never heard of it, but then i'm not much of a book reader...

I think this would be an awesome idea. Here is a possible way to bring them into the storyline. At the Vasari Transport Lab they somehow opened a phase jump hole to another part of the universe. A Robotic cruiser came through the hole and started slagging everything in sight. Realizing it was alone it sacrificed itself to create a colony, (the robotic blackout would account for the comm silence) and the rest is history so to speek. The Vasari beacons are simply being silenced because the they are broadcasting about the Vasari not the long dead Serjon (or whatever is decided).

not to be nitpicky but there hav been many different posts about faction ideas. iv contributed to a few, so thats also y im not backing this one, i hav my hopes set on another one.

this seems extremely cliched. they accidentally create a hole in space where an unknown super-enemy comes out and immediately starts killing everybody. its been in a few movies. and many many books.

i dont want to sound extremely negative, my first comment here prob wasnt needed, but watevr. ill contribute to other peoples ideas on here, but im not coming up with my own. I have my sights set on the Darkness.

I know it been done before, especially since I read alot of books, but I just gave an idea to fit them into the story. We know it started at the Kron Transport Lab, I take this as phase space research for expanding the Vasari Empire. Instead of them going through something else from the other side came. If the Robotics could build a fleet as fast as I think they could along with their comm blackout, ability to literally harvest enemy ships, and able to make enemy ships simply shutdown I could definately understand how the vaunted Vasari Dark Fleet could be outnumbered and crushed along with the silence from occupied systems. However, making them balanced wouldn't be to hard, I'd probably make it so the Advent or even better the TEC can stand a better chance of fighting them other then the Vasari.

Here's another idea. You could make it a classic case of under-estimation. The Vasari, fearing the worst with the destruction of their fleet, simple ran when the running was good. Instead of trying to understand what they were up against they simply sent the works and lost. Say, some of the Vasari forces that stayed behind found ways of fighting better and had a higher survivability, (Like the TEC when the Advent and Vasari showed up.) When you research Lost Fleet Remnant you get access to say High-powered EMP weaponry or the like. Hence, after exposure to this new enemy all factions learn how to fight them and they also get new weapons to bash each other in the head.

http://forums.impulsedriven.com/344094/page/2/#replies

lost of good ideas there, and i begin with the Darkness on the second page (that link takes u right to it). i kind of mix and change my ideas throughout it. enjoy.

One of the ideas pitched around was that whatever is chasing the Vasari is something made by them, most likely some of their nanotechnology gone horribly wrong. This fits in with the robots idea.

EDIT: Anyone played Mass Effect? The whole idea of an unstoppable race of androids wiping out all life could be similiar here. If the Vasari accidentally opened a phase lane to another galaxy, these androids could have poured through and began to systematically annihalate them.

@ demma

I like the idea of yours, the thing about the ships gaining more armor as the game progresses. i was thinking that since robots dont need things like life-support (or windows), they can fit more weapons in that space, making them more effective.

because they dont need those things, their ships should have big, powerful guns on them; the downside is that all of those guns leaves no room for extra plating. i mean, that they would have overall more powerful ships at the cost of fragility and lessened durability (what do you expect? their ships are made of junk)

you know how the light frigates of each faction have a special ability?  The Robots' frigate should be able to rip a weapon off of another ship in much the same way that frigates can merge with capital ships (except for the fact that they steal an enemy's gun). 

It would work like this: you tell the frigate to use it's tractor beam (or equivalent weapon stealing power) on an enemy ship, and when the enemy is destroyed, a specific weapon is granted to your ship.  Now, you may be asking, "What if i have a bunch of my ships set to 'auto', who gets the weapon?"  the answer, only one of the ships.  only one ship can target an enemy ship.

Also, when a ship has another ship's weapon, the "steal weapon" button will change to a "discard weapon", so that the ship can grab a new weapon.

O.K., pt 2: (note, my comp. is lagy so if the post seems incomplete, it's b/c the internet is crashing and I want to save my typed data; our connection has been sporadic since the storms.....)

They should have NO use of credits at all.  They instead use junk as an isolated econemy.  What this means is that each planet is it's own econemy and can trade junk to other planets.  It works like this:

1. Instead of planet infastructure to support populations, you get factories that make junk and launch it into low orbit to be picked up by construction ships.  These ships make both the structures and ships of the fleet (no factories).  More factories=more junk.  The factories function best on volcanic, then desert, terran, asteroid, then ice as the last one.

2.The low orbit junk is a planet's individual junk unless it gets traded to other planets who are "junk deficcient" lowering the first planet's junk rating. Trade ships fill this role and bring the junk to each planet (no ports either).  The refineries that are in orbit are the only civ. structures besides the mines and research stations.

This tie into the facet that they have on logistic or tactical structures, only slot points as a universal account.

3. As to prevent abuse of this, the robots must build uplink relays, or structures that improve efficiency of everything from mining to trade, construction, and more.  BUT it also makes their fleet supply, so no uplinks=no fleet (they would shut down from the lack of connection to the mainframe on the planet).

4. A fully junked planet would look horrible, and sets the infasuructure of the other races in the negative (up to 5 upgrades) as they must clean the atmosphere of [pollution and the massive cloud of junk in the sky. (Think Wall-e's Earth).

5. This makes the robots have to balance out their defenses and uplinks/refineries along with their fleet production and overall expansion.  A smart player would expand slowly at first to conserve their junk supply, but once they get up to speed, they can get a massive fleet that's nigh unstoppable!

I'd like to change their background: 

On the back of the box it notes that the Vassari are running from the terror of their own creation, this would lend credability to the nannites since they were made by the Vasarri.  One thing I would like to add is how the "phase hole" is implemented.  Inhibitors were found in areas of no evidence of inhabitation.  This makes me believe that these actually SPEED UP a jump to the sector; since the Vasarri used them throughout their empire, this would explain the rapid expansion o the unknown enemy.  It works by "scrunching" phase space like a ball, making jumps away hard if you don't have the right algorithms to jump out (owned by oen civ.) so jumping TOWARD one would actually increase speed because of the fact that you could aim at the general area of the "scrunch" you could actually speed up since you get pulled toward it faster, but the others wouldn't know of it. 

i remember a movie... cant remember the name... but it had Sam Neil in it (the Aussie guy from Jurassic Park etc)

anyway, its a Sci-fi movie about a new kind of FTL drive that rather than just going fast, created a wormhole (everyone knows about wormholes)

anyway, the first prototype went through and everyone on board died, then the rescue ship, with Sam Neil, found the prototype, looked at the sensor readings, and they said everyone on board died from madness and self mutilation yada yada, all horrific things. so, to take the prototype home, they used the new wormhole drive.

same thing happened, the people on board started going crazy, seeing things, dying.

so, ill cut to the chase, the wormhole that the ship created passed through Hell, as in where Lucifer lives (i know, far fetched hey) and so the ship got possessed and all the humans on board went crazy and died, leaving just the possessed ship.

so, fitting in with the Kron transport lab thing, this would actually make sense... i mean, the ships could be warped versions of the vasari tech they captured, a superweapon could be a hellmouth where all ships in a gw are either thrown into this hell-space and possessed, or idn

anyway, aside from all the gameplay and balance details, i think its a nice idea for an enemy, and its fits into what we already know. sure, its far fetched, but what sci fi isnt?

so, how would robots get a connection to Hell?