Bay 12 Games Forum

Incidentally, Angel is probably coming dangerously close to mindrape herself...

Yes, because all girls will be happy by being made into rabid slave-girl hentai people.

...Wait, does part of this process involve brainwashing?

There could even be viroids specifically made to just 'move this long and then die' to be resource haulers. After all, they could be made slightly more advanced than a virus, which to me means they have something that functions as a yes or no, which would determine other things they do. Just one, and still simple things, but it's the difference between having a skyscraper and having a bunch of steel bars several kilometers high.

That would be simple enough, in theory: Give them limited power supplies.
Seems like it would require pouring multiple mixtures of a nanobot-construction material slurry on the building-to-be, though...

Really will enjoy it.

And given that you described it as "breaking" Selina...

Poor Selina.

And it's kinda sad, in a way, that Demons Run was so specific...I can't help but wonder what the others would think.

<Yes...>

<I knew it!>

<Why did you include me!?!? ...and... um... it was a... a nice kiss Angel...>

<I...don't wanna think about it...>

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 05, 2013, 04:28:49 pm

((It's not just earthworms. There's other kinds of worms, too, you know...))

((I don't see how this addresses the point. If you've got "worms" filling the "eat dead stuff and make things plants can eat better" role, what does the size of the real-world Annelida or Nematoda have to do with anything whatsoever?))

((Earthworms don't do everything, you know.))

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 05, 2013, 04:28:49 pm

((I'm not confident enough in my abilities as an ecologist to create a list of creatures and say, "If you had these you'd have everything you need for an ecosystem!" But for a professional's estimate, take a look at the list of species in Biosphere 2. There were apparently 3,800 of them...and there were still issues, so that may not be enough.))

((And what makes you say I intend to enforce a similar level of complexity for this game?))

((The fact that you brought up bacteria, for one. Or that you brought up the failing ecosystems to begin with, for that matter. Or that you asked what species I thought would be necessary.
Building on that idea, here's basically what just happened:

You: "It would only take four creations to make a stable ecosystem!"
Me: "Which four?"
You: "Grass, Deer, Wolves, Worms."
Me: "That is insufficient."
You: "Then list all the species you think would be needed."
Me: "Probably about 3,800."
You: "Why do you think I'm going into such detail?"

You seem to have a bit of a goalpost-moving issue...in that you suddenly switched which side of the field was yours, right after I made a goal.))

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 05, 2013, 04:28:49 pm

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((Because now people are handwaving paralyzing venoms and assassin beetle swarms in, and the ecosystem still doesn't have any trees or large herbivores anyway. What's the point? If you want or need it, create it.))

((The problem is, no one has and there's no reason to think they will. If someone doesn't care about making every single species "interesting," why not just let them stick some mundane rats, trees, etc, in so the world works?))

((Of course they haven't, there's never been an opportunity to. They've tried to shovel life and other conditions into creations where it didn't work that way, though, which I'd say is a pretty good precedent for deciding their desert tribes have poisonous bugs available when the time comes.

((So...what makes you think that players will suddenly change?))

If they don't care about making every species interesting, they can wait for someone else to make them first, or they can make one for the sake of themselves and the world having one. I hardly think that amongst six players with an edge and, what, eight cycling in and out, expecting a single from of edible fauna or decomposing agent anywhere you expect life is putting a massive strain on every single player to personally waste massive quantities of time fiddling with eight different species of tree-eating bugs apiece.))

((WHY. DOES. EVERY. SINGLE. SPECIES. NEED. TO. BE. INTERESTING? You've never answered that. What's so bad about having some rats? Do you need to make this world so alien?))

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 05, 2013, 04:28:49 pm

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((You're complaining about them and insisting they're absolutely vital, so apparently so.

((If you define "massive" as "anything anyone cares about," then naturally you can point to anything someone asks for as being "massive".

((But you just admitted they're important. You claim the world can't live without them. You can't say something's a piddling irrelevant detail in the context of bitching about how the entire world's going to fall apart if nobody deals with it.

((...Remind me again why the importance of the organisms is germane? You're saying that anything important has to be specifically created by the players?))

Imagine if this were a squad-based shooter game, and I said you couldn't just have "ammo," you had to have different types of ammo- calibers, materials, payloads, etc. You could go on to make all manner of different caliber and quality and payload rounds, or you could shrug and create one arbitrary round for rifles and one for pistols and maybe one for assault rifles or sniper rifles, and then you'd ignore it entirely.
You hopefully wouldn't insist that there's thousands of real-world ammo types and the squad can't operate without them but they're also boring and stupid and nobody cares so I should just assume you have access to a Schrodinger's catalog of vaguely defined Whatever You Need ammunition.))

((However, I would assume that the types were being abstracted out unless otherwise noted; I wouldn't assume homogenity.
You are the one who said that there were no rats, bugs, plants, bacteria, etc, until we made them. You are the one who insisted that we pay this much attention to detail. You are the one requesting that we need to create every organism that exists.

I'm the one who wants regions to come with the basic organisms.))

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 05, 2013, 04:28:49 pm

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All you're asking for is me to handwave everything you don't personally find interesting yet. What kind of grass or trees or vermin or diseases a place has can have a huge impact on all that interesting stuff that comes later.

((And why does every species have to be "interesting"?))

((What's the point of a species that isn't? Why mention that there's over 2500 species of beetles if not one will ever in any way become relevant?
I mean, if you absolutely want to create boring beetles, that's fine. You can do that. I require you to describe your creations, not make them interesting. But if you're going to make boring beetles, I do insist that it's because you felt the beetles of this world should be boring, and not because your handwaving got out of hand.))

((I'd accept that, if it wasn't for the fact that without those beetles and the thousands of other species we need, the world would die. In other words, you're presenting us with a Morton's Fork: Either you make a lot of boring species that are needed for the world to work, or you make a lot of "interesting" species that are needed for the world to work.
What I want to know is, why do we need to make every species?))

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 05, 2013, 04:28:49 pm

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It's not silly to make a grassland area, because you can make the conditions favor grasses; more importantly, it's not silly to make separate, discrete regions with qualities you desire. What is silly is trying to make Schrodinger's Grasslands that have no concrete features beyond being grasslands, then trying to add interesting things to your generic quantum plains.))

((The problem is that this was apparently not clear, because people have been making regions with the assumption that basic species will be in place. This gets especially ludicrous in forests, but since most biomes are basically defined by flora, it's always an issue. If a desert region and a forest region look the same when first created, why bother distinguishing between the two before the plants are actually added?))

((I take full responsibility for communicating how the game is supposed to work to players. That said, I really suspect that this is purely a case of them not reading it at all or deciding they'll try anyway, because I don't really see what wasn't clear. Other than the counterintuitiveness of creating a place you're trying to name "The Verdant Swamp" when it hasn't actually got any trees or vines.

((As far as I noticed, it was generally and understandably assumed that little details like boring bushes, boring bugs, boring bacteria, etc, would be taken care of until you off-handedly mentioned that such things were not so.))

There are three reasons to distinguish between regions prior to plants and animals actually inhabiting them.

One, I felt the need to have discrete regions. This naturally lends itself to multistage projects.

Two, you can define basic properties like temperature and what grows well in the soil. A forest and a desert probably won't look the same on creation, because one will probably be a lifeless expanse of dry sand, while the other will be a lifeless expanse of fairly good, reasonably moist soil, possibly with rivers running through it.

Three, this allows flora and fauna to spread or die out naturally, as opposed to being locked in or out of a region because this particular forest wasn't created with wolves in it or this hellish volcanic basin used to have pine trees so obviously it still does.))

((Remind me, how does starting with basic life change ANY of these?))

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 05, 2013, 04:28:49 pm

((Again, I ask you: Why not make the basic, boring species, and if someone wants to add an "interesting" rat-niche creature or tree whatever, it can live there? Seriously, is it any fun to create a neat creature that promptly dies off because no ecosystem has been created yet?

((And again I answer: That's pointless. You don't need a thousand nameless rat variants padding the ecosystem and mucking with just what everything has available.

((Precisely. Why are you making us make every little species of rodent, every species of arthropod, every species of anything that exists?))

Presumably, it is indeed not fun to create a neat creature that dies off immediately because there's nothing to support it. To me, the solution to this would be to ensure that you don't create things unless they can survive in the place you're creating them, not make them anyway and then hope the game warps itself around accommodating whatever you feel like working on at the moment.

((What's wrong with letting regions start with those basic animals?))

I mean, would you suggest I remove temperature if someone made snowmen in a desert? That wouldn't be very fun, but that's presumably why you shouldn't do that.))

((No, but that's hardly a good comparison. A better one is: If the game was about making snowmen, I would suggest not setting it in a desert.

And that's ignoring that many deserts actually get below freezing fairly commonly. Even ignoring the ice caps, the Gobi is pretty cold.))

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 05, 2013, 04:28:49 pm

And another consideration: Are these species being assumed to be there really so much worse than assuming there is a sun? You were fine with a huge glowing celestial body for free, why not some little species? Especially since it would be a lot less time- and Belief-consuming to make a star than all the little critters needed to make the world work.))

((I said the exact opposite of that. There is no sun. There has never been a sun. There will never be a sun until and unless one is created.

((Okay, sun-like activity. But, really, you set your sights too low. Why not force players to create matter and time? Natural laws? How about the concept of existence?
Really, how much are you going to force players to create, and how much can you just assume is there?))

The current world(s) isn't a freezing hellish abyss because I went ahead and took general light levels and temperature as some of those moderate qualities you can define in regions on creation- in essence, I assumed everyone wanted their place to not be a cold dark hell even though there's no sun, and decided not being a cold dark hell in the absence of a sun was an acceptable way for worlds to work.

((Why not go a step further and assume that we wanted our forests to have trees, our deserts to have beetles, our oceans to have zooplankton, our just-about-everywhere to have rodents?))

Incidentally, another example of this philosophy- if you want a sun, make a sun. If you think you can get by without one, do so. If you prefer not having one, better yet. I'm not going to auto-add a sun just for the hell of it or because nobody wants to make it themselves but "we need one."))

((And we were getting by without a sun. Yet we can't get by without someone creating a species for each niche?))

Or we could have Goom-Bess or Cherish take the quest, and then provide proof that Ciro is a sibling.

Right?