Something New is in the works

**Duke John** · 03-24-2005, 16:34

Are you going to use vegetation? Since we cannot edit trees and such I would suggest to use only desert to make it more alien.

What are you going to do with the rebels? Perhaps a primitie native alien race? Sand Worms (yeah yeah, from Dune) or other monstrous aliens might be a nice change from all the robots.

**Sundjata Keita** · 03-24-2005, 17:05

Are there going to be any humans? It may be a bit boring with out them. I think you should go for a full out civil war between the different companies/factories.

This could be the storyline.
The humans after planning to have left the robots alone for 100 years to make a hospitable world find that the robots have made little or no progress. Instead they are fighting among themselves for the natural resources. The humans create a coalition to end the war of the robots but becasue the companies (robot factions) have become independant it is not as easy as they thought. etc... war begins

This would pit three different classes against each other. The senate factions who continued to terraform the new earth but now the humans attack them because the humans see their army as a threat. The humans who arrive unprepared for war begin to build weapons factories and recruiting stations. The independant robots who have become individual factions fighting for the resources.

This could be an expansion or fitted into the original version.

Ideas on the look of robots. Just to clarify my neoclassical idea here is an example of what it could look like

**Bwian** · 03-24-2005, 17:51

Hmm...humans.

Now...I see what you mean, but bringing humans in brings with it all the problems I was trying to avoid. Any humans arriving would include a degree of military presence. This would mean fire-arms. And modern weaponry at that. I can't see an effective way of adding that in without serious complications. If this becomes possible later on, then this would be a natural follow on to the Mod. The Humans are going to arrive...well, they ARE on the way :D

Now...DJ...that is a good idea. I could make some simple 'stone-age' type creatures. Broadly humanoid, but definitely alien. There is no reason why their tech level cannot fit in very well. I will see what I can come up with on that front.

The terrain detail will be something I will have to work around. If I can only have limited terrain types and open terrain, then that suits OK. I can always replace buildings with interesting 'crystal formations' or whatever. The sort of polystyrene rocks that always adorned Star Trek sets

Anyway.... I got 2 weeks holiday coming up which will be 100% PC free ( don;t know how I can survive...but I will try

) so I will be focusing on concept art and detail. When I get back, I want to be ready to model..... so don't worry if I don't post back here for a couple of days.

Your ideas are very welcome and have already added things to the melting pot I hadn't considered! Thanks

**Sundjata Keita** · 03-24-2005, 18:10

Hmmm, slight problem with having a desert landscape inhabited by wierd rebel aliens is that if the humans spent ages looking for a good planet to live on why would they pick a barron desert landscape filled with aliens.

**Bwian** · 03-24-2005, 19:50

It's supposed to be quite 'primordial', and that means lots of rock and vulcanism. I will have to see what I can do with this.

**Sundjata Keita** · 03-24-2005, 20:45

Maybee a place like Egypt's Nile delta. Desert but with some spots of lush vegetation. As you said yourself you could add models onto the battlemap. Maybee you could add some big plants or some big rock outcrops.

**Alexander the Pretty Good** · 03-25-2005, 05:09

The only reason there are so many robots is because there is a lot of work to do preparing the planet for human colonization. There could be somewhat terraformed (greener) areas around the "good" robots and/or an agriculturally-oriented factory. The rest of the landscape could be varying degrees of desert (maybe icy wastes near the poles?).

I would think that the robots would be very utilitarian (is that the right word?) and not very humanoid, at least to start with. In thinking up designs, I think you should keep in mind what the original designers of the robots were thinking. Mining robots won't look much like humans, for instance. As the tech tree advances (robots are designed via factory AI) the robots can take on a more military-oriented design, or something like that.

Leave the humans out, at least for version 1.0. That should be a problem left for an expansion of kinds, I think.

Native fauna? Hmm. Are we assuming that the planet was mostly barren or not? If so, then maybe have like sand worms or something hive-minded. If the planet is not barren, maybe some cool lizards or mammals of large size... like elephants? Personally, I don't like the idea of native creatures... but that's me.

This is so cool.