FYI The Worker's anatomy is completely different than the drone's.

vahouth wrote:

FYI The Worker's anatomy is completely different than the drone's.

Those could just be mechanical implants.... Cravers do use technology to improve their functions.

I guess it could be worse... you could be born in a Necrophage society. :D

Acording to Lore the Cravers would never have evolved past insectoids.

Also acording to lore they were evolved as a bioweapon, with clear cybernetic and dust enhancement.

Cravers also seem to have casts: Comon, bishop and whatever else.

Following the context above one could assume:

1) There are casts of warriors, but OTOH they are as smart as humans or around it, so they adapt to make bureaucratic tasks but they remain primarily warriors. 

2) When it comes to feeding we have 2 viable possibilities.

a) Integrated Biological/Cybernetic feeding.

They need to be fed constantly so the nutrients need to be of fast absorbtion: Liquid. The spreading of the nutrient in biological, but the nutrient can be fed in a circulatory system (blood or similar) or a HUB (stomach) via mechanical way(feed tube as exposed by someone).

This can cause logistic problems, but since they were not meant to survive, just conquer...

But this would be a problem for the creatures existance post Endless.

b) Entirely biological way:

Since they are insectoid, as someone said a molecular acid liquifying the victim to transform his biomass into soup being absorbed by mechanical/biological tube. This could be fast and messy as Aliens Blood. This also could be the origin of the hunger. The greater the hunger the faster the feed more acid, promptly returning to battlefield.

Imagine that you bioengineer a creature that produce acid all the time in a reasonable fast way, you have a reservatories like a sac (Spider venom sack), the excedent secrete into the "stomach" triggering the hunger process.  The more acid present the crazyer the creature become, until it is driven to the point of cannibalism (you only need the strongers anyway). Remember the lore: Cravers civilization would eat itself.

This seem to be the best strategy.

Autonomous, feed itself of virtually anything biological directly in the battlefield (freeing it from logistic problems), and finally If contained race will consume itself. (self destructible weapon.)

The greatest mystery for me is:

How do they breed ?

We ve all seen the sarcofagus which mutate them, we ve all seen the implants... If the specie was artificially mutated into something diferent and is covered in implants, whith no female and have lost the tech of the endless?

How would they proceed to the mutation without having some of the original specimens as reproduction to then mutate to what they ve become ? It doesn t make sense.

Did they remain oviparous, but then with or without mutation?

SuperMarloWorld wrote:

Thanks for the link, very intersting ! But that don't make them hunter-gatherer at all. So they have some soldiers and breeders. The fact that soldiers come back with the food/cattle of captured slave put them out of hunter-gatherer type of society, because hunter gatherer means : no breeding, no agriculture, mostly nomadism. 

Also, the link is funny because cravers society works as a totally fucked-up eusocial insect society. Most of the eusocial insect societies tend to increase the life time, chance of survival, of each member of its population (except some cast, most of the time the male repoducers). A strong example : In an ant society, the younger members make the safe and easy tasks (take care of babies, maintain the buildings, etc.), and the old members make the dangerous and hard task (exploration, hunting, etc.), so each ant have globaly the same life time, and is more "worthy". In ants societies, there are some casts (soldiers, workers, queen(s)), but each cast is able to change its role when its needed. Those mechanism tend to make a eusocial insect society stronger, polyvalent, and resilient. 

Cravers are all the contrary. Most of the cravers are destined to die, and reduce the strenght of its society because of the waste of ressources any death is (how many meal a dead craver offer compared to all he did eat ?). Each member of the craver society is not polyvalent (or dont look), so if the wrong cast die or don't born, the entire society is doomed. There is no clue about why they need to be constantly at war : they have an incredibly weak, unable to adapte, and costly society. If they cannot sustain their fucked up system, they canno't survive. 

Honneslty, if cravers invade the earth, humans are dead for sure, but insects, and especially ants will survive to them. Endless scientists who created cravers was super bad at ecology, totally crazy, or very angry... 

I think that the reason why craver society Works on such a fucked up way is because they didint evolved they never had the chance of evolving as a society, they are just a bioweapon that outlived their uselfulness, so they just keep doing what they are good at. 

Also something interesting about craver anatomy is that ES2 cravers have some sort of servos in their anterior arms.

https://wiki.endless-space.com/core/assets/images/cravers/leadership.4e610919.jpg

https://wiki.endless-space.com/core/assets/images/cravers/society.3c5db36a.jpg

https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/004/861/351/large/thomas-du-crest-gained-system-from-influence.jpg?1486813882

And they are quite strong.

https://wiki.endless-space.com/core/assets/images/cravers/lore.5298610a.jpg

I wonder how strong you would need to be to lift a person like that. 

Slaunyeh wrote:

UndeadPuppy wrote:

Slaunyeh wrote:

Acording to Lore the Cravers would never have evolved past insectoids.

Also acording to lore they were evolved as a bioweapon, with clear cybernetic and dust enhancement.

Cravers also seem to have casts: Comon, bishop and whatever else.

Following the context above one could assume:

1) There are casts of warriors, but OTOH they are as smart as humans or around it, so they adapt to make bureaucratic tasks but they remain primarily warriors. 

2) When it comes to feeding we have 2 viable possibilities.

a) Integrated Biological/Cybernetic feeding.

They need to be fed constantly so the nutrients need to be of fast absorbtion: Liquid. The spreading of the nutrient in biological, but the nutrient can be fed in a circulatory system (blood or similar) or a HUB (stomach) via mechanical way(feed tube as exposed by someone).

This can cause logistic problems, but since they were not meant to survive, just conquer...

But this would be a problem for the creatures existance post Endless.

b) Entirely biological way:

Since they are insectoid, as someone said a molecular acid liquifying the victim to transform his biomass into soup being absorbed by mechanical/biological tube. This could be fast and messy as Aliens Blood. This also could be the origin of the hunger. The greater the hunger the faster the feed more acid, promptly returning to battlefield.

Imagine that you bioengineer a creature that produce acid all the time in a reasonable fast way, you have a reservatories like a sac (Spider venom sack), the excedent secrete into the "stomach" triggering the hunger process.  The more acid present the crazyer the creature become, until it is driven to the point of cannibalism (you only need the strongers anyway). Remember the lore: Cravers civilization would eat itself.

This seem to be the best strategy.

Autonomous, feed itself of virtually anything biological directly in the battlefield (freeing it from logistic problems), and finally If contained race will consume itself. (self destructible weapon.)

The greatest mystery for me is:

How do they breed ?

We ve all seen the sarcofagus which mutate them, we ve all seen the implants... If the specie was artificially mutated into something diferent and is covered in implants, whith no female and have lost the tech of the endless?

How would they proceed to the mutation without having some of the original specimens as reproduction to then mutate to what they ve become ? It doesn t make sense.

Did they remain oviparous, but then with or without mutation?

I thought Queens were the ones that could reproduce by laying eggs. Cybernetic implants and augmentations are probably added at a later stage in life.

It could be...but was the queen genetically modifyed by the Endless too. If not do the Cravers possess the dust tech to transform themselves. I though not because of their missions in ES2, but also game corrupted before i got to the end.

And i haven t found some queen mentioned anywhere, not thats it prooves anything.

One of the Craver heroes is a queen, and I think Queens are mentioned on the game wiki:

Craver society:

STRATOCRACY OF HIVES

The Queen could be viewed as the leader of the society, but only in the sense that she has the capacity to refuse plans proposed by the Bishops.

She lacks a creative or directive role in the development of those plans, however, and simply passes judgment on them. In fact it is difficult to apply the concept of a political system to the Cravers, as a good two-thirds of their population barely have enough of a sense of individuality to understand the idea of casting a vote.

QUEEN & BISHOPS

Though the Queen is the most important single member of the Craver hierarchy, she is not necessarily its leader or decision-maker as her time is spent in the production of future generations.

Though she has an unquestionable right to veto and would be consulted in the case of extreme risk to the hive or a deadlock in the process, her importance is more social than political.

The true leaders of Craver society are a caste known as Bishops; this small percentage of intellectually advanced Cravers forms the backbone of society and is responsible for decisions on construction, warfare, development, reproduction, and exploration.

Also, an in-game queen hero, Oroyo Ner Freed:

  One of the fraction of a percent of Cravers who became a queen, the Endless took Oroyo as a test subject in order to mutate her body to create eggs that would provide larger, stronger, more dangerous warriors. The advanced cybernetic systems they used proved too much for her simple Craver nervous system, and the resulting neuronal overload was almost lethal.
The Virtuals decided to save her, however, and applied enough of their own technology to re-create her persona in an artificial brain. The side effects, unsurprisingly, were numerous. The explosive growth in brain capacity led to eidetic memory and a linked obsessive fascination for seemingly pointless data, as now she had the ability to note and track innumerable details.
With this capacity, however, came a great deal of information that she should not have had, and Freed used her own enhanced intellectual capacity to infiltrate and spike the Virtual network – murdering the entire lab system in which she was being held. She launched herself on an Anti-Endless rampage – Concrete and Virtual alike – until the resources of a small fleet were turned upon her and she was finally captured and frozen for study.
The details of how and why she was discovered and freed her have never been made public, though she is now available for hire as a freelance Hero.

Cravers probably reproduce like other eusocial insects: there is a big queen laying eggs the cravers are born and all those cybernetic implants are implanted in later stages of their lifes depending on their roles, my real question is how did the cravers survived the endless bombardment.

This is their homeworld, husk the plance was bombarded by the endless maybe millions of years ago ( based on the existance of amoebas which proves that the endless existed millions of years ago based on evolution theory) the planet is filled with country sized craters some by pixel scalling being 2000km wide which proves that the endless had nasty weaponry  in the order of exatonsof TNT (an exaton is 1 million teratons) so we are talking about stuff millions of times more powerful thann the explossion that killed the dinosaurs. an explosion like that let alone dozens should left a planet sterilized the blast would crack the crust of the planet and fill it with lava rendedinr unhabitable for millions of years, but somehow the cravers survived and not just that, they also developed an advanced spacefaring society with endless tech which somehow survived dozens of impacts millions of times more powerful than the one that caused the K- T event.

And Apparently they can also survive being dropped by really high heighs while unprotected as we can see in their intro i wonder how is that the other races are still alive.  My theory is that Endless war cravers are far more durable or badass tan the cravers we see today. 

solrac137 wrote:

Cravers probably reproduce like other eusocial insects: there is a big queen laying eggs the cravers are born and all those cybernetic implants are implanted in later stages of their lifes depending on their roles, my real question is how did the cravers survived the endless bombardment.

This is their homeworld, husk the plance was bombarded by the endless maybe millions of years ago ( based on the existance of amoebas which proves that the endless existed millions of years ago based on evolution theory) the planet is filled with country sized craters some by pixel scalling being 2000km wide which proves that the endless had nasty weaponry  in the order of exatonsof TNT (an exaton is 1 million teratons) so we are talking about stuff millions of times more powerful thann the explossion that killed the dinosaurs. an explosion like that let alone dozens should left a planet sterilized the blast would crack the crust of the planet and fill it with lava rendedinr unhabitable for millions of years, but somehow the cravers survived and not just that, they also developed an advanced spacefaring society with endless tech which somehow survived dozens of impacts millions of times more powerful than the one that caused the K- T event.

And Apparently they can also survive being dropped by really high heighs while unprotected as we can see in their intro i wonder how is that the other races are still alive.  My theory is that Endless war cravers are far more durable or badass tan the cravers we see today. 

They don't carry hard feelings about it either, seeing how easily they roll over to a Virtual in the game Questline.

But yes, that does sound possible, seeing how we're getting a Prime Cravers skin for their fleets.

It kind of makes me sad that the Necrophage didn't survive a meagre ice age on Auriga, while the Cravers can rebuild their species after getting pummelled from space by godlike beings. 

If I was a Concrete Endless, I'd want a refund on them. Unstoppable killing machines my ****.

UndeadPuppy wrote:

solrac137 wrote:

Cravers probably reproduce like other eusocial insects: there is a big queen laying eggs the cravers are born and all those cybernetic implants are implanted in later stages of their lifes depending on their roles, my real question is how did the cravers survived the endless bombardment.

This is their homeworld, husk the plance was bombarded by the endless maybe millions of years ago ( based on the existance of amoebas which proves that the endless existed millions of years ago based on evolution theory) the planet is filled with country sized craters some by pixel scalling being 2000km wide which proves that the endless had nasty weaponry  in the order of exatonsof TNT (an exaton is 1 million teratons) so we are talking about stuff millions of times more powerful thann the explossion that killed the dinosaurs. an explosion like that let alone dozens should left a planet sterilized the blast would crack the crust of the planet and fill it with lava rendedinr unhabitable for millions of years, but somehow the cravers survived and not just that, they also developed an advanced spacefaring society with endless tech which somehow survived dozens of impacts millions of times more powerful than the one that caused the K- T event.

And Apparently they can also survive being dropped by really high heighs while unprotected as we can see in their intro i wonder how is that the other races are still alive.  My theory is that Endless war cravers are far more durable or badass tan the cravers we see today. 

They don't carry hard feelings about it either, seeing how easily they roll over to a Virtual in the game Questline.

But yes, that does sound possible, seeing how we're getting a Prime Cravers skin for their fleets.

It kind of makes me sad that the Necrophage didn't survive a meagre ice age on Auriga, while the Cravers can rebuild their species after getting pummelled from space by godlike beings. 

If I was a Concrete Endless, I'd want a refund on them. Unstoppable killing machines my ****.

Yeah they are pretty okay about becoming slaves of the guys that almost drived them to extinction. 

As for the other point yeah although now that i think of it a more simple theory could be the following: the endless bombed husk turning into a ball of magma killing all cravers on it, then after millions of years the planet cooled and life began again, everything was normal until some craver ship the endless forgot to destroy probably carrying a queen and other craver forms landed on the planet and there you have.

This explain why cravers could get into the space age maybe reverse engineering endless tech and the fact that they are not steamrolling every other races with endless tech may be that they are too dumb to comprehend it ( well not that they are dumb just that the virtuals were far more advanced). 

As for the necrophages maybe the concrete died before they could fully develop them and send them to space  but i could be wrong. 

You know, I was kind of under the impression that the Necrophage were the precursor to the Cravers. Maybe they never made it off of Auriga before the planet froze over, but perhaps the Virtual Endless stole away some kind of specimen (or specimens) to experiment with before that came to pass. Given the war between the Concrete and the Virtual, it doesn't seem too far fetched to think that some Virtual spy managed to smuggle away something from the Concrete's labs on Auriga.

To be honest, for being giant (badass!) space bugs, they sure as hell don't look much like bugs. More like sinewy bipeds with 4 - 6 arms and multiple eyes. It took me a while to figure out that the red helmet glow doesn't signify viewports necessarily; if you look at the Craver leader picture (guess it'd be a bishop?) you can see its eyes sitting right below the helmet's profile. It's even more clear if you watch the animated version you can see in game. It seems to have mandibles for some kind of mouthpiece -- of most Cravers I've seen, this bishop is like the only one whose helmet doesn't cover the lower half of its face. So I'm wondering... what does the face of Craver actually look like?

It doesn't surprise me that the Cravers are so comfortable with becoming the pawns of the Virtuals again, seeing as more than 2/3rds of the population barely have a concept of self. I never go that way in the narrative though, just feels better to rise up and crush them instead. :)

I was curious because some of them in the art seem to have only square faceplates, with no mouth exposed, but some have the mouth.

vahouth wrote:

Nibot wrote:

That seems to be what I have observed, I wonder if the change in design renders the old concept art as non-canon?

It's not that much of a change really...Mostly they turned to 4 armed beings now.

The way I see it, they could have small heads and mouths and still be able to devour stuff rapidly. I always imagined them as having a proboscis inside their mouths that they use to inject digestive fluids into their prey, thus dissolving it from the inside and generally making it easier to consume.

So like spiders? the problema with that is that it would actually take alot of time for the acid to disolve their prey unless they have some xenomorph grade acid but that theory fits the craver insectoid vibe too. 

Also ES2 designs doesnt show mouths at least no that much.

No mouth.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/J36Qv

No mouths and in the last picute you can see some sort of slots in their backs which according to my theory is where the nutrient paste is injected :P 

Mainly they got fewer to none trophy spikes now, which illustrates perfectly that not all are battle hardened veterans. The Leader is still similar to ES1 variant meaning, same number of hands (4), cybernetic legs, mangled face with faceplate, has trophy spikes and I'd guess he is taller than the rest.

The differences in my eyes are artistic.