Space Monsters!!!

[Phoenix-D]

"I would agree if your goal is to make a giant space-borne monster like what you see in many sci-fi shows, it would be tough without hard-code changes."

You could do it; the tricky part is getting it to do anything! (or not die/be out-researched into oblivion)

Phoenix-D

[Rollo]

Hi everybody,
wanted to post here earlier, but couldn't get to the site .
I am currently working on a monster mod together with Puke.
I'll comment/answer to some of the earlier Posts.

Growltigga:
1 no diplomacy whatsoever
* the diplomacy part is done. The monsters simply declare war on everybody after first contact.

2 sole purpose to occupy and destroy planets.
* was there ever any other purpose?

3 gains resources by 'converting' population into more beasts, possibly can do the same thing with organics
* that cannot be done.

4 uses organic technology
* they will use any technology that our (and your) evil minds will come up with. Since we will make our own technologies and components anyway, we don't have to restrict ourselves to organics.

5 moves slowly, spreads slowly - for this to work it needs to be a creeping death style of thing
* don't have plans for expansion. they will just stick to their homeplanet(s)

6 basic cloaking abilities apply to the swarm
* some of them will have cloaks, some not

7 needs a swarm mother ie some kind of superbaseship able to create more little rampaging darlings
* we have considered that as well. Needs testing though, to check out how the AI handles that

8 needs to be tip top at ground combat
* no monster invasions at this time

Baron M.:
"I don't think these 'crutch' measures will ever make an effective 'space monster'. You'll have to play by self-restricting rules to make it work. I think MM has to alter the hardcode with some new AI routines and some special powers to make space monsters feasible."

I can see your point and I agree. The monsters will basically just behave like a normal AI. But with their special tech and some of their quirks (no colonization, huge single "ships", no resource problems, super fast build-rate, no plantes to attack) they will sure make a new and interesting challenge.

Geo: "I would agree if your goal is to make a giant space-borne monster like what you see in many sci-fi shows, it would be tough without hard-code changes."
Phoenix: "You could do it; the tricky part is getting it to do anything! (or not die/be out-researched into oblivion)"

The way I currently envision the monsters is not a swarm, but few huge beasts that operate mostly alone. The monsters will research and get stronger as the game progresses. For each level of "monster tech" there will be one or more monster(s)-of the-line that might have totally different weapons/abilities/tactics than the previous ones. If carefully tested/balanced the monsters should be a good challenge at any stage of the game. At the later stages the monsters could also "team up" in small fleets. Another good thing about the different tech levels is that you could have the monsters stay dormant for, say, the first 20 turns or so. This way you (or the other AI) don't get wiped out right away before you found your footing.

I was also wondering, if somebody else is working on making a monster mod. We could exchange ideas/concepts so we don't have to invent the wheel twice.

ROLL CALL: we need some cool monster pictures for the graphics. Anything goes from giant amoeba to space dragons. If somebody already has some pics or wants to do some, please let us know.
Question for Andres (if you read this): Can we use a few pics of the Cephalopeia?
I know there was a really nice picture of a dragon some time ago, but I cannot find it at the moment.

Okay, enough for now. Sorry about the lengthy post...

Rollo

[Egregius]

Rollo: yes I was busy making a spacemonster mod, as I posted earlier (I was the one who topped the thread out of oblivion after all).

I did some testing, ripping components from another mod and tweaking them, but I have the greatest difficulty getting the AI to design their own ships using the vastly superior monster components (like connective tissue that acts as life-support) and to get them to add to their own build cue correctly.

I am a total sputz in modding the designcreation file. I dont understand half the stuff there, like major weapon family etc.

Anyway for a picture set I advise using either species 8472 (some of their ships look like squiddly thingys with tentacles) or the Cephalopeian shipset which was basically meant as spacemonsters. Just ask permission I guess

Edit: my idea was also one planet which spawns the beasties (preferrable would be they didnt have a homeplanet but that doesnt work) which builds one starbase with a sector cloaking component (to avoid they get whiped out easily), and the planet keeps spawning them in various sizes, amongst which those able to harvest organics from asteroids (I hope the AI has some way of figuring this out), and a few sizes which can spawn new ships.

Their special shipsizes have -100% maintenance for obvious reasons.

[ 25 January 2002: Message edited by: Egregius ]

[Gryphin]

I've another concept for folks to ponder.
In a game with 3 or more human players, give one of the humans control of the Monster Race. Put certain limitaition on the race. Victrory condions for the human running this race could be any of the belo:
1) To have fun
2) Be based on a minumum of kt destroyed
3) How many turns it survives

I have no idea how to create this mod but based on the other Posts here, it apears to be possible.

Please don't ask how I come up with these ideas. Even my therapist doesn't know.

[Rollo]

Egregius: Sorry, I must have missed that you were working on those, too. My bad. I'd be glad to exchange thoughts and compare notes.
If you are having problems with the desigcreation file, I am sure that I can be of help. I have some modding experience with that (done two races for standard SE IV so far, as well as a couple for the Devnull Mod Gold). If you have any question, just post them or drop me an email (snickelsen@web.de). There is also a design creation "cheatsheet" made by Atraikius that is of great help to figure out that AI file. You can find that in the mod section somewhere. Btw, thanks Atraikius .

edit:Found it. Look for a post by Atraikius on June 7th 2001 that has a "Design Creation Cheat Sheet" attached.

As far as life support and so on, you can make the hull needing no life support, if you want. I don't know what the connective tissue is supposed to do, but you can add that as an extra component. For all the other components/abilities (sensors, ECM, cloak, whatever) needed for a monster, you can just add them to the hull (body) of the monster and not worry about the design minister choosing the wrong parts. Weapons can be added quite easily, just give your new monster weapons their own weapon numbers and use those for the primary and secondary weapons. You can also give some monster part bogus abilities like "star - unstable", "ancient ruins", or "ancient ruins unique" and use those abilities to add specific parts to a monster.

Thanks for tip about the pics. I was planning on using not a complete shipset, but different pics for the various monsters. The Cephalopeia will be good for some monsters, but I don't want them to be "squids only". I want Dragons, Amoeba, Jellyfish, sentient gas clouds, and whatnot as well. You know, the whole suite of classic space monsters.

About harvesting asteroids: sorry, but AFAIK the AI cannot do remote mining. But this is not a problem. The space monsters will not need resources much anyway. If give them a large enough maintenance reduction, the will actually not pay maintenance, but produce resources with their ships (negative maintenance = resource production). So the more monsters are out there, the more resources will be gained.

To all: If you have any ideas for a specific space monster that you would like to see (like a Dragon that spits a hundred fireballs per turn), just post here.

Rollo

[ 25 January 2002: Message edited by: Rollo ]

[Andrés]

Do you mean that you'll make a "monster shipset" that includes all those kind of monsters, or that there'll be different races of monsters in different systems?
I didn't find the pictures I had yet. If I don't find them soon I'll be easier to just make new ones.
I hope I can get to work in the dragon shipset again and finish it soon.

[Rollo]

I want to make one shipset for the monsters that has the different monsters (squid, dragon, whatever) in them. The monsters will just be one race in game terms.

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually, setting the lifesupport requirement to zero will make a hull without lifesupport valid, but you will still lose 3/4ths of your movement because you have no lifesupport components.

Just make a "Heart", "Brain" and "Nerve Tissue" to function as Lifesupport, bridge and crew quarters.

[Rollo]

quote:

---

Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Actually, setting the lifesupport requirement to zero will make a hull without lifesupport valid, but you will still lose 3/4ths of your movement because you have no lifesupport components.

Just make a "Heart", "Brain" and "Nerve Tissue" to function as Lifesupport, bridge and crew quarters.

---

Yep, that is true. I forget to mention that all monsters treated that way should have a built-in master computer in the hull (which is a good idea against psychics anyway).

Rollo

[Andrés]

http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/temp/monstercomps.zip

Here you have a couple of components (couldn't find the old ones and just modeled these) + a preview of the dragon shipset you can use (I'll give you a few more dragon sizes soon).


I had fightes that didn't require life support in the SW mod and they seemed to work fine. Maybe it's no the same with ships.