Space Monsters!!!

[Growltigga]

quote:

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Originally posted by dogscoff:
"Sire, Giant Space Lobsters have stolen 40000 Organics from our storage facilities."

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Cripes, I have this dream too, do you also have the one with the B5 Centauri and the giant broccoli spear tangoing to Westlife?

Seriously, the WP monster is an absolutely super idea. IMHO, monsters should fit into one of three types,

1 the bloodthirsty galactic 'as much mayhem before breakfast as possible' sterotype - eg the swarm thing you experts are discussing as to whether practical or not;

2 the "dangerous if you get near them but otherwise just hanging out in the far reaches of the galaxy type" eg most of the monsters they meet in Startrek; and

3 the mysterious 'never come across them but golly you know they are there' types just like your WP beast, unstoppable, not directly dangerous, elusive but capable of some game turning things, eg new warp point right into your home system etc

now, modding the AI? I leave to you experts

[Rollo]

Well, I'll give the WP monster a try tonight and see what the AI does with it.

Rollo

[geoschmo]

I know the ultimate goal is to create a non-player monster that will behave accordingly in a game and be a challange. But there is no reason that these more difficult ideas have to be discarded outright. They could be used in a multiplayer game. All you would need is a person willing to control the monsters. Make them interesting enough and that shouldn't be a problem.

Geo

[Growltigga]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
I know the ultimate goal is to create a non-player monster that will behave accordingly in a game and be a challange. But there is no reason that these more difficult ideas have to be discarded outright. They could be used in a multiplayer game. All you would need is a person willing to control the monsters. Make them interesting enough and that shouldn't be a problem.

Geo

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Geo, wise words - if all we are talking about for the moment (other than mod tweaks) to make these left field concepts I advocate reality is (i) a willingness to be a beasty on mutli-player and (ii) role playing then count me in - I will always be more than willing

[mac5732]

I like the ideas for the 3 types of monsters mentioned, this way everyone has their type of monster incorporated into the game. This could possibly be set as a random factor, that way you would never know which of the 3 you were going to see in your games. You could have 1,2 or all 3.
I would also make it an option that way those who didn't want monsters would be able to turn them off.

In some of the other sci-fi games out there, monsters were incorporated into the games and worked fairly well, ie; Moo, Federation, etc.

just some ideas mac

[Growltigga]

right on Mac, the question will be as Geo says whether is it possible to modd these traits into the game, or alternatively, and an idea I really like only if from a role playing angle, would be for a human to run the beasts, imagine, each swarm type could differ depending on who ran it -we would all have our own styles etc

just some ideas GT

[Suicide Junkie]

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to consider a multi-level game:
- at one level, we have the standard player races doing their thing.
- in the background, unseen by most players until the advent of advanced sensors, two or three non-expanding monster races battle it out.
- and at the bottom, we have a universe-eater with SM technology.

The universe-eater should probably eat all the systems at the edge of the map, then work slowly inwards, cloaking all planets, asteroid belts and stars with colonies and cloaking bases.

The winner of the game would be the player(s) who control the Last starsystem in the core of the galaxy.
The middle-monster races would attack this core system as their primary goal, preventing any one player from fortifying it until the Last part of the game - after the universe-eaters have swept past the monster-homeworlds.