The Borg.
Any and all Borg-like entities could be considered cliched. This thought has occurred to me often as I ponder any future to the Sins universe. What could so handily defeat the bulk of the Vasari Empire fleet, such that it also remains mysterious and unidentified?
Let us assume this phenomena will make an appearance in a future Sins game.
The most playable option is to incarnate the phenomena as a faction.
The most science-fictiony explanation is some insidious abstract phenomena... perhaps a chaining reaction spawned by some high science laboratory of the Vasari themselves. This is the least playable option, but one with the most solid theatrical integrity.
I wonder if for the sake of the game you could combine the two in some amicable fashion. Make a faction the result of some intertwined lab experiment.
DEFINITELY NOT: Zerg or Aliens rip-off organic beasts, BuckCraft "young hero punk hungry for power gets corrupted by said power and turns on former allies" plotline (and I use the term in the very loosest of literary senses... Blizzard storytelling in my opinion sucks and has sucked for some time), the even Eviller Vasari Empire - The Black Vasari, any race that adopts & replicates technology it encounters.
I would love to see a new faction that is deliberately imbalanced for the sake of cooperative play. A faction that is twice as powerful, pound for pound, as any existing single faction. This would present a grand opportunity for cooperative play teamwork. To Hell with completely equal competitive play for this group, this single faction.
I would also love to see the avoidance of any aforementioned cliches. I know the introduction of another playable faction rather than an insidious effect could be considered a cliche in and of itself, but then again this is a game environment. A new faction is a practical and sensible thing to introduce.
Difficult issue to mull. Any thoughts?
interesting, but i think thats been too cliched. ur basic idea, at least. some fools were researching new technologies when they accidently opened a hole to somewhere else and there was something living there that came through and f&$%ed them up.
hmm dont no y it posted this twice, but im editing this one out.
Well, it doesn't even have to be living, or it could be part of the energy being, quasar idea, it starts as shapeless energy, and gradually forms physical consiousness. <--that word doesn't look right. I just kinda want a force (non-living) to affect the map. Another use for the phase inhibitors maybe?
Space-blob!
just thinking about it... most sci-fi things have been done already, and the worse the idea the more times it has been done, its only the relly good ones that arent done again because the bar is already so high.
anyway, ideas... i didnt read all the posts because i dont have time, but has anyone thought of something mechanical?
Replicators from Stargate for instance?
another point, alot of people have been posting random ideas, but only a few (i.e. the guy with the energy-being idea) have thought of backstory and motivation.
so, let me see if i have the general concept of the best thoguht idea so far straight, the Vasari were researching new phase drives (or at least new sublight engines, but i dont see how new sublight engines could have created or caused baddies to appear...) and they created this form of sentient energy that, for some reason, is now hell bent on destroying the Vasari and anything else in its path...
am i in the ball park?
Ah well, since we're throwing ideas around, here is mine:
Great Pangalactic War Timeline
Its a PDF document I wrote some time ago as a backstory for my mod. It doesn't involve the Vasari directly, but if you connect the dots you can pretty much imagine what they are running from. Includes illustrated galaxy maps for... kicks.
It basically reduces the Vasari empire to the level of a hapless pebble in a great galaxy-spanning saga, which I thought would be a refreshing change from the overdone "extradimensional/robotic/cyborg/just-arsed-off-at-everything" themes that dominate the sci-fi scene lately.
mines the best thought idea so far? thanks.
well heres how i see it. the vasari r experimenting in their lab with something to do with transportation of some kind. (possibly phase space, but in my opinion, not. i was thinking more of trying to create an engine that could move a building, hence the transport lab? idn) then, on a random chance of bad luck, a quasar forms near their planet kron (where the labs on), and if iv understood what iv read correctly, a quasar gets its energy from supermassive black holes, and gives off (there a better word for that?) radio waves and visible light, but that light is 2 trillion times brighter than our sun. so anyway, the quasars giving off this radiation along with the supermassive black hole somewhere thats feeding it energy, and the transport lab's experiments get...idn exactly how im gonna put this, but gets combined with the quasar energy (possibly from the pull of the black hole? idn) and it forms this radioactive mass. the mass is sentient, and can split itself (somewhat like asexual reproduction) into new beings, although of course that reduces its form. it feeds on inorganic material, so the first thing to go is the nearby lab. "digesting" inorganic material makes the matter grow, and it quickly turns on the inorganic structures around the planet and on it, even down to the clothes the Vasari were wearing. due to the radio waves it gives off from its quasar parent, no transmissions can be sent from wherever the mass is. like an enormous jamming device, technically. so now we hav this gigantic mass gorged from the destruction of kron, and it splits itself many times over into smaller beings, ship-like (so as to give this race ships, theyr actually going to be the actual people of this race, but to everyone else they look like ships). they dont travel through phase space, but from their grandparent the supermassive black hole that gave birth to their quasar, and from the affects of their other parent, the vitsurka experimental transport lab, the beings travel through a different sort of space. for all purposes its the same as phase space, but theres no blue or purple glow as they "phase out." instead, the seem the twist space, and fly through that twist. (just there to giv them some flavour, and help my story along) so there we hav it, i think.
ok learned a little more about the relation between quasars and black holes. a quasar is a compact region 10-10,000 times the Schwarzschild radius of the central supermassive black hole of a galaxy, powered by that black hole's accretion disc, which is basically the very middle part of the black hole that compressed the mass coming into it and sends out electromagnetic waves. so a little iffy on what the first part means, and if anyone could help me out in that regard it would be greatly appreciated.
Replicators
If the Vasari can build and maintain a research lab anywhere near a quasar, I don't think they have anything to fear. A race that can pull that off wouldn't have any trouble with some space apes running about in converted cargo ships either...
well...still working on that part. maybe the quasar snuck up on 'em
I think I can help you out a little with this. The accretion disk of a black hole is a disk of matter spinning around the black hole. So if it formed near another star, the matter from the star can be "pulled off" and will spin around the black hole. It is almost the the rings around Saturn, except with a black hole the matter is being pulled inward while it "orbits". It will also form "jets" at the poles of the black hole, which are formed when some of the matter in the disk obtains just the right path to escape the black hole (it hasn't passed the event horizon yet, so this is still possible). Here is a picture that hopefully illustrates what I'm talking about, although it should be noted that this is NOT a quasar, just a regular black hole.
A quasar forms when a supermassive black hole (at the center of a galaxy) "feeds" on a lot of matter very quickly. The average quasar must consume the equivalent of about 10 suns a year to mantain its brightness. The brightest ones, however, need the equivalent of about 1000 suns. As matter spirals into the black hole, the immense amount of gravitational force actually creates friction, which super heats the matter in the disk, and about 10% of its mass is converted into energy, which is emitted as the entire electromagnetic spectrum (visible light, x-rays, gamma-rays, radio waves, etc).
The Schwarzschild radius is basicly the event horrizon of a black hole. It is the radius for a mass where if you compress it to a size smaller than that radius, there is no known force that will prevent the mass from forming a singularity (i.e. a black hole). Therefore, any object smaller than its Schwarzschild radius is a black hole
Hopefully this clears some things up for you.
Even if it's like this, you all still do not really account for the Fear and Near paralaysis that one ship that did survive underwent (miswording Failure).
I imagine ordinary panic would account for that. People have been known to go mad during old-fashioned shelling, I suppose having your fleet torn apart mercilessly and barely escaping would have a simmilar effect.
That, and you can always throw in some telepathic blast cliche... maybe the ship in question got caught on the fringe of this blast and got only slightly crazy.
What i dont understand (if i follow the Pulsar theory) us why the hell they (badly ship that returned) are so scared!!!!
i mean, its true that a pulsar on cocaine is scary.... but it doesnt dmg ships. it destroyed them or dont they are far enough.
pm the other hand, a zombie firefly style is as many as said b4... a bit cliché...
i dont know if devs thinks about it when they wrote the background story for the Vas. but now.... they gotta be freakin genies and come up with something good!!!!!!
or the ppl in this thread will be
oh.... and i LOVE the space whale.....
the vasari menace is only a ''fleet of 5 lvl 10 marzas.... that plenty enough to kill all the dark fleet isnt it????
10025 years ago, Vasari began their great exodus in an attempt to escape an unknown threat that annihilated every counterattack. Nobody lived to tell the tale. Now we know -- the timespace looped and Vasari are in fact running away from three lvl6 Marzas some noob sent on a scouting mission.
Very interesting ideas in here. I think the unknown menace could be some energy-like creatures like in the ideas before, but they should have some really crazy abilities, when they are going to be ever released in Sins of a Solar Empire. I thought of abilities like changing the user interface, that the player can't manage to do something and sees crazy illusions on the screen for a few seconds or changing the whole background to another dimension-like background to create an atmosphere, that makes you feel delivered on the enemy. The unknown menace should also grab a whole planet with an energy claw-like thing to absorb the whole planet to get energy and ressources. It would be cool to see this in SoaSE, because there is many space to do such great things
The suns should be very important for that faction even more than planets, so that opponents can focus especially on this points to fight against them. It is also conceivably that they use asteroids and form them to mobile bases to find other stars and planets. The asteroids should then look like dark comets with energy tails or something similar. After a while this faction should absorb the energy of a whole galaxy and that you can see energy tails throughout the map.
It should be really something new and not only a new faction...
Ancient god-like creatures with a mythological touch would also be great.
10000 years ago...
Dark Fleet Commander: General, we have spotted the enemy. FIRE!
*Five minutes later, Missile Barrages entire dark fleet*
And when the last ship was found.
Vasari Personalle: M...Missile...Missile...Missile...Barrage...So scary...
Vasari: Oh lordy! We're all screwed.
And so the Vasari fled. And when they arrived in Trader Space...
Vasari Commander: General, we have spotted an enemy race.
Vasari General: What ships do they have?
Vasari Commander: Some low-end frigates and... OH NOES!!! A MARZA!
Vasari General: NOOOO!!!
It would explain why the Marza is always a prime target in multiplayer.
"Sins" races VS Cthulhu and the Elder Gods?
Heck yes, love that idea.
I wondered that as well. They know that they're being followed by (insert awe inspiring alien race/whatever here), so why not just drop one of their little "warning beacons" and get the hell out of there, knowing full well that whatever is following them will pretty much wipe the floor with the TEC and Advent?
lmao!!
How about they build marzas for frigates, and then their capital ship is a super-marza whose missile barrage shoots, instead missiles, more Marzas!
".....static...... o noes!!! ..... death .... marza barraaaaaaaaaa aaaaaarrrrrggghhhhhhhh . . .. . "
LMAO!
Well what about phase inhibitors? it says in the lore that the Vasari dont know how or why they work they simply found them
They need the resources in order to continue on the Exodus
i dont have the specifics with me, but on the sins website it talks more about the entrenchment stance of each race. basically, the vasari r too entrenched in the war that if they retreated they would take severe losses, and they r using up all the resources that they need to continue the exodus in the war against the tec, and now the advent. so theyr out of money and too stuck in the war to retreat.
no no, ur missing the point. the pulsar is just a natural space reaction that i took which created the race of creatures that are following the vasari. just to giv it some "scientific" credibility.
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