species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

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stpa
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species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#1 Post by stpa »

labgnome wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2020 4:09 pm Asteroid Belt:
  • Celestephyte: No Ships, Telepathic, Phototrophic
My hope is for this to be a collaborative project to flesh out these species and add as many of them as possible to the game. In that spirit if you want to adopt a species and flesh out a story to go with them please feel free to do so. Also I don't know how balanced all of these guys all are so this
i can not help but feeling like i've been set up here ... those previous three species practically wrote themselves and i can sense with my bullshit-detectors wide open that that master list is no bullshit but a lot of thought went in there.. thanks again at labgnome, really appreciated .. i'll go with the astrophages next. sorry, celestephytes was it? oh right the whole astrophage thing came out AFTER the master list so someone probably ripped that idea off and made a fortune with the books … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary

okay blooming on the roids .. gonna get into the spirit here .. details coming up soon.

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stpa
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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#2 Post by stpa »

i was going to screenshot the little icon but only got the big one from pedia because it seems like no natives are placed on asteroids during universe creation .. i'll have a look into that before fleshing out this species'es story.

edit: my mistake was giving them no Good for environment asteroids but only Adequate. works just fine when they have good habitability. changing screenshot accordingly. needs some adjustment though, that population seems a bit high

edit again: also they would now be by far the very most frequent natives probably because there are more asteroids than other types of planets - this needs either adjustment in the universe creation phase or just more biodiversity on asteroids i.e. needs more species to come
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wobbly
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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#3 Post by wobbly »

I'd prefer inhabited asteroids to be rare.

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LienRag
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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#4 Post by LienRag »

There's already Whumsooms for Asteroids (not integrated in the game yet, but working).
And there's a discussion about how to avoid making Asteroids "just another environment" on the Whumsoon thread.

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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#5 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:57 am I'd prefer inhabited asteroids to be rare.
+1 simplest fix: make them planetbound
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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#6 Post by stpa »

yep or make them close to useless which was my original intention with the 'rapid colonization' and the telepatho-phopbic reaction to closeby other telepath-colonies (including themselves) see over there https://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtop ... =6&t=12203 but then i'll have to change the universe creation much more than i did already in that nightsider pullrequest now, which is probably slowly changing into a 'master list' pullrequest instead because i keep adding the new species there because it kind of builds on the previous experience ..

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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#7 Post by stpa »

anyway all those minusses look bad 'on paper' while in fact they would give any player who stumbled upon them in the early game a massive advantage because they could colonize the roids. needs some checks in place, but i'd still like to keep them colonizable somehow
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stpa
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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#8 Post by stpa »

wobbly wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:57 am I'd prefer inhabited asteroids to be rare.
well they still would be as rare as the game-creation-natives_frequency dictates, is just that compared to the number of colonies of any other natives they would have relatively six to ten times more - i thought either add a random one in six chance when adding natives to roids to adjust that frequency downwards for asteroid dwellers of which there are some more upcoming species on the master list. or as i said, make them hard to manage close to each other and thus not really practical to colonize with

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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#9 Post by Ophiuchus »

stpa wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:11 am
wobbly wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:57 am I'd prefer inhabited asteroids to be rare.
well they still would be as rare as the game-creation-natives_frequency dictates, is just that compared to the number of colonies of any other natives they would have relatively six to ten times more
I am pretty sure that wobbly meant rarety in the sense of having them on few planets even if you encountered them, so the game-creation-frequency is not the issue. as lienrag also pointed out, asteroids should not become "a normal" environment. so an asteroid species has to be either planetbound, or shitty (compared to full blown exobots), or prevent in some other way being a no-brainer (e.g. make them hate all the policies in the game).

One way to make colonization shitty without making the species shitty would be to offer bonus only on a homeworld. E.g. make it low pop and low on resource production.

One way to delay colonization until late game is to give very high stealth to the species (at least on the homeworld).

even more so for gas giants. one intended niche they currently have is ensuring that there are holes in empires so the Sly can go an fill those sneakily. this basically implies planetbound for all other gas giant species.
stpa wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:11 am asteroid dwellers of which there are some more upcoming species on the master list. or as i said, make them hard to manage close to each other and thus not really practical to colonize with
the "master list" is just something forum member labgnome invented, its aim (to fill holes in all the environments) is not widely shared, and it includes things which I and others strongly oppose. the list certainly has no authority and I do not think anybody really scrutinized it - it obviously contains things which were strongly opposed in previous discussions with labgnome.

I would also want the normal environments to feel more different than all the same. The only idea is that there is common theme to most of the e.g. "desert" species (e.g. good pilots often evolve on tundra planets).
But there is no clear laid out plan and we are missing a person taking care of that.

So only asteroids and gas giants are special in a meaningful way and they should stay special.

At current state of design: "prevent colonizing all the asteroids (by something else than exobots) before late game" and "prevent all the gas giants to be colonized by something else but Sly before (very) late game"

It is great that you use the list for creating natives, i and i am sure the others find that very inspiring, so please go on. We all love colorful natives :mrgreen:
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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#10 Post by stpa »

aye. CanNotColonize it is then. i'll keep the rapid colonization part anyway and explain it smth like 'although they easily break of and can be transplanted, they have long agoy colonized all roid habitable to them so no need to look for new colony sites for them'

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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#11 Post by stpa »

getting close to finsih line with the celeroidals ... text in quotes copied from in game pedia. i extensively 'borrowed' citations from ... well, i wont tell if you wont.

'''
Slow growing telepathic lichen. Quite fragile and mostly harmless.
Phototrophic Metabolism, lives only on asteroids.

−− Very bad Industry: 50%
−−− Extremely Bad Population: 25%
− Bad Stability: -2.50
− Bad Supply: no bonus
−−− No Offensive Ground Troops
− Bad Defensive Ground Troops: 50%
+ Fast Colonization: -25% time to build colonies
−− Narrow Planet Tolerance: flourishes on fewer types.

Cannot Produce Ships
Cannot Colonize Planets

Default Focus: Growth

Likes: Interstellar Lighthouse, Growth, Population

Dislikes: Asteroid Processor, Asteroid Reformation Processor, Eccentric Orbit, Juggernaut Nest, No Growth

Environment Preferences:
Swamp : Uninhabitable
Toxic : Uninhabitable
Inferno : Uninhabitable
Radiated : Uninhabitable
Barren : Hostile
Tundra : Uninhabitable
Desert : Uninhabitable
Terran : Uninhabitable
Ocean : Uninhabitable

Asteroids : Adequate
Gas Giant : Uninhabitable

No Homeworld



Although parts easily break off and can be transplanted on virgin rocks, it is highly unlikely they will ever take root. Certain rare trace elements (see ->Unobtainium) needed by its symbiotic astral fungus to telepathically travel the interdimensional universal webworks are so rare indeed, that Celestephyte have long since ago colonized every single rock even remotely habitable to them.

While adult Celestephyte have prehensile appendages and can in theory do some useful work, they rarely do so in practice and like to stick to the theory. Much rather prefer they to not disturb the delicate interconnectedness of all their minute little mycelia, their intra- and interasteroidal web of fungus roots so to speak. But most of all they prefer not to be disturbed.

When confronted with an enemy anyway, they try to stun them with their blatant incompetence and by staring them in the eyes if they have eyes and not yet invented the technology of protective sun goggles. Sometimes this even has the indended effect, but indirectly, because the attacker laugh themselves to death in a hysteric frenzy induced by the astral fungus'es spores transmitted telepathically through the accusing gaze of the defending Celestephyte. But that mostly works only on the weak minded, who would not have come to confront the ancient Celestephyte in the first place. That makes them kind of not quite adapted to this galaxy's way of live and some experts in the field of astromycology have speculated, that Celestephyte were originally introduced from Andromeda during the second coming of Chtullluhhulurtl by its fierceful minnions, the Fluffy Teddy Tenderizers, as they were called back in those dark and pre-empiric times.
'''

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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#12 Post by Oberlus »

xD
stpa wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:05 pmthe indended effect
Typo there.

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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#13 Post by LienRag »

stpa wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:12 am aye. CanNotColonize it is then.
I playtested the Whumsoons as planetbound for the same reason, and they quickly became "just another Native".

A very slow rate of Colonization may be a better way to have them different from anything else.
Also, some reason for them to not Colonize everything (disliking every Policies would make them not interesting to have at all, not "not Colonizing everything").

Maybe very specific boni and a general malus ?

Like very bad stability and likes of many specials (so only possible to have them on systems which have these specials) ?

It's also possible to have them dislike all Foci except Logistics/Stargate.

So since they don't produce much and cost Influence, they'll be used only when strategically needed.

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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#14 Post by wobbly »

LienRag wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:41 pm Like very bad stability and likes of many specials (so only possible to have them on systems which have these specials) ?

It's also possible to have them dislike all Foci except Logistics/Stargate.
In my opinion there's a UI issue with giving a species too many likes or dislikes. Look at the pedia entry for anything that's popular/unpopular like say, Mimetic Alloy. The long list of species is hard to read. When you start multiplying a long list of species by a long list of likes/dislikes the pedia entry starts getting very busy. I think at some stage that needs to be look at because either:

It's an issue to be solved with better UI or,
It's a structural issue with the system of likes/dislikes or,
Species likes/dislikes should be kept to short and simple lists of a few/species or,
something else.

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stpa
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Re: species #4 from the master list - Celestephyte

#15 Post by stpa »

> It's an issue to be solved with better UI or,
> It's a structural issue with the system of likes/dislikes or,
> Species likes/dislikes should be kept to short and simple lists of a few/species or,
> something else.

hard not to agree with you there ;)~ or maybe all of the above

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