Hive Queen Quest 53.5

It returns!

Once more into the breach. FOR MOTHER!

FUCK YES! FOR MOTHER!

Some of the ship designs have changed, notably the citadel. Just a heads up. All the info is on 1d4chan

So what's first on the agenda, QM?

Rolled 40 (1d100)

FOR MOTHER! RED AND FLUFFY!

IT'S FINALLY BACK!!

You didn't write up any of the systems in player-accessible prose during the waiting-for-/qst/-to-settle part of hiatus did you

i know that procrastination feel

Things were going pretty good really. I saw nothing I didn't really enjoy all that much before. I must say though, the funnest parts of the quest is SCIENCE, And also dealing with other species. Especially our human pals.

I still want to see Elizabeth go full Kerrigan and get to interact with other human beings again.

Aw yeah. I've been waiting for this.

Alright here's my first question.
When we retrieved the white queen's artifact from earth we found a skeleton, and when we mind-read the thing it ended with dr.seiner (the elder) holding on to the thing, is the corpse we found the same man as in the vision and can we clone him with intact memories?

It's hard to decide from this side of the QM screen.

What were some potential ideas for simplifications that were submitted in email so far?

I'm more concerned that we are physically incapable of doing all the things we want to do in the in-universe time we want to do it, and are IC capable of doing it, just because IC time correlates linearly with OOC time.

Since it's generally 24 hours per thread, and thread's time is finite.

I feel like we could set some things on 'auto'... but there's a balance, because doing things manually is the fun part.

>clone memories from bones

We were worrying about *Adam* Seiner's entirely-intact brain spoiling after we killed him and raced to bring it home, and we killed him mere minutes before.

What do you think?

Agreed. Designing was also fun at times, especially when new toys were unlocked. I actually thought about a few designs during the long hiatus.

We have been speaking rather regularly over twitter actually, and we both are more or less of the opinion that both our quests have gotten to the scale that our current way of organizing simply is no longer tenable, or at least won't be for much longer.

I have a few ideas myself, but wanted to get any major issues you guys have on the player side that I may not have noticed dealt with first.

Planet and system management, I would think.
At the moment, it is a mess. Multiple isolated resource income points scattered across multiple planets and systems, all having different rates of income, worker and upkeep costs, and margins of profitability.

My current idea is to do away with all the various independent resource points like harvesters or different farms, and instead assign every planet a resource stat that is essentially the sum of all sources for that resource, as well as the availability and ease of acquiring that resource. This stat could then be modified or added to by large, planetary scale hive building projects and worker population.

Likewise, workers would no longer be directly built, and would no longer cost anything directly, as they would be considered part of the hive maintenance, with local egg layers producing them as needed to repair and maintain local infrastructure.

Honestly, I actually just ran a tiny quest intended to be a one-shot on /qst/ to test how it was from a new QM perspective, and it ended up taking about three weeks.

One of the things that bug me about this quest is the limit to how many "actions" we have per turn.

Name of that Quest?

What was it?

Clearly we must unlock Very Advanced Psionic Reading that will allow us to read Seiner the elder's brainwaves 100 years into the past via telemetry of the location where he was last known to be alive.

It's tachyons bitch I ain't gotta explain shit.

OK sounds good, in terms of nutrients and metals score how would the new system affect it, factoring in that we no longer need a logistics chain due to teleporters.

Just stopping by before bed to say it's great to see you back, man.

Same, off to bed now but I am very much looking forward to reading once I wake up!

Ahahaha she returns!

Glad to have you back, QD. Never gave up hope.

>our current way of organizing simply is no longer tenable, or at least won't be for much longer
I agree it's a bit messy and will be getting a lot messier.

Other QMs have worked with large amounts of information by using images. Usually it means you have to be at least a bit imaginative artistically though. NERV QM managed to start a dungeon crawler with images only.

fuck that bump, bumping for mother!

Reminds of that free time I had when I thought 'what should the Hive research if it was in 40k'.

I would suggest doing it by system instead of planet considering the scope of our ability to make on and off planet resource collection

Yeah. I mean we *could* send other hybrids to infiltrate other worlds, not just sending them to a meeting on Path.

We *could* send hybrids to Mercy for potential nutrient tech research, or to Mentan for ultimate research jackpots to hack into the databases of to feed the Thinkers' research-lust.

But it takes time from other things.

All that automation makes sense. It doesn't make too much sense to have section of our time limited thread debating, for example, how many ghost beetles/egg layers to make on Gemini or exactly how many warriors/heavy warriors to have on a battleship. That made more sense when we had really limited resources, but with a big empire streamlining is logical. As long as there's a reasonable expectation that we will have adequate resources, I think this is a good idea that will let us do more juicy diplomacy/espionage/science in the mean time.

The skeleton is indeed Adam's grandfather, and you could clone him from the skeleton, but his brain is long gone and with it his memories.

This is exactly why I'm dedicating a thread to it. I don't want to assume any part of the crunch is just something that should be automated without making sure you all would be okay with it.

And I've thought of some new techs, too.

The rather blandly named Cyberpunk Detective Quest. Essentially my first attempt at crime mystery. Totally unrelated, but I archived it in suptg if you want to read it.
suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?searchall=Cyberpunk Detective Quest

Well, let's take an arbitrarily created example. Let's say Leeland has a Nutrient stat of 4 and a Metal stat of 5 on a scale of 0-10. Your farms, harvesters, ect would be lumped in as something that is expanded as the hive grows, or is built in vast numbers as part of a singular planetary project. These projects could either add to the planet's overall stat, or offer some kind of multiplier, or some other modifier.

His art is amazing, but I can hardly draw stick figures myself.

Yeah it was a mess when it came to base and resource management

Just use something like for the sins of a solar empire or early total war?

every planet we control has a fix resource amount and we automatically start at the minimal amount, just have the upgrades allow us to get more till we reach the cap?

Those that make sense?

Like one planet can have a cap of 5 for food and 2 for metal? you have to build the four food upgrade to reach 100% while you only need to upgrade metal production once to reach 100%

revenge on kek's when?

You mean how many bio-tanks on Gemini. obviously the egglayers answer is 'one'.

The number of clones we can make at one time is a more serious question.

So systems & sectors in Stellaris, we set certain groups of planets/bases to do a thing/things then largely forget about about it?

I DON'T HAVE A REACTION IMAGE SUFFICIENT TO EXPRESS THE SHEER ENERGY OF MY EJACULATION.

AWW SHIIIIEEET

I thought QuestDrone was kill forever.

OK so how would our current hives rate on that scale? I would suggest using a % system rather than 0-10 but your call, and what modifiers do you suggest for building and units?

How do you plan on modifying combat?

I wonder if we can partially--partially--automate infiltrating the Union once we have accomplished the basic prerequisites of making IDs, a means of making creds, and having smuggled ourselves interplanetarily at least once.

It would be nice to be on more than Gemini and Path, just in case.

Can we do away with keeping count for individual ground units?

I mean we are a swarm really and always have reserves

Instead just say we can only deploy a certain amount of ground units for the engagement

>Quest about social insects.
Lurking with great interest.

You know, we might want to just put an egglayer and an advanced relay in a pod and just drop it into every planet with an ocean we can find. With the egglayer laying some quantum veins infrastructure the psionic relays can be sustained just by feeding them nutrients from offplanet.

Meteors aren't that suspicious. Ships have been dismissed before as such already on Huron.

You can do better than lurk, user.
>Archives suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Hive Queen Quest

Early threads are fun.

I like this idea, even if I'm afraid it dumbs it down way too much. As long as the caps are variable and there are more options than simply trying to reach the cap, like multipliers as QD said.

What a time to be alive.

We need it unless we want to drown ourselves in crunch, i mean it already must be a pain with just what? 2 systems under direct control?

In my opinion the most entertaining threads are when we go full ALIENS on some human outpost or research facility.

Too fun.

That's what I'm still working on, I figure the base number would be added up and multiplied to the final total, and then that total is translated to some ungodly large number that adds up to the massive income rates that an entire, 100% settled and exploited planet would offer.

For example, adding the film harvesters would be a planetary construction project to build the maximum number that would be sustainable, and would add, say, 3 points the Leeland's base stat, bringing it to 7 in this example. That new stat is then translated somehow to the actual income of the hive. I was thinking maybe multiplied by something like the planet's development level, essentially the number and size of the hive's infrastructure across the planet, as well as a generalized worker population. The more developed the planet, the more resources can be harvested at once, which could be represented as a percentage.

Say Leeland is 50% developed (there is still room for local life) so we multiply the stat of 7 by 50 for 350 after upkeep. (this is just an example, we can fine tune exact rates as we go, this is the early rough draft essentially)

Yeah, please do check out the archives as said. It's really one of the most fun quests to do a long read through of as we slowly develop from one damaged pod and newborn queen to an empire with thousands of ships.

Many keks were also had during the long journey.

>2 systems
Totally under our control, but we have numerous expansions on several worlds.

Well, if you ignore the brief flame war which to my shame I was a part of. At least I wasn't part of the one surrounding Lyle's capture though.

I still can't believe people were actually trying to white knight some random female scientist or whatever the fuck she was.

could we get to 100% while not totally wiping out local xenos?

That stills seems complicated and heavy amount of time spent on crunching the numbers

I mean either we make it simple or keep our empire small then

I don't regret it. I still think we should have killed lyle. He deserved a warriors death. I've accepted the clone/brain/infestation experiments though. The rest didn't really matter as much as everyone thought at the time.

It would have made a really dramatic story if a single survivor got away. Too bad she had our data.

Again, sorry about that.

It is getting a bit crazy, yea.

I think you mentioned some time ago that you wanted to convert the non-ship drones from individuals to 'swarms'; aka the non-ship version of fleets.
I think we should have a system where we design swarms like ships, and just go with that.
Something like:
Warrior Swarm (medium):
Infantry: Warriors with Thorn Launchers
Special 1: Heavy Warriors
Special 2: Fire Support Warriors with Those Bolter-Alikes We got

With the size and cost of a Swarm being the big deal with it.
Each swarm would have a 'grunt' unit making up the bulk of its forces, and a number of special slots dependent on its size. For a 60/20/20 split, for example.

Thoughts?

Holy mother of fuck

That's so fucking tedious

Simplify it for fucks sake

But Lyle is quite possibly my favorite character.

Only second to Queen snarkiness,

It is wonderful to have you back QD! Unfortunately I need to tack on another 3 pages to my final paper by tonight so I probably can't participate, still I look forward to reading over this later!

Anyway, I certainly don't mind the idea of that. It would probably be a lot more streamlined at least.

Maybe now we know more, but at the time we were just throwing him in a pit till we decided what to do with him.

However this goes, i hope theres still room for us to suggest things.

e.g. like how i suggested using the scaled down shield tech to make multilayered shield projectors that can reinforce each other (on starship hulls).

Rude speaker drone has my vote.

We reached a point where can can safely stop tracking of the small units

Instead just take it for granted that we produce enough workers, warriors etc to maintain our empire and defend it, and that they obvious have the needed adaptions to survive there work environment

"That is not how you do thing for mother"

So did you catch up on papa AI Quest in hiatus at least. For Mother takes on a very different meaning there.

Papa AI quest chose bad end and basically went full retard.
it sucked.

Probably not. The hive gives off pollution too, just as any other techological civilization

It's actually got a bunch for formulas in it that add up everything. I just need to make sure the number of drones and their costs are correct.

It would actually be a lot better on my end, since it streamlines it in a way that all the resources are sort of coming from one base number instead of arbitrarily emerging from multiple structures. I would just need to add up one number for each planet/system, and only need to change them when you build a new structure.

Workers, warriors, and various basic units would essentially be included in the hive as a kind of free or semi free militia that automatically defends the planet, while more advanced drones could be included in other structures, such as aerodynamic fighter drones maintained in hangar bays that would intercept attackers.

The fast majority of this quest has been built on player suggestion, and I never intend to change that. I'm not creative enough.

Seriously? if were going to maintain multiple holdings then yeah planet infrastructure management going to have to be basic and simple then

Just give count resources from the places we got 100% control off and just have each have a simple fixed amount of resources (food, metal) that we get out of them

1-10 whatever you want and let it represent the amount needed to feed a civ

They only thing we going to actual try to keep direct count are the spaceships then

nooo :(

That was probably because everyone was depressed from how the Thanatos fight concluded.

Fucking dice Gods, man.

Better than failing the outrageous dice rolls the other choice entailed, resulting in objectively worse end with no compromise given.

>Instead just take it for granted that we produce enough workers, warriors etc to maintain our empire and defend it, and that they obvious have the needed adaptions to survive there work environment
>defend it

I wouldn't mind a system where once a colony reaches a certain size the
4000 workers
400 warriors
100 SPECIALIZED
Turns into a single module and automates to a degree, but the initial establishment and adaptations are things we should do. Especially the warriors. Having an automated governance in a direction like we have in one case is fine.

go big or go homo

Alight your call then about the resource system, but serious just don't bother to keep track of every actual drone at this point, it not hard for us to accept that we have warriors, workers, heavies and other drones already and that we have enough to invade a planet

We are the hive after all

As the MC in that quest, we stood and fought, and the ending was a cop out.
My view will not change on this matter.

I've been wondering. is there a way to trick ships scanners into thinking our ships are bigger than they actually are? Like some sort of digital hologram module?

For example we put the module on a corvette. to normal eyes it looks exactly like a corvette, but the ships scanners say it's a battleship, causing massive confusion and likely errors on targeting systems.

At this point I question the need to even split the resources don't we have tech that let's us convert food in to metal and vice versa

We already researched all the most common environment adaptions

toxic, heat, space, water, tundra etc

unless you can think of another environment than those, cause we kinda finished all that tech now

Some sort of ECM module? I think we can tweak the stealth tech a bit to make it do the opposite.

So merge it into a single biomass thing?

Devilish, underhand, and frankly, mean. I love it.

>stood and fought
Ophion was a total cuck to the Malorians.

>they're shooting at us
>ask them nicely to stop

>they hate us
>let's be nice to them

>they hate cyborg malorians
>ok no more of those whatever they say

Maybe we could make a particle sprayer of some form, spray out magnetic particles and keep them in orbit around the ship with a magnetic generator. Opponents scanner pings off the trapped particle cloud and comes back as a larger signature.

I've had an idea for a speeder drone template (like the speeder bike sur from star wars). It's basically an aerodynamic drone with ramjets, but no wings and hover legs. I couldn't think of a niche for it though.

Also though about designing warriors specialized against scavengers, but had no ideas besides giving them conductive carapace and radiator tubes to resist blaster weaponry.

maybe just have it be a configurable thing. the more we research it the more control we have until a single corvette looks like a entire hive fleet.

Strange. e.g. Low gravity world with symbiotic/parasitic organisms that attatch to the hive workers.

Dustbowl worlds with winds that could shred spaceship armor.

Places with atmosphere that would dissolve normal biomass.

>normal eyes
>ships scanners
>no overlap in functionality
Are you suggesting they don't have visible spectrum sensors to show the actual reality too?

actual reality, as opposed to fake reality

Maybe we can make proper hologram projectors after some research. the end goal would be to convince our enemies that we are exponentially stronger than we really are.

Strap a bomb or mine layer/creep sprayer to the back of it. Rapid mine/creep deployment, or suicide run, like a living homing missile.