They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Created

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

So, people can survive in lava, space, and anywhere on video games, but animals cant?

You can easily have partially-cyborg and armorized animals. Space suits for no atomesphere, plated armor against metal-machine-warfare, and the in-between part looking muscle-nervy. A T-rex wouldn't be such a bad thing in a certain class of units. It would be interesting, useful, and beatable. Sounds like balanceable to me.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

Why bother? If the environment supports it, use it. If not, build something else. If an organic chassis needs excessive life support and armor just to be viable, get rid of the waste material and make it PURE ROBOT.

In this case, organic weapons are just a different way of abusing every local resource imaginable to wage war. A healthy planet is a resource, is it not?

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

Can I increase my pledge so that I can make a giant mouse with a human ear on its back?

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

Exactly as you said, it might exist on a planet already. It is cheaper to battle-convert something that already moves, rather than build the bulk in the center.

Either way, it would be a different way to do things. If you are asking what would be the key point in using such a unit, maybe it could "heal naturally" up to a degree, maybe it could be cheaper and less armored even though it has standard firepower so it would make a good "filler" in an army. It could simply be an interesting looking variety of unit.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

I'm not sure you understand how ridiculous you're being. What you're suggesting is like trying to make a modern-day war elephant with chobham barding and a 120mm cannon in a howdah. Except worse, because the better technology gets, the larger the gap becomes. Why does the Indian army not up-armour elephants as a cheaper alternative to tanks? Because the elephant has a vastly inferior power to weight ratio when compared with a diesel engine and elephant bones perform remarkably poorly as structural elements when compared with steel. Right now we live on a planet covered with things that already move, but the automobile took on rather too well, even for budget applications. Add antimatter bombs, unobtainium armour and fusion reactors to the mix and your grass-eating fleshbags aren't "cheap", they're a liability. The best use of the 'resource' of organics you find on a planet is to be reclaimed for being slightly more efficient sources of material and energy than the dirt on which they stand.

Why are you so obsessed with shoehorning organics where they don't belong? Are you feeling your validity as a carbon-based organism being threatened by the notion that we are bound to become obsolete?

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

I am saying its sci-fi. I am not obsessed, but for points in the original post, human brains are supposed to be more compact computers and are in fact createable and programmable and able to be infused with machines to function a certain way.

You could have bio factories, you could make things with power suits like (isnt the game called) crackdown, and it could possibly fit in the game. If not, then it was an idea. I still don't see how it's dumb. That is like saying all the sci-fi shows and Fallout series is dumb.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

Unless we are talking about giant tigers with missiles and lasers I'm not interested. *meow*

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

No. You're not saying it's (It's = it is. A child can remember that rule, why can't you?) sci-fi. You're saying it's a comic book, or a saturday morning cartoon. What you're suggesting is no more science fiction than Superman or Dragonball Z are science fiction.

[QYOTE]
You could have bio factories, you could make things with power suits like (isnt the game called) crackdown, and it could possibly fit in the game. If not, then it was an idea. I still don't see how it's dumb. That is like saying all the sci-fi shows and Fallout series is dumb.
[/quote]

Well, you're using Fisher Price toys as evidence now. Certainly gives us an indication of the level at which you're arguing. I don't quite understand this argument, as it seems to imply that "all sci-fi shows" feature dinosaurs which can compete effectively with armies where the basic combat unit is twice the height of a T. Rex and is armed with a gun that shoots tactical nuclear weapons yet represents a totally insignificant investment in resources. Fallout is not Total Annihilation. In Fallout standard guns with chemical propellants which can be fired by unenhanced humans are considered viable weapons. In Total Annihilation, a device which converts a dozen cubic meters of rock into its component atoms in a second is not even considered a weapon.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

The problem is not that giant death war robots consuming entire planets in days to fight each-other since millennia couldn't use organics if they wanted to, or if it would be efficient.
The problem is that organic units wouldn't fit with the aesthetics of the game, both visually and with the whole "giant death war robots" thing. And this is also why, for most people, the 'zilla didn't fit in SupCom 2.

I'd love to see modders come up with new cybernetic or organic (or even magical or whatnot) armies, though. Or something like the Chicken in some Spring games, an AI-controlled swarm for PvE defence games.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

The biggest part of aesthetics is justifying the existence of something within the universe. The Zilla simply wasn't justified. It was yet another blotch for a world that is pretty well known for its inconsistency and bad story.

It's silly to think that organic material can compete with cold, hard steel. However, it's equally preposterous to assume that a galaxy spanning war didn't use EVERY resource possible. A society with advanced nanotech absolutely would have perfected gene manipulation and created cruel, efficient plagues and insect swarms of all varieties. Whether they work in the current war is up to debate, but remnants of that age would still have survived.

After countless years of war, the factions would likely have come to the conclusion that organic stuff is best used to reduce metal use. Nanobot hosts. Walking bombs. Reclaimation mounts. Corrosive... everything. Dragon's teeth (literally!). Anywhere that metal can be trimmed, a "good enough" organic equivalent could have easily taken its place. It most certainly would not look like war elephants or anything silly like that. It might have not worked everywhere or in every environment. It just would have been a niche tool in the Commander's arsenal, letting them save precious metal where robots would have been wasteful or unnecessary.

Don't forget that the key characteristic of a k-bot was the inclusion of synthetic muscle fibers and using forms suited to living things. A factory dedicated to such production could very easily find itself capable of much more.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

Hey, let's not be a grammar nazi, less I post my AP test scores in english here. The internet has absolutely nothing to do with grammar. I can accidentally all the grammars I want here, and calling me a child won't stop me. Better than you have tried.

It also doesnt have to be childish. as someone said earlier, synthetic titanium muscle fibers can be part of several robots, and so can armored organic brains. It was merely a cosmetic idea and unit idea to keep in mind if they need it.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

Everyone can use the grammar he likes and nobody has the permision to say that other individuals are kids he dont know.FINISH

Back to Topic:
Well, I think its better if there would be an entire faction with lifeforms instead of a few units in a robot faction.
Alien races would be cool

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

Brains and computers don’t work the same way, to compare processing power is meaningless. Brains are massively parallel, analogue calculating organs which have loose accuracy parameters. Computers excel in extremely fast serial digital calculations that are high on accuracy.
Brains only work within VERY narrow environmental conditions. Even very small temperature differences/interruption of oxygen/physical shock, and the brain fails rather dramatically. Even if a brain survives they are amazingly slow to heal, look at any brain damaged individual as a result of a stroke or a knock. Hostile environments simply suit computer tech better and any argument to say that we will have improved brains, can also be applied to having improved computers.

You are placing a lot of emphasis on being efficient and utilising every resource, and I see two flaws with this line of reasoning.

1. It would take a phenomenal amount of resources in research and development to find ways to find possible uses for biology. Not to mention the resources placed into creating custom conversion facilities for every type of organism encountered. It just doesn’t stack up when you can throw more conventional weapons at each other.
2. You are assuming that efficiency even enters into the programming of this war machine. This is a replicating mechanism of war which considers throwing a material rich asteroid at a materially rich world to destroy an enemy, destroying its own base and units in the process. Being efficient and using every resource is not something that even enters into the programming.

If it is one thing Uber has stressed, it is smashing large armies together. To me, this speaks of a high turnover of relatively cheap and simple purposed units, like two ant colonies going to war. If the sole goal is to destroy, then things like intelligence with biological brains, or using augmented biology to reduce wastage of biologic resource, don't even enter into it. Units would be built to be hardy, simple, and to follow explicitly the orders provided to them by the commander unit.

Taking lessons from nature and working it into the design of machines is one thing, extending that to using biology is entirely another. Even recently (excuse the pulpy nature of the article but not everyone will have access to academic journals) http://news.discovery.com/tech/artificial-muscle-stronger-121115.html you have examples of something artificial (and made of carbon to boot) being stronger than the biological equivalent.

Finally Thornell brings in perhaps the most relevant point when they mention the aesthetics aspect. thetrophysystem you mention the Fallout series, and showed the image of the brain robot. Fallout follows a retrofuturistic aesthetic, which is what people in the 50s thought the future would look like. That is not appropriate for the aesthetic that Uber are aiming for with PA. The aesthetic looks very well established and really gives off an ‘anti all life’ vibe with the boxy nature of the units and lack of anything that looks vaguely biological. I think any attempt to shoehorn in half biological units would detract from that.

In the form of a mod? sure, I wouldn't have any issue with that, however it has been stated by Uber that there is only going to be one faction in the release version of PA.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

They have said one unit pool, they could add another faction that uses organic looking replacements to some parts of the models.

But as many have said allredy, the model work can be debated to be the biggest part of a unit pool, so if they did all the models they might as well do another unit pool (and they wont do that).

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=502575#p502575
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yh7ss/this_game_absolutely_needs_to_happen/c5vqd9q?context=3 It is reasonable to assume their meaning and purpose is to work on a single unit pool/faction, the reason being, as Uber have stated, that it saves them time in both modelling and balancing. Looking at the semantics of the specific language they used isn't going to change that. They may visit additional factions post release but that is irrelevant in relation to what I was talking about, which was informing supremevoid about what we know about the informed release state of PA.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=40462&p=608720#p608720

The semantics are important ya know and since neutrino himself says "This is a very important point" (The link) i prefear to see it as one confirmed "units pool" only, since they might do more then one faction (Trow in some different colors and light, a different logo on large units, and maybe some small model variations and you have the visuals of a new faction without having to make everything from scratch and in playstyle differences said new faction can still recive some sort of different bonuses or simular from the orginal faction without having any "new units").

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

Alright ill give you that, thank you for the link I hadnt seen that one
I do however still think it a bit tangential to the argument for having organic units on the scale people are suggesting in this thread, they are talking quite deep levels of integration rather than superficial visual changes you are discussing. supremevoid was saying "I think its better if there would be an entire faction with lifeforms instead of a few units in a robot faction. Alien races would be cool "

I am saying that based on what we have heard that would not be a realistic expectation, even given what you linked. Uber certainly dont seem to be running with the idea of multiple factions very hard as they are trying to work within both time and budgetary constraints and would rather do one unit pool and faction appearance well.

In any case this seems to be getting off topic, the discussion at hand was including organic material as an integral aspect of the existing faction and/or unit pool. My objection to that being the main thrust of my post.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

Yes thats why i wrote this second part in my post:

I also think anything but minor differences would defeat the purpose of having one unit pool (less work), so i don't think making any part of the models organic to be feasible since i belive they cant pull something like that off with a minor change (since organic parts tend to be more advanced models).

That being the same for having organic parts as the base (of the "base" models that havent been altered in anyway). Organic looking things take more work, they want to keep the style simple to lessen the work.

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

Looks like we are on the same page : )

Re: They Don't All Have To Be Robots, Lifeforms Can Be Creat

The Internet has everything to do with grammar, because your entire presence is defined by the text you type. If you can't even be bothered to spend a few seconds checking what you've written, why should I assume you've spent more than a few seconds thinking of a response or checking any of your facts?

You know, titanium isn't very organic, so you're not exactly helping your point here. See above about brains being kind-of sucky.