GalCiv IV Dev Journal #7 - The Changing Face of Space Robots

Just spitballing here, but here goes.

Yor Quest - "Upgrade" The Stragglers:
Since The Upgrades began, some original Yor have held out on installing the neural linkage hardware necessary to bring them more fully into the group consciousness.  These Yor actually remember and experience their "individuality" to a degree that threatens the efficient functioning of the collective.  It's time to correct this oversight and integrate these Yor with the rest of the collective—by force, if necessary.

• The event chain would ultimately lead to a small nearby (pirate-controlled) Colony is spawning with a couple interceptors as defenses.
• The end goal of the chain is integrating this colony.  The Yor player could do this in a few different ways either:
  
  • Conquer the Colony with a fleet  (potentially decreasing approval from all non-Yor citizens or other empires)
  • Infiltrate the colony and Deceive the colonists into upgrading  (requires passing a Deception check or series of checks)
  • Expel the Colonists  (maybe giving a large diplo malus against the Yor or free Yor citizens to other empires?)

Just some random ideas:

• Fighting off a nanobyte invasion
• Aquatic worlds cause rust, which harms production
• A virus causes emotions, which creates chaos (idealogical shifts, political party upheaval, etc.)
• The Iconians create a doomsday device to wipe out all Yor and they have to fend it off
• A faction of Yor friendly to organics breaks off and forms their own civilization
• Fluctuating marketplace prices on some resources could affect them negatively and positively. Maybe they need Prometheus to run their factories and they get a boost in production for low prices and vice versa.
• They could discover a relic like the monolith from 2001 on a planet like Za'ha'dum and worship it like a god.
• With a collective hive mind they could get quest rewards that boost their fleet effectiveness. Colony governors could get boosts too.
• I think it would be neat to have some quest choices blocked off depending on what race you are. Like Yor would be unable to choose an option to save an organic life form. Kind of like quest choices in an RPG.

_ Raid to kidnap specimens of all biological species to lead experiments on them.

_ Spread a virus type through galaxy to annihilate biological life forms.

_ Convert by force biological beings into synthetic beings.

_ Hijack durantium and promethium convoys.

_ Try to create a biological life form to their image (like we do with androids).

Edited:

_ Recreate a fully artificial "Paradise" or Eden planet (with electromecanic plants, animals...) to prove their superiority over biological civs and their unreachable visions of perfect world.

_ Organise first olympic synthetic games.

_ Create an alternative universe without biological life forms.

_ Spread through galaxy very small killer robots wich cut biological form into pieces and transform these pieces into bio-synthetic killer robots to continue their horrible job but slowly and randomly evolve (due to their bio parts) to a new biosynthetic civ. This one is persuaded to be the best life form because it combines best of each side.

So in GCIV the Yor create the Borg?

By accident, maybe.

For the biological life form created by them, it's more a new optimised fully biological life form brought up to think and behave like a robot

Is it just me or is "hive mind singularity" now as much of a cliche as "rebellious servants" was in the 1990s? We already have the Cybermen and the Borg, and movies such as Avengers: Age of Ultron, and I think the MOO3 iteration of the Meklars may have been a hive mind as well? I don't know what to replace it with but I'm sure there's something new and original to try...

Personally, I like the Egalimind concept described in this worldbuilding article: The Three Types of Group Minds

An Egalimind of "uploaded" Iconians (or Iconian-created AIs) with a malevolent attitude towards their creators could work with a lot of the extant Yor-lore, I think.

My critique is, why only 1 synthetic species? Or why only 1 major synthetic civilization? You'd think there might be more.

I suggested a new species of synthetic in another thread, but I'll repeat it here. I was thinking that long ago, one civ was facing extinction. In order to survive, they designed machines that could do hard labor and assist their creators. In time their intelligence improved. Once they reached point where they became sentient, they continued their roles as caretakers. The creator species are still doesn't have the population to run a galactic civilization, so the machines do most of the work. As a whole, they are neutral on the good <--> evil scale.

Another cool quest line would be a melding of Yor and Iconian into a new cyborg race. 

Reminds me of the Slylandro from Star Control 2...

Is it just me or do the Iridium look like they're related to the Iconians?

Also... that sounds like another race from Star Control 2, the Chmrr, which was a fusion of the Chenjesu and the Mmrnmhrmm...

I'd like to have the Yor "uplift" a minor civ's robots to overthrow their creators. Thus creating a proxy that can harass the area, without being tied directly to the Yor. In my imagining, the uplifted robots don't even know the Yor were involved. They believe attacking organics was their own idea, and instinctively know to not contact the Yor. It's a hands off experiment.

_ a strange electromagnetic waves' melody coming from deep space turns Yorian populations into robotic zombies wasting their time in useless and destructive sexual reproduction simulation. Yor survivors have to find a way to protect themselves from this waves and to  discover and stop the source of this melody. Wich is, in fact, the source of Life through Univers now affecting also evolved synthetic beings. Facing this new information, Yors understand they're no more only synthetic life form but a part of the big whole of Life. Cured of their inforiority feeling herited by the fact to be former iconians' servants, they start to assume vacant galactic peacekeeper role since Thalan disappeared.

Or they just destroy it and so put Life close to the exctinction

While designing quests for the Yor, do not forget about the Dark Yor minor race.   I always assumed the Dark Yor was a hyper-evil offshoot of the Yor.  How about a quest that tells the story of this schism, maybe a rebellion-type event?  Or a quest with the Yor assimilating the Dark Yor after discovering a long cut-off Yor colony that has become a minor race?  Treat the Dark Yor like the Yor version of the Korath?  The Yor could have to prevent the Dark Yor faction from ticking off everyone at ALL Yor, creating a situation where everyone goes after the Yor player because of the Dark Yor NPCs trying to kill everyone.

It would be cool to see the Yor race citizens more like "programs" or specific task borgs.  Maybe Yor citizens can have excellent bonuses with little to negative consequences.  Maybe a negative would be lack of durantium or whatever resource.  There should be big penalties for acquiring carbon based life citizens since they will likely feel threatened.

The yor should also get the advantage of colonizing extreme worlds but suffer in diplomacy like in usual games.  It could be cool if some of their missions were focused around exterminating races or eliminating all life in certain sectors.  Plays in to the evil borg trope!

Here’s my idea for a Matrix inspired Yor quest  

“The One”

Triggers after you are at war with Terran for a number of turns and have successfully invaded a planet. 

*A new citizen joins your empire.*

From the Yor perspective the One is a virus that must be crushed. But the One is a citizen in their empire and essentially a computer virus attempting to liberate an underground Terrain refuge. 

The one could perform a number of disruptive effects on the planet if resources are not allocated to fighting against him, Such as

Giving a small economic penalty for number of turns 

Weakening friendly ships defenses in range of the planet for number of turns 

Taking production penalty for a number of turns

I envision three final outcomes 

-The threat of The One is neutralized. Yor receive a large production and economic bonus on the world with The One. 

-The One successfully liberates the world.  The world turns into a human minor civ or reverts back to Terran player

-The effort to eradicate The One culminates in the complete destruction of the world.

I am in between PCs so can’t play the Alpha just yet. Without hands on experience it’s tough to tell how some of this might work in IV.  Either way Love Kael’s work with FFH. can’t wait to play GCIV for years to come. I know this game is in good hands. 

More generally, I want the Yor to not feel shoehorned into the game. For instance, don't lock them at 100% approval and make us go to the trouble of manually raising the tax rate to max. Just get rid of those mechanics for any race that's a singular consciousness (biological, mechanical, or otherwise). The way the Yor have been integrated into GC up to this point make them feel like fan additions limited by proper development tools. They're cool as hell and one of my favorite races, but they never feel like they've had the treatment they deserve.

Do all robots/synthetic beings have to be evil? Could we potentially get a quest (unless scope would allow an entirely new robot race) where the Yor re-evaluate life and instead decide to try and protect all conscious life in the galaxy?

I liked Twin Ping’s idea for a Galactoc Synthetic Games. To me it sounds like a clear cultural path for them. Getting other friendly races to compete in a robotics games of sorts. 

like the real Olympics it could be a large financial burden to the host (planet) for the benefit of cultural boost.  I think there is a good non-‘evil’ quest idea there. 

Having more robot and technology themed events exclusive to the YOR would be a really solid way to give them their own identity. Perhaps utilizing technology to cause debuffs to enemy vessels in combat, slowing them down and or reducing their vision radius on the campaign map and instigating rebellions or at least causing an approval/manufacturing debuff in a select opposing colony.

Expanding on this, perhaps entire separate banks of colonization events that can only happen to carbon, silicon, aquatic, and synthetic lifeforms? A lot of colonization events simply don't make sense for certain races.

The number of unique colonization events wouldn't need to change, per se. Rather, let's say you design 1,000 mechanically unique colonization events, so that all races do have the exact same event table. Many of them could be generic and work for all races (There's a rare resource on this planet! What should we do with it!). However, some of the events could have a decision tree that displays different text based on the player's civilization. Further, you may even make the different versions recognizable across playthroughs. For instance, a 'what to do with these natives' event might offer 'enslave them, learn from them, or leave them alone,' as options to one category of races. But the Yor might instead receive options to 'exterminate them, experiment on them, or leave them alone.'

That kinda reminds me of the events in FTL, where sometimes certain choices would only be available if you meet a certain condition - have a particular race of crew on board with some particular skill, or have a powerful enough engine, or whatever.

(Again, not necroing for reason it still aplllies imo as a question)

I'm thinking of this seriously:

How about an "exceed their programming in succesfully re-integrating themselves into galactic society by actually befriending, trading and peacefully co-existing with non Yor?" It all starts with a glitch event that miraculously hacks into their mainframe units and makes a lot them behave like in the aforomentioned scenario which was an existing scenario they had stored and re-run from time to time but always declined to apply in the past. At first they try to destroy the faulty units, then wipe their drives and re-install their initial objectives and finally gradually recognizing there are actual merits in that behavioral pattern after all.