quote:
Originally posted by Emperor Zodd:
Shouldn't a machine race be emotionless and be free from plagues?
Well, there is a pseudo-science reason they are not and a real reason they are not.
The pseudo-science reason for the emotions is listed in the race description: their processing systems are organic, so over time they developed emotions (or, you could think of Data's emotion chip from Star Trek being taken a step too far), and I suppose that you could say that the organic nature of the processors also leaves them vulnerable to plagues.
The real reason is that I wanted this race to be as competitive as possible. My concept for doing this was a race with propulsion expert and advanced storage characteristics. That didn't leave me with racial points for emotionless. Besides, the speech file would have been far less fun if they had no emotions. The real reason I chose to make them machines was that I could only figure out how to make a race portrait that looked pretty much like the ships, which made them pretty much machines themselves. Of course, once I made the decision to make them machines, the Berserker reference came to mind and I just had to magnify their aggressiveness.
Buy into the pseudo-science, and I think you will find this an interesting race to play against.