The Cosmic Squid (aka the Teuthida Cosmica, or simply Teuthida) Her name is Onyx. Space is big. This is big. They're made for each other! There is a lot of information covering this suggestion, so for the sake of convenience, I'm going to illustrate the main points of the suggestions and then provide the detailing of the suggestion in spoilers if you're more interested in this becoming a reality. Essentially, this is what the suggestion boils down to: Teuthida are giant metallic squids the size of planets that turn into planets when they have babies, and are an ancient race of squid thought to have been long extinct due to the overzealous use of converting them into cyborgs for warfare and/or mining purposes. The ones you would fight in the game are early escaped cyborgs that could still reproduce, hence the cool looking decor on the sample above. You land on the planet and explore, to which some people may be living on it. The planet is made purple of titanium with blue wiring, so expect a lot of paneling. You cannot collect it yet. Talking to the people yields hints that the planet may be alive. You cannot destroy anything yet. You make it to the "core" and find the egg of it's offspring which you activate and hatch, to which you are forced to fight since it wants to eat you/play with you. After it's slain, the camera shakes, and you have a limited time to make it back to your ship alive. If you die, you're automatically taken up and the scenario continues. There will also be a chest to collect goodies from before the battle, which will be elaborated on later in the post. Once you make it to your ship, you look at your navigator only to watch the planet transform into a silhouette of the squid. Looking away prompts the squid to swim along your ship. The camera rocks and you hear a thud effect each time it happens, indicating that the squid is attempting to destroy your ship (it cannot, thankfully). If you go into hyperspace, it will swim with you to wherever you go. The only locations you're allowed to fight it is either on the moon or in asteroid fields (asteroid is preferred). The ship cannot allow you to fight anywhere else due to the squid taking other, more cybernetic (hint hint) measures to coax you out, since it's pissed that you killed it's only child. After defeating it, it flies into the distance and explodes. When you revisit the location in which the squid was originally, an abandoned planet made of titanium planet along with other rarer metals is available to destroy and collect. This is, essentially, the drop; an entire planet of expensive metals that you can mine at your leisure. And all you had to do was kill a mother and son of a nigh extinct species to do it! This is the very basic premise, distilled in it's purest form so you don't have to waste you time reading the rest of this if you don't like it, though I would appreciate if you took a look at the art, since I did work hard on that. For those of you still reading, here's the rest of the information! The Teuthida are an ancient race of squid that roamed the cosmos in the early beginnings of the Universe. Originally, they were not mechanical, but instead organic with a thick metal coating. Younger variations had coatings of carbon, while older ones were coated with steel or even titanium plating. Their synthetic plating comes from their diet; they devour planets whole, originally by wrapping their tentacles around or in a planet and consuming them with their extendable, hidden mouths. Sometimes during this process, some tentacles are stuck within the planet itself, and pop off as a result. They normally re-grow it back within 6-8 months, and the tentacle that remains eventually dissolves into the habitat. This is why some planets have protruding tentacles growing out and flesh-like environments; due to millenia of influencing the primordial pool of evolving plants of animals, their DNA tainted some areas of the planet, resulting in these mutations in the environment. The Teuthida mate like any other squid. Teuthida are "immortal"; they cannot die from natural causes, only from wounds and critical damage internally. When a female Teuthida is pregnant, she begins metamorphosing into a giant sphere, commonly mistaken as a planet. The synthetic coating yields a planet-like formation in which the squid becomes a solid titanium sphere, holding a single egg inside. The egg, which has a blackish blue hue and a carbon coating, requires a long time to hatch, ranging from a couple hundred years to thousands. The parent, while in planet form, hibernates until the egg hatches, in which the child floats out of the planet, and then the parent transforms back again into its normal cosmic squid form. Some people have unknowingly lived on planets that were secretly Teuthida before their presumed extinction. Teuthida rarely consume or eat planets with living beings on it. They only do so if they are badly wounded, and require the meat to regenerate body parts. Some societies fear this beast as a result of its rare habit of eating other beings. During the period of time in which artificial societies were developing their technology at an exponential rate, several civilizations studied the existence of these squids and even went as far as to venture onto one or two "planets" to examine how their incubation periods work with their future offspring. Unfortunately, various societies saw the squid as a platform for war, mining, and profit. Ships were made to capture them, and the Teuthida being one of the more passive and non-threatening species of cosmic squid due to their former power, were harvested a plenty. Captured Teuthida were stripped of all organic traces of their flesh, and turned into cyborgs. Centuries passed until enough experimentation was done upon them to fully convert them into machines with very little biological parts. A machine Teuthida (also known as Clankers in military slang, due to the loud clanks of their limbs while in action) had all the raw power of a Teuthida and none of the compassion. Its beak was replaced with a planetary grade ion cannon capable of destroying whole cities in one shot. All of them were made of pure titanium, per standard, and were kept on a tight leash due to their compromised mental state, thanks to all of the tech that had driven them insane. They could crush whole planets with their arms, and if they couldn't, their remodeled foreheads could ram into them instead. To be on the planet it desecrated and watching it unfold would be a sight of pure horror. Clankers were used for battles against other planets, waging war between advanced civilizations. They were also used for efficient mining operations, and at times both agendas would be fulfilled at the same time. Teuthida could not be grown artificially; attempts at doing so yielded inferior products, such as small squids with propellers for tentacles, which were then dumped onto abandoned or empty planets. The only successful attempt took too long to produce: 300 years. As such, due to the lack of practicality of making them artificially, along with the difficulty of cloning them or their body parts due to their enormous size, they were hunted, gutted, and reformatted into Clankers until presumably extinct. Some believe that the Teuthida still roam in proto-Clanker form, due to incidents in the early campaign of salvaging them into full Clankers; there were a few documented accidents involving complete reformatting that involved the Teuthida violently resisting the change and escaping into the furthest corners of space. As for whether or not it was recaptured or even alive, no one knows... Stories found with any settlements living on the planet would involve: - Creation myths on how the planet was formed - Scientist logs on the nature of the planet itself - Cults surrounding the "Stone" in the center of the "planet" (the squid egg) The Teuthidas in the present that you'll find in systems are partially cybernetic, since they are the ones that escaped early during the era in which they were converted into Clankers; they retain enough of their original anatomy to procreate, as slow as the process is. They're found as Tier 7 planets (which means currently, they'd be found in Sector X). These planets would have very unassuming names, matching the naming structure of other planets in the given solar system, and would come up as a moon biome. There is also more than one of them that exist, allowing the player to find, explore, and subsequently fight more of these kinds of bosses. Whether there is a limited number or not is up for discussion. The planet would look something like this: This planet will be at normal temperature day and night, and animals will spawn naturally on them. Minus a few bumps, the planet itself is relatively flat. The terrain of the planet cannot be destroyed as of yet, and any attempts to do so will end up blocked. The blocks that it's made of, as well as it's layering, is as follows: First Layer: Meteorite rock, titanium paneling, smooth metal, wall paneling, platinum and silver blocks. Second layer: Light Metal, steel block, iron block, pressurized steel. Final layer/ Core: Rusty Metal, Junk Tech, Brains, Flesh block, and Block of flesh, with the limits of the planet kept back with acid water. This planet may feature generated buildings for any A.I. living there, which would primarily be made of wall paneling, support blocks, pressurized girders, pressurized beams, steel platforms, modern platforms, and windows as well as any of the aforementioned blocks stated before (excluding both flesh blocks and brains). Alternatively, Apex Laboratories and USCM Buildings can spawn on there as well, since they match the general aesthetic of the planet. The most important detail is the spawning of a small chasm that can be trekked down to, which leads to the "core" of the planet that reveals a stand featuring a large black sphere and a chest right under it. In this chest will be 100 uranium ore for you to collect, which is highly recommended that you do so if your ship does not have fuel. After you open the chest, the sphere activates, transforming into a "little" baby squid. Congratulations, you just hatched the spawn of a long thought extinct species! Naturally, it wants to play with you, in the most painful, agonizing way possible, so sadly, you have no choice but to kill it if you value your own life. If you are killed, it will wait for you in the same location instead of chasing you up. Cute and deadly! It's name is Tephra. The fight is relatively basic: It keeps charging at you with it's forehead to try and slam into you, and you just have to keep attacking it until it dies. This is only a prelude to what is truly coming, though, because once it's killed, the camera starts shaking, and you will have 30 seconds to leave the planet to avoid instant death. If you die, you will be beamed up to the ship as usual, to which the scenario will continue to go on the same as if you made it to the ship normally (minus the loss of pixels or what have you with whatever difficulty you have it set). Once you're beamed up, you cannot go down into the planet again. Looking at the navigator yields a small animation; the planet you're on, which you're looking at, turns into a silhouette of itself and then transforms into a squid, and disappears. Looking away from the navigator and walking along your ship, you notice your camera rumbles with an audible thunk, and then this happens. Oh shit. This is the real boss you have to fight, size and all. Angered that you killed it's only off-spring, it wishes to end you in the swiftest and most efficient way possible. Thankfully, it cannot destroy your ship, but it can prevent you from landing in certain planets and locations. Anywhere you go, it will go, to the point where it swims right next to you when going light-speed, if not faster. The only locations you're allowed to come down to are moons and asteroid fields, and that's specifically for fighting the squid itself. You aren't allowed home, unless your home is a moon or asteroid field. It's that intense. The chest mentioned previously exists purposefully in the event that you don't have enough fuel to make it to the asteroid field/moon to fight it. If you didn't collect it and you don't have fuel to go to other places, the only thing I can think up is having a short animation in which the squid grabs the ship (by floating in front of it), and physically dragging you to the closest asteroid field or moon. After you fight it and kill it (the details of that covered in another tab entirely), you will initially get 10,000 pixels. Instead of any item drops, however, if you revisit the location where you activated the squid, you will notice that you can mine things out now, and can proceed to strip-mine the planet for many rare and valuable resources you may not find anywhere else very easily in mass. The drop is literally an entire planet when you kill it, down to the buildings (but not the A.I.s that were around previously, they're all dead for very obvious reasons). It will not drop a book, since books on the squid will be available in any buildings spawned on the now dead carcass of the squid. So much stuff, and all it took was killing the mother and child of a previously thought to be extinct race! The battle is meant to take place either on a moon or in an asteroid field. The technical reason is that those locations are usually the least inhabited or used as homes, so there's less consequences for destroying stuff there. Moons and asteroid fields also allow for higher jumps and faster/more fluid movement due to lack of solid gravity, which allows combat to be more effective. The most preferred place to fight the squid is in an asteroid field, though, since those would provide more open space for the battle to take place in, though giving the moon as an option fits for the sake of having options and pondering effective strategies between different kinds of landforms. On the flip-side of the coin, game wise, the reason the squid doesn't allow you to fight on normal planets is because your size along with the gravitational pull of actual planets means it's trying to smash an ant with cleats; you'll escape easily right under it's feet, and the gravitational pull will only make it lose momentum trying to destroy you. Destroying the planet with you on it also proves worthless for many reasons: One, it will alert other civilizations of it's existence, and two, it would much rather keep you trapped you in the ship until you land on somewhere it can kill you than destroy indiscriminately. When you descend down a moon or asteroid, the squid will immediately swim up to you. It doesn't do much at first, because quite frankly, it doesn't have to. It's sheer size means that it cannot do precise hits on you, and prefers to instead swat you with it's tentacles or ram into you. Some blocks will break during the squid's movement. Here are the hitboxes: Red signifies locations where the player could be damaged. Green signifies where the squid takes damage. The squid can swim faster than what the character can run, unless they're using speed boost. The squid swings around in a loop; it'll go from left to right, and from there go up and descend down onto the player, and then switch directions and rinse and repeat. Sometimes it will speed away, vanishing from the screen completely, when everything goes a bit silent. And then, it unveils it's signature weapon, revealing that it was indeed one of the early experimental Clankers from it's time. At the top of the screen, right above the player, aiming for them, is a charging blue energy field that will suddenly remain static when fully charged. It will fire and stay in the position that it's fired in until it's gone. Crude image depicting what it would roughly look like. Hiding under rocks also isn't much help. The beam itself is capable of destroying blocks quickly, and is quite large. The best option is to outrun it, or hide really deep. After the beam is fired, the squid will appear again and continue to do battle. This all continues until the squid is badly damaged, to which it will use left-over missiles meant for it's former goal of military use that are shot from the blue ridges from it's forehead, aimed at the general direction of the player, but it will not seek them. They impact on solid objects and destroy them. Once the squid is defeated, it will shake violently and fly away from the screen, where it later is seen flying away into space to the center of the screen (the sprite is actually shrinking to simulate it going farther) and explodes massively. The explosion creates a beaming point of light to flash, only to fade just as quickly, and 10,000 pixels along with an entire planet filled with expensive and rare metals is ready for the mining. This idea was a revamp of a prior idea of a boss battle I had with a group of friends who were tossing around boss ideas around five years ago. Here is the same concept five years prior: BOY HOW THINGS CHANGE. The squid I had to do layer by layer, so I have all these pieces saved in the event that I have to reconstruct it again. If there's any modders curious to make some sort of odd implementation or test of this, here are the pieces that you're free to use so long as you credit me for the art. Heads: Side and front view. Tentacles, which were the hardest part. There are darker ones to provide depth to the limbs. The baby squid followed the same strategy, but to a lesser degree, especially since baby squids only have 2 tentacles when they're born. Go figure! Here it is again for those who didn't see it: Finally, to reward those who either a) Took the time to read through this entire thing, or b) Took the time to look through the art in here, have a transparent empty glitch ship for your leisure. I used it to create the mock-ups for the boss, shown in other tabs. Feel free to discuss about this boss and it's flaws/strengths and raise any questions, concerns, criticisms, or even (dare I say) praise below. This was mostly just a personal project of mine that I wanted to perfect, but since I love Starbound and most things space related, I wanted to share it with you guys and see how you'd like it. Thanks for reading!
This is glorious. Having truly gigantic bosses like this sounds amazing... :O Imagine if the squid would latch onto a planet and start devouring it, slowly draining it of it's resources and turning it into a barren wasteland... Moving around the planet and attacking each tentacle, you could deny it from sucking dry the planet and engage in the actual bossfight...
It would be! Sadly, I wanted to keep this suggestion within the realm of possibility as much as possible, and why I avoided staging battles on actual planets. Instead, I settled with conveying the imagery of what it's capable of through stories available on the planet when you find it, before it transforms into a squid, and then have it happen on moon/asteroid fields. This way, you can fight the squid in a more practical manner while still feeling the raw power of the boss itself; sparked through it's lore and then manifested through the intensity of the actual battle.
This is absolutely amazing! It also explains the Human lore a bit, going into more depth about how Earth would have been destroyed. Maybe there was some sort of different squid (sounds stupid ) that gave birth by blasting its egg into the core of Earth, meteorite style, and the baby grew around the core and eventually became the planet, and smashed its tentacles up through the ground.
That actually could work! I never really expanded on how the baby squid grows up, but burying itself into a planet and eating it from the inside out, and then breaking out when it was big enough would make sense.
Imagine if after the battle with ts child, you can fight the mother woth your SHIP. That would be interesting
There needs to be a pirate based race to go along with this just so you can reenact the kraken scene from pirates of the carribean.
Bump. I'm annoyed at how this turned out, but here's a slow motion animation on the movement of the squid itself. Processed it through Flash which (to my knowledge) doesn't let me make the best .gifs ever, so I saved it frame by frame and reconstructed it to the best of my ability. Here you go.
It's honestly not the most mindblowing thing in the world, but it's a proof of concept for how I want to implement it's limbs. Since various animals consist of seperate un-animated parts in-game (i.e. their heads tilting down slowly sometimes), I decided to follow suit and have the tentacles be the same way, since they're not meant to do much besides move up and down. It works perfectly when placed in the right location, and it saves time vs. having truly animated pixel limbs. The in-game flexibility to have different patterns work for it vs. a fixed animation is also a nice plus.
how about maybe you could have tiers of size just like with planets small= normal medium= tougher large=even tougher, plus lasers and maybe you could like get a special item from beating enough of them which gives you special coordinates to fight a gas giant class one which can both shoot lasers, take Crud-tons of damage, and is red. it would also be cool if beating them yielded ship upgrades.
This could be viable. You could also tie the ship upgrades with them as a better reward along with the planet you can harvest. I avoided big rewards to keep from having this kind of boss be game-breaking, and also be a viable source for the kinds of metals you don't see commonly in the game. It wouldn't make sense for them to be gas giants on multiple levels, sadly. For one, you need to land on them first to do the whole thing, which is something you can't do with gas giants. Secondly, gas giants are exactly that: Planets that are mostly made of gas. It'd be hard to have something physically transform into something else if it's not solid.
