Primitive Proportions

[Lord Kodos]

and some countries are pretty stupid...

[Dingocat85]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
I think making the primitives be able to defend themselves is really not something a lot of effort should be spent on. My view of the primitives is adding another "resource" for the space faring empires to take advantage of. The question won't be who can kill the primitives, but who can make the best use of them in their empire.

One defense I would give primitives would be some sort of cultural unity. I can think of three ways this could be done:

>>>>> 1) Make it well-nigh impossible to use intelligence on the natives.

>>>>> 2) Natives ought to be blissfully happy.

>>>>> 3) Make it impossible for the natives to surrender. What good is it keeping a massively inferior race alive, when with a surrender, you could control them completely, get all of their resources, planets, etc? UNLESS there would be some other reason to keep the natives alive...IOW, something the natives could build/do that nobody else could, that would make it worth keeping their Empire around. The 'Plague Intelligence Project' sounds great, but something in addition might be good...off the top of my head, maybe a long-range plague infestation missile weapon, called (for now) Foul Catapult?

Originally posted by PvK:
Giving some of them plague weapons would be trivially easy. If you want to create some which have built-in infection abilities that aren't entirely intentional, that'd be pretty easy too. The problem is, if they're neutrals, then the only thing they could infect would be colonies in their own system...

Maybe so, but I was thinking that the natives would build a ship with a unique component, and the player would "buy" it from the natives, by trading resources, Tech levels, other ships, etc. for it.
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On another topic, it might be a cool feature if natives didn't actually speak your language, but instead there had to be translations. This would have no affect on gameplay, it'd just look neat . For example:

We have received a message from the Ewok Chiefdom:
" 'Yub Yub Inga Ooooohah...' Translation: We admire the many shiny things your empire has"
(General Message)

...or, conversely:
" 'Yub Yubaaaaaah Yah!!' Translation: We shall play your fighting game with glee!"
(response to declaration of War)

...and so on. Might be fun

[QuarianRex]

Dingo,

Why do you think that primitives would have cultural unity. Usually, the less advanced a culture, the more isolated and fragmented it is. I'm not sure why you would think that they would be acting with one mind, one voice.

As far as never surrendering, primitives may be a little technologicaly backward but they are not stupid. Courage and bravery mean nothing when your foe opens up the heavens and liquifies a small continent with a hail of APB XII's (or even just the threat of such). As for why you would bother keeping them around, see my post below.

Aloofi,

Yeah, the primitives should be friendly. The problem is that I have absolutely no experience modding the AI politics/anger files. If anyone wants to take a crack at them to make them a
little less surly I would appreciate it. In the meantime I'll probably try to tinker with them myself, but I promise nothing.

[dogscoff]

Wooha! I just started another game and managed to get a military alliance with the Clukruk (despite their "angry" attitude.)

I parked a ship around their homeworld and gifted them resaupply tech. Sure enough, within a few turns they had built me a resuply depot! I gifted them refining tech and sure enough, a few turns later my trade income from them had increased by a factor of about 5!

I gave them a crappy old escort. They have parked it above my homeworld and have been wondering what to do with it for the Last 20 turns

Now I've gifted them glactic expansion. I'll tell you what that does next week...

In the meantime, I think i might try to create a dedicated primitive shipset. I already have a spare race portrait knocking around, so I have some fun with the AI_general and AI_Speech. Then I can add some "spears and loincloth" infantry pics, maybe a bantha-rider small troop or something... Or perhaps I could make them steam tech or space tech and draw a few old-fashioned "destination moon" style rockets.

QR: Is it possible for them to get uplifted all the way up to full spacefaring in this mod? If so I should probably be making them look just like any other race, shouldn't I? Or should I? That seems kind of silly to me. I don't know. Rex I still can't see how your additions to the various modded files work- they obviously do work but I can't see how . What images do I need to make? Help!

EDIT: If there is a need for dedicated primitive shipset images, maybe they should just go in the generic folder to serve all primitive races. What do you think?

[ May 02, 2003, 14:39: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Dingocat85]

Originally posted by QuarianRex:
Dingo,

Why do you think that primitives would have cultural unity. Usually, the less advanced a culture, the more isolated and fragmented it is. I'm not sure why you would think that they would be acting with one mind, one voice.

As far as never surrendering, primitives may be a little technologicaly backward but they are not stupid. Courage and bravery mean nothing when your foe opens up the heavens and liquifies a small continent with a hail of APB XII's (or even just the threat of such).

At least the way it looks (on earth) to me, the more primitive people are, the more zealous they *tend* to be. Off the top of my head, some examples are the Aztecs, The Crusades, and Emperor-worship in both Rome and Egypt.

However, as society has progressed, it has become less and less dangerous to speak out against your government. From teachers on strike to the French Revolution, people rally together in Groups, demanding that they get their 'fair share'. Sure, living conditions are a lot better than they were back then...but people now have the chance to voice their disapproval, and anti-government feelings are not suppressed by survival instincts.

I'm no historical expert, I could be entirely wrong. And of course, there are exceptions - WWI/WWII Germany, Communism, Dictatorship - there are plenty of oppressive governments in this day and age. Not to mention the fact that this isn't a game of competing humans, it's competing alien species...their mindsets could be completely different from ours.

Why not have some races be surrender-prone, and others be stalwart never-surrender zealots?

Edit: Allright, maybe I got a little too philosophical there...

[ May 07, 2003, 00:31: Message edited by: Dingocat85 ]

[dogscoff]

20 or 30 turns after gifting "galactric expansion" to the Clukruk I have yet to see any ships or anything.

I also parked an empty troop transport above their homeworld and gave it to them (sold it for 1000 minerals ). They have yet to move it (I kind of hoped they'd go and conquer an EEE colony) but it might well be full of troops. I'll get some LR scanners later and find out.
(Oops- they're neutral - they can't attack a colony unless it's in their system! I think I'll send in a coloniser and gift them that, see what happens.)

Oh, and I met the Zynarra. I sent in a ship and saw that their homeworld had 4000 troops and 550 crappy fighters, as well as a heap of really low-tech space stations. - This mod is great fun.

Anyway, I will probably get on with that dedicated primitive shipset soon, and then swap it out with one of the existing neutrals, so that not all neutrals will be primitive, just most of them.

Also, now that Quarian has produced the "guts" of the mod, I might start messing about with it and release my own "remix".

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
(Oops- they're neutral - they can't attack a colony unless it's in their system! I think I'll send in a coloniser and gift them that, see what happens.)

Make sure if you give them a colonizer it is in a system with a planet they can colonize. What will happen is they will have full normal use of the colony ship in the system that you gave it to them in. But they cannot leave that system. You can use this method to help a neutral to "expand". But they will still be unable to transit any warp points.

Geoschmo

[Loser]

Originally posted by QuarianRex:
Here is a tweak of the Proportions mod to include primitive Neutral races.

Quick question, QuarianRex, why did you make the primitives Neutrals?

Was it your intention that they be forever unable to leave their home system?

[Grand Lord Vito]

Capture the Planet, drain the resources, and enslave this alternate breathing society to populate worlds that are compatible. Watch your POP and your production numbers climb then.

Trade with this race is not as profitable as total control of the species.

The original neutrals have far more to offer

[Dingocat85]

I have an idea for a fun Primitive Ship Weapon: Raider Pods!
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Description: A tiny vessel of armed thugs used to beat up & enslave a ship's crew - Will not work against Master Computers.

Explanation: A seeker that, upon contact with an enemy ship, will attempt to control it, a la Allegiance Subverter. It should use relatively high supplies (you're arming a weapon with people, for god's sake! ), but a faster reload than the allegiance subverter - maybe, say, reload time 8?

Another weapon Primitives could get is a long-range, high-seeker-speed, tiny weapon sized, weak seeker damage resistance, level-1-plague-inflicting missile...named Infested Catapult, maybe?
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Originally posted by Grand Lord Vito:
Trade with this [primitive] race is not as profitable as total control of the species.

With enough unique Intel (plague intel, for example) and unique weapons (i.e. Raider Pods, Infested Catapult, any other ideas?), there should be *some* incentive to keep primitives around

[ May 07, 2003, 00:27: Message edited by: Dingocat85 ]