a monumentally stupid idea to use a state of hyper-advancement to build a biological tool that works just as well as the same example of the neighboring empire that happens to be a million years younger.

Unless your state of hyper-advancement is so great that you pretty much do things for shits and giggles anyways.

2. Bio-ships =! the end-all-be-all of spacecraft. Bio-ships, are, quite frankly, an extremely naive (at best!), if not extraordinarily stupid idea IRL. In fiction, the concept can be executed quite well; witness Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy, a major part of which is biologically-based spacecraft and orbital habitats. But in this place we call 'reality', or 'real life', a bio-ship will be far more vulnerable than a conventional ship of metal.

Think about this; the first pieces of armor were composed of leather and wood, during the early Ancient world, such as the time period that the Trojan War would have taken place during, as well as the Greco-Persian conflict (and the historic Battle of Thermopylae), and the Peloponnesian Wars. By Roman times, shields were often made of metals, for increased strength, and breastplates were as well.

Fast-forward to medieval times, and you have plate armor composed of iron and steel to protect knights. Put a knight in steel plate-armor up against a Spartan with leather armor and a wooden shield (remember, that's organic/biological technology!). What happens? Fairly obviously, the knight will win- if only because the Spartan is simply unable to do any damage to the knight, thanks to the steel plate.

In the same way, a biological spaceship would be pathetically vulnerable to concentrated radiation- which is both abundant in space already, and easily produced by items such as nuclear and antimatter warheads- and any civilization which can build interstellar spaceships can also build nuclear weapons, at the very least.

3. Bio-engineering is not the ultimate peak of technology. Humanity is working on bio-engineering concepts now. Part of the reason is that the term is intrinsically broad and general. The other part is because we're always figuring out new ways to integrate technology with ourselves and into our lives.

Quite frankly, considering that it has been mathematically proven that mathematics will never be finished (IE, it will always be a growing field, with new formulae and equations being derived or formed all the time), it's quite possible that science would similarly be forever open-ended and unfinished.

That being said, the ultimate peak of technology would be, IMO, the ability to form a post-scarcity, post-human, post-singularity, society. And no one knows what that would look like, since by definition any society formed based on the singularity is unpredictable (that's why it's called 'the singularity'; it's a metaphorical event horizon beyond which we cannot predict what things would be like).

4. It is impossible for a species or civilization to transcend to pure energy- unless you mean that they do a mass mind-uploading into a gargantuan series of computer matrices. In which case you should really say "transcend into pure information". Energy-beings are a brainbug and a trope of fiction- they simply cannot exist.

5. Civilization =! 'race'/species. Look at humanity now- the entire species has wildly varying technical capability and access, whilst general "Eastern/Western/3rd-World" civilization tends to be grouped into general capability- for example, the majority of Western civilization has cheap, rapid mass-media, medical, and transportation access. Compared to 99% of 3rd-World countries, who lack all of those.

It gets even greater- the United States, Russia, and China, all of which either are, were, or are probably about to be, superpowers, have the ability to put men in orbit- and even on the Moon, if we're willing to spend the money. Nearly the entirety of the rest of the planet's nations are unable to even attempt to do so.

6. Nano-tech is NOT superior to conventional technology. Yes, there are some applications that it's far more suited to, but on the whole, a nanotechnological device is likely to be outperformed, for both cost and speed, by a conventional system. Nanotech manufacturing will never replace conventional manufacturing and assembly techniques, unless it's a fairly specialized item, like a quantum-level computer. Nanotech weapons are pretty much useless compared to a plain old-fashioned nuclear weapon, or even just lumps of metal chucked really really fast.

That Vasari nanotech is so superior and advanced is more because of Rule-of-Cool than anything that's plausible or scientific.

7. First off, the correct term is 'lose' it all. One 'O', not two. Secondly, it's quite simple- the Vasari may be the most civilization we know of in SINES lore, but, since the game is generally all we have to go by, the other factions are capable of holding their own against the Vasari warships and battlefleets.

Vasari technical par excellence relates more to their construction, maintenance, and movement capabilities, as well as certain more esoteric weaponry such as phase missiles (bypassing shields is quite the accomplishment) and the Kostura cannon (shooting Phase Nodes? YES).

It's entirely possible that the Vasari simply came across a power that their own technological superiority paled in comparison to- one of the resident theories of the forum is that the Vasari's nemesis is the civilization that constructed the Phase Jump Inhibitors- remember, the Vasari found them, and discovered that their ridiculously overpowered nanotech could replicate the PJIs.

It's also possible that the entire Vasari nemesis is a big elaborate hoax, or is hive-mind-nanobot-mind-controlled-Vasari hunting the not-hive-mind-nanobot-mind-controlled Vasari.

8. The Zerg of Starcraft and SC2 are nothing special. Look up the Tyranids. Just type "Tyranids" in Google. It's that easy. And you'll find just what Blizzard more-or-less copied the Zerg off of (the Tyranids have existed in some form since 3rd Edition Warhamer 40,000, so circa 1989-1991).

SINES lore? What is that? The history of why the side opposite the angle is totally over the hypotenuse? Sounds like some teenage dating drama.

Its scary what he comes up with in just one night .

I think the problem is accepting that bio-engineering has application for space technologies..while you might try point out it does- it may completely be different to what i have in mind. Which is probably the reason why you can't see it has a threat to the vasari. E.g Some super computers can process large amounts of information but can't mimic the brain. Current tech simply can't re-create the brain as it is now or phase drive engines or weapon banks made up of living parts (self sustainable living parts). These are just examples that could create controversy's but are places technology  is far off from mimicking. 

Don't dwel off-course and make pointers has to what doesn't exist in terms of scifi, Thats a whole another book to write. Nothings impossible in this universe. Heck i could say energy beings exist cos of the rule of cool of things.. heck this could spin off to  religious beliefs and angelic beings if we are not careful.  

and space ponys exist! We can bio engineer them anyday to breath and eat cosmic dust

It's a typo.

JEEZE NAPOLEON.

Check out my posts in a certain thread dealing with whether or not supply lines in Sins, and by extension RL space warfare, aren't such a good idea. Oh, yes, and why I think that space battleships utterly crush-rape their space carrier brethren.

The human brain, though immensely complex, is simply not comparable to a supercomputer that can, for lack of a better term, think thousands of times faster than a human. AI>Funky Biotech Brain-Controller-Device. For the simple reason that the synthetic hardware that an AI would run on has far superior tolerances- it can resist more G force (important in space combat), it requires no supplies other than occasional replacement parts (and that would be something that is likely to be engineered to coincide with the maintenance schedule of whatever the AI operates).

A self-sustainable biological phase drive or weapons bank is, quite frankly, impossible. This is due to the simple reason that, what little we are told about phase drives paints them more as purely technological devices (indeed, I maintain that a lore explanation of the way maps are arranged in Sins is that the view is from the reference frame of phase space, thus allowing for non-orbital tracks and movement)- with no possibility of mimicry via biological implementation.

Once again, I will cite the example of plate-armor knight versus the leather-armored Spartan: there's a very very good reason why we use synthetic materials and components for such highly complex tasks. Said non-biological materials are simply that much better than their biological counterparts.

Oh, yeah, and how is a weapon bank that is composed of living parts supposed to be self-sustainable? There's also the issue in that said weapon bank would be pathetically vulnerable to, say, an x-ray laser (case-in-point: Xrasers have radiation-kill ranges of around 1 light hour (IE, the distance a beam of light travels in 1 hour, or ~11 BILLION kilometers), and would also require a steady supply of nutrients.

Granted, a synthetic turret would likely be similarly vulnerable to a xraser at rad-kill ranges- with the caveat that said synthetic turret can easily be replaced at base, whilst your living weapon bank will have to slowly regrow. And be monitored for signs of cancerous growth (radiation does funky things to cells sometimes).

Also, for purposes of conquest, why do I need a computer that mimics my brain when I can have a computer that can solve problems faster than any human ever could? I mean really, a supercomputer can process information far faster, and in far greater quantities, than a human- it's part of the reason we use them, after all. In warfare, a computer that can mimic a human brain can, in all probability, be cheaply replaced by an actual human brain complete with body to lug it around!

No, there are impossible things. It's impossible to go FTL without a phase drive. It's impossible to bypass shields by exploiting frequencies (the Vasari phase missiles actually do a split-second jump to phase space to do a shield-bypass). I could probably think of more- the primary support for your argument is really that there's very little background given for Sins in the first place.

Further, I was elaborating more on the basic concepts of bio-ship, and bio-technology, being superior to good old-fashioned metal and computers. Your squishy living warship might be super-awesome, but my humble metal brick-of-a-ship will easily have superior durability (particularly against rad-kill, which your entire bio-ship is vulnerable to), and superior firepower.

And acceleration. And structural integrity. And G-resistance.

I'll also point out that, no, it couldn't spin off into religious beliefs and angelic beings if we're not careful- it would have to be entirely deliberate. Also, Rule of Cool doesn't work IRL. Sucks I know, but it is how it is.

And, to finally lay this to rest, I will straight-up say that no one in their right mind IN REAL LIFE would want to build a biological spaceship- especially when we know that plain ole metal bawkses work just fine. Even better, in fact, than a bio-ship.

Oh BTW, how do you propose to power a bio-ship? You do realize, of course, that the chemical reactions used by living creatures are far and away insufficient to the energy requirements of space travel (which is considered, at minimum, to require nuclear powerplants). So how do you propose for those squishy bio-ships to resist the intense heat and radiation flux of a nuclear reactor?

And once again Whiskey144 over analysis things again. 

No, you can't.

Space Ponies can naturally consume, imbibe, defecate, urinate, inhale, and exhale all known and unknown substances, without any ill effects.

This is canon.

dealwithit.jpg

Loving the read people. I write sci-fi and had to ask many of these questions to myself as well. In every situation though I have gone with non-organic options over bio-weapons/ships/intelligences.

I like the idea of using bio-tech for some species that are the descendants of biological constructs (i.e. biological machines genetically built to do something conventional non-organic tech simply cannot do, Star Control 2 anyone?). These descendants would therefore get no choice on what they are or their tools, therefore creating a logical possibility of bio-tech advancement to exist. However, I have not used this anywhere as yet and prefer to use metal ships and artificial intelligence.

Besides, melting chunks of metal hull plate crashing into the shields of dogfighting Frigates makes for a much better read than anything else.

whiskey (sigh)

I'm simply offering my views- which happen to be very indepth.

When you post something, expect to get a reply. Yes, so it's closer to a dissertation than a regular forum reply. So sue me. As I mentioned above, my views are very expansive and in-depth on the subject.

In depth I have only a slight issue with.

Its the

that is the biggest issue.

This

Is

A

Video

Game.

Not a realistic simulation.

The fact that we can see the weapons fire alone is proof enough that physics and science is played with fast and loosely. The OP was wanting some theoretical ideas and concepts from the Rule of Cool that could explain PsiTech. Not hard and fast science.

You

Over

Analyzed

The

Issue.

I'm perfectly aware of that- I was pointing out the appearance that RiddleKing (NOT THE OP) had an idea that Rule of Cool could be applied to real life in the form of "energy beings=cool, therefore they exist". I'm sure you'll agree that that's patently ridiculous.

You'll notice that I don't even touch on the OP's question whatsoever. So I really don't see the problem other than derailment- I have said nothing, zip zero nada, on the OP's question. My posts have generally been directed at RiddleKing, who seem to hold the (IMO) silly notion that biotechnological systems could be superior to their synthetic counterparts.

On the contrary. I haven't bloody touched the OP's issue.

Whiskey please defragment your brain and restart.