Post-human species

[avianmosquito]

Here we are again. This time, it's on posthuman species.

What I'm defining post-human as:
The species has to be humanoid, obviously.
The species has to be derived from human life, but truly be a different species. (As to say they cannot interbreed with humans.)
They must be significantly different from humans. (This seems obvious, but so does "water on road during rain.")

As always, I'll start us off. This is going to be a lot longer than the last one, and much more detailed. (Yes PeZook, I've learned my lesson.)

Kokome:
Binomial Name: Homo Auternus
Family: hominidae
Height: 140-160cm(male) 130-150cm(female)
Mass: 150-180kg(male) 115-135kg(female)
Notes: Adapt extremely quickly to any environment they are placed in, provided they survive it long enough.

Kokome are hominids, genetically engineered by an advanced extraterrestrial species to be the perfect soldiers, and, more importantly, the perfect slaves. (If only they hadn't let them keep their intelligence, this might actually of worked.) Kokome come in several different forms, most are, by all appearances, human, except for their eyes. Their eyes generally come in different colours than human eyes, greater shine, and have slit pupils. (If you're wondering what this looks like, take a look at your cat.) Also, located where humans have their sinus cavities, kokome have infrared seonsory organs similar to eyes, although these are covered by thin skin. Kokome also completely lack body hair, although the hair on their scalp remains, and the breasts of all female kokome produce milk. (As soon as they develop, which is earlier than it is in humans.) Kokome hair is also different in colour, as the dominant kokome genes code for blond, red and blue, and codominance results in mixed pigments. (orange, green and purple) The recessive, (but far more common) gene codes for gray. Kokome hair and eye colour is brighter in childhood, darker in adulthood.

Kokome have excellent senses, including the day-vision of a hawk, the night-vision of a cat, the hearing of an owl, and a sense of smell that matches most dogs. Add this to the ability to see ultraviolet light, extra organs for sensing infrared radiation (heat-vision, more or less) the ability to sense electromagnetic fields (therefore electrical currents) and excellent learning and memory, and they appear nearly omniscient in regards to their immediate surroundings. (Especially their own territory.)

Rarely, kokome may have large anatomical differences between them and humans, such as the possesion of a prehensile tail. These tails have hair, which is the same colour as the hair of the kokome. These tails vary from 40%-120% of the kokome's body length. Others include wings, which are usually of the 4 and 6-wing insectoid variety (.4% each) but can also be of the avian or mamallian variety. (.6% each) I'll provide a datasheet for all the variants.

6-wing insectoid:
Top speed: 40-50(male)* 50-60(female)*
Acceleration: 2.5-3.5g(male)* 3.5-4.5g(female)*
Endurance: 16-24m(male) 28-42m(female)
Note: Decent speed&endurance coupled with excellent acceleration&agility.

4-wing insectoid:
Top speed: 28-35m/s(male)* 35-42m/s(female)*
Acceleration: 2.5-3.5g(male&female)*
Endurance: 28-42m(male) 40-60(female)
Note: The greatest endurance of any set of wings, many females capable of flying for more than an hour, but mediocre flight characteristics.

Avian:
Top speed: 28-35m/s(male)* 50-60m/s(female)*
Acceleration: 2.5-3.5g(male&female)*
Endurance: 12-18m(male) 16-24m(female)
Note: These wings provide great flight characteristics, but poor endurance.

Mammallian:
Top speed: 40-50m/s(male)* 35-42/s(female)*
Acceleration: 1.5-2.5g(male)* 3.5-4.5g(female)*
Endurance: 12-18m(male) 16-24m(female)
Note: These wings are well balanced, the only thing they lack is endurance.

*Children with wings generally fly 5-10% faster and accelerate 10-20% faster.

However, wings are rare, only a total of 2% of kokome have them. Tails are more common, at 20%. They are not mutually exclusive, so .4% of kokome have both. This usually boosts agility by providing a superior sense of balance. None the less, most kokome are without this unique anatomy.

Now to put a little more detail onto kokome flesh, their greatest asset of all.

Tissue: skin
Density: 1.9g/ml
Tensile strength: 200-400mpa

Tissue: Muscle
Density: 1.8g/ml
Tensile strength: 10-20mpa

Tissue: Fat
Density: 1.6g/ml
Tensile strength: 2mpa

Tissue: Bone
Density: 1.8g/ml
Tensile strength: 200-400mpa

What this generally means to people that don't understand this, is that kokome tissue is upwards of 4 times as strong as human tissue. (It is also 80% more dense, leading to the occasionally comical situation where a human will find themself unable to pick up a kokome child.) This makes kokome all the more risilient. More importantly, it allows them to withstand their own strength.

A typical kokome male can provide 6 times the force of a human male, which results in a level of tension that would tear human muscle. A typical female cannot produce nearly as much force, but this is due to her smaller size. This increase in physical power is for the entire body, not just the upper body, so when coupled with greater flexibility, you can expect kokome to be over twice as fast as humans. (Females as much as 3x)

like humans, kokome also have a large amount of power held in reserve, adult males increasing their strength to almost 4x (12kn/arm, 36kn/leg) in an emergency, females increasing to 6x. (9kn/arm, 36kn/leg) In this state kokome are so powerful they can actually drive their hands, fingertips first, all the way through a human thorax. (They usually aim for the heart, but this is just overkill.) In fact, kokome have so much power they can kill weaker humans just by running into them, ramming them with such force it actually breaks the ribcage, rupturing the spleen and puncturing the lungs.

Kokome males are fast, (>15m/s) females are faster. (<18m/s) Female kokome are therefore far more dangerous than males in combat, closing distance in a heartbeat, presenting their head and shoulders to the target (both having armour and thick bone) and bringing a katana up through their target's body.

At the same time, males are more durable, wear thicker armour, (Rifle-stopping armour, not that shit we wear.) and have enough strength to dismember human foes with a shuto-uchi. (The reverse version reducing any bone it hits to splinters.) They also have a greater fondness for mid-range weapons than females, which allows for more general combat. Then again, a kokome assault rifle has the weight, power and recoil of a medium machinegun.

Kokome are also extremely resilient, having bodies nearly 6 times as resistant to penetration as human bodies. (Translation: a 9mm won't break the skin.) Their blood also clots 5 times as fast, (10hu*) meaning they loose ~20% of the blood humans do for an equal-sized injury. (And therefore need 5 times the injury to cause hypovolemia) To top this off, they recover from injury at 25 times the rate humans do. (100hu*) (Both replacing blood and repairing tissue.) When all of this comes together, you can empty an entire magazine of 5.56*45mm NATO into their chest and not cause enough damage to stop them from killing you. (30 ~5.7mm holes, 30 bullets lodged in their pectoral muscles. Maybe 300ml of blood loss.)

At the same time, kokome are actually slightly more intelligent than humans, have nearly impervious immune systems, and fairly advanced technology. On top of that, if shock lasts long enough without them dying, the mind recognizes and reverses it, allowing the kokome to get to the threshold of death and come back to life. This takes less time, and is therefore more common, amongst kokome children than adults. (A noteworthy example being a 4-year old kokome girl who took a single mauser round to the cerebellum and collapsed, only to wake up, almost completely unharmed, on a surgical table in an enemy base.)

Despite all this, the most significant change between kokome and humans is that kokome stop aging somewhere between 10 and 15 years, thus making them nearly immune to the sword of time as their bodies are eternally young. Their minds, however, are not. They last longer than human minds, but eventually deteriorate, so kokome do go senial, it just takes them a millenium to do it. (Sometimes as little as 500 years for alcoholics.) Eventually the mind goes entirely, but no kokome has ever lived this long, so we aren't sure how long that takes.

Kokome children perform very differently from kokome adults. (Which makes it odd that they don't distinguish between the two.) At 4-6 years, kokome are just as, if not more, combat-capable than adults. They are, of course, much smaller, but for their size they are much more powerful and efficient. For their size, they are stronger and MUCH faster, not to mention they can more punishment, heal faster, and are nearly immune to both blunt force and concussive blasts. This makes them much more dangerous in combat, as they are smaller, faster targets that can take more punishment and will still kill you in a single strike (likely with a hand-stab to the liver) if they reach you.

Kokome: (4-6y)
Height: 1.1-1.2m(male) 1-1.2(female)
Mass: 45-50kg(male) 40-45kg(female)
Upper body strength: 800-1200n(male) 600-900n (female)
Lower body strength: 3200-4800n(male) 3600-5400n (female)
Adrenalin multiplier: 6(male) 8 (female)
Clotting factor: 25hu*
Healing factor: 625hu*
Onset of hypovolemia: 600ml blood loss
Notes: Kokome children are nearly indestructible. They can stand up to entire magazines from typical assault rifles, (5.56*45mm or 7.62*39mm) without being significantly injured.

Kokome: (7-10)
Height: 1.3-1.5m(male) 1.2-1.4(female)
Mass: 80-100kg(male) 60-80kg(female)
Upper body strength: 1200-1800n(male) 900-1400n (female)
Lower body strength: 4800-7200n(male) 4500-5600n (female)
Adrenalin multiplier: 5(male) 7(female)
Clotting factor: 20hu*
Healing factor: 400hu*
Onset of hypovolemia: 900ml blood loss
Notes: Kokome puberty sets in at the end of this range, after that they are adults. A little confusing considering what we think of as adults, but none the less.

*hu, or houston urban, is a fictional unit for clotting and healing factors based on the average for downtown houston adults. It was taken amongst hospital patients, 90% of which were obese, and is actually quite a bit lower than what can be considered average for an adult. (~2hu clotting, ~4hu healing)

[avianmosquito]

(Couldn't fit it into the above space)

Kokome were created at ~900ad by the simini through the modification of captured humans (mostly from japan and mexico) and enslaved for 600 years by their creators before they finally rebelled, slaughtering every simini on both planets on which they were present within a matter of a few years. Since this was also happening with all other species controlled by the simini, they actually managed to succeed in throwing off the far more advanced species. Further, the simini, in their folly, had made the kokome immune to most of their weapons, especially their biological weapons, which had no effect at all. The only weapons the simini had that posed any threat at all were their chemical weapons, which were only useful at the tactical level, and their nuclear weapons, which were limited in both power and numbers. The simini had been hoisted on their own petard, and kokome took back their freedom with practically no effort.

When they are introduced to humanity in 2017, they are already the greatest military power in existance, or at least they would be if they weren't in the middle of a massive civil war. (Humans being sympathetic to the rebels, of course.)

[Feil]

I assume you have some variety of magic in your setting, at the very least to explain the wings and skin more durable per unit thickness than tank armor?

[avianmosquito]

I assume you have some variety of magic in your setting, at the very least to explain the wings and skin more durable per unit thickness than tank armor?

No magic required. Kokome skin is only about as strong as aluminum, (good aluminum, but aluminum) and skin (human or kokome) is a centimetre thick. If a centimetre of aluminum will stop a 9mm, so will kokome skin. As far as the wings, that's an addition that was made for pure practicality (and took 60 years to get right) considering kokome have a hard time swimming for extended periods and cannot tread water. Therefore, in order to go from one island to another, flying works best. It is also useful for bypassing gorges, mountains, rivers, and forests without spending money on creating a path. (Not to mention it beats the hell out of walking.)

[NecronLord]

Removed "Science fiction forum: " from the title - we're already in a Sci-fi forum, you don't need to restate it.

[Lord Relvenous]

Erm, I hate to be a downer, but wings on a human-like frame just doesn't work. We don't have the required muscle and bone design to achieve flight. Add on top of that your species super-skin, and you've got a useless pair of wings.

If a human cannot pick up a kokome child, that's pretty fucking heavy. No way is even a child going to get off the ground, let alone an adult.

I hate to say it, but to combine all the attributes you've given to this species into one super species smells of wank, super-science or no. Also, having an advanced society lose because they're stupid dumb asses usually isn't received well by more intelligent readers (see the discussions on Forerunners on this site, for example). If I'm making a slave species, you can be sure as hell that I've got some control built in, whether that be extreme behavioral training and indoctrination, or a glaring weakness that I can use to kill them if they rebel. Probably both.

[Starglider]

You appear to have pulled those numbers for flying humanoids out of your ass. The aerodynamics of insect wings do not work nearly as well at large scales as they do at small scales. For comparison, the minimum engine output for a backpack helicopter is around 30 hp, and that's just to get off the ground with minimal power reserve, vastly less acceleration capability than you have specified. You are using a much less efficient recirprocating wing system plus you want multiple g of acceleration, 100 hp would be a generous estimate of power output. The notion of getting 100 hp out of a set of muscles that would fit into someone's back is frankly ludicrous, without going into the multiple serious skeletal issues and the fact that no organic material has anywhere near the strength required to make such 'wings' (actually more like propellor blades for that thrust). Aside from anything else muscles are only about 20% efficient, so the waste heat alone would cook the creatures.

Then you seriously propose that this system of flight has more endurance than large conventional wings! That is equivalent to saying that a helicopter should outrange a business jet (which in reality has 10 times more range). Please stop spouting this nonsense.

[Peebo-T]

Hello. Looking at some of your early posting ideas. I think you'll find most if not all of these ideas covered in R. Talsorians' "Cyber Punk" setting. Or pretty much any book such as "Reap the whirlwind" (I think) by Walter Jon Williams.

So, about your metal laces skeletons? Why not have the organic equivalent of nano-bots or very cleverly tailored virus-es or some such to create the equivalent of Buckminster-fullerine tubes through the skeleton? People are already talking about using such creations in the future for Orbital Elevator material?

Just some ideas to help you along.

Cheers!

[Serafina]

Okay, here are some of the problems with a slave-species counqering their masters:

Any intelligent advanced species would be able to starve them off.
In your instance, they were created as soldiers - so they would be incapable of efficient agriculture and of manufacturing their own weapons. They would get these things from their masters - and if they rebell, they will be without food and ammunition in short order. You can't wage war without either.
Sure, if they manage to caputre the right factories - but why should they, and intact at that? Besides, they still won't have any skilled workers to use them, and no amount of intelligence lets you conjure knowledge out of thin air.

Their masters could go even further and include the need for a special chemical in their soldiers that needs to be ingested every couple of days or lead to death. Not a big weakness on the battlefield, but a huge one if they rebel or (more likely) defect. Especially if it can only be created in a laboratory and is not simple food.

Additionally, why should they put their whole military into their hands? Use them as foot soldier and other lowly tasks. Why should you need them to pilot your starships or command your battles?
Indeed, this guarantees that an uprising would cripple their warfaring capability - without a trained command structure and the knowledge how to use your starships (if they have them), a modern army would be screwed no matter how good soldiers they are.


Those are only a couple of things that could controll them very effectively. There is of course more, but that's a start.
There are viable szenarios where such an uprising can occur, but they involve either primitive societies or AIs.

And even IF such an uprising is sucessfull, you still have the problem that your new society has no scientists or other educated people. And learning that solely from books is...hard, to say the least.


Your species itself is kinda ludicrous from a scientific point of view.
Mostly, it includes numerous self-contradictionary attributes.

For one, a species does not have a major trait (such as wings) that only a small percentage of it express. That just flies straight into the face of biology, genetic engineering or not.

Second, why use humans if you want them to fly? The human body is perhaps one of the worst for adaptation to biological flight, especially if you want to put the wings on the back. It just won't work without magic - unless you have some way to lighten mass that can be done continuously by a biological being, but that's pretty much magic anyway.

Thirdly, if you start with a human genome, where do you get that immense lifespan? Genetic engineering is not magic. And why bother if you want to creeate a species of soldiers? They don't need to life for hundreds of years - that would indeed be detrimental as a security measure.

Fourthly, why the increased intelligence? That's again detrimental to your safety and not that beneficial for soldiers.

Fifthly, near-impervious immune systems have disadvantages. You can't just remove without weakening the immune system. And any species is vulnerable to specifically crafted bioweapons.

[Feil]

Incidentally, skin averages to about 1.5mm thick on humans, not a centimeter.

[Serafina]

Speaking of skin, both a thicker and more resilient skin could easily produce overheating issues. After all, most of our heat is absorbed/resorbed trough the skin. If you increase these attributes, that function could easily be reduced.
And given their hyperactive metabolism and the energy required for flight, you start to run into the problem of how you get rid of all that heat.

So you will have to include an additional mechanism.
Sweating is of course still an option, but that takes energy and you constantly leak water, requiring higher consumption of the same. Additionally, you will require greater reserves of it.
In that case, your super-species would require to consume great amounts of water before liftoff - assuming that they can actually carry additional weight - if not, then they will have severely limited range/endurance.


And why would you even want most of these features?
Flight is certainly nice, but a soldier on a modern battlefield wants to take advantage of cover - hovering in mid-air is the exact opposite of that!
It could be usefull for climbing rooftops or the like, but that's hardly worth the investment. Also, you can do that via helicopter or ropes if you have to.
For anything but small tactical mobility, aircraft of all kinds are better. They are sturdier, faster and more agile while also being able of carrying a great deal of weaponery and equipment.
And of course, the wings would be incredibly vulnerable, and plummeting while flying because you are hit certainly doesn't help the issue.

Likewise, the skin could easily be replaced with body armor. Which would be better at virtually everything, including the heat issue (given sufficient technology, which they would have).

[Starglider]

And of course, the wings would be incredibly vulnerable

'

Bird-like wings are actually quite durable; feathers are very resistant to tearing and shooting holes in them will not have a major aerodynamic effect. Loss of muscle strength due to bleeding etc can be dealt with by a glide landing; reflexes can do this to some extent even when unconscious. Breaking bones will probably cause a fatal crash though. Bat type wings are somewhat less durable to the fewer, more vulnerable of structural members and the membrane tearing issue, though artificial designs will have 'rip stop' criss-cross reinforcing fibre designs.

Insect-type wings would be ridiculously vulnerable due to the extreme stress they would be under and delicate balance of the unstable aerodynamics involved. Any significant hit is likely to cause explosive fragmentation of a wing followed by departure from controlled flight, aka a horrible crash. Obviously any body injury that stops the impossible 100 hp flight muscles from producing design power will also result in freefall from the flight altitude.

Incidentally I can suspend disbelief for the Collectors in Mass Effect 2 because they have mature antigrav technology and extensive cybernetic modification, so presumably the wings just generate maneuvering thrust. For a creature operating under real physics, no way.

[Mayabird]

Any intelligent advanced species would be able to starve them off.

This. Flying is very energetically expensive. Flying birds and bats typically eat half their body weight per day to survive. This is why when birds find themselves on some distant and remote island, they often go flightless - flying has its advantages, but it has to compensate for the ridiculous energy requirements. Flying does not beat the hell out of walking as a general rule, or everything would be flying.

The same with all the rest of your wanking. Super-immune systems and super-thick skin and super muscles and all that other shit is expensive. They will probably have to eat almost constantly to survive. Their masters could probably keep them under control simply by controlling access to high-energy foods. "You want to rebel? How cute. Have fun foraging. We'll be back in three days."

Unless they have magic abilities to rape thermodynamics as well.

[Lagmonster]

All flying superhumanoids are ridiculous and don't take into account the necessity of the weight and power of such an organism. If I were going to create something fantastic, I'd try to create a subterranean human, or a submariner human, or even a zero-gravity human. Both could be achieveable with reasonable changes to our frames.

[Serafina]

Incidentally I can suspend disbelief for the Collectors in Mass Effect 2 because they have mature antigrav technology and extensive cybernetic modification, so presumably the wings just generate maneuvering thrust. For a creature operating under real physics, no way.

That particular effect is propably due to the titular mass effect - biotics are capable of altering the mass of things, so it's harldy a stretch of the imagination that they can use that for personal flight.

But if you want to do such a thing, you need a mechanism that is not within normal science. And if you do it all the time while screwing thermodynamics, it really slips towards space-fantasy very fast.

[avianmosquito]

Erm, I hate to be a downer, but wings on a human-like frame just doesn't work. We don't have the required muscle and bone design to achieve flight. Add on top of that your species super-skin, and you've got a useless pair of wings.

If a human cannot pick up a kokome child, that's pretty fucking heavy. No way is even a child going to get off the ground, let alone an adult.

I hate to say it, but to combine all the attributes you've given to this species into one super species smells of wank, super-science or no. Also, having an advanced society lose because they're stupid dumb asses usually isn't received well by more intelligent readers (see the discussions on Forerunners on this site, for example). If I'm making a slave species, you can be sure as hell that I've got some control built in, whether that be extreme behavioral training and indoctrination, or a glaring weakness that I can use to kill them if they rebel. Probably both.

It's not like the wings are the only change, the entre strecture of their back changes to allow for a proper range of motion. Unfortunately, it also limits the range of motion of their arms.

As for weight, a kokome child can way as much as 100kg, it says so in the data sheet. That's more than most humans can lift, but still not much. The wings of a kokome child are muscular and their entire back contributes (Similar to how an entire side contributes when you move your arm) for a total upwards of 5kn of thrust. (Even in the gravity of their worlds, this is enough to get off the ground.)

The reason they lost was as much a fault of beuracracy as anything else. (Although I would like to blame it on arrogance.) They have a set of rules set up to provent them from damaging the resources they are trying to attain, and refused to breach them. These rules actually allowed the kokome to fight them for 8 years before they could use lethal chemical weapons. In those 8 years, kokome gained the advantage. Not only this, but since biological weapons are useless and it takes 512 years before nuclear weapons were cleared. The war clearly did not last that long. (They actually managed to find a loophole and start smaller-scale bombardments after about 60 years, but that loophole didn't give them much freedom.)

On top of this, kokome do have a massive, glaring weakness, two in fact.

1. They have practically no defense against poison. (At least after it enters their bodies.) This is sufficient enough, but it's coupled with an insanely fast metabolism, which means the poison will kill them quickly. This means the simini should be able to just kill them all in a few minutes with chemical weapons, but it didn't work because they kokome were prepared by the time they actually got around to it. (Does the term "gas mask" mean anything to you?)

2. Their nutritional requirements are off the scale. They emit more than a kilowatt from heat loss alone, (enough to track their body heat from space) and need to replace their energy frequently and in large quantities. (There are a few modifications to make this more convenient, but this is still an issue.) On top of that, due to having less fluid in their systems than their human counterparts, they are less tolerant to dehydration. This should mean that the logistics of managing a kokome army should be beyond the means of the uneducated kokome's minds.

Finally, the reason for the rebellion itself. The simini government holds a "benevolent guidance" kind of stance, so they tried to act under the assumption that kokome (and all their other creations) would be well fed, taken care of, and treated with kindness. This was not the case. Kokome were malnourished, abused and beaten. (I'd say "human nature," but it really doesn't apply here.) The simini government was not at fault, the people were, and they were not prepared as a result. They tried to quell the rebellion diplomatically and through conventional force, and nothing worked no matter how hard they tried. They were overrun, and they didn't even start it. (But they could of prevented it.)

[avianmosquito]

Okay, here are some of the problems with a slave-species counqering their masters:

Any intelligent advanced species would be able to starve them off.

The simini thought the same thing. Most kokome worked at plantations. Plenty of food there, as they know how to do all the work because they're the ones that've been doing it for 600 years.

In your instance, they were created as soldiers - so they would be incapable of efficient agriculture and of manufacturing their own weapons. They would get these things from their masters - and if they rebell, they will be without food and ammunition in short order. You can't wage war without either.
Sure, if they manage to caputre the right factories - but why should they, and intact at that? Besides, they still won't have any skilled workers to use them, and no amount of intelligence lets you conjure knowledge out of thin air.

And slaves, don't forget slaves. As they were slaves as often as soldiers, they were actually quite capable of efficient agriculture. As far as manufacture of their own weapons, their weapons were quite simple to begin with. They usually came down to a sword and an unreliable ranged weapon of some form. As a result, kokome have been making backups to their unreliable, short-ranged weapon (usually an oversized shotgun) for some time. These repalcements never got any more advanced than bows, but that's enough. (Especially when you consider the draw weight of a kokome bow is usually several kilonewtons.)

Their masters could go even further and include the need for a special chemical in their soldiers that needs to be ingested every couple of days or lead to death. Not a big weakness on the battlefield, but a huge one if they rebel or (more likely) defect. Especially if it can only be created in a laboratory and is not simple food.

A government cannot do such a thing and hold a "benevolent guidance" stance. As such, they decided to take a risk to save face, and it came out against them.

Additionally, why should they put their whole military into their hands? Use them as foot soldier and other lowly tasks. Why should you need them to pilot your starships or command your battles?

They didn't. Kokome handled their infantry and were their logistics force. As such, the biggest blow struck was that there were no more workers in their factories, mines and plantations, and he who cannot make war cannot wage war. On top of that, simini themselves were no match for kokome in combat. (The comparison is actually quite dismal, if only I had the time.) Since simini had to rely on their limited resources and their government refused to go nuclear, the kokome had the advantage right from the beginning. And, keep in mind, kokome were only one of dozens of rebelling species, so the simini had to fight off a good 50% of their military, while in the middle of another war, and the government refused to go nuclear. They were dead to rights from the word "go."

Fifthly, near-impervious immune systems have disadvantages. You can't just remove without weakening the immune system. And any species is vulnerable to specifically crafted bioweapons.

Yes, but the simini had neither the time nor resources to come up with such a bioweapon on short notice, while fighting a war over 6 star systems and facing a rebellion that included half of their military.

[avianmosquito]

Any intelligent advanced species would be able to starve them off.

This. Flying is very energetically expensive. Flying birds and bats typically eat half their body weight per day to survive. This is why when birds find themselves on some distant and remote island, they often go flightless - flying has its advantages, but it has to compensate for the ridiculous energy requirements. Flying does not beat the hell out of walking as a general rule, or everything would be flying.

The same with all the rest of your wanking. Super-immune systems and super-thick skin and super muscles and all that other shit is expensive. They will probably have to eat almost constantly to survive. Their masters could probably keep them under control simply by controlling access to high-energy foods. "You want to rebel? How cute. Have fun foraging. We'll be back in three days."

Unless they have magic abilities to rape thermodynamics as well.

They tried, of course, but the kokome were the ones doing all the work at their plantations, which, due to simini advancement, were rather large and extremely efficient. They could provide a good 120% of the demand before the kokome rebelled. Since the kokome were running the machinery already, they didn't have any issue continueing to do so after they rebelled.

As far as "eating constantly" is concerned, they follow what anime-fans call the "saiyajin way of life" simply eating more than seems humanly possible for every sitting. (50% of their body every day? How about at every meal?) Not only that, they do it fast, very fast. (It takes them no longer than it does for humans to eat their ludicrous 1%.)

[avianmosquito]

Incidentally, skin averages to about 1.5mm thick on humans, not a centimeter.

I meant millimetre, I wrote centimetre, I screwed up, saru mo ki kara ochiru, so sue me.

[Ghost Rider]

So let's get this straight...you want a humanoid but completely fantastical species to be critiqued so...you can do what?

Why go through all the hoops of some passing at realism when your critter essentially rapes parts of biology and thermodynamics, let alone your reasoning only really works because you haven't told us anything except your reveals. If it is to make it more realistic, then you have failed given the technology needed to create said beastie would be better in ventures of a mechanical sort.

If purely fantastical? Then it's a background fluff, that can be refined to make some fantastical reason or hell it can be as dumb as "They wanted it that way.". The reason of logical intervention is so your widget doesn't become an object of pure stupidity wherein the object of the piece has to jump through multiple hoops to narrate to the reader why said object exists.

[Feil]

Where did you get the notion that a millimeter of aluminum could stop a bullet, then?

[Serafina]

The simini thought the same thing. Most kokome worked at plantations. Plenty of food there, as they know how to do all the work because they're the ones that've been doing it for 600 years.

Which is an incredibly stupid move. You don't create soldiers to let them work on farms. If anything, you create multiple races - one that is good as a soldier and another one that is good as a worker.
A worker doesn't need wings or most of the other changes you mention. Having them would actually detract from performance.

And even then, it doesn't really add up. You also need people that know about the infrastructure. You need fertilizer. You need people to run the power plants, the industry and so on and so on.
In short, unless the slaves are employed in virtually every job (at least some of them), they are going to run into serious trouble after the rebellion.

As far as manufacture of their own weapons, their weapons were quite simple to begin with. They usually came down to a sword and an unreliable ranged weapon of some form. As a result, kokome have been making backups to their unreliable, short-ranged weapon (usually an oversized shotgun) for some time. These repalcements never got any more advanced than bows, but that's enough. (Especially when you consider the draw weight of a kokome bow is usually several kilonewtons.)

Bows and swords?
Are you telling me that the slave master race was so stupid that they could be overrun by a bunch of thugs with bows and swords?

A modern army would have a field day with them. No matter how strong you are (well, unless you are talking about supernatural strenght), a humanoid can do squat with those weapons against tanks and planes. Heck, bows are limited by simple aerodynamics at some point.
Heck, a WWI army could propably slaughter them - even with their ludicrous reinforced skin, heavy machine guns will rip trough them.

They didn't. Kokome handled their infantry and were their logistics force. As such, the biggest blow struck was that there were no more workers in their factories, mines and plantations, and he who cannot make war cannot wage war. On top of that, simini themselves were no match for kokome in combat. (The comparison is actually quite dismal, if only I had the time.) Since simini had to rely on their limited resources and their government refused to go nuclear, the kokome had the advantage right from the beginning. And, keep in mind, kokome were only one of dozens of rebelling species, so the simini had to fight off a good 50% of their military, while in the middle of another war, and the government refused to go nuclear. They were dead to rights from the word "go."

So they still had 50% or the military? What did those 50% include?
If the 50% include the armored brigades, the airforce and the command staff, their masters should have won.
Why?
Well, simple - an army without them is no better than a bunch of thugs. Thugs armed with swords and bows at that.
Meanwhile, you can draft infanterists within a couple of months - but you can replace neither of the above easily.

So you would end up with a small, over-equipped modern army against a large amount of thugs with no airforce, armor, logistic base (you know, factories) and command structure.

Yes, but the simini had neither the time nor resources to come up with such a bioweapon on short notice, while fighting a war over 6 star systems and facing a rebellion that included half of their military.

They should have made it in advance - as a contingency plan. Particulary since such a bio-weapon would circumvent the most dire problem we have with our bioweapons - it would only work against the people you want to hit (the rebels) instead of affecting everyone.

They tried, of course, but the kokome were the ones doing all the work at their plantations, which, due to simini advancement, were rather large and extremely efficient. They could provide a good 120% of the demand before the kokome rebelled. Since the kokome were running the machinery already, they didn't have any issue continueing to do so after they rebelled.

Again, modern agriculture requires on a lot of modern technology. Once that tech starts to break down or you run out of fertilizer, you have a problem.

And also again - your master race was incredibly stupid. They basically begged for what happened to them.
Simply not letting their soldiers run the farms or letting them on a short leash would have averted all the problems.
Having them require specially prepared food (prepared in factories, not specially cooked) makes a lot of sense, considering their high-demand diet. Adding a drug that will kill you if you do not take it for a couple of days would be an additional safety measure which would hardly be noticed - after all, they would eat all the time anyway.

As far as "eating constantly" is concerned, they follow what anime-fans call the "saiyajin way of life" simply eating more than seems humanly possible for every sitting. (50% of their body every day? How about at every meal?) Not only that, they do it fast, very fast. (It takes them no longer than it does for humans to eat their ludicrous 1%.)

Sorry, but you can't simply speed up such processes infinitely. What we have here is that their metabolism essentially works 50 times as fast. I am no biologist, but i'm pretty sure that won't work.
Species that eat a large amount of their body mass tend to be small. The largest birds are gliders, mostly because it would be impossible to be anything else.
I'm pretty sure you can't scale that up to a humans bodymass - especially not if the energy consumption would be even higher than for birds.

So either they rely on highly concentrated food (definately a possiblity - it's possible to fully nourish a human with way less than a cup full of food) or they will spend most of their time eating.



Overall, your story is already full of gaps.
Your soldier-slaves make nearly no sense at all, their masters were ridiculously stupid and even then the rebellion should have failed.

[avianmosquito]

You appear to have pulled those numbers for flying humanoids out of your ass. The aerodynamics of insect wings do not work nearly as well at large scales as they do at small scales. For comparison, the minimum engine output for a backpack helicopter is around 30 hp, and that's just to get off the ground with minimal power reserve, vastly less acceleration capability than you have specified. You are using a much less efficient recirprocating wing system plus you want multiple g of acceleration, 100 hp would be a generous estimate of power output. The notion of getting 100 hp out of a set of muscles that would fit into someone's back is frankly ludicrous, without going into the multiple serious skeletal issues and the fact that no organic material has anywhere near the strength required to make such 'wings' (actually more like propellor blades for that thrust). Aside from anything else muscles are only about 20% efficient, so the waste heat alone would cook the creatures.

Then you seriously propose that this system of flight has more endurance than large conventional wings! That is equivalent to saying that a helicopter should outrange a business jet (which in reality has 10 times more range). Please stop spouting this nonsense.

Hence why they can only fly (more glide, by the way) for 20-30 minutes at a time. As for their acceleration, that's easy, just fly about at a downward angle of 15-30 degrees, give it one big push, and pull up. It's something you see birds doing all the time. As for a lack of strength, the wings, being wings, are made up fo either a large, thing membrane (4 and 6-wing insectoid) no thicker than their skin or an array of cartilidge, powerful muscles and a lot of sinew covered in thinner-than-average skin. (avian and mammalian)

As for the entire issue with providing thrust, their muscle is more powerful than human muscle (by weight, it comes to ~2.5 times as powerful. By volume it comes to ~4.5.) and therefore shouldn't have any issue providing enough thrust to get a human airborne. As for range, you cannot rely on "top speed" when making calculations. They can maintain their top speed for 10-30 seconds at a time, the rest of the time they maintain about 20% of that. (Also, kokome like to make statements based off of atheletes and call it "average" so the endurance isn't reliable either.) That means that, even with the best range, they can only travel 30km in one go, and at that time they are likely to come to a less-than-graceful landing and lay on the ground hyperventilating for several minutes. At which time, their wings will probably be too sore to use at all for several hours, so they'll be on foot from then on out. (It's kind of like running a marathon with no training. It's possible, but you'll hate yourself in the morning when you discover that your legs won't move anymore.)

Oh, and I think I screwed up when I wrote the "top speed" stats for the 6-wing insectoid setup, they are most certainly NOT supposed to be that fast.

[Thanas]

Holy....

This almost beats Galactic_Juggernaut's insanity.

[avianmosquito]

Where did you get the notion that a millimeter of aluminum could stop a bullet, then?

From the metal sillouettes I use for pistol practice. They're 1mm thick, made of 7075 aluminim (don't ask why 7075, it was all I had at the time) and they stop both my 9mm and .45 hollowpoints with no issue.