Space Monsters!!!

[Suicide Junkie]

RE cloaking:
Translation:
- The spacemonsters lair can't ever be seen or attacked.
- The only way to kill the infested planets is to blow up the star.

The high-tech beastie thing is probably not scalable... At the beginning, they will be too powerful, and at endgame they will be only a nuisance.
The swarm could probably be handled better, since as the monsters take over new territory, their swarms will smoothly scale up. This is also probably good against minefields, since the loss of a hundred would not hurt the overall swarm later on in the game.

I would go with the swarm preferably, since the AI can screw up tactically with a few ships and not ruin the whole attack.

For variety, of course, there will have to be plenty of Borg monsters and middle of the road evil.

[Growltigga]

SJ - glad you agree, a few individual rampaging starbeasts (a la Starfleet Command II if any of you play that) would be quintessential to this game. The swarm would be the "uber-beast". I would think the following would be prerequisites:

1 no diplomacy whatsoever
2 sole purpose to occupy and destroy planets
3 gains resources by 'converting' population into more beasts, possibly can do the same thing with organics
4 uses organic technology
5 moves slowly, spreads slowly - for this to work it needs to be a creeping death style of thing
6 basic cloaking abilities apply to the swarm
7 needs a swarm mother ie some kind of superbaseship able to create more little rampaging darlings
8 needs to be tip top at ground combat

Would this be hard to mod?

[Suicide Junkie]

1: Everything you can possibly do politically (even nothing?) increases their anger towards you. No prob.
2: AIs naturally expand. They won't focus on adding territory, since they will attack any ships they see, but you don't want them expanding too fast.
3: Not gonna happen. Unfortunately, the soylent green facilities were tried and failed. They're gonna be building Farms on their invisible planets just like everybody else.
4: Super-organic tech. Organic + P&N "Living ships" at the very least. Add organic engines and electronics, and you'll be set.
5: Make swarm spores (colony ships) have a max of zero engines, with a built-in 1 standard movement point. They cannot be disabled .
6: Add it to the hulls. They should be very vulnerable to psychic sensors, but average against Grav & temporal, and strong against EM.
7: I don't think AIs handle mobile constrution ships very well. I could be wrong though. They can always use their planet-based hives to produce ships.
8: Not a problem. Dogscoff and his Space vikings should be able to give some pointers.

[Growltigga]

SJ - sounds like you have the answer for pretty much everything. Pity about the consuming ability not being a doer - my thought was that rather than glass planets, the swarm scoffs the populace and converts it into organic points or whatever

I have not downloaded the P&N mod or indeed any mod yet until I get the hang of it more

[Suicide Junkie]

GT: Sentyou a PM. Check out "my profile"

[Growltigga]

SJ - got your PM and sent one back, I can see your a modding genius, answer my command and communication query if you can - Spaceballs as favourite film? pluuuueeeeeaaaaasssseeee

[mac5732]

SJ, have a few questions, If you have 0 engines with movement of only 1, this would take their colony ships forever just to cross 1 system, I agree slow expansion, but shouldn't their colony ships be a little more speedy otherwise they become real sitting ducks and would take far to long to colonize thus negating their real threat. In regard to expansion, I understand the colonizing planets part, but once on a planet, since its a swarm type race, I would (my opinion only) increase their re-production on a planet by at least 25-30% more then the other races. Slow expansion, but once landed, rapid re-production, thus over population, causing even more colony ships to be sent out. Also what type of atmosphere? Probably should be able to use all types to be real threat. I like the idea of the mother planets only being eradicated by blowing the star. That way you can burn them off of planets, but until you find/locate a mother world, they will just keep coming. You could have more then 1 mother planet just to make it more interesting. (if possible)

just some ideas mac