RELEASED Avali Race Mod, The second thread!

During their evolution they would have been mostly restricted to certain latitudes of Avalon (the desert regions). Thus sharing a common climate and seasonal structure. After their evolution/uplifting into a spacefaring race it would likely be seen as traditional rather than essential to have a mass gathering in time to have young in the "spring". Much like earth's season cycle allows me to refer to that time of growth and plenty as spring and have you realize I meant baby time.

And again, they have advanced hormone therapy. I bet getting ready for baby making is as easy as taking a few pills and waiting a few days. And such festivals would take place at different times on different worlds. A really 'active' Avali could probably just travel from party to party if they felt like it. And if they don't have the need to be 'in season' (like humans) than that issue is thrown right out the airlock.

As for the reproduction stigma, I hate to break it to you, but the only reason any of us are alive (biologically speaking) is to have offspring. Any species that didn't place a portion of it's attitudes and focus on breeding would die out. With a casual attitude towards parentage I suspect that it wouldn't be uncommon to have long standing 'mate-pairs' of all genders having eggs with others outside that pairing. Breeding is a one night thing if done right, but a mate is for so much more.

Also if we are suggesting names I like: "Festival of Dance" because, like birds, I think dance would have played an important role in ancestral Avali history. So someone saying "You wanna go dance?" would be like saying "You wanna go somewhere quiet?" Possibly innocent but with many sexual undertones.

So TL : DR - I have way spent way too much time thinking about this and should go back to spriting.

edit: I am always fascinated by the way behaviour evolves over time and influences many things in ways you wouldn't expect. Take a look at humans. Most school children notice than there seem to be many more kids born in mid to late September than say july or august. Same goes for mid to late november. Do the math, you'll figure it out really quick!

 

this I agree with

 

Reproduction is important yes.

But not to society. Cultures can survive even with hardly any blatant societal emphasis on reproduction. Take, for instance, the classic example of sexual repression, the Victorian era. You certainly wouldn't have seen barely-clothed models on advertisements then, but they didn't die out because of a failure to reproduce. Cultural emphasis on reproduction must be separated from individual/personal emphasis, which is certainly required for survival.

Assuming you're from a Western nation: if you were to walk up to someone in the mall and ask them if they wanted to have sex with you, you'd have just tread into some seriously taboo territory. Western society is relatively permissive of sexual content when compared to many other countries. Yet while your experimental subject might say yes, it's more likely they'd just be made incredibly uncomfortable. That's what I mean when I say that a Festival of Dance requires significant cultural emphasis on the importance of reproduction. The culture must endorse a holiday where everyone essentially goes wandering around partying and looking for someone to reproduce with right then. This goes beyond just allowing individuals to do as they please, and into fully-blown societal encouragement of such actions.

But if reproduction is so important to your society (not the individuals or the race, the society) that it's an official holiday just like we celebrate Easter, or Christmas, or, in the states, July 4th, then you can't simultaneously have a culture that approves of matches that don't reproduce, like homosexual pairings. We know Avali culture approves the second, so having it also be the first strains belief.

A Festival of Dance that is accompanied by single Avali going around and... "getting to know" each other is completely sensible. But not if that's the express, culturally-sanctioned purpose of the festival.

In summary, I think the Avali cultural stance would be that reproduction is the business of the partners, not of society.

 

But that's just it, that isn't the sole purpose of the festival. It's about the meeting of tribes. Trading goods, and stories and celebrating meeting new people (and getting drunk and laid). The party and celebration come first. And if it takes place during a specific time of the 'year' than it would have Winter's almost over (christmas), or spring's here (easter) or the harvest is done (thanksgiving) connotations.

And remember homosexual matches would reproduce. Just not with each other (after all the sex would be physically the same). There likely isn't that much difference between a homosexual couple and a heterosexual couple other than the parentage of the children. In fact they may not even have language to differentiate between them. And with their technology it wouldn't be inconceivable that they could create fertilized eggs from same sex couples.

And like your example, if someone walked up to you in the mall, yeah it'd be unexpected and likely unwanted.

But if someone came up to you at a frat party and asked for sex than it may be unwanted but not unexpected.

And again, it may not be an official holiday. But more of a traditional festival that has changed over time. Any large gathering of humans and fun results in more than a few kids. I'd expect that the Avali would have similar results.

 

Whether or not homosexual matches actually reproduce is more than I really want to consider. I don't have anything against homosexuals, but I also can't see what exactly it is that's attractive about the same gender to them, so I don't particularly want to come down on whether or not your hypothetical average Avali homosexual wishes to have children.

As for the Festival of Dance being a normal holiday that also happens to be a great place to meet new people and "collect" genetic samples, yes, that's what I was trying to get at with my posts. Less of a "breeding season!" and more of a fun party with all the things that implies. The frat party example is an excellent one, in that it's the sort of thing that a specific fraction of the population participates in: namely, young single adults looking to have a loose fun time with other single adults. There's no "frat party day" because not all of the population is interested and thus society does not demand that frat parties be thrown on specific days. Certain days may have more frat parties, but that's just a function of the day.

The problem I have with a "breeding season" approach is that it's the sort of behavior I'd more expect out of an explosive breeder rather than from a creature where only one kit can be raised at a time, so having one at the proper moment is important. The Avali seem similar to humanity in that regard, at least.

 

let's also keep in mind the avali are a highly advanced society with excellent medical technology. Officially sanctioned breeding cycles would result in unsustainable population growth in very short order, the mortality rate is just not high enough to offset it without expanding to set up scores of new colonies on a regular basis (that kind of explosive expansion introduces logistical and territorial concerns even if they could technically sustain it)

 

Just curious, for those of us who use unstable and have access to the directional swords, daggers, axes and whatnot are there any plans to incorporate those into the mod??

And if we didn't exactly want to wait does anyone know how we would make them directional??

(I'm aware that the spears are taken care of already, I'd just like to use a Sword/shield combo since the avali's shield is pretty nice looking, rather not lose out on the directional benefits of my spear though.....)

 

Yes. In the old topic, Ryu was talking about how the claws should look when directional. So, its a pretty solid "yes"

 

They'll be incorporated once those changes move to stable. Given they are actively developing and refining the new weapon mechanics it'd be beyond pointless for me to keep updating the mod weaposn every tiem a new unstable build comes out.

 

Ok, thanks for the quick reply!! So far enjoying my playthrough, though I did run into some slightly odd behavior that I'm not sure was intended. I'm hesitant to call it a bug since I'm not sure, but I'm playing on an snow biome planet and oddly enough for whatever reason during the day I have to worry about freezing and at night it's not a problem. if that's intentional sorry for bringing it up, just thought it slightly odd.......

 

I've observed that bug too, however I believe it's on chucklefish's end or some other mods. The Avali mod doesn't edit those files connected to temperature.

 

I've noticed my Avali getting cold on desert nights and chuckled. Limitations... I've also heard rumor Avali are only about half a human high, but I don't know that for certain.

I do thank you for putting up with my topic question Ryuu. It really wasn't meant to be crude, but even if there isn't a firm answer yet, at least there's some ideas out there and I have a better idea now of the answer than I did before.

 

That is also true. They're basically fluffy, turkey-sized killer space raptors. However, game-wise making them shorter would reduce detail and probably cause a few issues as well. So they're "scaled up", though technically they are not as tall as the other races.

 

3-4ft high I believe.

 

currect

 

Alright, random lore mini-question for the night: How many fingers do the Avali have?

All the detailed pictures of hands I could find:

The first picture makes it look like a total of three (technically four if the wingtip counts as a finger); two grasping fingers and one thumb. The second picture makes it look more like four fingers (technically five if the wingtip counts); three grasping fingers and a thumb, though with the gun it's hard to tell.

If their hands are structured anything like their feet, I would expect it to be the first case: one dewclaw/thumb, two toes/grasping fingers, and the last toe/finger (roughly equating to the little toe/pinkie finger on a human) extending into the wingtip in the case of the hands. What does it look like to everyone else?

That's the main question, anyway, though it also segues into the interesting but ultimately pointless question of what is the Avali number system based in? Their number of fingers? Number of fingers plus toes? The number of primary feathers on a wing? Whatever base their "benefactors" used, since so much Avali tech had to eventually be reverse-engineered?

A uselessly complex additional question, but fun to ponder.
The last case sounds particularly intriguing, where the Avali originally used a completely different base than they currently do, but had to learn the new one in order to use their benefactors' technology.

 

Seems to me that both images provided depict individual Avali with three fingers, actually. Two grasping fingers, and one opposable.

The second image is harder to discern, but the left hand (with the sword) would not make sense from that perspective with three and one.

 

Good point. I was paying more attention to the right hand holding the gun in that image, and couldn't quite figure out if the thumb is one of those fingers or if it was three wrapped around with the thumb not visible.

Oh, I see now. It's got one of those fancy thumb-holes in the grip. So two grasping fingers and one thumb then (with the arguable fourth wingtip-finger structure).

 

@RyuujinZERO

I've been writing a story, but it depends on the Oracle system being quite vague about its indications in certain circumstances (highly complicated Diplomatic dealings).

How much detail does the Oracle system output about things other than the Economy?

Also thanks for recommending Psycho-pass, it's quite good.

 

Just for the sake of discussion, here's my guess:

If I understand the system correctly, the main limit on how good the Oracle's output can be is on how much information it is given (since it's separated from the outside world it probably doesn't have any remote intelligence gathering capability, and so it's conclusions are only as good as what its operators feed it). With sufficiently low intel, the Oracle might very well just spit out a "not enough data for meaningful conclusion" error. Of course, given the sophistication of the system, such an error would be unlikely, but if the situation hadn't been expected and was rapidly evolving, it might take time for the Oracle to gather enough data to make a conclusion.

"Garbage in, garbage out" still applies to supercomputing AIs.

But, if the Oracle's too smart for that and basically always gives the right solution, even then you might be able to use the excuse that it's operators weren't sure the data output was clean of an agenda or hidden plot, and so the situation arose and developed while they were still rechecking the conclusion manually to be sure the Oracle wasn't trying to pull a fast one on Avali civilization.

A lot of it depends on the story you're trying to write, as well. If the Oracle is deeply involved in the story, you'll certainly want to get Ryuujin's thoughts.