Creature Contest: Eraser (Full Version)

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Ilita -> Creature Contest: Eraser (10/6/2011 1:03:06 PM)

What the creature is
Eraser is mechanoid lifeform. Unlike other mechs he can't understand the concept of organic life. He has a limited intelligence and know nothing about his origins or nature. He sleeps in some abandoned laboratory as incompleted imbecile. Being waken (be researching special place naturally) he sees the world full of creatures not unlike him - spaceships. Those creatures, however, are mostly sick with corrosion of parasite organics. So Eraser wants to purge his brothers. After destroying ship's shields he attacks it with close-range radiate unblockable attack and kills everybody on board. So the ships is not destroyed (just damaged) and can be "repaired" like other damaged space objects.

What it looks like
It's basically robot vampire in space so it would be logical to give it bat-like appearance, maybe something like included picture.

What it does
Eraser seeks out for ships and stations and deactivates them, never destroying them. He doesn't attack mechanoids (and so they want attack him) but he doesn't communicate with them in any special way.

Gear
He has random standard ship weapons plus special weapon with very short range which basicaly makes any ship without shields damaged and unfunctional. He has rather low speed so he will rarely do any significant damage to passing ships, his primary targets are stations and fleets defending those stations.

[image]local://upfiles/39832/3280035C6A914683AC9CE89BE2EC24CF.jpg[/image]



Data -> RE: Creature Contest: Eraser (10/6/2011 1:57:53 PM)

Superb, great debut on the forum Ilita. How does it deactivate them? Drains enerrgy, consumes the fuel? I'm wondering how can we recover after it's passage.



Ilita -> RE: Creature Contest: Eraser (10/6/2011 2:12:09 PM)

I imagine deactivating is just killing all the crew. So perhapse it's some ionizing radiation. As wikipedia states 1 000 t neutron bomb instantly kills all organic life in 500 m radius.

When you investigate abandoned bases you get message like "Ship is in perfect order and we've just captured it" but I think you don't have actual gameplay mechanics for this kind of things. But I think ther are disabled ships you can repair with construction ships and only then you can use them. So in gameplay terms ships become "damaged" but can be repaired in no time.



Data -> RE: Creature Contest: Eraser (10/6/2011 2:46:00 PM)

Nice, that fits nicely with DW and it's "we found in the ships data archive this and that"



flap -> RE: Creature Contest: Eraser (10/6/2011 3:04:46 PM)

That sounds fun. These creatures would swarm our ships to repair and nurse them, but also kill every single living beings. I love that antagonism.

One of these creatures spotting ships or a system infested with "parasites" could run and call its mates for some cleaning. So if you see one, don't let it go !



Kalthaniell -> RE: Creature Contest: Eraser (10/6/2011 4:12:19 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: flap

That sounds fun. These creatures would swarm our ships to repair and nurse them, but also kill every single living beings. I love that antagonism.

One of these creatures spotting ships or a system infested with "parasites" could run and call its mates for some cleaning. So if you see one, don't let it go !


Yeah, I'm never going to look at my vacuum cleaner the same way again.....

An interesting idea Ilita. I think that the part about disabling the ships instead of destroying them could really enrich the gameplay in terms of space creatures. One could find other empire's abandoned spaceship and capture it easily, gaining a chance for tech advancement without risking a war with said empire.

Also, since there are small fighters in DW since ROTS, maybe your creature could attack in large packs of small erasers flying out of abandoned spacestations with labs which hosted them? That would introduce a creature against which the point defense weapons would be much more effective than the standard anti-spacecraft weapons and even promote the use of newly included dedicated carriers? That would go along nicely with the new expansion. What do you think?



Data -> RE: Creature Contest: Eraser (10/6/2011 6:57:41 PM)

That kinda reminds me of the zerg, maybe we should have some protos / zerg types of creatures: natural shielding that regenerates, overseer ones like flap's idea and so on.



Ilita -> RE: Creature Contest: Eraser (10/6/2011 7:54:03 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Kalthaniell
An interesting idea Ilita. I think that the part about disabling the ships instead of destroying them could really enrich the gameplay in terms of space creatures. One could find other empire's abandoned spaceship and capture it easily, gaining a chance for tech advancement without risking a war with said empire.

Also, since there are small fighters in DW since ROTS, maybe your creature could attack in large packs of small erasers flying out of abandoned spacestations with labs which hosted them? That would introduce a creature against which the point defense weapons would be much more effective than the standard anti-spacecraft weapons and even promote the use of newly included dedicated carriers? That would go along nicely with the new expansion. What do you think?


I thought about enemy ship capturing and therefore strategic using of this creature (maybe luring it to rival territory) but it seems like something rare: maybe you'd find random "dead" ships in space which your constructors will revive automatically.

If there is a feature contest I'd suggest ship capture which could make pirates much more serious threat. And special weapons. But it may be too much for DW - to have one more game system.

I think space creatures should be big, scary and slow - if they aren't scary then what's the point, if they're fast they'll rip civilizations like locusts (which could be some special disaster event but yet again I'm not asked to think of events). But small ships should be weak and fast (you won't believe in slow small swarm) and we're talking about space beasts, so it's strange if they have some sort of organization.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Data

That kinda reminds me of the zerg, maybe we should have some protos / zerg types of creatures: natural shielding that regenerates, overseer ones like flap's idea and so on.


I think there's enough Zerg in games. Even DW has caltros which looks like some generic space insect thing. Creeps me out, by the way, DW artist knows his trade.



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