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Mason's existing organisms, especially its fauna, were made alien for the sake of being alien and have an embarrassing number of issues. Most obvious is just how terrible the respiration and circulation of the terrestrial fauna is (quote taken from the page on quefts):

QUOTE

Quefts have four exterior breathing vents that allow it to smell and facilitate gas exchange. Two on each side generally merge toward the end of the end of the breathing tube, allowing one exterior vent. The majority of the respiratory system is contained within these breathing tubes. Air is pumped in and out of the tubes through rippling contractions along the tubes that produce wave-like motions. The interior of the tube consists of a thin mesh of tissues, kept moist by bodily fluids, that perform gas exchanges. Some tissue functions to absorb oxygen, and some to release CO2 and other waste gases, with the oxygen absorbing one being clustered near the front, and the latter near the back. Running around the breathing tubes are a cluster of ring-shaped arteries, which transport the gases via the queft's blood. The "hearts" mentioned are just single-chambered pumps found at even intervals. Queft blood, like all decedents of the mason hexspourous, is copper based and therefore blue.

Some members have expressed appreciation for their "simple pipe-like breathing system", however there is so much wrong with it that it's actually downright embarrassing.

• The most egregious issue is the thing of having specialized tissues for absorbing and releasing oxygen and CO2, respectively. This alone makes it obvious that this was not written by someone who has done any research whatsoever on how respiration works, as respiration as a whole is universally and fundamentally based around passive exchange of gasses directly between water/air and the actual organism and does not involve any specialized tissue like that. The closest is blood, which these organisms explicitly have in addition to these "specialized tissues", somehow. This issue can be fixed pretty easily by changing it to generic vascularized tissue that does both, but it's a flashing red sign of just how little research was actually put into making these organisms.
  
• The way the breathing tubes themselves work is also highly problematic. They are external, so nothing can pull them to expand them. These organisms are soft-bodied and lack support structures that can rebound to do the same thing. Their respiratory system literally does not work as a result, as it will collapse and not be able to draw in air. It would need a complete rewrite of all species to be functional without changing all the artwork as well.
  
• The hearts are also a part of them? The hearts for pumping blood are external? There's so many problems with doing that that it's literally giving me a headache in real life, and it has the same issue as the lungs with their positioning where they're likely to collapse in on themselves, though being fluid-filled makes them at least mildly less prone to that.
  
• All these major organs being external, protruding, and unretractable could never evolve. Even before predators existed, they first evolved on land where dust and stuff could damage it, not to mention their environment has always been frigid and their vital organs literally freezing off is a constant risk. Not even the burrowing species have done anything to protect their breathing tubes. The entire system is an abomination and an affront to evolution and biology.

I have some ideas for how the respiration could be fixed on a "replaced with fixed version" level, I'll share it in replies to this post. Different lineages have different needs that call for different respiratory systems.

Another issue is one that admittedly a lot of organisms on Sagan 4 have as well, but it still should not have been allowed: Their reproduction is exclusively asexual. Asexual reproduction is very, very, very bad for complex organisms. I recommend that the entire lineage be retconned to be capable of sexual reproduction, as it would be unreasonable to do fix replacements for everything.

Queft-specific but still problematic is the "heat sensors":

QUOTE

[They have] two or three specialized heat sensing organs which let quefts "see" infared radiation. The latter are covered in a thin membrane which encloses a gel-like substance. Heating in specific areas of the queft's membrane are amplified through the gel and picked up by modified flagellum, allowing them to make a map of nearby heat sources.

• Modified flagella?? Oh wait, correction, singular flagellum. They have one flagellum that does this. A single flagellum is somehow detecting infrared light, and not, I dunno, a photoreceptor or some other kind of nerve, something that one is immediately made aware of the existence of if they do any research on how senses work at all. Like the "specialized tissues" for gas exchange, this part can be fixed by just replacing it with (plural) nerves of some kind, but it's yet another sign of there being zero research going into this stuff.
• How is the gel amplifying it? That violates the law of conservation of energy. If it's meant to be refracting it, then it's messing up light direction and makes the heat sensors less accurate, especially since it's enclosed in a wobbly membrane that changes how it refracts it.
• This heat sensor is large and prominent in the species that have it. Based on the description given and the lack of defensive adaptations in any species, it could be easily popped, instantly disabling them.
• This feature was designed because Clarke decided that eyes were too terran and rejected any species that gained them. It is a blatant case of dysfunctional alienification.

I'm gonna expand this list of issues later, but man, there's so many problems and I keep finding new ones, it's kinda exhausting. Feel free to comment with any that I missed.

Some respiratory ideas:

• Some larger organisms could internalize it into a unidirectional trachial system like that used by some insects, though less extensive since they already have blood.
• Smaller species could turn it into normal tracheae, replacing their blood pigments entirely with a system that is very efficient for smaller organisms.
• Hexdiggers and other burrowers could instead externalize their respiratory system completely and become skin breathers.
• That one really big teci could probably use some air sacs or mini lungs or something.

I think the "flagellum" thing could have been a typo, or a grammatical mixup.

Internalizing the breathing tube and retconning it to have only one gas exchange tissue seems to me like the best solution for fixing most of these (aka the first solution you proposed). It probably requires the least amount of change and doesn't completely throw away the whole thing.

Also, I think you made a typo here:

"This feature was designed because Clarke decided that eyes were too alien and rejected any species that gained them. It is a blatant case of dysfunctional alienification."

As you mentioned, the reason for alienification is because he felt that eyes weren't alien enough (which we all know isn't the case anyway given that they've evolved almost the same way multiple times on earth).

whoops, fixed. I only got a few hours of sleep last night.

I think what they meant by "heart" is basically one that pumps air and not the blood

While this is an interesting and well analyzed critique of Mason's fauna, what you're proposing seems to me to be another example of an attitude that I don't think is very effective or good in the long run: trying to treat Alpha like Beta. IMO as I've mentioned before Alpha just has too many of these problems and was never run as anything near as tight a ship as Beta, and at this point it quite literally cannot be without massive retconning and revisionism that would just ruin the fun for everybody in the end, I think. I'm sorry if I'm being too critical, it probably doesn't help my reputation on here already.... I guess the last few posts I've made in MONTHS have been critical. I should really try to start some more constructive discussion. Anyway.... What say you?

I agree with "generic vascularized tissue".

The easiest solution might be hermaphroditism wiith self-fertilization or cloning most of the time, like nematodes. (I think) One could say they reproduce with each other only rarely, causing slow spread of novel traits. One might be able to make exceptions for a few organisms where this makes sense, like Symbiotic Provucis, which are social, and have behavior easily adapted into some kind of internal mating process.

How about making the hearts relatively close to the surface of the body?

Perhaps they have translucent skin over the internal, near-surface tubes, making them appear to be external at first?

The "arteries" and hearts could be actually rete mirables and nerve clusters?

The "exterior" breathing vents could be retractable structures?

I, personally, am willing to adjust my Terrantor art so the breathing tubes make more sense and bulge out from the body only slightly.

For Quefts, I agree with just using "nerves", perhaps with using flagella-like cilia as cleaning or protective structures initially mistaken for nerves.

Maybe the gel is myelin? Maybe the gel is myelin, surrounded by fatty deposits of some sort? Maybe the infrared sensors are basically like normal infrared sensors, but enclosed by gel pockets as a protective measure?

Quefts' biology is so alien it's hard to read. Recommended diagrams would help.

Can Clarke be contacted about this? It would be best to ask Clarke for input.

I have made attempts to contact Clarke, but while I have gotten as far as now being friends with him on Steam, he has not replied to any messages (in fact, he has not come online since he accepted my friend request).

As for Cosmo's comment on treating Alpha like Beta: Alpha organisms should still make sense and not violate the laws of physics. Alpha is not anarchy like 2speccers2tools, species this broken are typically rejected. Also, Mason was literally created under the same premise as Beta--to not make the same mistakes as Sagan 4 Alpha.

QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Aug 20 2021, 04:30 PM)

I have made attempts to contact Clarke, but while I have gotten as far as now being friends with him on Steam, he has not replied to any messages (in fact, he has not come online since he accepted my friend request). As for Cosmo's comment on treating Alpha like Beta: Alpha organisms should still make sense and not violate the laws of physics. Alpha is not anarchy like 2speccers2tools, species this broken are typically rejected. Also, Mason was literally created under the same premise as Beta--to not make the same mistakes as Sagan 4 Alpha.

While both of these points are fair I feel that there's, sadly not much to be done, feasibly anyway, about some of these issues, particularly the respiratory problem, as it is immediately obvious from the art of all of the quefts.

If how much the issue can be fixed is limited by the impracticality of modifying lots of artwork, perhaps one can say there are no infectious diseases, or a limited number of pathogen types or lifestyles, on Mason. That would reduce the sheer impracticality of having such easily-injured respiratory tubes. A "soft reboot" of introducing pathogens that exploit respiration-tube injuries would strongly encourage future organisms to be made more plausible in the external parts of their respiration tubes.

Both Alpha and Beta have underdeveloped widespread/genus-group disease microbes selections, so, apparently, it's plausible there could be underdeveloped pathogens for this long.

Another potential option might be that the respiratory system uses cilia instead of contractions to move air. This is considerably less efficient, but it works with the current setup.

Hmm... I wonder if there's any way to make that method more efficient?

QUOTE (CosmoRomanticist @ Aug 21 2021, 11:31 PM)

Hmm... I wonder if there's any way to make that method more efficient?

None of them need it more efficient. Semi-active respiration using ciliated tubes is sufficient for all current fauna living in Mason Reef.

QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Aug 21 2021, 09:46 PM)

QUOTE (CosmoRomanticist @ Aug 21 2021, 11:31 PM) Hmm... I wonder if there's any way to make that method more efficient? None of them need it more efficient. Semi-active respiration using ciliated tubes is sufficient for all current fauna living in Mason Reef.

Fair enough. Just ignorant enough that I wasn't sure if this was still implausibly inneficient.

Clarke update: We can't ask for his input. He appears to not want anything to do with Sagan 4, and expressed this by blocking me on all social media.