So some of you might be aware of what Von Neumann machines are (if only from here http://xkcd.com/387/), but in case you don't, they are essentially machines that have self-replication capabilities. This means that they can make copies of themselves which, in turn, make more copies. So I was thinking that a cool unit or support power would be to either build or summon some of these, and they replicate themselves by absorbing units in a certain area. They could be nanobots that just appear as a growing cloud which disintegrates units within the cloud, or as machines which physically deconstruct enemies and create copies of themselves. And they would just consume everything in a given area until either they ran out of material, were ordered to stop, or were somehow destroyed. So yeah, that's just an idea.
Well. You basically explained the whole point of the game. Not much to add to that. The difference is that no robot here really builds itself. Rather, they build the tools that build the tools that build the bots that make the things blow up. It's a bit more of a hive mind, with a "queen" bot and many different types of drones that contribute to a greater whole.
You could check out the background story of "Machines - Wired for War" Theoreticly the game had almoste the same idear as Plantery Anihilation, but without the Large Scale Solar System fights. The background story there was that mankind launched terraformer robots to distant planets after they found out that human tissue couldnt survive there devoloped FTL Travel. Bla bla , long story short. They launched a couple of Master Control Units, or MCU´s, that established the base, terraformed the planet, waited for humans but they never came. 1000 years later all ressources are gone, they copy the FTL tech from there seed ships and beginn to spread out to terraform all worlds to human standarts. 1 MCU meets another one, a logical error occures and both MCU´s think the other one has a malfunction. But no one wants to give up controll and so both AI´s decide that they need weapons to take out the other one and correct the error. But i see where you want to go with the idear. I would say that would be a cool special unit for ancient tech. The PA Robots are Warmachines. Never intended to be anything else. But a Von Neumann device is more like a probe, using the method you allready described. I could imagine that the PA Warmachines could find tech like that and repurpose it for there own needs as a WMD or a highly advanced scout unit. It seems quit logical that humans would have constructed some von neumans to scout the universe and that lay dormant at some worlds as a tech that can be recovered.
You could have an unit, that uses wrecks to build copies of itself. It would be kinda weak, but with a large enough wreckage field you could get quickly tons of it without the need of additional factories. Attack a badly defended enemy base with them and you could end up with more units after the attack then before the attack. :twisted:
As bobucles said, its mostly the point of the game to, as a faction, replicate until you control all things. And although i acknowledge that this is different to a specific bot that can replicate and fight your enemies by itself consuming resources, it is important to recognise that division of labour means that the former system with specific roles for each unit within the replication process is vastly superior and would be preferred over the general purpose consume-and-multiply 'tanks'. That said the idea has definitely got potential in terms of coolness factor so the challenge would be to make it an impressive/scary phenomenon without it fulfilling the same role as general faction expansion (which could otherwise do it better). This is fantastically demonstrated in the film "the day the earth stood still", where as a weapon this was used for indiscriminate extermination and assimilation. The idea being that these nanobots focus all energy on replication, rather than controllability or strategy, thereby forming a plague of grey matter. This could be a cool feature ingame, acting somewhat like tiberium in C&C, ie it is slow spreading but deadly to all who cross it, Obv some sort of counter(/cure) would have to exist, preferably expensive and high tech to keep the nanos as a genuine threat in a fixed area, but it would add a new dynamic to the game and achieve the lore-goal of being a cool yet formidable tide of badness, (a sort of desperate-player caused plague). Stephen
I recognize that this is kinda the idea of the game, but I was thinking of utilizing this as some sort of power, like a nanobot swarm. Something where you could summon it, but after that it was more or less out of your control. One interesting idea is that it could be used as a superweapon, but one where it would affect both sides indiscriminately. Like if there was a contested planet that one side really didn't want the other side to have, he could use a swarm of these nanobots to render the planet uninhabitable. It would mean that he wouldn't be able to take the planet, but neither could his opponent.
With the key difference that the planet is still, you know, there. Just barren... Hm! Then again, if the nanoswarm reached such a scale that it consumed everything on a planet, it kinda diminishes the impact "asteroid annihilating everything" would have in terms of wow factor.
There's a unit (or more precisely,a moving bomb) in Zero-K which do the same thing you ordered: absorb wrecks,self-replicate and moving to destroy everything. Not super-effective,through.
Viceroids anyone? I agree that this would be a cool unit, but it's kinda like a self-replicating army ant. There's already so many that it's kinda arbitrary. That suicide bomb unit scratches my C&C itch though.
This kind of unit would work well as a "disaster", though I remember Uber saying they wern't planning on including that kind of mechanic, though a time, or random encounter based disaster mod which spawns some replicator bots would be cool. Also, replicators could work as a neutral team which attacks if you get too close to their base, or some kind of smaller, more frequently occurring mini-base - a bit like the Flood were in Halo Wars campaign missions? You could potentially even seed neutral bases of this type, by building some factory which just works on it own, and then run off - it would be perfect in un-favorable choke points instead of building your own turrets which you have to go back to, and no need to worry about resources, if they could reclaim all resources in a given area, based on the swarm size, to build up their number, before the enemy attacks. Though these neutral units would still attack your units if they got too close, so its more balanced. I always liked the neutral bases in SupCom, but it would be an added dynamic if something like this could be the bases defences if there were some randomly, map generated neutral bases, instead of loads of turrets/shields, with the plague affect happening if you throw too many units at trying to kill the swarm, and not succeeding. Or, if you could "infect" a big asteroid, and make it into a planet killer, by having the replicators then infect the planet the asteroid hits and only destroys a small portion? Im hoping to get into modding this game as im already a programmer, so if anyone thinks any part of what I just said is a decent idea ill have a go - when we get access to the modding stuff of course Mike
Give this guy a medal for mind-reading. Planet killing without cracking the damn thing in twain. I personally like to entertain the idea of creating a swarm of small meteorites to shower the enemy planet, each holding a dozen or so little replicators. The replicators 'eat' surrounding mass and reproduce more replicators, each subsequent generation becoming more and more specialized than the last until the first generations are eaten for resources, then they begin to spread autonomously. Think 'grey goo' scenario, but more awesome. The only sure-fire counter would be to nuke it from orbit-er... mass carpet nuke afflicted continents.
