PA lore

Well we know so far that PA is machine vs machine fight but the lore on why they are fighting is not announced so lets have some fun making it up

So to kick it off here is my shot at it

The creator race built the machines as an army for protection but at some stage the conflict grew more and more until it overflowed and the creator race was no more.
The only thing left is metal planets and random broken tech on planets they once lived on and the remaining machines of war locked in endless battle in belief that the creators exist hidden.(to kill or keep safe from the enemy)

This is just a quick over view not to detailed (because frankly i rather type on keyboard then typing on phone )

Ok now lets hear what you all think or better yet your idea for the lore behind the game

I think TA style lore really suits the game.

An ancient war fought by machines created by two long extinct races. The war has been raging for millennia and the original cause of war was lost with the passing of the creator races. All that is left is the total annihilation of the enemy.

The machines continue to fight their autonomous war according to protocol. Self replicating, assimilating technology and moving from planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy in search of the enemy and resources to continue the war.

Some sentient carbon based lifeforms had a primitive competition where they would force robots (who are naturally peaceful) to fight. To gain an edge on the inferior carbon based lifeforms controlled robots some where given artificial intelligence. This soon gave way to real intelligence, and the inevitable pacification of the aforementioned lifeforms. So in homage to there humble beginnings every million years these robots battle over a solitary galaxy, with the side effect of destroying sentient and pre-sentient lifeforms. The winner gets to judge the pie baking competition and ride the Big float in the parade, celebrating robotic supremacy, held after the competition.

A lone Peewee lies on the floor, now crippled beyond repair. His cyborg brain is half missing, and as it short-circuits and malfunctions he finds himself imagining a future conflict. Worlds collide and empires rise and fall in his mind as his broken body twitches and whirs.

Kind of like David Lynch for robots.

Edit: Added Progenitor - Humans and backstory.
I am imagining Ellen narrating the part about the humans, and John narrating the machine part.
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Thousands of years ago on a planet inhabited by humans, some civiliations achieved a utopian prosperity, and found that overpopulation was destroying their planet inexorably. Their populations agreed to a self-reduction in numbers, and they prospered. But others who saw that prosperity wanted it for themselves, and emigrated there in ever increasing numbers for a better way of life. The host culture, finding that their way of life was threatened by a lack of interest in learning their culture found their progress sliding backward.

In an effort to stave off this threat to their culture a plan was implemented, and research into drone warfare to cull the numbers of emigrant invaders. The progress was too slow however, and new methods of automation and self determination were researched. This led to the creation of the world's first military A.I, and it seemed promising at first. It was melded with the current technology of the time, and a new form of machine emerged.

What began as faulty IFF systems spiraled out of control, and collateral damage found its way to institutions of history, annihilating all memory of the past. Battles waged onward, machines took over their means of manufacture, and the creators were forgotten, destroyed by their own creations. All temperance and control lost, the only means of justice became an eye for an eye.

In an effort to outmatch the enemy factions of machine, research led into an ever spiraling arms race, and eventually self replication was discovered. Their home planet exhausted of resources, machines took to the stars to continue their expansion. Encountering alien races, their technology was assimilated over their broken bodies, their culture crushed underfoot, the machines continued their war heedlessly. Eventually they achieved maximal efficiency in the theaters of war, and their offensive ground to a halt, both sides locked in a seething standstill.

Kinetic bombardment weapons were found to be the most efficient method of annihilating defenses, and entire planets were lost to the madness of wretched, mechanical desperation. The tides of war washed back and forth, leaving twisted, ruined planets in their wake, forever lost in the void, crippled beyond use. All that remains are the flickering lights of warfare rippling across the void, consuming the galaxy in a wildfire of madness.

Who are the progenitors?

Is it turtles all the way down?

I liked the sort-of-lore of the kickstarter trailer.

Which is the confirmed lack of a lore.

As in, there is no lore. They came about long ago, nobody knows where or why, they obviously have been at war as long as anyone has known, and they will pretty much always be at war.

No history, just a purpose of war, and war is what happens, and war is all that happens. Tomorrow, there will still be no history, still just be war, and where the war has moved to has little meaning because it is the same war as yesterday except on different but undeniably identical rocks.

At this point, it is an infinite war. They build themselves from resources on planets, they fight for planets, they destroy each other, they destroy planets. They find new planets, and do it all over again.

Tell me if I got it correct.

^^^ There's not any need for a story beyond saying that these people want to make these other people explode. TA had a really basic story that still managed to make no sense, and whilst SupCom's story is a bit more plausible (and the intro movie is never going to get old for me), it's still basically ideological differences leads to incessant shooting.

Incessant shooting is good.

If Uber can come up with a brilliant story then I would welcome it, but it really doesn't need to be anything more than robots are fighting and they can't remember why.

Although if there was some sort of existential horror involved (as in my post above) I would personally love it.

My vision when watching the concept pitch video was that a race (Humans perhaps?) in war developed this technology. The whole concept and idea behind it being a AI controlled commander unit that manufactures lesser AI controlled units (linked to the commanders AI perhaps, or robots simply being fully controlled by the AI commander without any AI themselves) easily on the field of battle.

The technology was then stolen by the other faction (perhaps just another branch of humanity), both sides keept capturing and perfecting the AI Commander technology and in the end it destroyed them. But the machines survived.

And then they keept on fighting and multiplying even when the factions (Or maybe even the whole race) that orginaly created them was long dead and the cause of the war was long forgotten.

Basicly thinking weapons doing what they were made for, even when no longer needed.

Interesting thoughts though, if they are incessantly warring, they did have to had a creator at one point.

What probably happened between decades and billions of years ago is that two armies build robots and robot commanders to war for them, they both eventually successfully killed every living member of each other's enemy, for the first time the only existing beings and thus the highest ranking members of the military on each side were robots, and they continued producing more commanders and soldier units which constantly kill each other which constantly build each other, which has been happening across the neverending planets for the last decades-billionyears.

Question is, did the robots actually achieve becoming sentient and acting on their own created ideas and thoughts, or are they still just doing as programmed, creating themselves and destroying their long-ago programmed targets?

Seconded. Can we have reskins of the various robots wearing party hats and asteroids being replaced with gigantic pies as a seasonal update, please?

Please, Mr. Mavor? Pretty please?

This.

The problem with any developed backstory is that it's about giant self-replicating robots throwing planets to each-other. It's just goofy. So any "realistic" (read : brown-coloured gritty) backstory will contrast to the point of ridiculous.
So any backstory would have to be goofy as well, but that's far harder to make right than one would think. Also, many people would dislike such backstory unless done perfectly, so you have the risk of alienating part of the players. (I personally like sacrificiallamb's one, but many won't.)

So the best move is to give the least possible amount of backstory, and give hints instead. People will then imagine their own, which, for them, will probably be better than what you would have come up with.

Now, you should still give bits of backstory, to give the game a flavour. Particularly to make things coherent, and give some (vague) hints For example :

Given their name, we can guess that they built other Commanders. I would go for them having been created by the humans in the final stages of whatever conflict ended up with the Commanders and with Mankind's demise. They then created the next generation of Commanders to continue and expand the battle, trying to out-grow the other faction(s).

Now, if only the Progenitors could create new Commanders, the conflict would have probably either ended up a long time ago, or they would never been seen on the battlefield, staying behind to build new Commanders. So regular Commanders can also create new Commanders, which is why this war is truly infinite, as they can continue to waste galaxies after galaxies, destroyed Commanders being replaced by new ones.
And, for some reason, Commanders each try to ultimately destroy every other one. Which doesn't say that they can't form alliances, even lasting ones. But somehow, even if an alliance managed to be the last one standing (not that there's much of a chance), it would end up shattering and warring against each-other.
It doesn't prevent them to build other Commanders for the same reason : the new Commanders (with some luck and/or skill) will attack the far more menacing enemies in priority, instead of turning against their creators. Until said enemy is beaten, but that's for later anyway.

In the same way, the Alpha, given their name, are probably a prototype series. And the custom Commanders are probably unique ones built at this time, or before, as individual prototypes.

Also, they need to be sapient at some level. First, they are player characters, and thus are almost required to be sapient. Then, they are able to fight on teams, call truces and temporary alliances, adapt and such, which are the traits of a sapient mind.
And it's more interesting to play a sapient being than an automaton anyway.


With that, you have enough for a coherent background (which isn't the same thing as realistic, as coherence is far more important here).
Many questions are still unanswered : what was this conflict? Why did the humans built those dangerous self-replicating sapient war machines in the first place? Who thought that it would be a good idea? How did the humans disappear? Did they really disappear? Will the war end, will one Commander stand victorious in the end? What will it do then, recreate a civilisation?
Don't answer it, let people imagine, keep the mystery. It will work better this way.


And whatever happens, don't put aliens there. Please. There are two kinds of aliens that aren't ridiculous as hell : the related ones (they created humans, they were created by the same people, their ancestors were humans...) and the alien ones (And not the hive-minded bug ones. The sentient Dyson spheres. The atomic matrices living in the crust of a neutron star. The radio waves feeding themselves by tormenting quasars. The ones with so different time and space scales than we may not even perceive their existence.) And both are hard to do right, to make interesting and to not make cliché as hell.
So, please, no aliens. You can only go right by not putting aliens in your story.

I think it is really simple. This robots factions are nothing more then teams in a game. This conflict is the latest reality tv show. Two commanders are created. They are programmed to fight each other and then they are let loose on a corner of space.

Humans watch eagerly through thousands of cameras in the robots. This robots don't know they have this cameras to transmit the massacre, hell they don't even know why they are fighting. They just follow thier protocols and destroy everything on thier path.

I like this take on it. Maybe with one tweak in that it doesnt need to have been two races at war originally, just the progenitors, whoever they are (after all we humans cant seem to stop killing eachother).

There is something I find inherently interesting in the concept that the automated war machines the progenitors built will forever faithfully carry out their programming in the abscence of further instructions. It fits in quite well with the voice over from the gamplay visualisation too.

[Edit] Another idea. There isnt going to be a single player, but I think it could be neat to have aspects of lore visually told in the game. Progenitor ruins on some planets, wrecks of earlier models of the current more advanced machines, or smashed up shells of orbital platforms in orbit around a gas giants. Maybe even something like a band in orbit around the star (examples of the progenitors building dyson spheres prior to their extinction?) I'm guessing the metal planets serve a purpose somewhat like this. Just an idea for things for players to see as they play, not nessesarily any exposition required when you encounter them.

400 Quatloos on the newcomer.

It's as simple as this;

You're fighting in a War.

/Thread

Mike

You're*

Dammit, Usually I'm so good about that, fixed! xD

Mike

Haha, I just had to do it. ;-)

But yeah I'm not sure if we really need a lore, especially a fabricated one. Most games who have lore (Warcraft, Total War etc.) are based on really vast amounts of background information and a very cohesive story. I doubt it's something we can come up with just like that, nor should we really want to.