Mdtryhht

Not all threats are for violence. Countries often threaten one another with sanctions without going to war. To intimidate another group you just need the threat of an action which is detrimental to them, not necessarily violent. Use your technological superiority to take their resources right out of their hands, consume a nearby plant with your mining, or even syphon hydrogen away from their local star. If you can preform such an action without the other side being able to stop you, they will fear you.

Big Scary Ships

If you can't make it, fake it.

Enemies will leave you alone if they think you're a threat. Some animals make themselves appear larger and more threatening to scare off potential threats.

Alternative, threats don't need to be violent. The right allies or the threat of loss of trade or the threat of secrets being released can be just as powerful as the threat of violence.

Trade, economy, political power, WiFi password or defensive system

1) Trade. It does not only cover imposing simple embargo. It also covers informing all other powers, that they are fully free to choose whether they want to trade with you or with that rogue state, but regrettably have to pick one. (US did something like that with Cuba)

2) Political power. Being a nice, peaceful civilisation should bring plenty of friends. Even if not true "friends" that at least other powers are fine with them and may have some kind of defensive alliance system. Sure no guns...

• Just it's likely that the allies may also have a grudge against the offending rogue state and "accidentally" the benevolent power may provide them with war loans on highly favourable conditions.


• Being part of some defensive system. Just paying hefty membership fees. Any hostile action would trigger some superpowers.

3) WiFi password

• Does FTL require for effective use some kind of navigation system? Sorry, access denied.


• Does galactic trade require some banking system? Sorry, access denied. (In RL tried with Iran and SWIFT system)


• Does galactic use some kind of FTL data transfer? Sorry, access denied. It requires building the galactic infrastructure and then allow other parties to use it cheaply.

4) Defensive systems

• Having ultra fast or well shielded ships makes attacking them somewhat pointless. Just in case somewhat would scratch your ship paint, while the ship would be escaping to hyperspace.


• We're using high tech anti-matter drive. Yes, we know it's expensive. Yes, we know other civilisations considered it as good idea on paper, but a nightmare to maintain. We beg not to shoot to us, as failure of magnetic containment would cause a supernova size explosion that would kill both of us.

I would suggest either psychological warfare or technological denial tactics.

Why psychological warfare, if you make any potential enemy shutter in their boots before ever seeing one of your ships, they may jump to FTL before a full threat assessment is made on your Navy's ships.

You can also possess a form that just irks others. Taking a spectral form, or some "ghost" like appearance that others just get nervous about may deter others from wanting to interact with you.

Use of tactics or technologies that would make approaching your ships a detriment. If you emit some kind of energy field that effects technology, such as FLT denial, gravimetric distortions or significantly effects power generation. If someone gets too close and, let say, their anti-matter containment for their warp core just up and quit, they may think twice before approaching weapons range.

Another thought, if the field just altered one aspect of how physics work, such as electrons reverse their spin for some reason, it would definitely cause some issues with potential attackers.

Batesian mimicry.

Batesian mimicry is a form of mimicry where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species directed at a predator of them both.

You have probably heard of the coral snake and the milk snake:

”Red on yellow kills a fellow. Red on black venom lack”

Due to the many colors of the eastern milk snake (L. t. triangulum), it can resemble the coral snake, corn snake, fox snake, scarlet snake, and most importantly, the venomous snake genera Agkistrodon and Sistrurus.

Disguise like a well known dangerous group, like the milk snake does, resembling the coral snake, or some fly does showing yellow and black stripes typical of wasps.

Most of those spotting you would prefer to move away rather then checking if you are really a menace or not.

I'll assume a truly peaceful species (not vegetarians, peaceful towards everything they believe to be sentient) . No violence. No threats to sentient species. No posturing (implicit threats). They will FTL into any meteoroid-storm to rescue fellow sentients, brave any gamma ray excursion to bring help to fellow sentients. Their point defenses are just that good.

There was this one time where fellow sentients were in danger of being annihilated by a particularly insidious meteoroid swarm. A sequence of complex biochemical reactions had given rise to concentrations of fissile material, that had subsequently been carried, by an unfortunate, but really unavoidable sequence of events, towards the home planet of their fellow sentients. They stopped the radioactive meteoroids, and stopped the biochemical reactions giving rise to them (it would have a high possibility of happening again, they concluded after some sampling. Sad. Someday this primordial soup might have given rise to sentients) by supernovaeing the star of the system in which the biochemical reactions were taking place. The star was called Sol. Don't be like Sol. Be sentient.

(Some of the sentients they know happen into localized gamma ray excursions quite often. It's a mystery. They are investigating)

Pour as many resources as you can afford into researching and improving defense systems. Depending on what your universe has to offer that may be shields, polarized armor plating or the likes. If a potential enemy cannot even dent your defenses, they will think twice about what your weapons(which they won't know you don't have) might do to theirs.

1) You have a way to cut off entire systems from the rest of the universe

Through pocket dimensions/FTL scrambling/Very big shields... It's completely pacifist but very scary.

2) A sect of crazy murderous priests consider you are gods and will exterminate anyone that dares to attack you

You don't like it at all but they wouldn't listen to your complaints.

3) Once, one of the most powerful and dangerous fleet in the universe was anihilated when they got to your systems.

Nobody really knows how it happened (accident, cosmic event, unknown entity passing by..?) but somehow everyone assume it was you and that your pacifism is a front.

People fear what they don't understand

Your species - whether naturally or through the use of advanced technology - possesses a vast and unusual intelligence, or senses that no other civilization understands. Their motives and culture are so complex that they'll appear alien and incomprehensible to anyone who attempts to peek beneath the surface.

Even worse, they understand how alien they are to everyone and make good use of it. When they commnuicate with others, it is in short, yet precise statements that more often than not hint at a piece of information that they should not reasonably be able to know.

Negotiating with your nation, while occasionally worthwhile, feels like playing 4D chess against a notorious cheater. Whatever move you try to make, they somehow have a piece in place to counter it, but you could hve sworn it wasn't there a minute ago. In the end, the may or may not let you win, but it's always on their terms.

Information is power

It is said that if you break a contract with these strangers, very soon a swarm of amorphous dark vessels will silently appear above your planet or habitat. Comm systems will randomly break down and if they work, people will complain about weird, barely audible background noises. Instruments will show impossible readings, data will get corrputed, it's like your entire network was slowly corroding. After a while, they disappear without a warning, leaving nothing but afterimages and the realization that your lastest and greates technologies inexaplicably ceased to function, and your most well hidden secrets have somehow made their way into the hands of your enemies.

Attacking these vessels, even if you eventually manage to drive them off, is always a headache-inducing waste of resources. Their ships are never where you expect them, there is no rhyme or reason to their defenses, they only ever take minor, calculated losses. Best case, you maintain this frustrating dance until they leave. You have no idea what their objective was, or whether they achieved it, all you know is that you desperately need to refuel and rearm, and that you're so far out of position that any aggressive third party would have a field day if they knew about it. Oh my, I hope no one will tell them. That would be terrifying.

Mount very powerful sublight reaction engines on your craft, even if they are no longer necessary because you have FTL. As Niven wrote in a short story, the efficiency of a drive is directly as a weapon related to the efficiency as a drive.