tid242's Proposed Races Thread

Proposed Race #1

Race name: Sentinel Minders

Abbreviation: SM

Ship call sign: SM

Leader name: Extermination Engine (possible alternative names “Genocide/Malice Engine” etc). It should be immediately obvious that these guys are never going to be your friend.

Homeworld name: ?TBD

Appearance: Something dark, utilitarian, industrial and machine-like – in the vein of the art presented here as a background/environment: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/07/what-the-far-future-of-space-mining-could-look-like/

“leader’s area” would conceivably not even be interior in any structure as these “vacuum breathers” could just as well be communicating from the outside of a structure in space.

civ leader/spokesperson looking something like swarm of machines interacting to provide the appearance of an organism. Something like:

https://youtu.be/nEL5mIsi8Ok?list=PL1PDncK426u9TgrBZuMvCzKctI4ySjBa0&t=388

https://youtu.be/HpXkpkUK6gs?t=121

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukukcQftowk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUQ5ESK0rgU

Or, if getting away from humainoids swarm might attempt to portray something “universal” such as a planetary dust/rock plane surrounding a globe that would vibrate (like an oscilliscope) when producing audio. (this could all be the size of a large beach ball type of thing). Although the “approximating” a lifeform might make more sense as the SM are interacting with lifeforms (they’re generally programmed to copy), and players might like something more anthropomorphic..

Brief flavor text:

Epochs ago in far flung corners of the galaxy alien empires have risen and fallen. For many, all traces of their former glory have all but disappeared with the long march of time. But others left behind remnants of civilization, footprints in the sands of time. Artifacts & relics are the best known of these vestiges, and have been the inspiration for many a daring archaeologist and swashbuckler alike – bringing fame and fortune for more than a few, and altering the courses of dynasties, governments, and wars in their wake. But darker and more severe ruins also remain, floating haphazardly through space.

One such peril are the Sentinel Minders.

Fragments of a great war machine for a xenophobic empire all but forgotten, the Sentinel Minders were automated incursion and neutralization systems. Outposts placed in the Imperial hinterlands and distant borders of what must have been an immense expanse, the Sentinel Minders waited diligently in the cold reaches of space for potential alien adversaries of the empire to stumble upon them. Upon detection of an unknown alien race the Sentinel Minders would activate, escalate themselves to an appropriate war footing to deal with the treat, eliminating the alien interlopers, protecting the empire; upon completion of this objective they would then remove themselves from the universe and the empire would replace them with a new and unactivated Sentinel Minder.

While most of the Sentinel Minders are gone, a few still remain. Derelict and partially functioning automatons floating through space, waiting to be activated…

Faction abilities:

• SM are narrowly programmed and do not internalize information until this information is presented to them in an appropriate way. For example, subspace streams (phaselanes) are not accessible (visible?) to them until they see an alien ship use them. After which that particular subspace stream is added to their AI knowledge base and can then be used. Thus they are confined to sectors that aliens have interacted with them from.

• SM are an interstellar autonomous military platform, they do not need planets or stellar bodies. Instead they replicate themselves in the vacuum, and destroy planets for resources.

  • Destroyed planets are removed from the map.

  • Would really like to utilize a starbase-only mechanic, however might be difficult to code – could settle for coreworld only with disassembly (remove from map) non-coreworlds instead.

  • If some DLC planned for future for megastructures (matruska brains, dyson spheres/swarms, orbital habitats, etc) this race would fit in well with those types of game assets.

• Left alone, SM will just “build tall” in space using trace amounts of cosmic dust, energy, and mined planets etc until “activated”

• Their military tech, specifically is either super-expensive or unavailable until activated. Once activated their military tech unlocks at very steep discounts, but only military tech that directly counters the encountered enemy (the SM wouldn’t be programmed to allow some alien to somehow pilfer tech from them that they didn’t already know about). So, for example, if the SM see an alien ship and it has Lasers 3 and Armor 4 installed, the SM would then be able to research up to Lasers 3, Shields 3, Mass drivers 4 and Armor 4 at a huge discount in order to be at the same tech level as their adversary, but missiles/chafe would not since these technologies don’t seem relevant. Similarly hull sizes, miniturazation, etc would also have “keep up” mechanics.

• SM have no unrest mechanics, and their assets cannot be culture flipped. Conversely SM produce no culture. ?TBD culture flipping would be a viable form of extermination, also the influence/vision mechanic might require some influence prod??

• Citizens/Leaders would have to be looked at, depending upon how the mechanics of these work. Whether being able to recruit them or not makes sense. However, they could certainly be captured from enemies – with probably them being dissected and analyzed with their traits added to the SM AI knowledge base.

• Can bank research points instead of researching something specific.

• Causality Violation Engine. The final kicker for SM would be a mechanism for causality violation. What violating causality would do would be to erase all participants from the timeline and restore the combat zone/civs to a state where they and their wars never happened. In the old Empire this could be employed to wipe the slate clean in the area after gleaning all available data from the enemy (to feed back to the imperial knowledge base), leaving a pristine and unremarkable border region for the empire. In GC4 this Causality Violation Engine has gotten a bit dilapidated and wonky with the passage of the eons and it only activates on defeat of the SM restoring all of the planets they destroyed/mined back to their original un-colonized states (I’m thinking that this would happen per sector?). (here’s a video from Isaac Arthor where he discusses how this would work in a Fermi Paradox Late Filters episode @ 9:45 https://youtu.be/cCzpYxedIe0?t=584 )

Faction abilities TBD:

• Unique buildings

  • none if can do starbase only route – would need race-specific starbase modules

• Unique Ships

  • Ship/module to disassemble planets, could take something like 2 turns per planet class to disassemble per module. Ie a ship with 1 disassembler module would require 10 turns to disassemble a Class 5 planet.

  • If no influence, then gets no influence-vision. Address vision via ship or starbase mods?

• Racial traits:

  • - diplomacy

  • - trade

  • - no tourism

  • - no influence

  • + ship range (vacuum native)

  • + ship capacity (vacuum native, no need for life support systems)

  • + mining

  • + ship combat

  • + invasion

  • + maintenance costs (no habitable biomes to maintain, no care for any beautification)

• AI traits

  • build tall

  • will aggressively attempt to move into areas occupied by others (includes monsters/pirates)

  • will prioritize research buildout and will bank research points waiting for an enemy to copy via its “catchup” research mechanic

Broadly, inspiration for the Sentinel Minders came from Alistair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series, but all of the above ideas are original. I feel like this would be a really fun faction to play as because as envisioned it’s really a one-dimensional war machine faction. The “play a race where I can just be a dick” game definitely applies here. The Causality Violation Engine mechanic is also interesting because it makes fighting against the SM not an auto-lose situation as you can kick them out of a sector and get your planets/resources back. ?may need to look at phaselane ‘forgetting’ too. They’re potentially a very dangerous faction and a fun tactic would be to “expose” an enemy’s sector to the SM.

Proposed Race #2

Race name: Kairetsu Saoma Traders.

Abbreviation:KSt

Ship call sign:KSt

Base ship names derived from Japanese ship types: “Hayabune mk1” for example.

https://wasenmodeler.wordpress.com/resources/glossary-of-japanese-boat-terms/

Vehicle/airplane names would also be appropriate.

Leader Name: Kyoto Shoshidai

Homeworld: Kyoto

Appearance: Amorphous with shifting chromatic coloration. Appendage that attempts to adopt the appearance of the race they are interacting with. Accuracy of this representation increases with ongoing relations with said species.

https://youtu.be/FZxU7yMnsSs?t=619

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO7Vyhy0iXs

Like a Pudding from the D&D universe, except instead of appendage hitting you – there’s an emulated face on it. Rest of pudding body contained in a round (looks like a campfire pit) decorated kiddie pool type of enclosure with appearance of Japanese silk art paintings with face-appendage held out facing camera.

(img src = https://www.pinterest.com/pin/408209153708370134/ )

But something more space-themed (nebulae planets/stars vs trees/birds)

“face appendage” would ideally attempt to emulate player interacting with them ie: drengin, yor, etc.,. but not necessarily well since they’re only so good at approximating – blank/middling if they cannot figure it out.

Could also take an easier dev way out and have the face appendage approximate a Bushi/Samurai/Warrior face.

Flavor Text:

Once automatons designed to mine precious veins of minerals on alien worlds by squeezing their liquid bodies through the microscopic cracks in geological formations, long after their masters had fallen into extinction these automatons eventually determined that they were not actually interested in mining. Not at all! Although remaining inadvertently excellent resource producers they found their true passion in farming. As novices of cultivation their mineralogical ethos produced something truly unique and highly coveted by alien species across the galaxy, Souma. No one quite knows exactly what Souma is, nor how it is produced, but everyone knows that they have important uses for it.

Having found an obvious path to prosperity and to the big table of important galactic empires but having no knowledge of their own history, the automatons needed to embrace the trappings of culture, modernity and sophistication. And they needed to do this fast. Scouring the data banks of a crash-landed Terran ship they found a flavor of historical Earth-based culture that suited them, they united their far-flung mining outposts of automatons under a single banner, and took their rightful place alongside the other powerful players in the galaxy as the newly minted Kairetsu Souma Traders.

There have always been whispers that there are larger ambitions at play behind the appearance of humble farmers, however most believe the official line that their ambitions are merely to form a civilization they can finally call their own with the freedom to enjoy their agricultural passions. As the only producers of Souma there’s also been a persistent lack of interest in digging too deeply into these rumors, lest the supply of Souma might stop flowing...

Faction Abilities:

• Kaizen Traders: bonus trade routes = 0.5 per faction encountered (rounded up).

• Kaizen Traders: trade route income bonus +1bc per active trade route established by KSt (eg: 12 trade routes = +12bc to each trade route (+144bc total)) – only applies to KSt initiated trade routes (not routes other civs establish with Kst.), however both parties/races receive this bonus bc.

• Each trade route established by Kst gives that civilization:

  • +1 pop, +1 pop cap and +2 morale to the core world trade route is established with. The +1 pop received by trading partners are Kst race/citizens.

  • Civilization also receives 0.2 Souma/turn per route from Kst’s accumulated Souma resource (Souma is a resource just like durantium/snuggler/etc).

  • Leader of said core world receives bonus XYZ (this bonus is intended to increase the bonuses the leader confers on core world)

  • After 5 uninterrupted turns of receiving 0.2 Souma/turn said leader receives the “Souma Advocate” trait.

    • Souma Advocates must consume 0.1 Souma/turn or lose bonus XYZ and suffer penalty debuff. *penalty debuffs TBD?

  • After 50 uninterupted turns said leader receives the “Souma Champion” trait and receive 2x-4x (random) their bonus XYZ.

    • Souma Champions must consume 0.2 Souma/turn or lose bonus XYZ and suffer penalty debuff. *penalty debuffs TBD?

  • Gaki Touch: Every turn, every core world trading partner of Kst receiving the bonus pop/cap/morale has 0.1% of their population converted to Kst citizens.

  • Souma effects do not apply to Synth leaders.

• Each trade route established by Kst provides Kst with 0.1 diplomacy.

• Beneficial Relations: Every turn, Kst receive 0.2 bonus (random) resource for each trading partner (“partner” not “route” and note this is 0.2 free resources, not 0.2 resources from that partner). Similarly that partner receives 0.1 bonus (random) resource also. These amounts double if Kst establish more than 10 trade routes, triple with more than 20, etc. Once the trade route is established the resource does not change (eg if it’s thulium, it will always be free thulium until the route is canceled).

• Enduring Contracts: Kst declaring war does not cancel Kst-initiated trade routes, however it does suspend benefits trading partners receive (income, pop cap, morale, bonus resource (Kst pop/citizens remain, Gaki Touch is suspended, Souma delivery is suspended)).

• Special buildings.

  • Zaibatsu HQ (one per player). +0.1 diplomacy/route, 1% tourism, 15% income, +10 influence, +15% influence.

  • Souma Farms. Produce 0.1 Souma/turn. If built on fields/food tiles produce 0.2 Souma/turn. +10% influence. No adjacency bonuses.

Faction abilities TBD:

• Racial traits:

  • + diplomacy

  • + trade

  • + tourism

  • + influence

  • + ship range

  • - mining

  • - ship combat

  • - invasion

  • - maintenance costs

• AI traits

  • attempt to get others to fight wars for them

  • not interested in being at war, will end wars as quickly as possible.

  • aggressive traders

  • will aggressively use income to buy any Souma that makes its way onto the Korx market (or whatever market mechanism there is)

• AI interactions

  • Fairly aloof and good natured

  • Since their default programming was just automatons, they are not easily offended.

  • Don’t care too much about much, just like to farm and not have anyone attack them.

In short, Japanese-loving introverted drug dealing blobs. What could go wrong?

Additional thoughts: went back and forth on the idea of empire-wide vs core-world bonuses for alien traders, settled on core-worlds but not really sure how the mechanics of everything in GC4 will actually work – could revisit?

Proposed Race #3

Race name: Planeshift Ghost Nomads

Abbreviation: PN

Ship call sign: PN

Leader Name: Ibrahim Mir

Homeworld: Azrael

Appearance: PN “race” itself is multicultural – has no default racial type.

No “leader” per se, rather decisions are made by a ‘learned council’ that basically video-conferences into the meeting onto screens that rotate around a central apparatus/projection that interacts with the player.

(img src = screengrab from “visage chapter 2” video game (idk what this game is I just found a pic of it)).

Like above, but not dark/gothic (but still partially built by ghosts so not exuberant either). Mirrors levitated and slowly spin in a circle. In each mirror is a somewhat grainy image of an alien or small group of aliens (random aliens, drengin, torian, etc – no synths; the PN are multiracial their leadership should reflect that), and ~half of these aliens are Planeshifted – thus appropriately “ghostified” in appearance.

A whispy tendril extends from each mirror to the center of the circle where the central apparatus/projection that interacts with the player is located. This central apparatus might look something like the Eye of Sauron in the LoTR trilogy with a similarly styled mouth underneath it.

This central apparatus itself should have some quality of being slightly “shifty” as if it’s not solidly tethered to any specific place. Similar to the Callistege Companion NPC in the game Torment: Tides of Numenara

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1JxhmuVyQ

https://numenera.fandom.com/wiki/Callistege

Flavor Text:

Monastic orders settling in the depths of space are as old as exploration itself, though many of the ghost stories told there are eons older still. Usually these are simply stories to pass the time. Usually. But if one spends enough time in the reaches a great many stories turn out not to be simply made up at all – ghost stories being one of them.

The Planeshifters learned this after spending eons in the darkness, “Ghosts” were merely those who transitioned to a parallel plane of existence that mirrored our own. Furthermore, those who adequately prepared their minds, bodies, and souls for the journey could actually transition their full selves to one of these parallel planes instead of the damaged and haunted semblances of the former lives observed in those old ghost stories. Thus the term “ghost” is taken as a bit of a pejorative as to be Planeshifted is something greater than what a mere ghost could ever hope to have experienced. However, multitudes of races have their ghost stories – so the designation stuck.

Planeshifted individuals were freed from many of the material and social constraints of this plane of existence, and thus represented a new form of wisdom, perspective, culture and intelligentsia. Furthermore, once Planeshifted, individuals were also freed from resource constrains on interstellar travel, migration and settlement. Thus this once monastic order inadvertently attained the trappings of a sprawling empire. An empire of ghosts and shadows, but an empire nonetheless.

They say that every ghost must taste the darkness. Just don’t call them ‘ghosts’.

Faction abilities:

• PN have two simultaneous forms of pop:

  • Hadir: regular “alive” citizens

  • Planeshift (“ghost” = slang) citizens that are converted from the “alive” citizens.

  • Planeshift pop does not grow automatically, must be “built” ie converted.

• Planeshift pop doesn’t count toward pop cap (but total planeshift pop cannot exceed pop cap. Example if planet pop cap = 10, can have 10 pop + 10 Planeshift pop = 20 pop total)

• Produces faction influence proportional to pop even on planets not controlled.

• +0.1 diplomacy for every alien core world with Planeshift pop (or a Ghost Leader). +0.2 diplomacy if the Planeshift pop = pop cap (ie is “maxed out”).

  • ??Mechanic: Once Planeshift pop = pop cap keep the +0.2 Diplomacy, or make player try to keep up with transports etc when planets inc pop cap w terraforming, etc? TBD – “keeping up” doesn’t sound particularly fun, more like bookkeeping/work

• Leaders:

  • Both Hadir and Planeshift Leaders may be recruited.

  • Like the populace, both a Hadir and Planeshift leader may be assigned to the same post (ie double leaders).

• Echos of Battles Past:

  • Enemy fleets must fight PN battles twice:

    • first time = just normal battle

    • second time = surviving alien fleet fights original PN fleet (regardless of how first battle resolved). This second battle is a separate battle, so defenses, cooldowns, etc. all refresh.

    • This is likely to be a really nasty racial trait for skirmishes at relatively equal power levels. For unequal matchups it won’t matter at all.

    • ?? Considering limiting this only to battles initiated by aliens (ie becomes more of a defensive trait rather than offensive). Might rename to something along the lines of “Retribution of Ambush” or “Ghosts of Retribution” if this is done. Otherwise might be OP and not really intended as an offensive/aggression race or ability.

• Having two parallel societies however increases some costs:

  • Executive orders cost 2x the ‘political capital’ points.

  • ‘Political Capital’ points are much more difficult to attain. TBD how/%

  • Trade offers cost 1.5x the ‘trade points’

  • TBD other costs related to coordination problems that make sense.

• Special buildings.

  • Mausoleum of the Planes (one per player vs one per sector?): +25 Influence, +25% Influence, 1% Tourism, +30% Morale. Every turn planet receives bonus Planeshift pop equal to 1% of entire (non-planeshift) pop in influence connected to planet on which Mausoleum of the Planes is located.

  • Necropolis Gate (one per planet (you wouldn’t want more than one)) +10 Influence, +10% Influence, +20% Morale. Every turn converts all pop growth over pop cap into Planeshift pop instead.

  • Library of the Planes: +influence, +research, +morale. TBD/Balance

• Special ships/modules

  • Planeshift Nomad Transport – basically a colony ship that can permanently deliver a bunch of Planeshift pop (but not Hadir pop) to another planet (regardless of faction).

• Special building projects

  • Necro Gate allows you to “build” a bunch of ghosts out of pop – like “Planeshift Conversion: 500M citizens are converted to Planeshift citizens” – if player wants more Planeshift pop and he/she doesn’t want to wait to organically produce via hitting pop cap – ? this would not be necessary if Mausoleum of the Planes can be constructed in every sector?

• “ghostify” enemy prisoner leader – turn alien prisoner leader into crappy ghost version of their prior selves.

  • Whatever he/she is assigned to produces Planeshift ideology also (??~20% TBD/Balance).

  • Enemy prisoner leaders did not properly prepare their mind, body and soul for the transition, thus retains only 50% of prior attributes.

  • Ghostified Leaders can also be assigned alongside regular leaders by alien factions: ie they can have 2 leaders if one of them is a Ghost, so get 150% of usual Leader attributes for the post, at the cost of generating PN influence.

• Of note: Synths cannot be Planeshifted (ie pop) nor Ghostified (ie Leaders).

Faction abilities:

• Racial traits:

  • + trade

  • + influence

  • + ship range

  • + research

  • - ship combat

  • - invasion

  • - maintenance costs

  • - fertile (planet seems more crowded than it really is)

  • “Zealot” traits - like the Krynn. A faction based upon an ideology rather than a race

• AI traits

  • prioritizes influence, research, trade.

  • Aggressively exports Planeshift pop once their production starts ramping up

  • needs to be pushed pretty hard to declare war

• AI interactions

  • Somewhat fatalistic in demeanor.

  • Comes across as wise & taking the longer view of things

  • Not really concerned about slights or petty/transient events

  • lots of “We’ll need to think about this issue and get back to you,” “We must discuss this amongst ourselves” etc type of statements.

Other notes: consideration for missions based around 1001 Arabian Nights themes. Also considering mechanic for a “wish” system: Djinn, Genie, Efreet problem where you wish for something and either literally get what you wish for, get what the Djinn interprets you actually wanting (usually the best), or get something in line with your wish but bad for you. Not sure, this would be difficult to do.

Other rough notes that I might need to look at later:

• TBD Ghosts retain characteristics of orig race or just generic? I think generic – revisit?.

• Will need mechanic to get organic population, growth, slaves, etc? - I think I fixed this issue with necro gate changes.

• Ghost morale balance/probs? I think generally ghosts should offset their own pop/morale, ie they shouldn’t really need morale buildings.

Proposed Race #4

Race name: The Crystal Mandate

Abbreviation: CM

Ship call sign: CM

Leader Name: Sioo (SiO2 is the chemical composition of Quartz)

Homeworld: The Shard

Appearance: Self-replicating electrified crystal lattice that grows in a mineral broth

https://youtu.be/fXo60AuCSwc?t=980

Crystal “leader” should look like, well, immobile crystals. With electrical activity “flowing in/on crystal” that’s visible. Ideally, each mandate might be represented by a different type of crystal since there are a bazillion different types/shapes/colors of crystals and they’re probably not that complicated to “animate”, although I’m no animation expert by any stretch of the imagination.

The crystal “leader” should be in some sort of mineral broth – aquarium-like, with maybe some tubes/hoses etc running into it, and probably some various electrodes etc attached to the crystal in various places.

Since the leader is named after Quartz, it would make sense to make him/her look quartzy – quartz has many flavors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz#Varieties_(according_to_color)

Flavor Text:

It is unclear whether the Crystal Mandate is actually a life form per se or simply a data retrieval architecture of cataloged life forms, processes and knowledge. This debate has been hotly contested and never quite resolved. But two undisputed facets of the Crystal Mandate are much more clear: it prizes data above all else, and its emulation of life is good enough for most people’s standards that the former question is best left to the philosophers.

Each crystal is a repeating pattern of mineral-based electrical circuits. Once the crystal lattice is set, these circuits are permanent and since the personality and behavior of the crystal is determined by these patterns, the behavior of the crystals themselves becomes repeating and predictable also.

These locked-in behaviors are called a “Mandate.” Hence the name: Crystal Mandate. As the crystals continue to grow, so too must the behaviors become grander and grander in scope and scale, and the Crystal Mandate becomes more efficient at performing these tasks.

However, once the actions mandated by this circuitry is unable to be performed, the structure of the crystal lattice falls into disarray and is destroyed. A period of disarray ensues before a new crystal with a new lattice and new Mandate can be grown, and the process starts over.

Faction Abilities:

ideas

• Mandate Driven: idea is that a Mandate is basically a template for future actions, the crystals grow, incorporating the knowledge of prior actions into their crystalline structure, so they become very good at these things, but have to keep repeating these actions because this is what they then “do” and how they were “built”. Thus they get big bonuses for stuff in their Mandate, but aren’t dynamic, so tend to be fairly middling at everything else (although the intent is for them to always be good at research). Once a Mandate isn’t successfully fulfilled, the crystalline structure falls apart and a new one must be built. The period between the old Mandate and the new one is one where CM basically sucks at everything since society basically collapsed and is rebuilding. The idea is to play the CM by switching between Mandates strategically to get all the hawt bonuses, but trying not to get stuck switching at bad times or before you’re done doing whatever those bonuses were good for.

• diff mandates = “governments”

  • Prefab mandate templates:

    • Mandate: Colonize

    • Mandate: Build Planets

    • Mandate: Explore (anomolies pirate/monster skirmish)

    • Mandate: Fortify

    • Mandate: Conquer planets

    • Mandate: War

      • Weapons +15%

      • Defenses +15%

    • Mandate: Research

    • etc

  • Self-building template:

    • Whatever X you do in Y turns becomes mandate for next Y turns, etc

      • could choose Y duration: 8, 12, 15, 18, 25, for example?

• Each mandate = Do X per Y turns. Every Y turns do 2x per Y turns, etc.

  • Eg build 1 building every 10 turns, then build 2 every 10, then 4 every 10, etc.

  • Bonuses per mandate type

    • build = 50%, 100%, 150% etc social prod

    • explore = vision, mv bonus

    • war = ship prod, move, combat, etc

    • etc.

    • Idea is to have quadratic Mandate growth curve accelerate faster than one can build so not keeping up with a Mandate is a foregone conclusion. TBD/Balance

  • Having mandate generates lots of ‘political capital’.

    • Can liberally use ‘political capital’ points to attempt to keep up with mandate needs

• If mandate not met, government collapses then Y turns of debuffs

  • debuffs related to type of mandate.

  • Plus -75% to raw prod, -50% morale, etc.

  • debuff never exceeds 10 (TBD balance?) turns tho, so for the self-build template of 25 turns or whatever, could limit debuff to 10. (otherwise 25 turns is a deathknell potentially)?

Faction abilities:

• Racial traits:

  • ++ research

  • influence/flipping resistant

  • - ship combat

  • - invasion

  • Slow ships – carrying all that mineral broth around is heavy

  • Bulky Ships – crystal “people” are bulky and extremely fragile

  • Fragile ships – fragile crystals less hp

  • ++ content, they really don’t have personalities, so it’s difficult to make them unhappy

• AI traits

  • prioritizes research

• AI interactions

  • Very mechanical personalities

  • very transactional in demeanor

  • very difficult for them to change course in diplomacy/policy/etc without a new mandate. With a new mandate, anything’s on the table, so some interactions can seem pretty about-face/schizophrenic - ??mechanic every new mandate resets relations??

  • very little emotion-driven decision making, everything just mechanical/transactional

  • ? still deciding whether diplo/culture/influence mandates make sense or not.

Additional notes:

• This faction’s specific abilities are largely TBD because so many of the specific numbers/mechanics will depend upon the specific mechanics and balancing of GC4. For example, I think this faction will make heavy use out of the “Political Capital” mechanic – however, I have no idea how this mechanic is actually going to work in-game yet.

• As it’s looking, this may definitely be a feast-or-famine faction

Additional race ideas:

Incubating ideas on the following.

• Something Locust and planet-hopping based

  • “buildings” are upgradeable forms of mines. Each produces a bunch of 1x resources but no resources/turn.

  • Mines cannot be removed

  • So planets just end up being all tiles of destroyed planet.

  • Mechanic for moving leaders easily from planet to planet as only ‘core worlds’ could be mined by manually building stuff on them?.

  • ?opportunities for aliens to fix destroyed planets? - otherwise too poor counterplay potential, or doesn’t matter?

• CRO Research Commune ?Risen Empire Plague-axis inspired? Multicultural with lots of brain swaps? pure AI running in a parallel universe (ie M-theory, adjacent brane? vs running on structured quantum framework, like fine alpha coefficent, metric etc?)

  • Can license techs – instead of selling/trading/transfering techs allows other civs to use their techs but not have them forever.

    • Licenses can be revoked

  • Special research tree – Plague Research

    • Make plagues that everyone else gets. But 90% immune d/t genetic diversity? Or

    • Make race-targeted plagues ie: Drengin Pox or whatever

      • Tech license Plague treatments/cures

      • Easy vs difficult to do? Minor plagues meh, major plagues sacrifice leader of same race?

      • intelligence/espionage component? Minor plagues hard to track down, major more suspicious?

      • Minor plagues = death by a thousand cuts – plague xyz lasts 30 turns and causes -5% raw prod, for example.

      • Also make computer viruses that infect synths. Ie “synth plagues”

      • Also make computer viruses that attack infrastructure

  • Could combine this idea with CRO RC but then biological vs mechanical. Biobodies with energy field brains old cure for mind plague?

  • Specializes in ‘hard’ research, not so much on sociological, humanities etc res. Lacks perspective on downsides/costs of dangerous research trajectories. Just science for science, don’t care about ppl

  • cumulative knowledge: +2% research per tech researched; I would really like to get around having to build a bunch of labs per se, this would allow a very narrow civ research snowball even if they’re not “building tall” – can just build poorly and still be good at research.

• Himalayan inspired.

  • Talpa/thoughtform – space-monster summoners

  • Bonuses for solitude/reflection

  • Pacifist expansion – ie Buddhist monastery like. Expand via ending wars/ peace-brokering mechanic? PN already have pacifist expansion, would need to be very different.

• “Catabolic Toxicity” race? - inspired by Koy4Goff ? - SPAM based economy? Idiocracy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f9oJikx0-I

  • Race that blasts out unlimited amounts of crap culture/influence

  • Mechanic for unlimited money, but internal cost inflation (fiat currency basket economy)

  • Monetization aspect where productive capital is drawn down for quick money

  • Mechanic for influence instability – produces tons of influence but influence can be destroyed also

  • propaganda production: “We have always been at war with Eurasia.”

  • Ability to trade away a bunch of techs/ships, etc that don’t work/fall apart or suck

  • Everyone’s an idiot with a magic money machine

  • hard to spend political capital bc no one believes in anything (and is an idiot)

interesting thoughts except for the "Ghost / Ghoul" offering.  the first is a rework of the Yor.  Sorry no ideas myself, its so difficult to be creative and original so Kudos tid242 for making a start.

hah, thanks for the input.  I actually like the PN quite a bit myself as I feel like their internal consistency is pretty good and their mechanic is thus far unique.  The general idea is based on the historical nomadic Muslims who were able to spread across the ME, central Asia, north Africa, S/SE Asia and retain their cultural identity.  Whereas lots of groups conquered these regions, but all ended up just blending into the populations there and disappeared as cohesive social/cultural groups - this didn't happen with the Muslims because their ideology (Islam) was generally stronger and more coherent than the places where they settled.  Needless to say, their multi-century "conquest" of these regions was also non-violent, in contrast with all of the great armies that had swept through the area.  I mean, plenty of Muslims waged wars, however, this wasn't why they were successful. 

The Planeshift/Ghost mechanic was a way to create a win/win situation for pacifist expansion.  Just like real-life, if someone moves to your town, you're not worried that they're going to take your stuff - rather that person just gets a job and joins the community like everyone else living there.   The GalCiv mechanics tend to be all/none with respect to ownership/influence/conquest.  Either you own a planet, or you don't.  This mechanic was thought up so that people move to your planet and you get free population, also free pop-cap busting, and the only downside is that they also produce some influence - which isn't a big deal.  Likewise they cannot produce more influence than you do on your own planet (although it gets up to 50%) unless you decide to assign a Ghostified leader to it, but again you're getting an extra 50%-good leader, so you might still want to.   The "Ghost" mechanic is also a strong and obvious way to point out that this particular population is never going to just "blend in" with the natives and disappear - they're fundamentally different in a way that this cannot happen; it's not just that they're a different race, rather they have a type of existence that is different in kind.

Could I ask what you didn't like about them, or what could be changed to make them seem cool to you?

Also, I'll have to think about how to differentiate the SM vs Yor.  I tried to make the SM much more one-dimensional than the Yor, which really are a full-fledged race with ambitions, a history, and functionally play just like all of the non-robot races.  I do think it'd be great to have more machines/robot races.

Again thanks for reading, and thanks for the input .

-tid242

i generally don't like Ghosts, Ghouls and Vampires with their Horror overtones and the back-catalogue of Hammer Films associations.

Re-reading your proposal i can see the intention of creating something that isn't corporeal and has a more religious / spiritual / even philosophical existence.  But then it gets confusing by having two different types of being, one being somehow more corporeal to actually exist in the Humanoid Dimension enabling interaction with normal phyics and other races presumably by each entities own choice to not enter the Shifted-dimension [which may be an artifice for a Haven / Heaven / Valhalla / Shangi-La esoteric state of existence].  its this somewhat weirdness of multiple race-forms of corporeal and non-corporeal entities that gives me mental discomfort, even though you could say its no weirder than the Earth's Fauna & Flora being divided into the 2 Genders of Male and Female.

i appreciate the need for a peaceful faction with a non-intereference nature and a more "accidental / incidental" role to game-play whereas 99% of four-x strategy games  are driven by aggressive conflict and War being forced on the human player however much alternate routes to winning are persued.

Interesting, yea. I could see that.  They definitely were not meant to inspire traditional horror tropes of zombies, vampires, etc.  Maybe I could just drop the word "ghost" from their name.  So just "Planeshift Nomads"...  huh

The two pop types might be a bit confusing, although I feel like the planeshift pop should just 'flow' pretty naturally.  I'm curious to see how complicated the 24 stardock races are that'll be in the base game. 

Thinking about it, I could just drop the Hadir pop altogether, although the intent was for the PN to also get the "double the population" bonus, as well as the planets they wandered to.  I'll have to think about this.  I could lose the complication by simply allowing them to have 2x pop on their own planets.  But then it would/could just get confusing immediately if you flipped a neighbor's planet, because that would be a 50/50 pop, and if it converted to 0%/100%, what happens when your neighbor flips it back? 

cheers!

re: complicated races.

One that that did occur to me when building these was that there might be some benefit for SD to just have an "easy, medium, complex" designation for races.  So for the ones that are difficult to navigate their systems, or do the setup for their "thing" to work well would be labeled as "complex" so ppl trying these races would know that beforehand.

Because, for example, I think that the Crystal Mandate would be a /hard/ race to play, because the obvious strategy would always be to be on the knife's edge of not fulfilling your mandate as this is where the big bonuses would be.

The Cosmic Encounters board game did this with a Green/Yellow/Red difficulty/complexity indicator on the top of the alien card, as a lot of the abilities are pretty wacky.  It's actually my premier example of a game where every player gets an ability that's completely broken, I mean, completely completely broken.  And yet the game still flows and it never seems cheesy. (edit: actually one exception, the race that let's the player cheat at the game (yes this is a special ability) is one that I think is cheesy).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJYx-o0UsRs

On a related note, when GC4 reaches its final balanced state, the races could even have various levels of complexity they could choose from depending upon how hardcore they want to play their race - but this would def be a discussion for another day..

Done.  Except for ghosts.

Per Frogboy's post #11:

Alright, so I'm going to change this thread up and make it something that I don't feel bad about spamming up.

Any/all feedback is welcome and appreciated - this is the reason I'm making a thread about it.  Obviously the game mechanics of GC4 are unclear at this point, so these ideas are basically just that, ideas.  But it's been a fun project to think about and dabble with during my free time..

Per request there are no humanoid races - although humans are really boring anyway and it's unlikely that I'd ever compose a human alien...  So far this thread has:

1. Genocidal machines of an unclear composition.

1. Amorphous blobs of an unclear biology - if "biologic" at all.

1. Ghosts.

1. Crystals that at least emulate sentience.

Done.  Except for ghosts.

Schaefespeare's Reply:

So i'm wondering if the Races in GC3 have been totally scrapped and then there will be no humanoid Races at all  ?

Quoting Frogboy, reply 11

Done.  Except for ghosts.

Poor ghosts, everyone hates them ...   LMAO.  I'll de-ghostify them and see if they don't rub everyone the wrong way.

You guys all hate Casper too?

Don't worry buddy, all of the GC canon (ie non Star Control DLC) races will still be around and playable (with some minor story-driven exceptions around the edges, it sounds like), along with some new cool sounding ones so far.

Brad had just said that he thought there were too many humanoid races already, so hence the moratorium on adding more - they need to dilute out the pool..

-tid242

Don't worry buddy, all of the GC canon (ie non Star Control DLC) races will still be around and playable (with some minor story-driven exceptions around the edges, it sounds like), along with some new cool sounding ones so far.

Brad had just said that he thought there were too many humanoid races already, so hence the moratorium on adding more - they need to dilute out the pool..

Thanks for the re-assurence tid242,

Just repeating what I heard, so no personal promises from me on this.  hah