Exotic Species & Tech Descriptions

Species suggestions, story ideas and contributions.
Message
Author
User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: Exotic Species & Tech Descriptions

#16 Post by eleazar »

em3 wrote:There is also a question if we want technologies that allow development of new species. One could imagine a technology that would enable manufacturing a lithovore worker race just in order to take advantage of inhabitable planets (they would essentially be robots, but based on a different set of paradigms than our understanding of what a "robot" is...).
Well, of course we want it. 8) But i wouldn't count on it. Seems complicated to implement and balance.
Having the the ability to create arbitrary species (besides your starting species) would tend to deflate the interest in exploration and the value in conquest as ways to acquire new species of citizens with their own special place.

User avatar
Bigjoe5
Designer and Programmer
Posts: 2058
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:33 pm
Location: Orion

Re: Exotic Species & Tech Descriptions

#17 Post by Bigjoe5 »

eleazar wrote:Well, of course we want it. 8) But i wouldn't count on it. Seems complicated to implement and balance.
Having the the ability to create arbitrary species (besides your starting species) would tend to deflate the interest in exploration and the value in conquest as ways to acquire new species of citizens with their own special place.
Not arbitrary player-made species perhaps, but it seems reasonable to have techs that allow the player to use certain predefined species similar to MoO2's Android Workers/Farmers/Scientists (and I have such techs in my tech tree mock-up). Basically, the way I think we agreed it should be is that if you have a species in your empire you can build ships manned by that species.

The simple extension of that idea is if you have a species in your empire, or you have an "abduction" espionage project on a planet containing that species, or if you have researched a tech that allows you to use that species, then you can build ships manned by that species. In cases where the species is able to colonize, this allows the player to build colony ships with that species and colonize planets.
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: Exotic Species & Tech Descriptions

#18 Post by eleazar »

Bigjoe5 wrote:
eleazar wrote:Well, of course we want it. 8) But i wouldn't count on it. Seems complicated to implement and balance.
Having the the ability to create arbitrary species (besides your starting species) would tend to deflate the interest in exploration and the value in conquest as ways to acquire new species of citizens with their own special place.
Not arbitrary player-made species perhaps, but it seems reasonable to have techs that allow the player to use certain predefined species similar to MoO2's Android Workers/Farmers/Scientists (and I have such techs in my tech tree mock-up).
The idea sounds appealing. I'm still thinking it through.
I don't remember what Androids were like in MoO, or if you detailed those ideas. But here are some ideas:

Robots would be a single (or a few) predefined "species" that anyone could research and get. Especially at first they would have fewer pics than an imperial species. But they would be able to thrive on planets normally hostile to organic species. The concept is not robot "people", i.e. sentients, but fancy machines with AIs sophisticated enough to let them run a mining colony (for instance) without any organics needed to be present. They could be "upgraded" with various techs that improve their abilities. "Allegiance" (or whatever we have) would normally stick at 100%, but they would be vulnerable to "hacking" espionage which might take over the whole colony.

User avatar
em3
Vacuum Dragon
Posts: 630
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2011 2:51 pm

Re: Exotic Species & Tech Descriptions

#19 Post by em3 »

Then add random events: "Artificial population of colony X achieved sentience and demand civil rights".
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

SowerCleaver
Space Squid
Posts: 54
Joined: Wed Oct 25, 2006 8:59 pm

Re: Exotic Species & Tech Descriptions

#20 Post by SowerCleaver »

eleazar wrote:I don't remember what Androids were like in MoO, or if you detailed those ideas.
MoO2 had android farmers, workers and scientists. They would need to be built with production, and never breed themselves. Once built, they could not be reassigned (i.e., an Android farmer could not be changed into an Android worker). They consumed production instead of food, and had greater output than any playable species (without considering morale bonus).
em3 wrote:The problem with the robotic species is just that: they are literally creations of a high level tech. They didn't emerge because of some physical or chemical reactions. They were developed, technologically. Then again, we could assume they were created by a high-level species, but have little technological knowledge themselves.
What you say is true, but I don't see this as a gameplay problem - we just need a plausible theory why that is the case, and it is not a hard one to invent. If I understand the backstory correctly, all playable species had intrasystem space flight capabilities when the starlane techs are revealed to them. We obviously haven't achieved intrasystem flight yet - who knows what humans will be capable of in terms of robotics/cybernetics when we successfully sends a human to Mars, Jupiter or Pluto? It wouldn't be far fetched to pose that the creator species were far advanced in robotics so that it could create robotic species. but not so great in terms of other techs. As you suggested, we can also adopt the Terminator scenario - once the robotic mind awakened, it terminated all creator species, and hence lost much of the knowledge regarding robotics.

I think we do want robotic species (or digital minds) as one or more playable races - they do fit one of the oldest archetypes of aliens.

Post Reply