Void Enemies concept

[falco708]

Void Enemies are meant to come from Void sectors (sectors without any stars). Obviously most of them are outside the main galaxy.
They look like small dark blob that have the size of a bloc.
In human they come at you to eat you.
In your ship they come at you to eat your ship.
If they come in enough number they can take down your shield (basically the same way mosquito take down the lights in real life when they suicide into), then eat your hull, then delight from the internal system of your ship.
They can reproduce into shipwreck and take the control of it by filling the eaten system by themself (but the lost hulls will become weak point to aim for the next player that will have to face the infested ship).

So if you go into Void Sectors you will face against infested dead ship and if you die your ship belong to them.
The Void Enemies aren't smart or anything so they just expend and reproduce as much as they can and look for food. Regularly they come into the main galaxy but they don't like light of any stars.

You could also use some weapons that create light to scare or burn them (note that you still will have to face against infested ships).

Maybe you could hope for ancient technology inside really old infested ship that doesn't belong to your era or come from really far away in the universe (and get upgrade for your ship).

A single or a few lost Void Enemy can hibernate inside decaying space station waiting for food (it be interesting for astronaut exploration almost like really old spiders)

 

[Ribbons0121R121]

ok well please learn proper grammar and english first, thank you.

 

[Energywelder]

ok well please learn proper grammar and english first, thank you.

His English is better than your next language

 

[Dr. Whammy]

That was rather rude, Ribbons0121R121

Did you forget that this is an international community? Some of the best builders and players this game has ever seen have come from outside of the U.S. / U.K.

 

[EricBlank]

On topic, I'm not fond of the zombie ship aspect, and such tiny entities would be effectively uncounterable via weapons.
Perhaps block sized ones can threaten to stowaway onboard a ship like population supposedly will and consume small quantities of power from systems, like 20 e/s per individual, or stealing 10 shield hp per second, reducing damage output from one of your weapons by the equivalent etc... But even their population has to have a cap, and a counter like crew members fighting them, so you're not totally crippled by 3000 freeloaders.
But to threaten a ship as a whole, bigger ones should be hittable at least at close range, and dangerous enough to justify not spending too long in the void.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I had a similar idea a while back; based on the Venomoid (Radam) from the Teknoman/Tekkaman series.


With that having been said, I like the idea but it needs some fleshing out... yeeeesssss.... delicsssiousssss flllesssssh...


1) They should be detectable on sensors like an astronaut but only at close range. Likewise, I think astronaut detection range should be shortened as well.

2) As larva, the creatures drain your shields and power at a slow rate; which increases over time. After they consume enough mass/energy, they can grow into adults. When your shields drop, they start cutting through your hull and consuming blocks; forcing you to either aim turrets at them or step outside and Ellen Ripley their asses.

3) As adults, they drain shields and eat hull, armor and systems at a faster rate; also increasing over time. After consuming enough mass/energy, adults will evolve into larger, tougher entities; which fire biological weapons (armor piercing spines, acid globs, plasma streams, etc.) at you in addition to their contact-based attacks. They can also, implant larva onto you hull if your shields are down.

4) Shipwrecks and decayed stations can become "infected/infested"; spawning larva and adults. These structures can also come under alien control and attack you directly with ship-mounted weapons, bio-weapons and by trying to infect your ship by ramming it. Boarding an infected structure in astronaut mode will infect you and kill you over time unless you make it to the medical locker or someone zaps you with a healing beam. If you have to step outside, power armor (with shields) is recommended to prevent infection.

5) Upon death, these creatures and their infected structures leave an infectious cloud that will drain your shields and contaminate your ship with larva if you fly through it with the shields down. The cloud is visible but does not show up on radar (like a loot cloud) Attempting to salvage infected structures will result in contamination of your ship even with the shields up. Salvaging in astronaut mode is poisonous and will kill you over time unless you make it to the medical locker or someone zaps you with a healing beam.

There's only one way to deal with this near-unstoppable menace from beyond the stars; incineration.

Burn it! Burn it all!!!

 

[Ribbons0121R121]

His English is better than your next language

what next language?

 

[OfficialCoding]

what next language?

lol good point. However you probably should have been more polite
[doublepost=1564965908,1564965814][/doublepost]

I had a similar idea a while back; based on the Venomoid (Radam) from the Teknoman/Tekkaman series.
View attachment 54296View attachment 54297View attachment 54298

With that having been said, I like the idea but it needs some fleshing out... yeeeesssss.... delicsssiousssss flllesssssh...


1) They should be detectable on sensors like an astronaut but only at close range. Likewise, I think astronaut detection range should be shortened as well.

2) As larva, the creatures drain your shields and power at a slow rate; which increases over time. After they consume enough mass/energy, they can grow into adults. When your shields drop, they start cutting through your hull and consuming blocks; forcing you to either aim turrets at them or step outside and Ellen Ripley their asses.

3) As adults, they drain shields and eat hull, armor and systems at a faster rate; also increasing over time. After consuming enough mass/energy, adults will evolve into larger, tougher entities; which fire biological weapons (armor piercing spines, acid globs, plasma streams, etc.) at you in addition to their contact-based attacks. They can also, implant larva onto you hull if your shields are down.

4) Shipwrecks and decayed stations can become "infected/infested"; spawning larva and and adults. These structures can also come under alien control and attack you directly with ship-mounted weapons, bio-weapons and by trying to infect your ship by ramming it. Boarding an infected structure in astronaut mode will infect you and kill you over time unless you make it to the medical locker or someone zaps you with a healing beam. If you have to step outside, power armor (with shields) is recommended to prevent infection.

5) Upon death, these creatures and their infected structures leave an infectious cloud that will drain your shields and contaminate your ship with larva if you fly through it with the shields down. The cloud is visible but does not show up on radar (like a loot cloud) Attempting to salvage infected structures will result in contamination of your ship even with the shields up. Salvaging in astronaut mode is poisonous and will kill you over time unless you make it to the medical locker or someone zaps you with a healing beam.

There's only one way to deal with this near-unstoppable menace from beyond the stars; incineration.

Burn it! Burn it all!!!

Looks like you took some inspiration from Stranger Things (burning is the only way to kill the monsters) and it could be cool. However this would make the game really grindy and frustrating. I just don't think this would be a good idea in SM.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I like your thinking! Sounds very replicator-ish (Stargate SG-1), but I like it none the less.

This is a cool idea and it comes with balance, light.
Perhaps stars could be used to de-infest a ship by entering the heat proximity for a period of time.
At that point, two things could happen,
1) The star would cause the infestation to become agitated and convert back from system/hull/whatever to their original form leaving the ship full of holes.
2) The stars radiation kills the infestation and if they are in the form of a system or other block, that block converts to a damaged block with varying damage including total disintegration.
[doublepost=1564967767,1564967692][/doublepost]Oh yeah, perhaps Damage Beams and Harvester Beams could be used as weapons to counter them from a battle perspective.
[doublepost=1564968209][/doublepost]Ooh ooh... more ideas....

With an aversion to light, they could shy away from brightly lit ships or lighted sections of ships.
Perhaps, when boarding a ship to infest they initially aim for darkened out of the way sections of the ship/station.
And when a ship is infested, they disable/destroy the lights and take the place of the light block. Perhaps as a booby trap for unsuspecting astronauts.
Or perhaps lights go out in a spherical distance from the infested section. Allowing a player to know they have a stowaway and get an idea where it could be.

This would mean, infested ships should have no illumination.

Also, the scanner would be useful for detecting them, by showing them up the way systems show up in scans. Maybe with a different colour.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Looks like you took some inspiration from Stranger Things (burning is the only way to kill the monsters) and it could be cool. However this would make the game really grindy and frustrating. I just don't think this would be a good idea in SM.

More like the Zerg from StarCraft or the Infested from WarFrame.
- Simple enough to kill the individual units but they become a major threat in large numbers.
- Somewhat difficult to find and eliminate the source.
- Can really ruin your day if your ship/station/planet gets infected.

Heat damage doesn't have to be the only way to kill these things. There's just something comically satisfying about yelling "OMG! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!" when talking about predatory, infectious, space-borne lifeforms. Then again, I'd imagine that cannons, lasers, missiles, rail guns, etc. all generate extreme heat when they strike a target.

I have an idea to avoid excessive grinding. Just as we have pirate stations, there could also be infested spore colonies which send these creatures out to attack, consume or infect everything within range. The colonies would only appear in void space and can be destroyed like a pirate station; ending future attacks. Their "response" fleets would come from the colony itself rather than the surrounding area.

The larva can also register as "missiles" so that point defense units can engage them; simplifying the fight somewhat.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I have an idea to avoid excessive grinding. Just as we have pirate stations, there could also be infested spore colonies which send these creatures out to attack, consume or infect everything within range. The colonies would only appear in void space and can be destroyed like a pirate station; ending future attacks. Their "response" fleets would come from the colony itself rather than the surrounding area.

Hey, this made me think schema could use the existing mine laying mechanic to spawn space born critters.
Actually, I wish we had a spawn block for these things like I suggested a while back.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Hey, this made me think schema could use the existing mine laying mechanic to spawn space born critters.
Actually, I wish we had a spawn block for these things like I suggested a while back.

There actually used to be a creature spawner in the game, although it wasn't a conventionally place-able block. IIRC, you had to use admin commands to place it and it would repeatedly spawn a single spider that would come and get you when you entered the structure on foot.

When they finally release fauna and NPC populations in the year 2025, I hope they use that mechanic again.

 

[aceface]

i like the idea of killed ships being infested and turning on other players. maybe have it so that ships killed are infested/infected with their blobs and are saved as the void blueprints. and depending on their stats (the attack, defence stats) these are then reused and matched against other players strength

 

[Lone_Puppy]

There actually used to be a creature spawner in the game, although it wasn't a conventionally place-able block. IIRC, you had to use admin commands to place it and it would repeatedly spawn a single spider that would come and get you when you entered the structure on foot.

When they finally release fauna and NPC populations in the year 2025, I hope they use that mechanic again.

Yeah, I used it accidentally once. It's one of the built in example commands. I think it attaches the spawner to the entity you're aligned to or looking at. Was a a pain, because it just wrecked the entity I was working on. Having a place-able block would be useful in so many ways. In particular, a block you can configure like the BobbyAI block.
[doublepost=1565777825,1565777349][/doublepost]Here's my original suggestion. It's a bit dated. I don't think the mine laying system was a thing then.
https://starmadedock.net/threads/creature-npc-spawn-block.29322/

 

[StormWing0]

Honestly the Replicators from Stargate SG1 would be a pain to deal with but rather funny.

Replicator Info:

• Eats blocks and other materials to either make more of itself or carry off to a Queen/factory.
• Tends to Replicate Exponentially if ignored
• Infests any ships, stations, and planets to build more of themselves and any infested ships or stations
• Has access to the BPs of all ships and stations they've infested
• Infested ships during the replication phase for the Replicators tend to be slow moving and not aggressive
• Infested ships outside the Replication Phase are extremely aggressive and well ram to infect other ships, stations, planets, or in more advanced phases their weapons fire carries replicators to infect targets
• Tends to seek out more advanced tech than their own or things they don't yet have
• might be some missed things

 

[Ithirahad]

According to the last Q&A, we will indeed get void enemies! :D

No idea what form they will take, but presumably there are things planned.

 

[Malum Phasma]

To keep it clear, I still like the idea of void entities in general, my only fear is that they will be OP. I believe they should be there to flavor the game, bringing the universe to life, and adding small challenges. Some of what I am hearing they are a part of an 'end-game' (which I never liked) but as all things StarMade... time will tell.

aceface I think that would be a great idea, afterall, with creatures like that there will be corpses right? And Dr. Whammy that is exactly the generic line I was thinking I would love to see those void creatures go! here's hoping