What if we had a faction that came about because of an event,



Imagine in the dark depth of space, a few pirate vessels seem to tumble onto some sort of organic life that was growing out of a old ship that resembled something the endless had created, for some reason the ship had its engine destroyed, its comm channel cuts, and most of its systems were disabled by the looks of some one on the inside of it. When the pirates tried to plunder the ship by trying to board it, they were met with a surprise. Contact with boarding parties were lost, life signs could still be detected but they were... feint. When a status report was required by the boarding crew the pirates got nothing, and soon the pirate boarding ships tried to come back into the hanger. In their foolishness the pirates believed that the comm systems were jammed and the boarding ships were attempting to report back their findings by docking first. But they did not see the organic matter hanging from the outside of the boarding ship. The boarding ships came into contact with the pirate vessels, and they... 'transferred' their organic matter into the pirate ships. The pirates did not realise what was happening. They were losing crew members all over the ship, entire decks and quarters went dark and soon the bridge did not respond as well. Soon the pirate ship could be seen having organic matter sticking out of it as well.



This organic matter soon began its 'conquest' as it 'subdued' other ships and vessels to become part of 'it'. Whether it was flesh or machine did not matter, as long as it could come into contact with it, it could grow on it, and it could very well take it with 'it self'. If it was met with hostilities when 'converting' other ships, it would use its 'captured' vessels weapons to protect it self. Soon these creatures would be known as the defilers(cant really think of a better name).



Their traits are unknown other then the obvious fact being that it captures other ships and turns them into its own. Anything about where they came from, what is their purpose, and what they are doing in the universe are also unknown. They are not a playable faction, instead they are part of the universe and are triggered at a random point in the game. If this 'species' came into contact with a unhabitated system, it would not be able to colonize, use its resources, or interact with it in any way. If it came into contact with a habitated system, if given the chance, it would start 'capturing' the planets inhabitants. When captured the planet would have a total population of 1 and that would be the maximum for this 'species' on all the captured planets. They would not be able to use any industrial buildings on the systems, they would not be able to build any ships on the system, rather each system they take would give them an innate ability which improves all of their statistics by 5%, if the planet is lost, so is the part of the innate ability, and the ability stacks with each system they capture. If this 'species' encounters a space battle, their will be special set of rules in place. If the enemy this 'species' is fighting against loses a ship, that ship has a 80% chance of becoming part of the 'species' ship (so it would rather not explode, but have some sort of special action by the 'species' 'captured' ships attempting to turn it into one of their own thereby followed by the failure (explosion) or success (subverted)).



The purpose of this race is to use your own weapons against you, to band together all the other factions ship assortments and put them together in one large biomass thats hell bent on either 'converting' you, or killing you if your not going to become part of 'it'. I believe this would add some really intense space drama as this foe will probably be some what hard to beat by your self and would require you to band together with other civilizations to fight such a monster. Obviously the success of this race depends on how good it did when it started the ball rolling early on, if it fails horribly when trying to 'convert' other ships in the beginning, the race will die out quickly, if it is successful early on chances are that is it continually going to be successful as it keeps growing in size.



Then again this only came up in my dreams when remembering home world cataclysm. Not really put much thought into this idea so any suggestions and feedback are welcome.

it does sound like the beast

would be nice if they got a hefty defense bonus more than likely would be awesome in a player generated mission scenario.



this will be nice scenario once custom races can be made.

I would see this event more in a campaign than in a multiplayer simple game. Still it's interesting even it's a classic.

Photon_Ventdesdunes wrote:
I would see this event more in a campaign than in a multiplayer simple game. Still it's interesting even it's a classic.

It really sounds more than a campaign because a event like this would be extremely rare.

But such speziel events as an game option would be nice.

It would definatly add more depth to the game and throw people off if it occurs randomaly so sounds pretty interesting

Oh damm, another idea that has me thinking of silicoids, specters, and Von Neuman. These sort of things give a galaxy are real feeling of being alive and make it so that space is never boring. Simple minor races like you see used extensively in GalCiv and some others would be nice too. Also, dust's nature makes the concept of sudden mutations and "grey goo" scenarios possible. If Endless Space proves to be more than simply profitable, then when could be in for an interesting 4x future. Oh also stuff like the colony traps. Starships Unlimited's planet guardian mechanic would also be a great addition.

This is a great idea man. But how fast could it spread to other places?

Moved to game design proposals.