Introducing The Races (And Logo) For Spectral Empire

[Histidine]

Ah, so are the Spire still before (or partly in the transition to) their "crystalpunk" stage at the time of AI War? That seems to fit the FS lore (and my purposes) quite nicely. (Or maybe they have small "drone" individuals which they use as emissaries to more "typical" species?)

For the Neinzul: The fan theory I came up with involves them as a haplodiploid species.

• Each enclave is a colony of related Neinzul organisms with a networked intelligence in an organic-tech ship. These are diploid individuals, slow-growing but immortal (i.e. they don't die of old age, like most animal cells do).
• Younglings are formed as haploid offspring of the enclaves. Their cells grow and replicate very quickly with the proper nourishment, and they can use water to "pad out" volume like plant cells do, but are also very short-lived and die quickly; regeneration chambers reverse the degenerative process. The younglings are connected to the enclave hivemind and store their memories there, which the replacement offspring can access. The humans (and the AI?) simply grow younglings as single-use clones in vats.
• The Enclaves can also bud off "mature" diploid offspring, like the Railpods and Scapegoats.

This is based on the observed ingame behavior of the Neinzul units in AI War, and the blurb for the CoN expansion:

The Neinzul are an insectoid race of perpetual “younglings” that live for an extremely short span before dying and being superseded by fully-aware and vicious replacements. Their Enclaves form mini-collectives with their own personalities, goals, and desires.

[Aklyon]

...and then I'm going to have a few words with Drs. Davidson and Langstrom from the FS campaign. How did they miss something this big?! 

Well, they did point out that the Spire are...rocks, just not what else they looked like. And were busy with making sense of what the Spire actually said (The early journal entries are either from human sources, or are in a word, terse. The latter entries are much less terse, but I haven't seen all of them.)

Also, as far as i can tell, the only time the zenith have spoke was in nebulae. In the probably not-grimdarkness of the spectral future, do they still speak in poem?

[keith.lamothe]

I had no idea whatsoever that the spire ships were actually huge individual Spire, but the FS journals do hint that the ships were composed of Spire (without giving a number), so it's not entirely incompatible.  It wouldn't work with the idea that there are never Spire who aren't spaceships, but I don't think that's what's being said here.

The Exodian Blade journals are actually pretty explicit that the blade itself is a sentient individual (spaceship).  Though ironically it's also trying to hint that it (and the other one you've "met") are not really Spire per se, but rather from a separate race associated with (and former masters of) the Spire.  But the association and similarity needn't be coincidental.

[Rekka]

Looking forward to it. It's nice to see old races from both AI War and TLF. It adds some bonds between the 3 different games (even if this one is in the far future). Good job on the new ones also.

[MaskityMask]

Huh, I was always kinda spectical about whether Zenith are the ships or not, but I didn't expect that to apply to spire. I kinda always assumed they were immobile rocks/crystal formations that can somehow move stuff and build ships and stuff. But again, if they are living rocks/crystal, no reason why they couldn't build spaceship out of themselves I guess?

Anyway, "awww, I was too late at race suggestion thread when I posted" was my first thought before I noticed that three new races are plants, crabs and snakes

I mean, crab aliens are really rare for some reason, dunno why insects are more often used than crustacean its really pity, but yeah, awesome to see more aquatic scissor goodness

And I love snakes, they are really beautiful animals so its nice to see sort of indian-ish(the six arm thing reminds me of hinduism's gods) snake race instead of "Graaah, snakes are eeeevil" thing westerns have going on. Stupid us, Asian mythology understand beauty of snakes better xP Seriously though, no big feelings on dryads even though I like plant races(I hope they really look like plants and aren't just some other type of alien that likes flower crowns or something), but I love crab and snake race

(Good thing that plant race is deadly though. I mean, I always figured out that any race based on plants should be really alien and hostile to non plants considering that plants are really far away from other form of life)

Anyway, yay for getting new reptile and arthropod race despite posting about draconians and insect races too late in suggestion thread xD

[Alex Heartnet]

You guys pulling a Wing Commander II and assuming that all 8 TLF races somehow survived?

So then, the Spire Starship clearly isn't alive (while the Capital Ships are), but what about the legitimate Spirecraft that we make from asteroids? Do those count as the aforementioned "living ships?" What you've said seems to suggest that no, since the process of becoming a liveship seems to take a while, unless...

perhaps the "asteroids" are sort of like embryonic Spire? So we're basically harvesting their eggs and incubating with the "mining" vessel until they grow into full-grown live ships?

Indeed I pointed this out earlier.   Perhaps a retcon might be in order?

[MaskityMask]

You guys pulling a Wing Commander II and assuming that all 8 TLF races somehow survived?

Well, it IS video game tradition that usually the best ending is the canon one  Usually. Plus it'd be boring solar system if hydral fails to create union between all 9( minus 1 aka hydrals) races xP

[topper]

I'm holding onto my theory that the TLF solar system was setup as a zoo by a bigger/badder race. Possibly with the Hydrals as a sort of jail-keeper. It seems more likely than having so many intelligent species occur in such proximity on similar development timelines.

Plus, that means that there could easily be other systems with those races as well.

[MaskityMask]

I'm holding onto my theory that the TLF solar system was setup as a zoo by a bigger/badder race. Possibly with the Hydrals as a sort of jail-keeper. It seems more likely than having so many intelligent species occur in such proximity on similar development timelines.

Plus, that means that there could easily be other systems with those races as well.

Eh, reason why they have similar development timeline is that they have been space capable for long time already, but hydrals have been forcefully stopping them from getting to space so we can assume that hydrals got to space long before any of other races and one by one each race has gotten up to technology where they can send primitive manned spaceflights only to be shot down by hydrals which has been hindering their technological progression

[topper]

I'm holding onto my theory that the TLF solar system was setup as a zoo by a bigger/badder race. Possibly with the Hydrals as a sort of jail-keeper. It seems more likely than having so many intelligent species occur in such proximity on similar development timelines.

Plus, that means that there could easily be other systems with those races as well.

Eh, reason why they have similar development timeline is that they have been space capable for long time already, but hydrals have been forcefully stopping them from getting to space so we can assume that hydrals got to space long before any of other races and one by one each race has gotten up to technology where they can send primitive manned spaceflights only to be shot down by hydrals which has been hindering their technological progression

Depends on how long a "space capable for long time" is. Tech development of spaceflight is on the order of 10^3 to 10^5 years once intelligence is achieved. Evolution of intelligence may be on the 10^6 magnitude once planetary processes are done. Interesting to read that we may not see signs of intelligent life out in space because it all occurred millions of years ago.

Then again, I really do not want to debate a hypothetical situation occurring in a virtual universe in a video game.   

[KDR_11k]

Aw, I'm sad that we don't get to play as the AI. It could be merely there to harvest anything interesting and ship it off-world with units not produced from local resources but warped in according to how important the fleet distribution logic considers the mining outpost...

Then again humans and the AI would probably be a bit too strong considering both can destroy a planet with trivial effort, even the Evucks require a massive effort to pull that off.

[Salamander]

Looks very cool. And knowing you guys it'll have new twists on old themes to make it very interesting indeed. Going to have to keep my eyes open for it.

I still snicker at: "Fascist Lobsters", sounds like a race to try for sure!

[Teal_Blue]

I thought they were fine. Why would you think they weren't?

I, by no means, wanted to imply that the icons are abyssmal, mind you .

They just stand out from the rest for me, likely due to all other race emblems depicting the physical appearance of each race to some degree (which I like) - which does not seem to be case for the Zenith and Neinzul emblems . Maybe its just me not being able to make out what the emblems actually are supposed to depict, though - I definitely had some trouble with the one for the "wisdom" race before reading Chris' text.

I just feel like, if you would put all the emblems together into one screen, they would look like they originated from different games (instead of a single game with a coherent style) - which is bad in my book.

OT: Just guessing from your current avatar - but did you back Rain World as well? They have a really nice pathfinding related update going over on Kickstarter - in case you haven't read it yet. Worth a read!

yes, i did, thought it looked very very cool, and no i haven't seen the new pathfinding update yet, will have to check that out thank you very much! 

-teal

[ScrObot]

I have to say, the M in the logo looks like an alien squatting and peeing to me. I apologize in advance if I cause others to see it that way. Perhaps fatten the leg up a bit so it doesn't look quite so much like a stream?

[x4000]

You guys pulling a Wing Commander II and assuming that all 8 TLF races somehow survived?

Well, it IS video game tradition that usually the best ending is the canon one  Usually. Plus it'd be boring solar system if hydral fails to create union between all 9( minus 1 aka hydrals) races xP

Actually, we're not pulling a Wing Commander II in this case.  SE makes no assumptions whatsoever about what happened in the solar system that the races originated from.  But that's all I'm going to say about that...