[Mod Idea] Dwarggonit! Playing the packleader.

[UberWaffe]

Idea for a mod that aims to:
Short version:
Flesh out a back story on the Dwarg. (Possibly totally in opposition to what their actual back story is.)
Allow player to become packleader of several "packs" of Dwarg, including stations and economy.
'Living' economy for Dwarg, including having to mine/produce raw materials to obtain processed, to obtain ships/weapons/pilots.
'Teching' your Dwarg followers by having them reverse engineer and learn from other tech.
Guide them into savage raiders, or into semi-benign "just-bite-off-a-few-fingers" mini-empire.

[Long Term] Expand the idea to other factions.


Long version: (Warning: May contain sad attempts of tongue-in-the-cheek humor)
I know little to nothing of the Dwarg's backstory, but have always pictured them to be some sort of dog/wolf/gnoll/neo-human hybrid, controlled by some form of overlords.
Mainly given their "Grrr!" and "WE foLLow thE stRong" comments, the closeness of "Dwarg", "Dog" and "Warg", the whole "Dwarg MASTER" deal, and how they'll follow you around.
(Despite the "Zoanthrope" Warhammer 40K references google will spit at you. The "Bloody Roar" references are probably more valid in this interpretation of mine.)
So I figured it would be awesome to flesh out their purpose in the game some, while making it possible to become the "leader of the pack" so to speak.

Flesh out a back story on the Dwarg
I figured something along the lines of them being the results of some of the first neo-human genetic experiments, back when mixing in generous helpings of animal genes were still trendy.

Being one of the more successful breeds, as opposed to things like the "self-choking-snakeman" or the "big-blob-of-what-the-heck-is-that", the Dwarg had increased intelligence, psionics, increased strength and constitution, resilience to various harsh environments including space, and a neat legal-loophole for the use of docility collars.

Quite popular originally as manual labor, pit-fighters, and all-round slaves, the Dwarg soon became problematic to control as their pack-minds became increasing skilled at psionics. The Dwargs were soon genetically 'inhibited', suppressing their mental and psionic capacity.
When this proved to render them mostly incapable of unsupervised work, they were rounded up to be neutered and 'phased-out' as the newer neo-human projects superseded the old 'animal-hybrid' days.

However, due to budget cuts, some 'creative-accounting', and shareholders baying for larger profits, the rounded up Dwarg instead found themselves in the hands of enterprising if rather shady characters, whom saw much potential in teaching to Dwarg to 'Fetch and retreive'.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The new 'masters' soon turned the Dwarg into organized raiders, commanding them from the rear by vigorous use of pain & rage collars. And before long, the new Dwarg raiders managed to start producing their own technology (though only a few Dwarg are capable of that level of intellect). Had it not been for the infighting amongst the 'Dwarg masters' that soon resulted, the Dwarg would probably be an even larger threat.



Allow player to become packleader of several "packs" of Dwarg, including stations and economy:
Since the Dwarg follow the strong, I figured to make a story connection where a player that becomes battle arena champion can discover a 'masterless' neutral Dwarg colony.
From there, the player can rise to position of 'pack leader', and then fold several other pack colonies into his/her control.
From there, the player would need to nurture the new packs through various tasks and missions in order to get a large unified pack.
Even going as far as establishing/capturing new colonies, gatherings, and fortresses.
You can make a small amount of your Dwargs follow you about on your quest, and the stronger your pack, the stronger your personal guards can be.


'Living' economy for Dwarg, including having to mine/produce raw materials to obtain processed, to obtain ships/weapons/pilots
Instead of stations just having a fixed amount of trade goods, they would have a 'simplistic' economy.
Basic resources stations -> Resource processing -> Device and Item production.
With each tier needs time to slowly process its inputs to its outputs.
To take their economy beyond a certain point, you will need to convince human settlers to join your cause, and make your two factions play nice.

Possibly making the economy's currency be 'Loyalty'.
Player would have a base and current loyalty.
Buying/Taking stuff/ships would decrease current loyalty.
Selling/Giving stuff would increase current loyalty.
Over time your current loyalty would return to base loyalty (very slowly increasing if lower, or semi-quickly decreasing if above).
Completing missions would increase base loyalty.
Failing missions / letting Dwarg followers die would decrease base loyalty.
Dropping below a certain loyalty would cause Dwargs to turn on you. (Insta-death if you land on one a Dwarg station.)


'Teching' your Dwarg followers by having them reverse engineer and learn from other tech
Essentially by bringing various items to them (think Dvalin), they slowly learn and allow their ships to be better outfitted with newer weapons, armor, devices, etc.
Before they can tech up much, you will need to do a quest to undo their genetic inhibit. Allowing access to better teching, and psionic powers (think weak Domina powers).
Dwarg technology would become more and more biological-tech-hybrid as it progresses.


Guide them into savage raiders, or into semi-benign "just-bite-off-a-few-fingers" mini-empire
Expanding the Dwarg backstory through various missions and tasks, you can ultimately decide if you want your followers to play nice with the rest of humanity, or not.
The war-path essentially allows you to expand your followers across more sectors, but nets you more enemies.
The peace-path limits your expansion options, but gains you less enemies.


Long term, probably pipe-dream, vision
In the end, the idea is to do something similar for each faction in the game. Allowing the player to pick which faction to 'adopt and improve'. (Though you need not necessarily 'become-the-boss' of that faction.) Joining a faction may automatically exclude joining some others. (Ex. you cannot belong to two factions that are enemies).
Then, instead of having the human quarantine zone be linear, it is more like several clusters of sectors, with the various factions controlling (or simply being in) different areas.
Difficulty (enemy strength) would increase as you approach a faction's core regions (not necessarily as you head towards Heretic).
Your starting point would be in the heart of Commonwealth territory, and given that you start as 'not their enemy', thus be easy to survive.
(Sidenote: Commonwealth core sectors would obviously offer little in the way of money making. I.e. very few unmined asteroids, few trade routes not already saturated by other traders, harsh restrictions on purchasable weaponry and technology, little tolerance for looting, etc.)

BUT, in order to escape from heretic you would need a unique items from each major faction. Gained either by adopting and improving that faction to a certain point (for the builders), conquering it entirely (for the warriors), or gaining it by some other means of subterfuge (for the 'anti-faction'-ers & 'undistracted-pilgrims').



[EDIT]
Sidenote of random useful stuff I've made so far:
- Fuel cells that if used to refuel leave behind 'depleted' version of themselves. Can be used to draw fuel from reactor and recharge themselves. (Uses more fuel than they provide. Only really useful in conjunction with solar panels.
- Higher tech solar panels, that charge faster, but mainly that automatically recharge new depleted fuel cells, if your reactor is full of fuel. (More efficient that manually recharging cells)
[/EDIT]

[Jay2Jay]

Very interesting. Love the idea, some of these features would be hard to implement though. If you have read my topic on TCE then you know that I am working on a large mod also. I would love to have inter-mod compatibility for our mods or maybe even simply combining the mods into one (the topology seems like it would be in the same direction so that would carve out a large piece of work, plus the relationship between the player and factions would also be similiar). Oh, and before I forget, the Dwarg use particle reflecting and resisting armor "to combat the sung" implying that they have a history.

[UberWaffe]

Thanks for the heads up! I'd also love some integration / merging with other mods.
More hands make light work and all that.

I'll try and work something of the sung into the backstory as well!

[RPC]

Love the idea, hope that I can see an alpha somewhere in ~6-12 months :3

[UberWaffe]

[Sarcasm]
6 to 12 months? Nay, I shall birth this mod in less than a fortnight!
[/Sarcasm]

Yeah, I know I'm very likely being way overambitious, but meh, aim for the stars and maybe you make the roof.

Itty-bitty steps is probably the way I'll tackle this anyway.

Currently working on just making the link into the main storyline.
I.e. if player completes the battle arena, then spawn a single special dwarg station and change the relations with the new dwarg sovereign to friendly.

[Jay2Jay]

Updates? Some pics maybe?

[UberWaffe]

Pics?
Err....

Maybe I should mention that I have no 3D modeling or artistry skills... whatsoever.
I was going to see if I could bug other people for that once I sort out the actual functionality.


Progress update:
Currently working on the loyalty economy functionality.
Link into main storyline (battle-arena-victory-party-freak-out-dream) done.
(Current the special zoanthrope station just spawn in the same sector.)

Once I get this loyalty-creds working I will move on to the tiered, time-based production side of the economy.
Including the self-replenishing asteroid fields, again time based.


Sidenote:
Doing interesting checks on the possibility to make all damage types usable throughout the game.
Mucking around in excel to see how I need to adjust the weapon damage and armor/shield HP to re-implement the curve using flat 100% ArmorDamageAdj for all levels. (I.e. still the same scaling between tech levels, but can still make higher tier weapons of all damage types.