Humanity invents FTL but every star system outside out our Solar System has been claimed by Aliens

[ray245]

How would and how should Humanity respond to a situation where every single system in the Milky Way, outside of our Solar System has already been claimed by a variety of Alien factions by the time humanity invents FTL? In this scenario, Aliens effectively prohibits humans from sending ships of any kind to their systems and deemed any expedition to be an intrusion of their sovereignty.

Humanity is allowed to move in deep space, but not allowed to actually enter any other system in the Milky Way. All the alien factions are also far more advanced and humanity is in no position to challenge them via a force of arms.

[Crazedwraith]

I guess we don't go into other people's star systems since you've shown it to be impossible?

And negotiate with them until we can?

[TheFeniX]

As said, negotiate. More like, pray really. Pray we have something they might want that they can't get just by wiping out humanity and taking it. Maybe they like our recipe for Coca-Cola or something.

The fact they haven't invaded the last "unowned" system in the entire galaxy is a rather large miracle in of itself. Do they have some kind of Prime Directive? Now that we are FTL capable, does that apply? How long, provided inter-galatic FTL isn't on the table, is that one last morsel going to last?

How much does humanity need to expand in this scenario? Are resources scarce? Because that's going to affect how much large Earth entities are going to push the limit of the alien's patience.

How fractious is Humanity? How controlled is access to FTL? Because at some point, if the need (want) is there, some group of morons is going to poke the bear by invading a system for resources or research, or think they can sneak into one (or an area of one) they think is uninhabited. If they get away with it, that will just embolden them/others. Which means more incursions will be made. The more separate Earth entities that exist, the more chance one doesn't believe we are still stone-age space tech or that the aliens have the gall to wipe us out.

Then we're all fucked.

[Megabot]

I suppose it depends on whether the Solar System can sustain humanity indefinitely, or if there are significant exploitable resources to be found in deep space that others haven't found yet...which is pretty slim considering how advanced other powers are and how long they've been around. In this scenario some kind of population control might be justified at some point, to prevent a situation where humanity has no choice but to expand in order to survive. Too bad there's no established Galactic Republic/Federation/Empire/etc. for us to join in this scenario...

The upside is that we're probably so small and insignificant for any more advanced alien power to bother with us, and they've had plenty of time to advance socially as well as technologically, so perhaps a combination of a strong sense of morality and the fact that the resources in our single system being a "drop in the bucket" to what they already have means that there's zero motivation for anyone to wipe us out. If humanity in Avatar didn't immediately wipe out the Na'vi for their planet's resources, then there's a strong case to be made that we ourselves would be save from even more advanced aliens.

[Galvatron]

Fear The Alien. Hate The Alien. Kill The Alien.

[Megabot]

Fear The Alien. Hate The Alien. Kill The Alien.

The problem is, that kind of mentality in this particular scenario will most likely result in something like this for humanity:

[Galvatron]

Only a madman deals with the alien. Only a fool relies on the alien. Only the dead have trusted the alien, although the last may be deluded into claiming that they yet live.

[Solauren]

First, it would appear they've been respecting our 'species right' (or whatever) by not claiming our solar system.

We should respect that in turn.


Which leaves us numerous questions:

First, how is 'Solar system' defined?
For example, what are considered the borders of our solar system?
The Helioshock? The Inner edge of the Oort Cloud? The Outer Edge? (Which would be roughly 2 lyr)

Second, how fast is our FTL? (If our own galaxy is all claimed, what about other galaxies? Hell, what about our own satelite galaxies?)

Third, Is there some sort of central alien government/organization we can appeal to for systems nearby that are claimed, but uncolonized (if any exist)?

[bilateralrope]

Step one: Establish some dialogue with those who have claimed nearby systems.
Step two: Ask them if it's "no human ships will ever be allowed in our space" or "no human ships without our permission". I'm hoping for the second.
Step three: Begin negotiations.

Fear The Alien. Hate The Alien. Kill The Alien.

Only a madman deals with the alien. Only a fool relies on the alien. Only the dead have trusted the alien, although the last may be deluded into claiming that they yet live.

So you would start a war that we have no hope of winning ?

[Sky Captain]

It would suck to have FTL and nowhere interesting to go. At least Solar system has resources to sustain trillions of people so there is no immediate threat if we can't colonize other star systems. Aliens seem decent enough that they respect weaker species when they apparently are spacefaring much longer and could have claimed Solar system thousands of years ago.

Best course of action would be to not piss them off and if possible open some sort of negotiations, maybe they would allow scientific expeditions to systems they have claimed, but actually are not using for anything if colonization are not allowed.

[Simon_Jester]

How does the "any visits by aliens constitutes an infringement on our sovereignty" attitude work in a massively multipolar galaxy?

You'd think that the level of mutual distrust that implies would result in a lot of wars, and a lot of systems that are empty, if only because everyone who used to live there is dead.

[TheFeniX]

I can't think of a reason it would. He did say "been claimed," so it could be their intergalatic council of morons divided up the galaxy and the races have a lot of room to expand into otherwise "claimed" areas and just don't want squatter-come-lateys. There could be multiple other systems with life that are also "claimed" but they can't/won't go stomping out all life. Or understand sovereignty a sapient species has over it's home system.

If venturing into one of these claimed but empty areas means they'll stomp us out of existence, then we're pretty much screwed as a species. Or at least the Sol System is.

But I'm betting it's the Spathi trying to trick us into not venturing into the galaxy. They fear us, as they fear all things.

[CetaMan]

I'd be more interested in how every single system in the entire galaxy ended up getting claimed (if they are, that's a level of infrastructure that we should of noticed, especially for local-ish systems like Alpha Centauri.) If we find they are lying once we actually send some scouts out, well diplomatic relations may be a bit strained but theres nothing we can really do for a few centuries at least.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, what I'm getting at is that you'd think there would be at least some openness to commerce and interchange of ideas, goods, and travellers among at least some of the species involved. Even if everyone's posting property claims, everyone posting "trespassers will be shot" claims is just... weird.

If nothing else, I bet there's some race of frigid-blooded methane-breathers or something who would totally swap us the settlement rights for Titan in exchange for what is to them a worthless lava-planet.

You know, one of those little blue marble worlds that orbit close to the star. The kind with a hellacious, fire-inducing oxygen death atmosphere, covered in giant-ass seas of dihydrogen oxide lava full of lava-fish that swim in the lava and strain corrosive gases out of it to power their hyper-energetic metabolisms. And toxic microbes that metabolize normal chemicals into literally more corrosive gas and actively murder all life on the planet that can't survive in a 20% concentration of this crazy shit, the third-most corrosive elemental gas known, that will literally eat your flesh and dissolve you. While setting you on fire!

One of those planets that's so close to the star that the lava is constantly vaporizing in the blistering, brutal solar radiation and raining down out of the sky onto forests of lava-plants that shed their lava-leaves whenever too much blessedly temporarily solid volcanic ash settles on them in the planetary winter. And where all the dominant land-based lifeforms are lava-monsters that run around and literally die of lava-starvation if they don't drink lava every day.

The idea of exchanging such a miserable godforsaken death world to the weird lava-mutants of Sol III (Three! Seriously, what the fuck kind of weird-ass life lives on the third planet from a G-class star!? That's practically inside the stellar corona!) in exchange for a perfectly habitable moon with a shirtsleeve working environment as long as you don't mind the radiation levels would probably be pretty appealing.

...

In general, this kind of setting falls prey to the same issue as the "single biome planet." Wait, everyone is like this? The whole galaxy? Why? If people are this mutually untrustworthy and can't think of at least SOME reasons to get along or interact with one another, why don't we see more species actively trying to kill each other and take each other's stuff? Deterrence logic can't work on everyone, especially since there's bound to be someone with brilliant (!) ideas about how to not get caught.

Or someone who just pulls an IndrickBoreale93 (inside forum joke) and gets so hysterical and batshit about the INTOLERABLE THREAT that they start trying to murder everyone around them without provocation because they're so convinced everyone else is out to kill them first.

[Formless]

You know, if the FTL drive is fast enough, we could just colonize the Magellanic clouds or even the Andromeda galaxy. I know most space operas stick to one galaxy at a time, but in reality faster than light means faster than light. Light can go wherever the hell it wants in the universe, and so can we if we can go faster. It would bypass the problem entirely, assuming the other civilizations of the galaxy haven't thought of it before us.

[Simon_Jester]

It seems a pretty safe assumption that they'd have thought of this before us...

[bilateralrope]

You know, if the FTL drive is fast enough, we could just colonize the Magellanic clouds or even the Andromeda galaxy. I know most space operas stick to one galaxy at a time, but in reality faster than light means faster than light. Light can go wherever the hell it wants in the universe, and so can we if we can go faster. It would bypass the problem entirely, assuming the other civilizations of the galaxy haven't thought of it before us.

How does "faster than light" automatically mean "infinite speed" ?

[ray245]

You know, if the FTL drive is fast enough, we could just colonize the Magellanic clouds or even the Andromeda galaxy. I know most space operas stick to one galaxy at a time, but in reality faster than light means faster than light. Light can go wherever the hell it wants in the universe, and so can we if we can go faster. It would bypass the problem entirely, assuming the other civilizations of the galaxy haven't thought of it before us.

That's if you can assume the aliens are somehow slower than humans. Which they are not in this scenario. You can try your luck in the whole universe, but you have to assume you are slower than the aliens in this scenario.

[Formless]

You know, if the FTL drive is fast enough, we could just colonize the Magellanic clouds or even the Andromeda galaxy. I know most space operas stick to one galaxy at a time, but in reality faster than light means faster than light. Light can go wherever the hell it wants in the universe, and so can we if we can go faster. It would bypass the problem entirely, assuming the other civilizations of the galaxy haven't thought of it before us.

How does "faster than light" automatically mean "infinite speed" ?

It doesn't, but it does highlight that if imagination is the limit you need a better defined scenario.

And I mean, yeah, other species will probably think of the same thing, but there is so much universe in this universe that any attempt to claim the entire universe is a facetious claim on its face. Now scale the logic down a bit. The Milky Way galaxy is huge, and we've observed significant portions of it that show no sign of intelligent life. No spaceships, no megastructures, not even radio signals or communication lasers informing us of their existence. So their claims to the rest of the galaxy are not based on the usual standards that dictate ownership like usage or at minimum some kind of sign marking territory, but rather the more aggressive standard of "because". If you only own it because you won the race to actually get to space, historically those claims do get contested by other polities. And historically, those contests were often settled either through force, or by one side discovering uncontested land and moving there. Again, its a huge galaxy, with more red and brown dwarf stars than we can ever hope to count (because they are so dim, but still warm and potentially harboring planets). Its hard to believe that literally every star in the galaxy can or will be catalogued and a valid claim laid to it. After all, they apparently didn't claim Earth for some reason...



All I'm saying is, its always easier to share and compromise with new species than to aggressively expand until you encounter someone meaner than you or just crazy enough call your bluff and make beating them an expensive proposition. It might not be humanity. It might be someone else. But its foolish to think your civilization will always be the biggest dog on the block.

[Steelinghades]

That's if you can assume the aliens are somehow slower than humans. Which they are not in this scenario. You can try your luck in the whole universe, but you have to assume you are slower than the aliens in this scenario.

If these aliens have already claimed the entire galaxy, they may not have even bothered giving extra-galactic travel a thought and why should they? There is a hell of a lot of resources for them to claim in the milky way, why bother expanding anymore.

[ray245]

That's if you can assume the aliens are somehow slower than humans. Which they are not in this scenario. You can try your luck in the whole universe, but you have to assume you are slower than the aliens in this scenario.

If these aliens have already claimed the entire galaxy, they may not have even bothered giving extra-galactic travel a thought and why should they? There is a hell of a lot of resources for them to claim in the milky way, why bother expanding anymore.

That's if you assume other nearby Galaxies don't have aliens of their own claiming the star systems there.

[Steelinghades]

That's if you assume other nearby Galaxies don't have aliens of their own claiming the star systems there.

I Assumed nothing of the such, In fact quite the opposite. If our galaxy is fully claimed by however many aliens there are, then it's quite likely that other galaxies also have intelligent life. The chance though, of every galaxy having been fully claimed with no space anywhere, along with no species existing that are willing to share systems or planets is unlikely.

[Simon_Jester]

Galaxies are big.

Now, you may naively think "so there must be room!"

But there's a catch.

Galaxies are SO big, they are subject to a phenomenon called regression towards the mean. In this setting, it is strongly implied that there are many intelligent species per galaxy. This indicates that all galaxies will have many intelligent species, unless of course they are so young or unstable that intelligent life cannot survive or evolve there.

While any one species in a galaxy may be an outlier (say, one that only claims territory they are directly using), you won't find galaxies where all the species are outliers. It is reasonable to expect that our galaxy is big enough to be a representative sample of alien species throughout the universe. So if we find a diverse array of many species out there and ALL of them are xenophobic territory-hoarders, it is likely that if we go to Andromeda, we will find other xenophobic territory-hoarders.

The only way this wouldn't happen is if one or two individual species are hoarding all the territory in our galaxy, in which case we could plausibly hope that in another galaxy, such territory-hoarders might never have evolved at all. The problem is that even if that were true, there's no reason to assume our galaxy's territory-hoarders would have abstained from taking advantage of having access to all that territory themselves, and their drive technology is better than ours.

[Zixinus]

First we will all collectively shit ourselves as we realize that we are very, very small boys surrounded by giants.

The first real question is that considering the solar system appears to be "pristine", that is obviously untapped, and why? What has kept aliens from entering the solar system? What is it that has kept us both unconquered and unmolested (as far as we know)? We really need to figure that out.

Second, what can we actually do? We have barely reached the moon, never mind the solar system. We can play around with communications, if we even can. Then the question becomes "What can we actually offer that we are willing to give and what should we even ask for?". First steps would be gently asking around the neighbours to find out who is even willing to even talk to us and who we shouldn't talk to. Not just because who is a bad egg but whose interests should we avoid.

[ray245]

First we will all collectively shit ourselves as we realize that we are very, very small boys surrounded by giants.

The first real question is that considering the solar system appears to be "pristine", that is obviously untapped, and why? What has kept aliens from entering the solar system? What is it that has kept us both unconquered and unmolested (as far as we know)? We really need to figure that out.

Second, what can we actually do? We have barely reached the moon, never mind the solar system. We can play around with communications, if we even can. Then the question becomes "What can we actually offer that we are willing to give and what should we even ask for?". First steps would be gently asking around the neighbours to find out who is even willing to even talk to us and who we shouldn't talk to. Not just because who is a bad egg but whose interests should we avoid.

Think of it as some sort of Prime Directive/respect the rights of sentient species. While humans were busy learning how to set up civilizations, every other alien species in the Galaxy and beyond has been busy exploring and laying claims on worlds. In other words, humanity is dead last in the race to FTL.