0015185: Bonus Fleet Ship Type: Necromancer ship (Building zombie ships out of the recently-deceased utilizing the current planets scrap) - DEV Arcen

ID	Project	Category		Date Submitted	Last Update

0015185	AI War 1 / Classic	Suggestion - New Unit Ideas - Bonus Ships		May 15, 2014 3:44 pm	May 22, 2014 4:51 am

Reporter	Shoat	Assigned To
Status	new	Resolution	open

Summary	0015185: Bonus Fleet Ship Type: Necromancer ship (Building zombie ships out of the recently-deceased utilizing the current planets scrap)
Description	Hello everyone. This is my first suggestion, so please pardon me if it's not well-structured. I'm not sure how exactly to go about it and how detailed it needs to be, so I'll just write out my thoughts of the concept and the kind of stats it would end up having. Please give your feedback in the notes below, please tell me why you think this idea is stupid (or good). The basic idea is that the ship utilizes Salvage to provide you with zombie ships. The "Necromancer" name is only a placeholder because it describes the concept well, I'm sure there's a way better in-lore name. It would build up BP and upon reaching a certain point, it would draw some Metal (a certain % of the to-be-revived ship's metal cost, depending on the necromancer's mark level, maybe starting at over 100% for the MKI) from the current planet's Salvage pool to create a zombie-version of a fleet ship (friendly or hostile ones are viable targets) that has recently been destroyed on the current planet. Since the game probably does not save a list containing "ships which recently died and contributed to salvage" anywhere that the necromancer ship could draw upon, the ability could probably just trigger on ship death similar to the regenerator golem or scapegoat (except that it can revive both friendly and hostile ships and "pays" for the revived ship in time and salvage instead of it's own health). The necromancer builds up BP and when they're "full" (how many that is is a balancing issue I can't possibly make a decision on right here) he waits for the next ship that dies on the current planet, checks whether it can create a zombie from it and then creates one if it's a viable target, meaning it could maybe "snatch" dying ships away from the enemy's (or friendly) regenerators/scapegoats so they can't be revived by them (which would be hilarious to be honest). Limitations to the zombification ability are: - It can of course only create ships that could normally become zombies (reclaimable ones). - It can only create ones of it's own mark or lower (which would mean that if the enemy sends only MKII+ ships at you, your MKI necromancers will only have your own MKI ships as possible targets). - The required BP, and thus time inbetween created ships, increase the more zombie ships the player already owns (similar to the viral shredder when it exceeds it's ship cap). Also higher Mark necromancers would probably refill the BP faster or require less of them (otherwise the only advantage they'd have is access to higher mark targets for zombification). - The cap for zombie ships is, as always, "until they fly into enemy territory one by one and die", so there's no need to create an artifical one. Though it wouldn't be unreasonable to put a self-attrition timer (1 minute per mark of the necromancer ship?) on zombies created by this ship's ability (if that is possible). - Since Salvage normally requires fixed structures to utilize, maybe this ship would need to have been standing still for X seconds before it can access the current planet's Salvage pool to build zombies. Since this ship would probably be standing still anyways during combat (just like spire blade spawners or lightning torpedo frigates do) this wouldn't be a big deal. The ship itself would be a big low-cap (around 5-8) fleet ship (similar to a blade spawner or lightning torpedo frigate), meaning decently high health but only a weak mid-range anti-swarmer weapon (also the same immunities the other "big" fleet ships have). It'd be kind of slow and have the "just standing around" AI of blade spawners and torpedo frigates. As for which faction they'd "belong" to: The only things which really utilize zombies as a mechanic are the botnet golem (zenith) and the insanity inducer champion module (which is neinzul tech I think). Since it'd be a bit bigger, slower and bulkier (and also not thematically organic), it isn't quite fit for neinzul design, but it could also be something "new" (experimental human/AI tech / evil dark spire tech?) instead of being neinzul or zenith tech. Thank you very much for reading all the way through this. I hope you liked the basic idea and I hope you have suggestions for improvements to the parts you didn't like (or can at least specify why you disliked certain pieces of the idea).
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Internal Weight

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
May 15, 2014 3:44 pm	Shoat	New Issue
May 15, 2014 3:52 pm	Shoat	Description Updated
May 22, 2014 4:51 am	Shoat	Summary	Bonus Fleet Ship Type: Necromancer ship (Building zombie ships out of the recently-deceased) => Bonus Fleet Ship Type: Necromancer ship (Building zombie ships out of the recently-deceased utilizing the current planets scrap)