View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0006559 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - New Features | Mar 9, 2012 2:44 am | Mar 10, 2012 12:14 pm | |
| Reporter | c4sc4 | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Summary | 0006559: Minor Faction: Neinzul Anthill | ||||
| Description | I came up with an idea for a new minor faction, Neinzul Anthill. Somewhat lengthy writeup, also possibly complex new mechanics. EDIT: Added some possible Hybrid interactions. -The Basics- This base of this faction would be the Anthill structure, a fairly high health structure similarly placed in systems as the Dyson Sphere. This Anthill would build a variety of new unit types, each with their own specific task. Not sure how many Anthills would spawn in the galaxy, maybe only one if my colonization idea is implemented. -Neinzul Soldiers Ants- These units defend the Anthill. Perhaps these would be melee units because ants attack by biting. The Anthill will produce and store up to 200 (or so) of these units similarly to the Hive Golem. When the Anthill is attacked, the stored Soldiers will be released from the Anthill and once the treat is eliminated, they will return to the Anthill and be healed (like the Nienzul regeneration chamber). If the Anthill is under attack, any soldiers produced at that time will be automatically released to defend. -Neinzul Forager Ant- These units are cloaked and produced 10 (again, could vary) at a time at some time interval (15 minutes maybe) and they will scout nearby systems for high value targets. If one of these finds a target and makes it there alive, it will 'mark' the target for attack by the following unit... -Neinzul Worker Ant- These units are spawn in force when a Forager ant marks a target. These ants will then move to the target and try to destroy it. If successful, they will then seek another marked target or return to the Anthill. One idea I had for this was if these ants destroy a marked target, they 'gather' some resources which go into a stockpile which would be used for the construction of a new anthill. Which leads to... -Neinzul Queen Ant- A massive unit that spawns when the Workers 'gather' enough resources. This unit and her entourage would head of a planet X hops away and start construction of a new colony. Perhaps the construction of the colony has a build time to allow you the chance to try and destroy it before it is built. -Neinzul Royal Soldier/Guard Ants- These units would spawn with the Queen ant and follow and protect her. These would be very powerful versions of the Neinzul Soldier Ants and perhaps there would be two types, one melee and one long range. If these units survive and a new colony is built, they will function like regular Soldier ants, protecting the new colony and garrisoning inside when the Anthill is safe. Or instead of garrisoning, they could just guard the anthill until they die. -In Summary- The Neinzul Anthill would be a high health structure that spawns Neinzul Soldier Ants to protect it when under attack. At regular intervals, Neinzul Forager Ants would spawn to seek out and mark targets for Neinzul Worker Ants to destroy. Once enough marked targets are destroyed, a Neinzul Queen Ant and her entourage of Neinzul Royal Soldier/Guard Ants would go seek out another planet to build a new Anthill on. EDIT: -Hybrid Plots- 1) For regular hybrids. Hybrids learned how the Forager Ants mark their targets and can now mark Human targets. This leads to the same response by the Anthill as if a Forger marked the target. 2)For Advanced Hybrids. The Super Hybrid infects a Neinzul Anthill. The Anthill is converted to an Infected Neinzul Anthill and a timer starts. The infected anthill now produces the stronger Hybrid Ant variants of all the units but the Anthill is still neutral. Once the timer ends, the Hybrids fully take control of the Anthill which is now allied with the AI. Now that new Hybrid Anthill has the unlimited resources of the AI, they no longer have to worry about gathering resources and now are focused on war. When Hybrids attack a Human world, the Hybrid Anthill will now send a swarm of Hybrid Worker Ants to assist. Also, because the Anthill no longer has to worry about resources, the only limit to how fast they can build new Anthills is how long it takes to build a Hybrid Queen. The Hybrid Anthill will now produce a Queen every X minutes. This could get ugly fast as each new Hybrid Anthill will be producing Queens. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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what kind of targets could we expect to see? and will the minor faction be allied to humans, AI or neither? And if it is allied with either one, is there a way to make it change sides (like the dyson)? |
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This has a lot of Dyson Sphere similarities. The expansion aspect is pretty problematic, and so are the threat it is going to cause to AI systems. My suggestion would be to limit Foragers to four hops from their Anthill. Then give the AI Ant Repeller structures that prevent Foragers from marking anything in the system. Seed these structures to all AI systems within four hops of the Anthill. This means the Anthill cannot expand at first, or really do much of anything to the AI. However, have the Ant Repellers die when the AI Command Station does. This means humans taking those worlds become valid targets of the Anthill, which makes the space around the Anthill more hostile to the player. Another option for the player is to destroy the Ant Repellers so the AI needs to deal with the ant aggression. This is ok as long as the Ants are weak enough they generally can't take a Mark III+ system. If they are that strong though, allow the AI to repair the Ant Repeller given some time so it only buys a little bit of a distraction. |
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They would be nuetral and wouldn't have them side with anyone. Although I could see Keith doing something with the hybrids working with the anthill, something like hybrids marking targets for the Ants. Also, I figure that the AI will be able to take out the foragers fairly easily because a lot of their planets have taychon guards so I figure they would be killed quickely. But on player planets, they would cause more problems because they are cloaked. Not entirely sure on the types of targets yet though. The ant repellers are an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how successful the ants will be in AI systems so it may not be needed. The foragers should be limited in the number of hops they go though. |
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Very interesting :) In general, though, stuff that attacks the AI and the humans will either: 1) Tend to cause a lot of threat and/or alerted AI worlds. 2) Be so crippled by "cannot hit anything that would potentially free AI ships" and such flags that it makes them less than satisfying. The Dyson neutrals fall into the 2nd camp; the player-ally ones avoid this by being allied with the humans and thus having somewhere to be without messing things up. So I'd be interested in doing something like this if players using it understand and accept that it _is_ going to cause AI threat when it blows up a guard post (I can deal with making sure it never blows up AIP-increasing stuff, I suppose). But if it would just lead to frequent reports of "there's threat coming at me that I didn't cause", I'll pass :) |
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So could the tooltip for this just have something like "WARNING: May cause unwanted Threat and Alerted AI Worlds. Play at your own risk!"? I can see why people wouldn't want something out of their control to cause threat and Alert planets but if people are properly notified of this, then they could just not play with that feature but still leave it for others to enjoy. Although it may be a good idea if these ants couldn't target or colonize Core Worlds or AI Homeworlds because that may be a little extreme. Also, I really like the idea of something else colonizing planets in the galaxy so I hope something like this happens. |
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Edited the original Idea to add some ideas for Hybrid Interaction. Also, if enemy to everyone is really an issue, they could be allied to the AI, similar to my Hybrid idea but I think that would take away some of the fun from it. |
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That was the reason I suggested locking the Foragers out of marking stuff in AI systems via a special structure. That would prevent Workers from spawning to attack AI targets. And since the AI ignores the Anthill, Soldiers don't spawn. So until the human gets involved, nothing gets put on alert. It would be exclusively a human problem initially. Only if the player explicitly kills off special structures or "lets" the Anthill expand (it will have a new reach that likely reaches AI systems without the special structure), does the AI start to interact with the Anthill. There probably would need to be some special handling of the ants ally status allowing it to change dynamically. Basically they'd all be AI-allied except: 1) Foragers in an AI system without the special structure are considered neutral 2) Workers targeting a marked AI target are neutral when they enter the system with their target 3) Soldiers, Queen and Guards are always AI-allied |
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The Ant Repellent structures do seem like they would help the problem of the Ants causing Threat/Alert and they could seed on Core Planets and AI Home worlds too. "3) Soldiers, Queen and Guards are always AI-allied" I don't know if I like the idea of these being AI Allied, I like the idea that if these try to colonize on a AI world that the AI would try to fend them off. I also figured that the AI may try to attack the Anthills but that may cause problems so perhaps they shouldn't. I guess the AI only attacks the dyson gatlings and not the sphere itself so I guess this would be similar. |
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Hmmm. My first thought upon reading this is that this is just the Hybrid rebuilding structures plot, except with the Neinzul stuff. I think expanding the advanced hybrid plot, or making this a 3rd option for hybrids where they can build the existing neinzul clusters in a system (like they could back when introduced), maybe adding the anthill structure as a new structure the hybrids can build? The hybrids are thematically AI-Neinzul hybrids as it is so it works for that too. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 9, 2012 2:44 am | c4sc4 | New Issue | |
| Mar 9, 2012 7:14 am | zoutzakje | Note Added: 0020637 | |
| Mar 9, 2012 9:29 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Mar 9, 2012 9:29 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Mar 9, 2012 10:50 am | Hearteater | Note Added: 0020662 | |
| Mar 9, 2012 12:19 pm | c4sc4 | Note Added: 0020665 | |
| Mar 9, 2012 3:07 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0020680 | |
| Mar 9, 2012 3:41 pm | c4sc4 | Note Added: 0020682 | |
| Mar 9, 2012 3:54 pm | c4sc4 | Note Added: 0020684 | |
| Mar 9, 2012 3:54 pm | c4sc4 | Description Updated | |
| Mar 9, 2012 4:05 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0020685 | |
| Mar 9, 2012 4:06 pm | Hearteater | Note Edited: 0020685 | |
| Mar 9, 2012 5:05 pm | c4sc4 | Note Added: 0020686 | |
| Mar 9, 2012 5:05 pm | c4sc4 | Note Edited: 0020686 | |
| Mar 10, 2012 12:14 pm | Dazio | Note Added: 0020708 |
