I'd like to create a setting based on the same aesthetics as Warframe (sexy far-future space ninjas in symbiote armor)...

Pretty much this. Just refluff Eclipse Phase for it

>symbiotes

Ahah, someone hasn't been doing their quests.

How about instead of space ninjas, it was space mongols?

Another zentai fetish thread, awesome.

How about space langobards?

Damn, Warframe models are so fucking hnnngh

Most people who aren't already too invested to back out have been disillusioned with Warframe ever since they retconned half the lore to get rid of the 'symbiote armour' element and make the player a character a shota/loli stuck in a pod controlling the suits remotely. It was effectively purposeless, came completely out of the blue and made so many old codex entries suddenly make no sense or read very differently, and the only real reason I can think of for it is to try and appeal to a younger crowd who really have no place playing that game to begin with.

As for how to do it yourself OP, iunno, I always liked the original Dark Sector/early WF approach where the wearers are victims of some biomechanical infection that causes rapid mutation, and the suits are a way of slowing and controlling the process. Beyond that, look at things Kamen Rider, Guyver, even Spidey's symbiote arcs. There's plenty to work with.

>mongols
>using the douli + kabuto horn for the hat shape

I don't think you know how a Mongol costume is supposed to be like.

No, I know, but it was the closest pic i had and it was vaguely warframey

Pretty much this. The "twist" was just retarded, neither clever nor funny

With some notable exceptions.

>Not wanting some of that sweet healslut lobster booty

Get a load of this faggot.

>booty
You mean the crabtail?

I'd say it was a pretty necessary development if the devs want to make any more story-heavy content in the future.

Warframes are faceless, emotionless, disposable Lotus mooks. Which is cool in its own right, but it makes for terrible protagonists. When they die, they just respawn, when they're not needed they can be exchanged for different 'frames. There's no stakes, no personal or emotional focus.

Operators fix those things. They give players a central avatar amidst a sea of interchangeable weapons and warframes, and they give the story writers a central narrative focal point. Even back when Warframes were just regarded as armor for an elusive ninja-knight, that ninja-knight already basically was the Operator. The concept was already there, people just assumed that they were inside armor instead of the Warframe being a separate entity.

And I'd say the two being dinstinct entities also opens up interesting narrative possibilities imo. The two are useless without each other. Lots of potential for drama when the two are separated and need to reunite to kick the ass of whoever separated them. Also opens up scenarios in which the Operator may want something that's bad for the Warframes, or the Warframes are tempted into defying their Operators.

Plus Warframe's already so anime that another pinch of NGE didn't really change THAT much. At least Operators being children brings their physical reliance on Warframes in the field better across.

Just copy and reflavour Evangelion, just like warframe devs did.

>Mfw greater Finland begins its military campaign to become an interstellar empire.

So, Klingons?

Ok first off: reskinning Eclipse Phase is pretty much the worst thing you can do. The system is crap, and if you subtract out the setting then you have nothing left worth saving.

What you want is a good core system like Fate, GURPS, or savage worlds. Something built with customization in mind.

Once you make that jump, you then have supers literally reskinned with the suits.

Sounds like a cool setting, user. Tell us more. I've wanted to see a better take on the warframe concept for a while.

GURPS did have an article about Biomecha suits, which would be a good start.

>Warframes are faceless, emotionless, disposable Lotus mooks. Which is cool in its own right, but it makes for terrible protagonists.

Protagonists don't need awesome character backstory because the protagonist is you.

But... that's exactly my point. You already WERE the Operator, everything you're saying could ALREADY have been done without rewriting two games' worth of lore for the minimal emotional payoff that comes with seeing their faces.
They could have done much the same thing *without* tearing apart the already fragile lore and it'd have worked just as well, it'd have made more sense and it wouldn't have resulted in a laughing stock.

It doesn't even make fucking sense, we're supposed to hate Alad V for his experimentation, then we find out the suits were empty the entire time anyway. Nobody was tortured, nobody was harmed. Or what about all the codex entries that just make no sense any more?

It's hard to give a shit about the story AT ALL now, because the stakes have been removed completely. We're just asshole kids destroying the only human civilisations left. Tenno seemed sketchy in general beforehand, but now? Now we're literally committing genocide against every human faction worth noting, just because 'mom said so', when we have no stake in the conflict ourselves whatsoever.

Face it, they fucked up. There's no reason to feel invested at all in the story any more - we're villains with no real motive and all the interesting stuff about Tenno, IE the assumption that they were Technocyte infectees with a heart pretty much, is all gone.

>
Warframes are faceless, emotionless, disposable Lotus mooks. Which is cool in its own right, but it makes for terrible protagonists. When they die, they just respawn, when they're not needed they can be exchanged for different 'frames. There's no stakes, no personal or emotional focus.

To summarise, NONE OF THIS HAS CHANGED. IT'S /WORSE/ NOW.

The only thing I care about is that I went from a badass space ninja lady to a stupid-looking loli, then dropped the game and never looked back.

Yes, because being told your character you thought you were playing doesn't exist and it was some 11 year old kid in a pod two dozen light years away really helps with establishing a 'personal, emotional focus'.

No, fuck you, you literally just killed my character and undid literally untold hours of storytelling, both personal roleplay and canon, just to attract more kids to waste money on the in-game store.
That could not be further from providing stakes and a personal motivation.

This. Your operator doesn't look or act cool, they act like an emotionally stunted loli/shota hooked up to a simulator and NOBODY WANTS TO SELF INSERT AS THAT.

>for the minimal emotional payoff that comes with seeing their faces.
Wait, wat. Warframes are just remote controlled drones now and we have player avatars with faces?

yeah, and They're pre teen children
also
lotus is a sentient, she was sent by her race to wipe out the orokin but decided to stay and look after the tenno after the destruction of human civilisation

Oh shit this is perfect.

I'm cooking up a setting right now based on the Power Armor CYOA. The idea is to be space operatic, but not in the 40k/Star Wars tradition.

So the pods fall, and when the dust clears, approximately one pod for every million people has fallen (7,000 total). People fall into one of three categories. The first people to get converted were just random people. Then the military/police/rescue/scientific agencies got a handle on what was happening, and so the second third were first responders who got podded while attempting to manage the emergency. The third group were the rich, powerful, and/or high-status, who wanted to be bioconverted for instant youth and superpowers and so entered the pods on purpose.

If you're converted, then after a few days semiconscious in the force-shielded pod, you emerge in perfect health, your youth restored, wearing a biosuit similar to a warframe. The pod has another component that moves to an isolated area and covertly builds or converts a suitable vehicle unto a transforming mecha bonded to you.

People don't know how to use their suits to maximum advantage at first. So for the first few months, they don't even know how to take the helmet off. The pod itself bases the warframe and mecha it designs on the podded person's personality and experiences.

It's designed to be maximum awesome, and maybe a little fetishy. It genuflects moderately towards science but doesn't get sand in its vagina about it.

Man, I'm glad I quit after the Cryo op.

Yes yes yes, it sounds very stupid.

But since everyone agrees that it sucks, and OP wanted to create an RPG with different fluff so that it DIDN'T suck, then can we get back on track and try to make an awesome setting / system?

First off, the players are normal humans (or biomodded from normal humans). Second, the armor really is just armor, not remotely operated robots.

>maybe a little fetishy

Why fetishy? I'm genuinely curious.

The idea doesn't HAVE to be fetishy. But if you want it to be like that, then it's basically fit girls (and guys) in latex ninja suits. Often with performance-enhancing biomods that make them extra hot as a side effect.

In the early days after the Podfall, people didn't have full control of their suits. The secret of even taking them off wasn't revealed for almost a year. So in the latex bondage community there's a whole forced latex thing that this taps into.

Finally, part of the point of a suit like this is to provide life support. That means... ummm... places where the suit interfaces with the wearer's biology to manage air, water, food, and waste recycling.

Like I said, it doesn't have to be fetishy. You could easily write any or all of this to be as sexless as a Womyn's Studies Department. Or you could go full-on magical realm and emphasize the sex.

My own preference is just a taste of sexiness. Just enough that a GM who wants to run his sexitimes campaign has something to start with, but someone who wants it to be totally Southern Baptist about it can do it, too.

A little like vampire fiction. Not necessarily sexy, not necessarily porn. Usually there's some fan service but doesn't go further than that.

No no no, don't stop man. I love this shit both in the fluff and fetish department.

I'm waiting to hear what OP thinks. Hell, I'm starting with a CYOA, so maybe we've started an old-fashioned Veeky Forums-creates-a-setting thread.

>If you're converted, then after a few days semiconscious in the force-shielded pod, you emerge in perfect health, your youth restored, wearing a biosuit similar to a warframe.

This is interesting to me. What sort of range to this are we talking? Does it fully restore youth? Does it cure chronic diseases, disfigurement, what? How does it decide what perfect health is?

Steal a system that's already in place, and just change the setting? Or, there's plenty of systems out there that are bare bones for constructing your own works around it.

For example, there's at least 3 mass effect homebrews out there. Grab one. Omnitool is now a kitana. Adept force push is now mags ability. The reapers are the tech fucks on venus or whatever.

Make life easier on yourself and limit the frames pcs can choose. Mold them aroud other classes such as tank (excalibur) and so on. Pulled this out of my ass in 5 minutes. Quit being lazy

Been a long time since I've played warframe.

OP here.

Yep I love this. Go for it man, let's make this a thing.

>Roleplaying in an MMO
Despite my love of tabletop, I think this is fucking retarded.

Originally it was assumed that it was all Dark Sect0r.
You are a human that has been infected with the Technocyte virus. A virus that can infect metal as well as flesh.
You are then wrapped up in crazy space metal and, on the whole, manifest space magic.
So each Warframe has a themed superhero powerset.
The Warframe fluff diverges a bit, where the Technocyte is now a failed weapon created by the Orokin.

Years and years ago, you were the elite fighting force for the Orokin, a technologically advanced, possibly alien, galactic empire.
Then... something happened.
Something caused their pristine white-and-gold cities to fall derelict, abandoned by naught but the security mainframe or overrun by Technocyte creatures.

You, Tenno, have awoken from cryosleep in a new era. You remember very little, not even how or why you entered it in the first place.
The militaristic Grineer seek conquest of the solar system, grinding planets to feed their war machine. They are ruled by the brutal and swift Twin Queens and manufacture their own race in the toxic womb of the cloning vats, a process that leaves them more broken and closer to death with each generation.
The Corpus is a catch-all term for the merchantile faction, made up of individually-interested companies and powerhouses, headed by a board of the richest and manned by conscripts that are indoctrinated at temples on Neptune. Their lives are long, a couple hundred years, and to them profit is more than just a goal.
At odds to all are the Infested: the hivemind of the the Technocyte plague. Made up of horrible mutated infected bodies, they fester in abandoned remote stations before crashing in waves upon the system.

>tank (excalibur)
ha.

Nobody gives a fuck about that stupid twist.

Seriously, if they're just remote piloted drones, why don't they just find a way to jam the signal and make all 10-hoes useless?

Whoops, the Corpus also make heavy use of 'combat proxies,' or fighting robots, and exclusively use energy weapons.
The Grineer are heavily into medical cybernetics, to offset degenerated limbs from cloning, and use conventional weaponry.

There is also 'The Stalker,' who appears to be a Tenno but comes after you in revenge for high profile targets you've killed, apparently seeking vengence for your misuse of your powers.

This is a good starting point, the following fluff is more divisive.

The Grineer are the bad guys. They crush and subjugate without mercy or honor.
The Corpus are neutral and can be reasoned with.
There are human colonies scattered and hidden throughout the solar system. You will occasionally rescue captured humans.

[ACTUAL SPOILER]: The big twist is that the 'Tenno' isn't the player, but a kid that was irradiated by space stuff and thrown into a potato where you control the warframes, which are robots.

Several points contradict those last points,
Popularly:

Alad V was a member of the Corpus board until he discovered a stash of warframe cryopods which he cannibalized into a new line of combat proxies. Then he infected himself with the Technocyte, stole more 'frames, and has been a general asshole. Also you pronounce the 'V' like "vee," it's not a 'the fifth.'
General Sargas Ruk is a high ranking Grineer officer. Places a high value on honor. He helped the Tenno fight Alad's forces to recover the warframes the first time. He knows you're a highly disciplined and honorable fighting force and respects that.

Ok so here's what I'm thinking as game rules. I'm still reading that GURPS article but it looks like exactly what I need. So here we go in GURPS terms. Convert to your favorite system as needed.

Step 1: Remove all Disadvantages and penalties due to the physical effects of age, disease, and injury. This includes genetic disorders. Any Disadvantages for build (skinny/fat/dwarfism/gigantism) are removed, though you can optionally still appear thin/fat/short/tall. Your metabolic age is late teens/early 20's, but you may choose any apparent age you'd like.

Step 2: Add the following advantages: Strength +2 (lift/striking only), Health +2, Dex +1, a 20 point neural upgrade package (choose from social, coordination, or analytical), 4 points of appearance*, Unaging, Fit, Regeneration (Slow, Radiation Only), No Degeneration due to Zero Gee, Sanitized Metabolism, and Acceleration Tolerance. Plus three key implants: Implant Computer, Biosuit Interface, and Exotic Equipment Training (your mecha). 100 points total.

Then comes the neural interface and psychoprogramming. This consists of the 25 point Advantage in the pdf the user linked above, a base TL of 10, and Combat Reflexes. That's 50 more points.

You can buy further bio-upgrades later.

* Appearance comes in levels and at first glance it's hard to notice that it provides a average of a +1 reaction bonus per 4 points.

Step 3: Add your suit. This counts as Signature Gear. All suits provide protection in vacuum and hostile environments, plus recycled life support. All run on power cells that can be recharged from either house current or your mecha. You can't take one off without the right software commands, which in the setting aren't discovered until about a year after Podfall.

Each suit is uniquely fitted to a particular individual, who HAS to have the biomods in the last post. Suits regenerate slowly as long as they aren't destroyed outright and have access to power and materials. Cutting someone out of a suit that hasn't been properly disengaged will usually kill them unless you're an expert medtech that knows what he's doing. Every suit looks different, again suited to the wearer's personality/physique/self-perception.

Light suits provide the fewest capacity for weapons/armor/gizmos, but are lightweight enough that you can move around easily even if out of power, and are extremely fast/agile/stealthy when powered up. They're skintight bodysuits, similar to what girls usually wear in sci fi.

Medium suits are more like the armored suits that you see men in sci fi wear. They're stronger, bulkier, slower, and carry more weapons and armor.

Heavy suits are as slow as normal humans and too heavy to go in some of the places normal humans can. If power runs out, you can pop it open, but otherwise you're immobile (if you can't open your suit, then you'd better hope someone arrives with a power cord before you die). OTOH, they're armed to the teeth, very well protected, and crammed with useful gizmos.

Step 4: Design your vehicle.

Pick a vehicle appropriate to your personality. Its mecha mode will have similar overall size. You can control your own mecha without penalty. Vehicle mode requires the drive skill.

You can hack someone else's mecha. If you have the biomods you can pilot it at a penalty. Without the mods, you can drive the vehicle mode and that's it.

Isn't Ruk also the guy that accuses you of being greedy honor-less mercenaries when you fight him? And we have no clue what Alad V's doing. We cured him of the virus and then he helped us in exchange for a favor which he then called in to help get the Stalker off his ass. No one knows what the fuck is up with him anymore.

speak for yourself

OK so the pod range is about 20 feet (6 meters) with a clear line of sight. Each pod is a little different, but all wait for the first biocompatible human to show up. Children before puberty are ignored, as are animals and people who have already been Podded. A few Transformed people have collected pods and hid them in remote locations so they can convert friends, allies, and family later.

When it detects you, a pod will pull you back into the shell. Depending on the pod, it might use robot tentacles, a forcefield/tractor beam thingy, or send out small drones to drag you back. If you can get to 30 feet, it'll abandon attempts to convert you and grab anyone appropriate within 30 feet; if nobody's in range, it seals back up and goes back to waiting.

If you're pulled inside, the pod seals, you're thrown into a semiconscious dreamlike state as transformation begins. The pod itself is armored and protected by a strong force field. If the pod is destroyed or opened prior to completion, the occupant dies. The pod probes your instincts, experiences, and aspirations and designs a mech and suit to match your personality (though its tastes can be... eclectic).

Youth is fully restored and then some. Limbs regenerated, even genetic diseases are cured. "Perfect Health" is a GM decision but basically anything that he wants will be cured. Tattoos, scars, piercings, tooth fillings, and prosthetics of all kinds are removed.

Before anyone asks... if you have gender dysphoria, it's up to the player whether the character gets a perfect sex change (including chromosomes) or if you're neurology is modified to match your body's natural gender.

Grooming decisions like hair correspond to the wearer's standard of beauty and self-image. In some cultures/genders, this could mean elimination of some or all body hair. Or growth of an appropriately-groomed beard. I consider it wrapped up with "Sanitized Metabolism" because I just thought of it now.

Mecha over about 2 tons can field a fusion reactor. This provides plenty of power for operations, indefinitely, and can recharge biosuits (the pilot and/or anyone else who plugs in). Smaller mecha like passenger cars and motorcycles have high-density power cells. These need to be recharged, which means teaming up with a larger, more powerful mecha. Or having regular access to house current, which takes much longer to recharge.

The vehicle mode only looks cosmetically like a vehicle. It's actually highly advanced, highly miniaturized technology. Take a car or motorcycle, for example. The motors and many of the power cells are in the wheel hubs. That leaves most of the housing for the engines and structure for limbs and armor for the wearer.

Specialized miniature nano-factories construct ammunition and certain spare parts. So the mecha can usually self-repair, given time and assuming the structural damage isn't too bad. Since the cockpit includes a medical pod, this applies to the pilot as well, if he can get aboard. The pilot can trace the location of his mecha, at least when it's within a few dozen miles. If the pilot dies, his biosuit self-destructs and his mecha goes dormant until hacked. If the mechs is destroyed, the pilot can operate from his biosuit without it.

Interesting!

Sometimes his line sympathizes with how we must be hunting for scraps if we're coming after him.

Salad's just a cunt that the dev's are trying to push as an ally because their plan was for the Grineer to be Always Chaotic Evil. And for the players to somehow get that despite never being shown outside of one, maybe two individuals.
Seriously. Alad steals Valk, we were supposed to side with him as the lesser of two evils. Infects Mesa, oh whatever, we'll just help him in five minutes. Even what you just said: cure him, use his help, and then WE owe HIM a favor?
And he's also keeping the whole 'cure for the techocyte virus' thing a secret, too.

What the fuck is with the Stalker anyway? I remember years ago there were hints that suggested he was just a manifestation of the greed each Tenno feels for their genocide/murder/etc, and suggesting he was just in your head.

Then other NPCs started interacting with him, and apparently he's huge in the recent missions now?

Fucking phone, greed should be guilt.

I remember reading some stuff about how he was something called a "Lower Guard" during the Orokin era. Theory has it that he and his acolytes are Warframes with minds of their own, no operator controlling them. While the Tenno were something like a higher guard probably. We do know that the Tenno all rebelled and destroyed the Orokin, though for what reason, we're not sure.

Looks good to me. Shall we talk fluff?

Do you want the spoiler version, or non spoiler version?

Stalker had an event with a bunch of 'acolytes' a while ago. I'm sure there wasn't any real plot happening there.

This is from his codex scan.

Yes, but lol my internet died. I have some ideas that won't fit on a cell keypad. Let's keep the thread pumping, and by all means do other people have ideas to add to this? don't let the thread die while I wait to get back!

If people want to talk about the vidya, they should go to /v/ for that. This is for building an RPG setting based on PA similar to warframes.

I'm waiting to hear what you have to say before I say anything.

That's his personal setting thing though, isn't it?
Not what OP's doing?

OP wants a setting with bio-power armor similar to warframes, but different setting. I made a proposal off the top of my head because I think the idea is cool. OP agreed that he likes it , and wanted more. So I'm coming up with stuff.

OP is like me. He loves the original warframes idea, but doesn't like the gameworld.

This is all of the top of my head, so jump in with ideas.

I'm working on a game for that.

>sexy far-future space ninjas in symbiote armor
>without the retarded actual Warframe lore

These two are mutually exclusive.

>personal roleplay
Found your problem.

why lolis/shotas?

This thread is once again proof that, despite the good intentions and high amounts of effort, Koreans will inevitably ruin any MMO they make.

I'm looking at you, Black Desert

Spoiler:
Also plot that nobody likes.

Orokin era: there was a shipment of women/children that went through the !Warp. Most of them died, but a pile of kids was left over.

The Orokin recovered the ship YEARS later, went exploring and found a bunch of kids. One of the officers broke quarantine because kids and ended up horribly disfigured.
Those kids, who were much older than kids at that point, became the Tenno.
The officer got thrown in a blender executed because the Orokin aren't good people.

Sidenote,
The Grineer were working class practically slaves of the Orokin, and the Corpus started as smugglers.
It's not *clear,* but the Orokin-era Grineer might have been clones, too.

>came completely out of the blue and made so many old codex entries suddenly make no sense or read very differently,
Not really? I always thought the warframes weren't us. Its why the infested get so confused about the player killing them. They are just controlled technocyte.

>I always thought the warframes weren't us.
They sure as hell weren't remote controlled empty shells either.

SLA industries.

says 15 yr old who's never heard of anything else.

An user above linked a pdf with a whole list of symbiote armor fictional sources. All you had to do was click and learn. It's like saying cyberpunk was invented with the Matrix. It's embarrassing just to read it.

The Integrationist seed ship drifted on the outskirts of the solar system. Encased in four and a half million years worth of ice, its receiver array dangled limply from what was now nothing more than one more comet in the Oort cloud. Its power systems barely ticked over, the controlling AI waited patiently, as it had been commanded to do an epoch before.

A couple maintenance bots crawled over the surface of the ice. Clearing the dish of ice was a chore done every few decades, along with clearing the ice tunnel that lead from the hangar bay to the surface. The rest of the time, the bots worked their way through an endless litany of maintenance. Every few thousand years, the routine was punctuated with a major overhaul. Otherwise, quiet. The ship lacked any other orders, and was too badly damaged to have returned for repair or reassignment. So it waited, as it had for many times longer than the civilization which had created it.

The battle with the Synthesist cruiser had left the seedship physically damaged but still serviceable. However, a deadly payload of nanorecursive weapons had shattered the ship's AI. Memory and cognitive systems suffered damage that the AI could no longer completely comprehend, much less repair. What could be fixed had been fixed. What could be reconstructed had been reconstructed. With the engines disabled, the seedship couldn't hope to find colonies to convert. So it waited. Perhaps suitable candidates would establish a colony in this system. It had at least three conventionally habitable worlds, and one suitable for its own builders. The odds were poor, but the War had ebbed and flowed for thousands of years. Waiting was all it could do.

And, on this day, its waiting was at long last rewarded. Primitive radio signals, faint but clear. The seedship began an immediate overhaul and prepared to fully activate. It wouldn't be long now.

What does Korea have to do with a Canadian game?

What is the motivation for why the pods work on humans?

Its the Chinese actually.
DE sold their assholes to a Chinese investor so they get to make decisions for them now.
Also they still have micro-transactions despite having a sugar daddy.

Sure enough, it was only a scant decade later that the first visual signals began to arrive. Like the audio, it was easily decoded. But here the AI faced a conundrum.

Its knowledge of biochemistry had been among the libraries destroyed in the battle. It had long since recreated several sciences of biochemistry based on what records were left and extrapolation from its scientific knowledge in other fields. But it could no longer positively identify offshoots and colonies of the Race. Complicating this was the fact that thousands of divergent species had been created over the millennia. Like any species, the Race had long since fractured into dozens of clades, castes, and variants. The definition had to be loose to begin with, and the AI lacked the databanks to enforce even that hazy definition.

On the other hand, its mission was critical. Any primitive colony could and usually would quickly progress from the development of radio to star travel. It could happen as quickly as a few decades. Any in the meantime, the other sciences would progress. If the AI didn't move quickly, a Race colony could spontaneously develop Synthesism, or some other divergent heresy. Or, at least, develop defenses that would make the seedship's job risky or impossible. Ultimately, the seedship's job was to ensure that Integrationism was firmly planted, for the good of all.

It didn't really. They'd be hinting at the Warframes being controlled by children, or energy beings as some thought, as far back as Ember Primes release. It was never going to be armor, except maybe in really early stages when it was a Dark Sector spinoff.

They aren't really empty. They are more like infested perfected. They can even move on their own when not controlled. I figured thats what the rhino prime codex entry was. A randomly pissed off newly made rhino. Your warframe moved on its own in second dream too right at the end.

The AI used what clues it had. The planet was right. That was good news; intelligent life on thin-atmosphere, high temperature rock worlds was rare. What it could make of the audio sounded very strange, but it was in generally the right frequencies. The differences had been enough that the seedship procrastinated.

The video settled it. Bipedal, modified forelimbs used as tool manipulators, paired visual receptors on top. The proportions were all wrong, the coloration garish, the bodies covered in strange fibers and protrusions. But the general plan was right. These beings didn't look much like the ones who had built it, but the species of the Race often looked highly alien to one another. Thousands of years of genetic and cultural tinkering could make related beings look monstrous indeed to one another. Normally, a biochemical assay would reveal the truth, but that data was gone. The AI was as sure as it could be.

Probes were launched immediately. Samples would need to be brought back. The seedship had no practical bioscience data-- that had all been wiped. It would have to be reconstructed from experimentation and field assays. But it balanced its hunger for data; it had a limited supply of nanofabricators. It living mind might have thought to build factories to build more... but such a mind would not have patiently whiled away the epochs.

It took the probes nearly a decade to arrive, just in time to watch a global war unfold. This was to be expected; the Race was as aggressive as any intelligent life. Brief global wars at first and then, in fits and starts, they would grow into full maturity and constant warfare. It happened to every intelligent species.

I'd like to say that them selling out is why Warframe is as it is, but the sadder truth is that it's due to the sheer incompetence of their creative leads (in Steve Sinclair's case, this has been documented when DE were working on that recent Star Trek game).

Oh definitely. Warframe is a text book list of what to not fucking do to run an online game. From balancing, bug fixes, to simple customer relations, its just a sad horrible mess. That's not here nor there though.

Covert labs were constructed in the shallow ocean depths. Native flora, fauna, and of course the intelligent life were studied. Samples were taken. Eventually, a stasis technology was developed, and samples sent back to the seedship for further analysis. The AI raced against the clock to fill out its empty bioscience libraries.

The more it knew, the greater its suspicions should have grown. But all intelligence, natural and artificial, was essentially heuristic in nature. Confirmation bias isn't a merely human foible. The planet was right, the basic body plan was right. Perhaps the basic biochemistry and genomics had been re-engineered by the Race. Four and a half million years is a long time.

But it raced against the clock. The primitives had ended their war with nuclear arms. They were quarreling now over some point of economic theory that to the AI was transparently obvious. Nevertheless, the fact of the conflict was driving advances. The first samples were arriving in the Oort cloud just in time for the first humans to travel in space. Time was running out. The labs were dismantled; the locals were developing technology that might detect them. Secrecy and surprise were paramount.

The data was sufficient. The primitives' genome had immense headroom for improvement. The neuroplasticity was excellent, fertile ground for Integrationism. The seedship formulated its plans and began spending its nanofabricators prolifically building conversion pods. It would not stop until its tanks were exhausted.

Shortly before the pods were deployed, the AI began picking up video transmissions that it could scarcely believe. Could these primitives be developing radical Integrationism on their own? The AI quickly adjusted the programs to suit what it guessed the local culture might value, but the time had come. The pods were launched. In a couple dozen years: Podfall.

OK so that's the backstory. Pods are designed to advance the cause of Integrationism. To an Integrationist, they are one of the two basic paths of Transhumanist apotheosis. Ultimately, it comes down to a choice: advance the living being though biotech and cybernetics into some (unstated) perfect final state.

The alternative is synthesism: creation of end-state beings that replace your own species: artificial races, and especially robots/AI. Of course, the Integrationists use genetic engineering and AIs of their own. This is ok for intricate doctrinal reasons that make zero sense if you're not one of the belligerents in this ancient conflict.

Most alien civilizations develop over millions of years in Europa-style moons. Intelligent seafood, basically. Every few million years, one of those races beats the odds and invents space travel. They then explore and colonize the galaxy, often leading to other advanced races they discover inventing the technology as well. Civilization flourishes, then war, and then the races either advance to some higher plane or go extinct.

Every once in a very rare while, life develops on one of the rocky, airy worlds inside what we call the Goldilocks Zone. Such races inevitably develop space travel and are an every-few-million-years disruption to the normal cycle of life. The Race looked vaguely like Humans, hence the AI's confusion.

How exactly did Warframe get run into the ground? I still see it marketed all over the place, and there's not many games out there with its style.

Seedships are designed to find primitive colonies and transform them into Integrationist strongholds. That means two things. First, locking them into the integrationist technology tree by advancing them just far enough that integrationism is always an easier solution to any given problem than backtracking and inventing synthesist technologies. (This is called a competency trap.)

The second part is converting their ideology, culture, and institutions. This is very hard to do, and big changes are only possible in a crisis. So the idea is to engineer a massive social upheaval, a partial social collapse. When society puts itself together, if the AI did its job, the winners will be the ones who adopted Integrationism most fervently.

That's where the pods, battlesuits, and transforming mecha come in. It HAS to work this way. Just building robots would be rank heresy and utterly defeat the purpose. The AI itself might even suicide once it's convinced it's purpose is fulfilled, just to keep AI tech out of the hands of its targets.

The idea is that throwing this supertech into the hands of primitives, more or less at random, will capture imaginations even as it tears apart society. Some will be criminals, some soldiers, some workers, etc. All will be gifted, suddenly, with power that can't be countered except by another like themselves. In short order, all the positions of power will be held by people who have been Podded. Or, by people who secure the loyalty and manage to run an organization of those who have been Podded. Either way, that's the power base, and only reverse-engineering and promulgating the technology will grow that power base.

Its a laundry list but the short story is:
>There's a grenade launcher call the tonkor. Its the best fucking gun in the game. DE has tried to nerf it several times. Each time they instead crippled the other grenade launchers, leaving the tonkor still obscene.
>There's a late game mission call Draco. It is the go to map for XP grinding. You can take a weapon from brand new to max rank in like 2 waves. DE doesn't like this. Instead of lowering the enemy spawns or decreasing the xp gains for the map, they instead cripple two of the warframes people used to grind the mission. Said frames are basically useless now.
>the Veeky Forums clan Warbros ranked #1 in every event. DE started to change the scoring tallies mid event to lower warbros scores. Warbros still wins because they're fucking autistic.

>Warbros still wins because they're fucking autistic.

Add in the dilution of drop tables to frustrate players into buying plat, a kickbot so hyper sensitive it bans players that haven't played for weeks, and any criticism toward any of this is met with either "its just a beta bro" the game's been in open beta for three years now. or your post is deleted they call you a child and maybe even ban you from the forums for being "abusive."
I only still play it to hang out with my clan.

If I remember right, that guy broke a finger hammering his keyboard.

Question.
By the time a Seedship sends out pods (both in most scenarios I can imagine and the one presented in your writeup), large power blocs capable of isolating and studying the pods would have arisen (both national and corporate). Since this could lead to their scientific discoveries being used for Synthesism, what measures would the ship AI take to overcome this factor? Would the pods be resistant to being isolated, and interested in seeking out potential converts, would there be a stealth tech so that corporations and governments don't just hoard them, and instead have to deal with the fact that they have superhumans with mechs running around all of a sudden?

Additionally, does the integration process change the mentality of the individual, or would a KKK grand wizard who finds one get a suit with a white pointy cap that helps him locate black people? Since the location of the pods are static, wouldn't communities of individuals exposed (which tend to be relatively homogeneous) create what are essentially super clans? IE, pod lands in North Korea, suddenly we have an army of brainwashed communists who think this tech comes from their glorious leader, or is the dispersal broad and dense enough that this isn't a problem? Do the pods target population centers, or is there some other metric used?

STRONKOR SO GOOD

I think the actual problem with the game is a good CC frame either with energy restores or a trinity can literally incapacitate the entire map non stop. So you get to levels where even the STRONKOR is peanuts and the only chance you have of grinding those fucking chase prime parts is by hard locking all enemies constantly

Is Excalibur Blind Spam still legit?

>There's a grenade launcher call the tonkor. Its the best fucking gun in the game.
Tonkor is over hyped. Sure it's probably the highest damage per shot weapon, but there are plenty of situation where other weapons are better.

>There's a late game mission call Draco. It is the go to map for XP grinding. You can take a weapon from brand new to max rank in like 2 waves. DE doesn't like this. Instead of lowering the enemy spawns or decreasing the xp gains for the map, they instead cripple two of the warframes people used to grind the mission. Said frames are basically useless now.
Which frames did they cripple? The last frame who's rework I would call crippling would be Mesa but that was a long time ago and wasn't just because of Draco. And it's not so much that Draco it's self is a problem, it's more an issue of just how the star map and the mission on it are. They have been working on the 3rd iteration for the star map for months now and it's supposedly getting close-ish to done.

>the Veeky Forums clan Warbros ranked #1 in every event. DE started to change the scoring tallies mid event to lower warbros scores. Warbros still wins because they're fucking autistic.
Uh, you're griping because there is a tryhard clan? I mean that shit happens in any MMO or MMO-like game.

So that's the fluff.

Now go read the Power Armor CYOA. One night, out of the blue, pods begin dropping all over the world. Call it one pod per 100,000 humans. That's 70,000 total in the world, and 3000 in the United States, dropped in waves a few weeks apart. Pods drop in pairs along with considerable space trash. One pod drops in a populated area, the other in a more stealthy area where a nearly pre-built mecha can be finalized and given a vehicle form. They're stealthy and extremely well-shielded, making them hard to track. Pods fall at night, therefore also mostly snaring the kind of people who are out at night.

On the surface, drops appear to be random. However, a disproportionate number of pod drops have snared notable people. Or fallen in clusters, such as the motorcycle gang that had five guys podded at the same time. In intelligence circles, there's suspicion that the aliens have a reconnaissance element on-planet and may be intentionally targeting individuals, at least some of the time.

> Tentatively, how about Chuck Yeager and Buzz Aldrin? Try to pick famous or notable people, but not necessarily movie stars, musicians, or other celebrities. In your campaigns, try to limit yourself to one or two celebs total, but feel free to pick famous engineers, activists, criminals, entrepreneurs, etc. How about Larry Ellison in a samurai mech?

Divide that number evenly into three parts.

In the first few weeks, total panic and chaos. Pods are swallowing people up, and there's no telling why or what's happening or what will happen to the people swallowed.