The Creeping - Part 1: Concepts

[Phoenix]

posted on July 1st, 2009, 9:45 pm

Last edited by Phoenix on July 1st, 2009, 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Growth and Contraction

That would make quite a cool ranking system for them. Perhaps when attacking the enemy each of the entities "harvests" the crew during the attack and then eats them to grow bigger. This growth could be reflected with greater mass, new abilities and obviously a sharper tooth for taking on bigger ships. "veterans" could be like graduated royalty among the hive. The best of the best rising to be the most influential starship crew eaters among the Noxter.

This could give the Noxter a reputation for consumption of everything in their path, rather than simply mindless destruction. You could be really cheaky and make it so that organisms can also unrank and become smaller and less powerful if they don't eat regularly. This could give rise to a new station organism (restricted to one unit) that can temporarily act as a feeder to hungry entities (kind of like rations) while you search for new sources of food (new enemies). It could also prove to be an interesting game play dynamic that forces the Noxter player to push on to preserve their prosperity.

Also, imagine those Noxter vs Noxter matches. It'd be like a swarming tug of war!

posted on July 1st, 2009, 9:54 pm

I don't see you complaining about the posts saying what a great idea this is.

I don't have an attitude problem just a different opinion which I didn't express in a rude way unless you consider questioning developers ideas rude?

The Ferengi are a major power also and their ships are more than capable of standing up to the Federation as shown in TNG when they could have destroyed the Enterprise D.

As for the Cardassians every race in the quadrant was in a mess after the Dominion war so they were in no worse state than the others.

The Ferengi are obnoxious. They were designed as villains, but the audience never took them seriously, so, the producers of TNG and later DS9 demoted them from "bad guys" to comic relief.

As for the Cardassians, their home planet was destroyed. Personally, I think they could have rebuilt, or at least amassed a new battle fleet in secret. But that brings us to the main point:

This is Fleet Operations. It follows the Fleet Operations storyline. This mod can be as canon or as non-canon as it wants to be. The staff could say, "Yep, we like Star Trek, and this is a Star Trek mod, but 'Enterprise' and Nemesis don't exist in our storyline because we didn't care for them," and that would be a valid decision. The staff could say, "Yep, we like Star Trek, and this is a Star Trek mod, but we're setting it in an alternate universe in which the Dominion War and the events of 'Deep Space Nine' never happened," and that would be a valid decision. The staff could say, "Yep, we like Star Trek, and this is a Star Trek mod, but we think it all could have been done a lot differently, and this is our reimagining of the universe," and that would be a valid decision. In fact, the staff could make a mod completely unrelated to Star Trek, and that would be a valid decision.

Have you played Fleet Ops? It's a good mod. It's a lot of fun, and it's very intelligent, especially considering how old the game engine is. The staff have really done good things with it. So, why don't you stop complaining and keep an open mind? Maybe you'll get your Cardassians someday, and maybe you won't. If you don't like it, no one is making you play it.

posted on July 1st, 2009, 9:56 pm

So the Noxter are alchemists?  

So I think their ships should be like this.

Civilian Noxter can "evolve" to preform the tasks of:  Mining, building, breeding, repairing.

Assuming Noxter military ships are evolved from eggs, not yards:  All classes of military ships, depending on the maturity of seed/ egg

Scientist, Noxter would be the most evolved eggs/seed:  Would form Ships that transfer, or teach other noxter how to use special melee attacks, or other attacks.

Then of course there are stations, that are built by ships, or grown from a different type of non sentient, or less evolved seed.

posted on July 1st, 2009, 9:57 pm

Growth and Contraction

That would make quite a cool ranking system for them. Perhaps when attacking the enemy each of the entities "harvests" the crew during the attack and then eats them to grow bigger. This growth could be reflected with greater mass, new abilities and obviously a sharper tooth for taking on bigger ships. "veterans" could be like graduated royalty among the hive. The best of the best rising to be the most influential starship crew eaters among the Noxter.

This could give the Noxter a reputation for consumption of everything in their path, rather than simply mindless destruction. You could be really cheaky and make it so that organisms can also unrank and become smaller and less powerful if they don't eat regularly. This could give rise to a new station organism (restricted to one unit) that can temporarily act as a feeder to hungry entities (kind of like rations) while you search for new sources of food (new enemies). It could also prove to be an interesting game play dynamic that forces the Noxter player to push on to preserve their prosperity.

Awesome. Can this be implemented?

[Anonymous]

posted on July 1st, 2009, 10:23 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on July 1st, 2009, 10:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

@ Serpicus: I don't see how the Noxter could be influenced necessarily by the Morphidians, given that the particular game came out in 2005-6... and plus, the idea of an organic space faring faction ain't exactly completely unique....

I hear ya.

I was just asking about the design. cos the breeder design looked a bit like the base turret design in 2160. but may be coincidence.

Hope to see them in action soon... albeit that a strange new race detracts from the STU feel and kinda makes me feel like im in a kitbash of sorts....

but ill imagine them as mutated 8472 and move along.

posted on July 1st, 2009, 10:52 pm

Out of curiousity, for those of us who are new to the game and the Fleetops community, and weren't around for the older versions (Armada 1, Beta 1, Beta 2... ), could anyone provide a link to a primer on the Fleetops universe...i.e. exactly the background and context the devs intended, how much liberty they intend to take with canon, what the storyline is, etc.

I think if a document of that "vision" is posted somewhere, all the arguing over where to take this mod may stop and the community can unite behind one vision.   :thumbsup:

No response to this?? Does anyone have the history/timeline of fleetops? It would be cool to see where it is going.

posted on July 1st, 2009, 10:57 pm

Well, you already give food to your ships when they constantly consume your second ressource (whatever it is called).

So a unrank wont make much sense.
Also, not all Noxter ships should be able to eat enemy ships.

I suggested that a destroyer class could do that (and only that, without having any weapons) and the battleship class.

When the battleship is eating an enemy ship, this ship must be slower than this ship, so it wont reach many ships if they are intact. So you need engine-deactivating weapons in order to do that. Or we leave this thing out for the battleship and let only the small destroyers do that.
Then the battleship need another "thing" that it could do, because the "eat" modus on slow ships is not very efficient.
So maybe this ship gets something like a "virus" attack, that are similar to the borg nanites but will affect enemy systems or a super-armor or... I dont know. We already had soooo many ideas for all the ships.

Shield breaking torpedos, assimilation beams, system deactivating weapons, a artificial nebular and so on...

For the Noxter we need abilities that are NEW and not only "nice to have".

We have already a full fledged balancing system with the constant drain of supplies and "hunger" so we can add whatever we want, because the drain will be affected through that.

posted on July 1st, 2009, 11:00 pm

The timeline is in scattered bits ... using the search feature helps a lot

For starters we know that FO is set about 10-20 years after the Dominion War.

[Phoenix]

posted on July 2nd, 2009, 12:05 am

Last edited by Phoenix on July 2nd, 2009, 12:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, you already give food to your ships when they constantly consume your second ressource (whatever it is called).

So a unrank wont make much sense.
Also, not all Noxter ships should be able to eat enemy ships.

Personally, I think that all Noxter ships should be melee orientated. I've always been wary of biological races in the past because they end up using things like "phasers" and such like. I vote that all Noxter be equiped with varying sizes of mouth and can perhaps "spit" torpedoes at their next meal to knock them out

In terms of the second resource being used as a food source. I've no problem with that but I don't think that every Noxter vessel should magically receive it's sustenance through open space. They should periodically (perhaps not too often) return to a feeding station for a good well filling meal to get their food or eat crew in the field for smaller boosts

By combining the two ideas, I think that the unrank idea is does make sense because at the end of the day, food is there to keep them fighting. If they're hungry then it should be reflected by reduced combat ability.

In addition, let's say they were magically receiving a constant stream of food directly from your resource pool. That would mean every ship would be creating a constant effect drain on your resources. Eventually, you'd reach your limit and then what? You can't build new stations or ships because your feeding your whole fleet 100% of the time and once their voracious appetite exceeds your ability to collect resources then you'll run out of resource altogether and presumably they'd all die of starvation. The enemy could win by setting all their ships to Green Alert and simply running like hell, without ever firing a shot.

I think the second resource could feed them through the use of a special station (backup food supply), as I mentioned, but their primary source of food should be the enemies your fighting. For me, the whole point of food would be to fuel to push towards victory, not to turtle up next to a Noxter Supermarket.

I suggested that a destroyer class could do that (and only that, without having any weapons) and the battleship class.

When the battleship is eating an enemy ship, this ship must be slower than this ship, so it wont reach many ships if they are intact. So you need engine-deactivating weapons in order to do that. Or we leave this thing out for the battleship and let only the small destroyers do that.
Then the battleship need another "thing" that it could do, because the "eat" modus on slow ships is not very efficient.
So maybe this ship gets something like a "virus" attack, that are similar to the borg nanites but will affect enemy systems or a super-armor or... I dont know. We already had soooo many ideas for all the ships.

I had a brainwave as I read this . I still think that all Noxter entities should have a primary attack focuses on melee and eating. However, like you say, bigger entities should be slower. That would make it tough for it to catch quick ships like Rheins and Sabers, so this is where the smaller entities come in use. An "engine-deactivating weapon" sounds like a piece of technology placed on any regular humanoid ship and I don't think that would befit a Noxter entity but I do think that smaller Noxter ships can latch onto enemy ships and attempt to pin them down.

The Noxter player could use small, fast entities to catch and pin those pesky enemy destroyers while the big lumbering entities, slowly make their way over to gobble them up/shoot spacegoo at them in some fancy crew killing fashion. The bigger entities wouldn't need a special trump card as long as you use them in tandem with their smaller counterparts.

I think that mid sized entities should perhaps be a bit more aggressive and focused on destruction as opposed to consumption but they should also still have the ability to consume, even if it is at a reduced level.

Shield breaking torpedos, assimilation beams, system deactivating weapons, a artificial nebular and so on...

For the Noxter we need abilities that are NEW and not only "nice to have".

We have already a full fledged balancing system with the constant drain of supplies and "hunger" so we can add whatever we want, because the drain will be affected through that.

I think that abilities that focus on biological processes should be the key focus of the Noxter since they are actual living organisms. "technological abilities" should be steered away from and I think a flotilla of unique abilities will be devised as a result

I do strongly think that in terms of "food", the Noxter ships need to be able to feed themselves through the course of battle. A constant effect drain on the players resources that gets bigger as they expand their fleet could likely end up in a total economy crash, crippled by that increasing drain. Since one of the focuses of the Noxter is through swarming then this would only make it worse. In any case, palming off hunger to a constant effect, automatic process, would be a significant loss of game play opportunity



EDIT - hmm

I am wondering whether it's possible to create a natural balancing element by adding in a form of AI for your entities that governs how they act towards eachother. So, let's say certain entities might not actually like to work with certain others. Example: If I was the Noxter equivalent of a "battleship" then I'd be pretty territorial when it came to interacting with "other" Noxter battleships. I'd probably want to kill it... On the other hand I wouldn't care about the smaller entities because they are no threat to me. You could have the same for other types of entities. Each one could have behavioural aspects that influence how you construct you fleet, lest they start squabbling with eachother!

Just a thought for the FO team (I'd imagine this would be next to impossible to achieve with the A2 engine but then again the FO team has achieved the "impossible" by the standards of 7 years ago)

posted on July 2nd, 2009, 12:27 am

I love aliens like this. Put up another sneak peek ASAP! ALso, you cans ee a bunch of Noxter vessels under your avatar thingy.

posted on July 2nd, 2009, 12:56 am

How about some sort of "Adrenalin Rush" for some Noxter that lets them briefly shrug off attacks, move faster, and do more damage? The duration could increase with each rank up.

[Anonymous]

posted on July 2nd, 2009, 1:13 am

Last edited by Anonymous on July 2nd, 2009, 1:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

how about acid balls -not torps. varying sizes of phlegm wads so to speak.
Also in place of phasers we can have a form of venom spray - a spray of venom along the lines of a disruptor blast

For the color of the acid spit i would recommend green - but a slime green.
For the color of the venom spray i would recommend bluish green, with more emphasis on blue.

The noxter can use nebulae, tri moons, and dilithium moons to get resources. But all harvested from these sources will be converted into a base resource for a resource pool or bolus.

The noxter will then have to have specifically adapted units that will convert the base resource/Bolus to the varied resource requirements - I view this as analogous to the way any organism's digestive system breaks down the consumed raw material into the necessary proteins, carbs etc.

Therefore I would envision it as follows: The noxter mother unit can breed specific organisms that act as the harvester and mining facility. The raw resource collected therefrom pools steadily into the raw resource pool.
This is the feeding aspect and we can label the units feeders.
Feeders should also be able to "upgrade" or evolve to consume enemy ships first sapping the shields and then feeding on the hulls to strip the hulk for some resources that go into the pool.

This pool can then be processed by the mother for starters.
The mother can utilize or synthesize the pool to create sub-units which will be seeders or evolvers.
The evolvers will be able to evolve into larger stations that go towards further synthesizing the pool into the other core resources - which IMO would be:
Nucleic Enzymes
Electrolytes
and
Slag (which would be the left over processed metal/carapacey extract) which will go towards the species' hull/carapace.

Of these nucleic enxymes and slag go towards building. Electrolytes go towards sustaining the fleet and building seeds. If the electrolytes are zeroed out, then no seeds are built and the breeders die.
Ships that are alive also need electrolytes and can obtain them by either feeding on enemy ship special energy or draining from the pool.
In order to feed from an enemy ship the noxter will need to have the enemy's shields lowered. for borg ships the noxter can feed directly.
Feeding will be done by extending the grappling tendril onto the ship. However it will stop firing and carapace resistance will drop to 50% original strenght - meaning feed at ur own risk on a live and not disabled enemy.

The evolvers can also develop Specialization Factories. The factories will allow specific noxter classes to develop certain specialized weaponry - such as neurotoxic gas, which can penetrate ship shields and kill crew.
Or Grappling tendrils which can grip ships and drag them to a specific location even when their engines are on ie ship not crewless and not disabled (all noxter should have a grappling tendril that is used for feeding as well as tractoring).
Or Subspace frequency shrieks which jam enemy sensors for a period of time.
etc

Additionally, evolvers will be able to evolve into an Immunity Complex.
This complex will be able to be fed enemy ships that are grabbed by the tendrils or that have been decrewed by neurotoxic gas and then dragged to the complex etc.
This factory when fed a ship will increase immunity to all noxter ships for that race's attacks by a certian amount. The increase is proportional to the size and type of enemy ship that has been fed - so a Sov will increase immunity by 3% whille a sabre by say .25%
The amount of adaptation will be infinite based on how many ships are fed - this leaves it to the noxter player's acumen to actually capture ships.

Noxter spaceships themselves should be able to immunize to enemy fire from a particular race. This will be limited to say 20% of base value. The increased immunity will be as is in normal living things related to damage endured and survived - "That which does not kill us makes us stronger".

Seeders will synthesize seeds using the pool and the synthesized resources.

All living Noxter will need to either draw on electrolyte reserves to survive or feed on enemy ship special energy. Noxter ships that are alive should need to feed in order to recharge special energy, not otherwise. Special energy is used when they use their special weapons.

This is what I can contribute atm for the Noxter.

posted on July 2nd, 2009, 1:21 am

Phoenix, I love the first part of your idea, but concerning the portion after the Edit, remember that the Noxter are a swarm with a hive mind of sorts (or so the FO team has indicated), so, internal squabbling and territorial behavior probably wouldn't exist unless they served a purpose within the swarm.

Thoughts on the Noxter Supermarket ( ): could be limited to one or two stations (maybe an additional one provided by a certain avatar), each of which could only nourish a certain number of units (maybe even just one) at a time. This could function like a repair/recrew facility, as the sustenance bar on the Noxter unit ran down (a possible way to code this by semi-stock A2 rules could be using crew, with a constant crew "trickle rate" and consumption functioning like the Auto-Assimilator bore, effectively taking crew from an enemy ship to replenish the supply, with the ship "dying" once it ran down to zero and became derelict; I don't know if some Fleet Ops magic couldn't code it a better way  :thumbsup: ). Because of their limited number and limited ability to provide sustenance to hungry Noxter units, these stations would be used mainly by base defenders or in times of desperation when prey is scarce (thinking this might happen a bit when playing against a particularly crafty Romulan or Klingon opponent).

As for melee/ranged attack, IIRC, one of the main Noxter weapons in Beta 2 was an acid-spewing attack. Personally, I felt that this was an interesting idea limited by A2's weapon dynamics (a problem that the mod has since addressed, as alluded to in the news post) and rendered a bit irritating by the "chittery" sound effects used (maybe they would have worked better with a more realistic-looking weapon?). I definitely think that Noxter gameplay should focus on close-quarters engagements, but something has to be done to balance that, since as I've found in my personal build, weapons range can be pretty critical and if your fleet gets hammered by a ship out of range that it can't catch up to, disable, or inhibit somehow, you can have a veritable Q-ship and it won't matter if it doesn't get to fire a shot.

The way I balanced this in my build, BTW, was by using a modified Klingon Death Chant to target nearby enemies and halve their fire rates, buying my short-ranged Klingon main battleships some time to close and bring their impressive disruptor arrays to bear. Something like that could work for the Noxter as well.

posted on July 2nd, 2009, 1:27 am

---> nucleic enzymes
Sorry just had to nitpick  :D

Interesting ideas though, although I find the "green" acid to be a bit cliche: I mean most of the really strong acids are clear (or slightly yellowish etc).... Why not a different color all together like dark purple or orange... or diffuse-looking coloration... dunno  :D

[Anonymous]

posted on July 2nd, 2009, 3:06 am

Last edited by Anonymous on July 2nd, 2009, 3:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's ok

I was just looking around and picked it from here .
Directed evolution of nucleic acid enzymes. [Annu Rev Biochem. 2004] - PubMed Result
Maybe protoplasm would sound better though --

yellow as a color for the acid spit would be better for sure. We already have green with the rommies and a yellowish green with the klings, light purple is already dominion and dark purple would fade in against most black backdrops. So your idea of Yellow - bright yellow or an orangey yellow like the great eye from LOTR would be a better color for sure .