I wouldn't put your odds any higher than zero. I thought their could be non-humanoid life and thought long and hard on it. The problem is that every "humanoid" in the game and in reality is designed near perfectly for advanced functions.

you just can't get far enough away from what's been working and still have it work. The only viable alternative is scorpions they are close to perfect AND are unique AND beautiful IMO. But or ant or spiders, but they can't be a original race in anyone's universe sadly.

But I would like to see a scorpion like race here because they would be very diverse...along with a custom race I once created on the forums...

DARCA

There are many species of octopus that have the manual dexterity and intelligence to recognise food in a jar work out how to unscrew the lid of a jar and extract the food.

To assume that because the humanoid form is the only possible form for technologicaly advanced life because we are the only example we have is extremely narrow minded.

Yeah starfishes are wonder of nature.

Torians are water based. Their ships are full of water.

Ants are capable of agriculture and can build bridges. Technology isnt specific to humanoid apes.

Says the guy who thinks all advanced sentient aliens must be humanoid. 

The Puppeteers from Known Space. The Outsiders, Jotoki, Thrint, and Gw'oth from the same universe. All developed space travel independently, even if they aren't "major" races.

The Hutts from Star Wars.

Part of the problem is that most people's exposure to science fiction is TV and movies - and the races in those media need to be played by a human. Or maybe CGI, but that's expensive and we tend to relate to humanoids more than anything else. We're just hardwired that way.

I hadn't seen it that way before, thanks.

The old Star Control races had the perfect mixture of humanoid and non-humanoid races. I loved all of them! I would like to see GalCiv3 get some variety and weirdness like those classics. Some were truly alien. Great ship designs too.

The Mycons were creepy.

Don't you love how all the life forms In the movies look just like humans with just a mark on their necks or whatever, and that makes them aliens?

As for a major non-humanoid race, here's my answer:  Gonzo the Great, from "Muppets from Space."   When all his alien friends contacted him through his breakfast cereal, that was a pivotal moment in scifi literature.  As it says in Wikipedia, "Gonzo is the only character other than Kermit the frog to feature as the main protagonist in a Muppet film."   So there, Gonzo is a major race.

The Thalans are not Humanoid, neither are the Snathi and Scottlingas.

 

Species 8472 in Star Trek.

The Hutts in Star Wars.

The Puppeteers in Known Space.

All you need to use/create technology is a suitable grasper (like our hands) and intelligence. We know it's possible for animals to have intelligence (We're animals, and we're intelligent), and there are many varied graspers across the animal, plant and bacterial kingdoms capable of tool use (Tentacles, noses. hands... etc) 

Many animals over hundreds of millions of years have evolved the ability to converse and talk with others of their species. Today, Great Apes, Dolphins, Elephants, Whales and Humans are capable of carrying on a conversation with each other.

Humans have never had an ancestor that looks like an elephant or Dolphin.

Some parrots actually have a basic understanding of the words they mimic.

Dinosaurs (birds) often had hands suitable for grasping before they were re-purposed for flight, and it has been shown that had they not gone extinct, the Saurian dinosaurs would likely have continued to diversify into beings capable of tool use. 

I mentioned three above. 

No it isn't. Here's a picture of a hypothetical alien I pulled of the internet in five seconds, capable of using its forward mandibles to manipulate objects.

It more resembles an alien mix between a fish and an insect.

This is the intelligent alien race from the book Expedition , and it uses air sacs to float around.

Look at the above. They have no terrestrial equivalents. 

So? Aliens on other planets could potential have been around for up to possibly 11 billion years.

Nets are invisible under water, and elephants know how to paint impressionistic pictures.

You're using an argument from ignorance; "I don't know how it could happen differently, therefore it cannot"

Also many sea-based living things regularly visit the land, so it's possible for alien aquatic life to develop tools. Any living thing capable of using graspers would be able to crawl onto land and experience life there.

Just because we're smarter, and have leverage over them, doesn't mean we're innately better than them. Importance and relevance is granted by people, so obviously we're going to place Humans above them, but we're not objectively better than them.

No you don't as I've shown above; there are many forms which are objectively vastly superior to the Human body plan in nearly every way.

Almost any extant multicellular animal could theoretically develop into an intelligent creature

You need better opinions :3

Those millions of species of diverse life all have a common root and ancestral heritage so share common characteristics.

For example why are mammals including ourselves pentadactyl? Why do they all have four limbs as do same with reptiles (although snakes have devolved theirs? Answer they all have a common ancestor.

Evolution doesn’t design new life forms from scratch it makes slight alterations to existing entities. However even earth life shows a high degree of diversity. All life on earth has a single common ancestor if you go back far enough on a cellular level all those species and individuals are really one example of life.

As to why we design alien life forms by looking at earth life, that’s simply because we have to start somewhere and no human can imagine something entirely outside their experience. When we imagine things that don’t exist in our experience the only way we can is by piecing together ideas and thoughts on things that do. You seem to be arguing that it is less narrow minded to say all intelligent technological species must be humanoid than it is to try and imaging alternatives by looking at non-humanoid earth life and extrapolating ideas, that stance seems strange to me.

The reason Cephalopods are often used in sci-fi they are an example of truly alien intelligence here on earth. Because why scientists all agree they show a high degree of dexterity and intelligence on par with primates in some cases their central nervous system is wired nothing like ours or any other vertebrate. It’s far more distributed for one thing.

As to intelligence and sentience, what do you believe sentience is? Are intelligence and sentience the same thing? Do you consider other primates to be sentient? How intelligent do you have to be to be sentient? Technology wise living in water is a big disadvantage as you can’t start fires. Many scientists would put some octopus species on par with primates but the liquid environment makes it unlikely they would develop technological society at least following the same path as ours.

Why have Cephalopods not made it onto land, well they can travel short distances over land but their lack of a skeleton for support and is a real disadvantage less so if our world had lower gravity.

Intelligent life could exist in far more exotic forms with entirely different frames of reference than our own all you really need for life to evolve is a slightly imperfect replicator of some sort. If such life evolved intelligence or not would depend on how complex it’s environment was. However for this game we probably want life forms that at least have a similar frame of reference otherwise they would be unlikely to interact or recognise each other as intelligent life.

"What do Martians look like" is a great book that takes this idea further arguing that intelligent life could exist in forms so different from ours that we would never recognise each other as life yet alone as intelligent, existing in radically different environments and having totally different perceptions of time.

The "Shadows" in  Babylon5 for one.

The "Primes", and "Riel" in "Pandora's star" and "Judas unchained", "Daleks", "The great old ones" in lovecraft literature. I could probably come up with more given a bit longer.

They tend to be more common in litarary sci-fi and modern sci-fi series and movies though since special effects used to be limited to putting a man in a suit or sticking a crinckly forehead on him in pre CGI sci-fi.

Im out of this thread guys, I do not think you will be able to convince DARCA that his line of thought is flawed. He is obstinate.

And he might be using us as a stress reliever for a dentist appointment or something.