FreeOrion

If anybody mades a cool space monster, that's:

* functionally distinct from existing monsters,
* and has been tested and found to be reasonably balanced.

Please post it in "Content Creation" and i'll likely add it to the game.

EDIT: no guarantee of course that it, or any other bit of content will survive the various waves of balancing.

You'll also have to state that your release it under: CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GPL 2.0
Info about our licenses here.

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Due to comments here:
revision 4670
~ Made monsters nests last on average twice as long.
~ Halved the generation of floaters from forests.


Also, it looks like none of the monsters are actually scripted to make new nests. I guess i never got that to work right.

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With the switch in how ship/hull graphics are found the space monster graphics no longer showed up in the fleet window. I've rewired them into the monster hulls, but that leaves one problem. The Guardian/Sentinel/Warden all use the same hull, but each had distinct graphics. Now only the graphic assigned to the hull shows up anywhere.

Is the icon assigned in "Space_monsters.txt" meaningless now, or am i missing something?

And yeah, i can split the Guardian/Sentinel/Warden to each having their own hull -- i just want to make sure i know what's going on. And at some point we want a scylior scout to have a different graphic from a human scout, so the issue has some future relevance.

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There's a weird bug with the serialization code version numbering, which results in the client never knowing about the icon specified in the monster definition, and so defaulting to the hull's icon or graphic. I'm fiddling with things to see if I can fix it.

Edit: I have no idea why the version-safe code wasn't working, and can't tell how to fix it, so I've broken save compatibility with previous versions in order to get the ship design icons ship up in the client.

For those skilled scripters out there, perhaps you'ld like to try this out:

I'd intended the tame-able space monsters to be more unique from ships, and also act as part of a simplistic ecology of monsters, but didn't really get around to achieving that. Currently there's simple a random chance for them to level up, and a random chance for them to make a new nest (if that even works-- can't remember the last time i saw that happen)

See here for the partly unrealized plan for these monsters.

Based on what's actually practical to script or devious imaginations, you may have other idea to flesh them out. Lets here 'em!

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I'm planning on making space monsters a more dangerous opponent so that we can test the game in a more realistic setting, i.e. one in which the player has a realistic chance of being eliminated. This should make it much easier to test various macro-balancing paradigms and strategic dichotomies. In doing so, I may or may not end up also making improvements related to what eleazar mentioned above.

My plan as of now involves the following:

1) Make it possible for monsters to destroy an empire by adding a ship-based bio-weapon and equipping space monsters with it.

2) Have one ultimate space monster nest be generated in each galaxy from which more and more deadly space monsters are spawned as the game progresses. Other space monster nests will still be present as normal. Destroying this nest is a victory condition.

3) Implement Nova Bomb weapon, which will for now be the only way to destroy the monster's nest.

4) Increase the volume and deadliness of space monsters, and remove the restriction on most space monsters which prevents them from moving into owned territory.

This is really just a short-term measure to make content testing more meaningful, but I thought I'd see if anyone else has any ideas on the subject?

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Good idea.


You mean weapons that can take out colonies?

Before you do anything fancy-- many of the larger monsters are prevented from entering systems with colonies. IIRC it was a balancing crutch to keep them from being too dangerous. Commenting that out should up their threat-level quite a bit.

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I don't consider it a crutch really... Any monster that's capable of destroying a player's homeworld or preventing any ships from being built and used at the start of the game can't be allowed to spawn near and move into player homeworld systems until they player has a chance to get a defensible empire established. Particularly at the start of the game, monsters can appear in systems with little or no warning, making them potentially very frustrating and unfun if they could move into starting systems.

A probably better way to handle this is to prevent monsters that powerful from spawning at the start of the game to begin with, with monster nests upgrading over time to create more powerful monsters.

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Even weak monsters appearing in the starting system without any warning due to stealth and low detection, with resulting damage to ships or planets or annoying sitrep messages about it would be annoying and result in lots of forum posts whining about it.

But you put in an option to turn "monsters" to "none". Anybody who still complains is an incorrigible complainer.
IIRC the only monsters that get spawned regardless are immobile guardian monsters.

I agree the homeworld shouldn't get trashed by monsters before the player has a chance to grow, but that may be better prevented by giving the homeworld extra defenses that can drive out any early/mid game monsters. We don't need to perfectly protect every single colony.

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There should be some settings between no opposition and constant unpreventable and undetectable monster invasions. I don't object to a "ranging hordes" option in which monsters have modified behaviour to ignore player territory when moving, though.
The game mechanics don't presently make it easy to do that without risk of ships being damaged or destroyed, even if the monsters are guaranteed to be destroyed by the planet defenses. Also, that's still a bunch of annoying sitrep messages that the player can't actually do anything about in some cases, especially at the start of the game.

It didn't sound to me like BigJoe is proposing "constant unpreventable and undetectable monster invasions". The stated goal is to provide a rough stand-in for a competent imperial foe-- which shouldn't be able to provide that level of opposition from the start.

I don't care if it blows up ships too. Enemy capitals are pretty easy right now.

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My concern is that that will be the result if almost all monsters have no movement restrictions, not that it was the intended outcome.
I meant the monsters blowing up ships in the system even though it has these defenses.

Easy solution:
Early monsters move as they do now (not trespassing owned systems).

Monsters spawned really late in the game may have a different movement script without the restriction (and don't make them stealthy).

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