What about it : "Nids"

First of all : hello everyone !

I've been following closely the project for some time and just now I've created a forum account (to test the character creator).

We have a huge amount of critters created proceduraly and such, with different patterns and behaviors. We will have quests and other nice stuff.

When I saw the last stream, one of the armors was a Space Marine armor. So I've tought : what about if we had "Nids" in Starbound ?

For those of you not familiar with Warhammer:40k (or have never watched/read Star Troopers or Starcraft) , the Nidalysks are basically a insect race driven by a single purpose : evolve.

Nids are all coordened by a single Hivemind which basically assimilate the fauna of different planets and add their characteristics to the entire Hive. This way, they are like a virus/plague which kill entire planets on a tide of insectoid-c destruction.

I can see this happening in Starbound ! It would be kind of cool if you were taking your everyday life and all of a sudden an enemy appeared and you had to defend against them.

 

I think your idea is similar to the Darkbound idea, where things become evil and corrupted.

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/darkbound-legacy-of-the-lucent-update.8560/

 

Funny, I made suggesting to have something like that in the Monster Content a while ago, can find my entry here. But it didn't even make into 16 honorable mentions, like devs just didn't like the idea at all and just ignored it.

 

The reason most of these are passed up is because there are so many of them. The ideas are just like Terraria's corruption and goblin invasion. Sorry for comparing to Terraria, but it is the easiest to compare to and the first thing I thought of.

 

My idea is Nothing like Terraria's corruption or goblin invasion, and I don't think that's what OP is asking for either. Yeah nobody wants bunch of similar monsters spawn on sides of your screen, because its cheap and boring. Having monsters that live somewhere, do things when you are away, and have a plan, that's much more interesting. Its just making that happen is way more difficult.

 

It's still around the same idea. But I see where you are going, you are saying something along the lines of those games that you build your empire and other empires are taking over the continents and things like that just on a galactic scale. If something like was added it would definitely add some difficulty and enjoyment, but if it is made a lot of people would probably request a mode that disables that so they can build and explore without having to worry about stuff being destroyed or opportunities lost.

 

If you don't want your stuff destroyed, then you probably should explore the planet first and make sure it doesn't have any hostile AI that is capable of such thing. If you find one, you can either just find different planet, you can fortify your area so they can't get to you, or you can destroy them first and then build whatever the heck you want, or in my entry I even suggested giving player option to interact with that AI and do quests for them or make player work with AI for some common goal. Its all about giving player more interesting choices and more variety in gameplay.

 

Interesting thoughts here, and something to be considered for future updates post-release. I like the idea of a unified, non-player character race that is hostile to everyone, as it could create some cool gameplay opportunities. My only worry here is about implementation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this proposal sounds to me almost like there is a hostile AI player running around doing the same things we are in the game world, and it's possible we may run across that player at any given moment. Moreover, because that AI doesn't have to actually see what's going on to do things, it could in fact be doing several things at once. It could be exploring multiple planets with multiple "players".

If this is kinda what's being proposed, again, my worry is implementation. That's an entirely different design than what Starbound currently has, at least as far as I know. Right now, the game is only actually running a planet if there is a player character on it. In this model, potentially hundreds or even thousands of planets would have to be running in the background to support that AI opponents activities. I suppose you could limit it such that the opponent is only able to explore one planet at a time, just like us, and that could eliminate that problem. But even though, programming an AI to "play the game" to such an extensive level could be quite difficult.

Still, as I said, interesting.

 

Well my favourite thing about 'nids is that they are not evil. They are just a horde of creatures that hunger for biomass. Hell, the fact that the planets actually grow back eventually grow back seeds theories that they are trying to rid the galaxy of all the species that just generally f*** up the place.

This is why they are nothing like corruption. The corruption is evil. It's not natural, it exists purely to be evil. That is the main reason I hate it's entire concept - it's completely black, whereas nids and other similar aliens are driven by their hunger to grow, to evolve, not to just generally be evil and something for the 'good guys' to fight.
They are not like a virus like the op says, and dont evilify and corrupt like the darkbound. They are just 'bugs' that 'adapt, adopt and improve' to battle anything that gets in the way of progress. Just like humans do in real life, and just like is the end goal of every species that is driven by their need to continue living.

 

RE: ... my brain...

 

I. Love. Zerglings.

 

Hmmm.... Not so sure about the comparison to humans. Sure, we strive to survive, progress, and improve our lives, but we don't function as a hive mind. We have individual goals, and limitations on the actions we'll take to achieve them. Morality comes into play when we're looking at those paths to advancement, at least for some.

A unified, species-wide drive to progress that doesn't take anything else into account? In my opinion, that's not humanity. That's the Borg.

 

Morality, when it comes to humans, tends to only apply to humans. Humanity is, at a base level still driven by reproduction, the trib mentality and overall racism. I was more using humans as an example of how everything we do is about survival - stopping global warming isn't compassion, it's humanities denial that they are not the most powerful thing on earth.

If this makes no sense, I get why. It's because what I write tends not to :/

 

Planets eaten by Tyranids do not "grow back", unless we're talking about Orks (because getting rid of an Ork infestation is that goddamned hard).

The planets after being consumed by a Tyranid horde become lifeless husks, removed of all biomatter.

That's certainly not true; not all human morality based off of the things you described, nor is is impossible to apply them to non-humans.

It's not like Blizzard has ever come up with a unique idea or anything. Wait, no, they haven't.

 

(I know I ignored your other statement, I'm just dropping it as it makes nos sense anyway )
They do grow back. It takes a couple million years but they do.
If ork spores ever landed on the initial barren rock, they would die. The spores don't generate plant life(IIRC). They may increase it, but don't create it.

 

My position makes perfect sense. Perhaps you have not actually bothered to study ethics or morality in a scholastic and professional sense, but I have done so.

Stop making shit up.

Ork spores are an entire self-contained ecosystem, starting with fungi, then squig-beasts, then snotlings, then gretchin, then Orks, as stated by their codex.

And Orkoid beings can survive in a vacuum. They fly open-cockpit aircraft (not spacecraft) in to space to do battle against Imperial space-based interceptor craft, and make use of such things as space hulks and asteroids to get from planet to planet.

 

I was saying my position made no sense.

I'm not. Literally nothing the tyranids do a planet stop it from growing back, starting with single celled organisms. Remember that, acccording to the the most widely acccepted theory all planets were once lifeleess hunks of rock and gas. The tyranids do nothing special.

Guess you learn something new everyday. I knew they could survive in a vacuum and the space hulk stuff, but I was saying they would die because I didn't know it also generated general fungi.

Besides. This is off-topic.
Most of what I said first was supporting the idea. All you've done is nitpick over what I said.(Don't blame you, I would do the same)