Species: Amiri - an experiment in low-gravity

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Jaumito
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Location: Catalonia, France, Europe, Earth, Sol, Orion Arm, Milky Way, Virgo Cluster

Species: Amiri - an experiment in low-gravity

#1 Post by Jaumito »

Amiri_desc.png
Amiri_desc.png (134.68 KiB) Viewed 7261 times
It always puzzles me that gravity isn't even considered relevant to habitability issues in FO, so I wanted to design a few species around this, and here's the first one.

For this first try I tried to keep things simple: the Amiri are environment-immune (or rather averse, since everything but asteroid belts is hostile to them), and their ecological niche is at one end of the gravity spectrum: asteroids are best, then tiny planets, then small ones, etc.

Next one will try to mix gravity with one of the common environment, e.g. a species which prefers medium swamp planets will like large swamps a bit less, and medium oceans a bit more, than your usual gravity-immune swamp dweller.

What you need to play the Amiri (locations are all relative to the 'default' directory in your FO install) --

Add this somewhere in stringtables/en.txt

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LOW_GRAVITY_HABITABILITY_DESC
	Prefer low-gravity worlds such as asteroids, and, to a lesser degree, the smallest planets.

EFFECT_MONSTER_CAPTURE
Suddenly, %ship% appeared at the gates of %planet% and wanted to fight for your cause!

EFFECT_MONSTER_CAPTURE_LABEL
Monster Joined

# Species: Amiri
SP_AMIRI
Amiri

SP_AMIRI_GAMEPLAY_DESC
'''Edible, winged gasbags.
Prefer low-gravity worlds, such as [[PT_ASTEROIDS]].
[[encyclopedia GASEOUS_SPECIES_TITLE]]
'''

SP_AMIRI_DESC
'''Description:
The Amiri have never been properly studied by other species, most of which just consider them as food. They are generally rather small, about the size of Capiona nymphs, although they can grow as big as Tussapiac larvae. Their shape remains about the same during their lifespan, but their size doesn't seem to be related to age, or gender (are they even gendered?), and can vary suddenly and unpredictably. The body is ampoule- or amphora-shaped, and seems to only contain light gases, like hydrogen. Attached to it are a small, round head and a pair of large wings. Given their anatomy and the fact that Amiri only live in low-gravity environments, it's hard to figure out if they're better described as floating or flying. Anyway, they never land on solid ground. Space Krakens consider them a delicacy.

Social Structure:
The Amiri are a very social species. They gather in large hordes - or swarms? schools? plagues? depending on whose xenoentomologist's work you're relying upon - and often accompany space krill during their migrations. Other than that, the only remarkable thing about them is that such a species achieved sentience.
'''

BLD_COL_AMIRI
Amiri Colony

BLD_COL_AMIRI_DESC
[[BLD_COL_PART_1]] [[species SP_AMIRI]] colony. [[BLD_COL_PART_2]] Amiri colony [[BLD_COL_PART_3]].

Add this (near the end, before the triple quote) to customizations/common_user_customizations.txt

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EFFECT_MONSTER_CAPTURE_LABEL
Append this to scripting/species/common/planet_size.macros

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ASTEROIDS_BELT
'''EffectsGroup
        scope = Source
        activation = And [
            Planet
            Turn high = 0
        ]
        effects = SetPlanetSize planetsize = Asteroids
'''
Add this somewhere in scripting/starting_unlocks/items.inf

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Item type = Building name = "BLD_COL_AMIRI"
Add this in the species_list list (and beware the commas) in scripting/buildings/colonies/col_bld_gen.py

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    ("SP_AMIRI", "icons/species/aerial-07.png"),
This file goes in scripting/species/
SP_AMIRI.focs.txt
(4.41 KiB) Downloaded 251 times
This file goes in scripting/buildings/colonies/
SP_AMIRI.focs.txt
(3.99 KiB) Downloaded 278 times
If you want to discover the Amiri by yourself, stop reading here.

________________ SPOILER ALERT ________________















On habitability.
  • Asteroids are the same size to Amiri as their homeworld is to most species (e.g., Humans), except they can't be Gaiafied.
  • All other planet types are 'hostile' and will remain so, as Amiri worlds can't be terraformed.
  • Tiny planets are colonizable from turn 1, but will never grow huge: size 14 at maxed tech and with the HW on 'growth' focus
  • Other planets will need some hab research and will always be worse than the tiny ones. Gas giants can theoretically be settled but will remain deadly at max tech unless they are in supply range of a HW on growth focus (then their max hab becomes an awesome... 1 :lol: )
  • Realistically you only want to colonize asteroid belts and tiny planets, the rest is best left to conquered species. Unless you want to take advantage of the Amiri's special feature (see below), then it may be worth it to colonize small planets in systems that don't already have an Amiri colony and are close to an area where krill is likely to spawn.
The Amiri's Special Power!

As hinted to in their description, Amiri have an affinity with the Space Krill and Tree (floaters) monster lines. What this means is, when one of these monsters arrives on one of your Amiri colonies, there's a 50% chance it will join your empire - if your planet defenses didn't shoot it down first. Now, it's true that neither floaters nor krill are overawing, but at least they're free, if basically nothing more than chaff. Plus, they're fickle and will forget their allegiance as soon as they evolve to greater forms. Plus, they're super-fickle and will try to wander aimlessly if left on hold. That is, unless you let your krill mature to the last stage (Plague of Krill), which won't wander like their smaller kin. Those are awfully slow, but they have their uses - think of them as defanged Death Stars, with huge TIE fighters wings but no planet-busting big gun. If you feel patient enough to try this, you'd better set a staging area (preferably more depending on your empire's size) up somewhere in your backyard, maybe delay your planet defense research until after you've researched some planet stealth tech (to avoid shooting prospective recruits down), and keep in mind that -
  • you need to bring 2 same-size krill monster to get the next upgrade
  • sometimes a krill monster (any size) will spawn a small krill swarm
Thanks for reading so far. Enjoy!

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Oberlus
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Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Species: Amiri - an experiment in low-gravity

#2 Post by Oberlus »

Woooooo! I'm eager to test this!

Capiona and Tussapiac :lol: :lol:

Jaumito
Space Kraken
Posts: 189
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 3:42 am
Location: Catalonia, France, Europe, Earth, Sol, Orion Arm, Milky Way, Virgo Cluster

Re: Species: Amiri - an experiment in low-gravity

#3 Post by Jaumito »

Oberlus wrote: Wed Jan 16, 2019 6:57 amCapiona and Tussapiac :lol: :lol:
Heh. Give the Capiona and Tussapiac some respect!

(By the way, inventing exotic names is no laughing matter: I find it one of the hardest parts in species design.)

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Oberlus
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Re: Species: Amiri - an experiment in low-gravity

#4 Post by Oberlus »

Jaumito wrote: Wed Jan 16, 2019 11:51 am(By the way, inventing exotic names is no laughing matter: I find it one of the hardest parts in species design.)
I did google for them, that's why I was laughing. They (and you) have my respect!

PS: Amiri got 34M hits, Capiona (a family name in Spain, it seems) got 22,700, and Tussapiac (drum roll) ¡none! (appart from the one from this page, damn google bots are fast).
I love completely new words!

Jaumito
Space Kraken
Posts: 189
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 3:42 am
Location: Catalonia, France, Europe, Earth, Sol, Orion Arm, Milky Way, Virgo Cluster

Re: Species: Amiri - an experiment in low-gravity

#5 Post by Jaumito »

Oberlus wrote: Wed Jan 16, 2019 3:11 pmPS: Amiri got 34M hits, Capiona (a family name in Spain, it seems) got 22,700, and Tussapiac (drum roll) ¡none!
Amiri was supposed to be Amirrin, but two letters got dropped at some point and I realized it too late. Which is a shame because the only Google hit for Amirrin I got from this page - I suppose it's Cyrillic or something, except for these words: Da’rregon’hantta Amirrin - it makes the whole page sounds like something from Lovecraft, with the only 'readable' part an actually unintelligible invocation to an ancient malevolent entity... I haven't even tried to translate this thing (I guess it's about pastries), I know I'd be very disappointed :lol:

Capiona - I could swear I had zero hits for it but it seems I fumbled something here.
I love completely new words!
So do I, the hard part is trying to create words that are not too long, still pronounceable, and without using the 10-points letters from a Scrabble set - too many X's or Z's looks like cheating.

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