Lembala'Lam

Species suggestions, story ideas and contributions.
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Sloth
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Lembala'Lam

#1 Post by Sloth »

Here is a new native species:

Lembala'Lam

Egocentric, degenerated ancient reptiles that no longer reproduce.

Description:
The Lembala'Lam are an ancient species in the evening of its existence. They had some apparent resemblance with reptiles such as snakes or geckos, but most of their original physiognomy was lost to evolution warped by their mechanically enhanced lifestyle. Without machines they would no longer be capable of locomotion or feeding. The ability to reproduce was lost completely, but most importantly they've lost the trust in each other. The last nail in the coffin for Lembala society was the invention of an automated system that transfers the mind of a dying Lembala into the next spare clone, of which every Lembala has hundreds safely hidden. Almost all mental and material ressources of the Lembala are used to assure their artificial immortality, leaving little to no room for real developement of their civilization.

Social Structure:
The Lembala know each other for eons, but are suspicious of each and every one of the others. Their democratic government is forever paralyzed by long accepted stalemates. Due to paranoia and their lack of altruism even the most basic cooperation is rare and short lived.

Species traits:
Organic metabolism (but because of their immortality and lack of reproduction their population is always fixed to 5)
Desert standard EP
Good Research
No Industry
Average Supply
Average Ground Troops
Good Planetary Stealth

Can't build ships
Can't Colonize

Additional effects as Natives:
- They always have the special "High Tech Natives"
- They create the Volcanic Ash stealth special which grants them + 40 stealth (resulting in a stealth of 65, which means Sensors are needed to find them)

Additional effects when conquered:
They give away the techs: Planetary Cloud Cover, Planetary Ash Clouds and Lifecycle Manipulation (one tech per turn with a siderep).

I managed to script everything up already. Here is an ingame image:
Attachments
Lembalalam.png
Lembalalam.png (70.39 KiB) Viewed 10441 times
All released under the GNU GPL 2.0 and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licences.

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Vezzra
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#2 Post by Vezzra »

Nice ideas. :)

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The Silent One
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#3 Post by The Silent One »

I agree, they sound fun!
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MatGB
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#4 Post by MatGB »

Yup, but Morlic's interaction concerns that he voiced on the PR are good ones, if their population always resets itself to 5 each turn (maybe that ought to be planet size or twice planet size?) then

What is the interaction with Evacuation or Concentration Camp?

What is the interaction with Bombard-type weapons?
As written, I think you could camp them indefinitely which would be a tad abusive.

Also, while granting techs is a good thing for late-game natives to do, if you need Sensors to detect them aren't you already likely to have Lifecycle Manipulation? Perhaps Cyborgs given they are cyborgs?
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The Silent One
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#5 Post by The Silent One »

MatGB wrote:Yup, but Morlic's interaction concerns that he voiced on the PR are good ones, if their population always resets itself to 5 each turn
Oh, I misunderstood that. I thought the population would (start at and) be capped at 5. And if you bombard them, they'll regrow just like other races up to 5, but in lore by "cloning".
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Sloth
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#6 Post by Sloth »

MatGB wrote:Also, while granting techs is a good thing for late-game natives to do, if you need Sensors to detect them aren't you already likely to have Lifecycle Manipulation? Perhaps Cyborgs given they are cyborgs?
The Cyborg tech in FO is more advanced than the tech the Lembala'lam use. Lifecycle Manipulation is just a bonus for flavor reasons, the real advantage is getting the stealth techs for free.
MatGB wrote:Yup, but Morlic's interaction concerns that he voiced on the PR are good ones, if their population always resets itself to 5 each turn (maybe that ought to be planet size or twice planet size?) then

What is the interaction with Evacuation or Concentration Camp?

What is the interaction with Bombard-type weapons?
As written, I think you could camp them indefinitely which would be a tad abusive.
Good points. I've fixed these issues by seperating the effects and the second one looks like this:

Code: Select all

        EffectsGroup
            description = "FIXED_LOW_POPULATION"
            scope = Source
            activation = And [
                Planet
                Not Contains Building name = "BLD_EVACUATION"
                Not Contains Building name = "BLD_CONC_CAMP"
                Not OrderedBombardedBy Ship
            ]
            priority = 130
            effects = [
                SetPopulation value = Target.TargetPopulation
            ]
But after finishing i'm not quite sure whether the second effect is needed at all to capture the flavor (instant regrowth). Maybe it's enough to implement what The Silent One thought was implemented:
The Silent One wrote:I thought the population would (start at and) be capped at 5. And if you bombard them, they'll regrow just like other races up to 5, but in lore by "cloning".
I'd be ok whith either solution. What do you think?

A. Target and current population fixed at 5 (unless evacuation, concentration camp or bombaredement are in effect).
B. Only Target and starting population fixed at 5.
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Vezzra
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#7 Post by Vezzra »

Sloth wrote:B. Only Target and starting population fixed at 5.
In this case you have to make sure pop can regrow even if reduced to zero - or adjust the lore to say that there need to be at least a min pop left to operate the transfer-your-mind-to-spare-clone technology. If the entire pop is killed, the whole system breaks down and all remain dead.

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MatGB
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#8 Post by MatGB »

Yeah, that'd be my preferred, if they take damage from some effect it should take them awhile to rebuild but restoring from backup is fine (this aspect sorta reminds me of the Asgard in SG-1, intentional?)

But B) makes the most sense to me.
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Sloth
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#9 Post by Sloth »

Vezzra wrote:In this case you have to make sure pop can regrow even if reduced to zero - or adjust the lore to say that there need to be at least a min pop left to operate the transfer-your-mind-to-spare-clone technology. If the entire pop is killed, the whole system breaks down and all remain dead.
Are there any effects that could reduce the pop to zero other than the three excluded (evacuation, concentration camp and bombaredement)?

My guess is that most things that wipe out the population will also destroy the clones and/or transfer machines.
MatGB wrote:B) makes the most sense to me.
I also tend more and more towards B.

Maybe another species idea is better suited for a truly indestructible population. :D
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Vezzra
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#10 Post by Vezzra »

Sloth wrote:Are there any effects that could reduce the pop to zero other than the three excluded (evacuation, concentration camp and bombaredement)?
Nothing comes to mind. But if you exclude these effects (by that I assume you mean they don't work on Lembala'Lam pop at all), then the pop will stay fixed at 5 at all times, no point in discussing options A and B - or am I missing something obvious here?

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Sloth
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#11 Post by Sloth »

Vezzra wrote:But if you exclude these effects (by that I assume you mean they don't work on Lembala'Lam pop at all), then the pop will stay fixed at 5 at all times, no point in discussing options A and B - or am I missing something obvious here?
The initial version was uneffected by evacuation, concentration camp and bombaredement (ECB), pop always fixed at 5. But, as pointed out, that implementation would cause some problems.

Both option A and B will enable the Lembala'Lam to be killed by ECB. The only real gameplay difference between A and B is that in case of A the pop will recover instantly from a failed attempt to kill the Lembala and in case of B it will take the normal time to recover.

A recovery from zero population with a special or building ("Clone Vault"?) sounds interesting and is possible with both option A and B. But there will be similar problems as in the initial version:

Should Evacuation be allowed?
Are there any Concentration Camp tricks?
Should they recover the colony after a bombardement?

As i've said i could live with option B and no recovery from zero, that would also be more future proof (in case more ways to reduce pop to zero would be introduced).
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MatGB
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#12 Post by MatGB »

Bioterror.

It's awful and no one uses it because Genome Bank, but they're Organic.

And making it not awful or removed is one of the issues for the next release cycle.
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stpa
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#13 Post by stpa »

Sloth wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2016 10:51 am Lembala'Lam
hi @Sloth, fellow creature wrangler … i came across what i believe to be a bug or overlooking concerning your species, please have a look at this post and following, or at the code in this pull request if you would like to comment.

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Oberlus
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Re: Lembala'Lam

#14 Post by Oberlus »

stpa wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 8:08 pm hi @Sloth, fellow creature wrangler …
Last time he visited the forums (or github, for the matter), briefly, was in 2017.

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