Ferians and zooanthropes

[george moromisato]

The Ferians are one of the stranger inhabitants of the Transcendence world and I would be all for hearing a bit of lore from George...in any case, it would appear that even if the Ferians are not physically insects (being neo-humans), they do at least exhibit strong insect-like psychology and behaviour. On that basis, I have to concede that the Ferians are less-than humans and thus humans (and their drug-addictions) should come first, so given the choice where you could do only one thing, it would perhaps be more ethical to attack the Ferians than to provide drugs to humans, because the ones of your own species should come first.

Ferians are zoanthropes (like most of the Dwarg) meaning that they are descended from humans but not longer posses full human cognition--they are more like animals. They live in the 'now' and no longer worry about all the things that normal humans worry about: money, power, the future, life and death, etc.

Some zoanthropes were formerly humans who decided to live a simpler life. Others were created or bred for a partcular purpose.

I don't know what to say about the ethics of killing Ferians. In Transcendence, some unethical behavior is punished (e.g., killing Commonwealth stations); but some unethical behavior is not (e.g., selling illegal items). And even some ethical behavior is punished, as anyone who tries to play without killing anyone can tell you.

Whether or not the game rewards or punishes certain behavior is (rightly) not a good guide for ethical behavior--only your own conscience is a guide for that. [And in my opinion, ethical behavior is most praiseworthy when it goes against your own self-interest.]

Nevertheless, I think there are game reasons for a few changes:

1. There should be other ways of benefiting from Ferians other than killing them. Perhaps there should be some way of trading with them. Or perhaps there should be other non-violent (though still coercive) ways of getting their ore.

2. Ideally, players who pursue the Ferian-farming strategy should be forced to give up some other strategies. That is, there should be some interesting trade-off involved in Ferian-farming. One possibility is that Ringers should react in some way: perhaps Ringers refuse to buy "stolen" Ferian ore. Or perhaps they refuse to sell the player any weapons.

3. The stats screen is the mechanism for self-imposed conducts. There should be a stat item for the number of friendly zoanthropes killed.

[Ttech]

That is pretty neat, simpler lives, genetically engineered. We need to sit you down and write all this stuff down in once place.

[Aury]

At the moment, the only gameplay reason (Some people farm them simply to reduce lag, as in some systems, the number of ferians can severely impact performance on low end computers) people farm ferians is to get rin. So having the ringers outright not buy the ore could break that, and thus nobody would farm the ore.

Also, I think it would be interesting to introduce something along the lines of how much worth the ferians are in the eyes of the ringers. IE, something I'd personally like to see is some display of how unimportant the lives of ferians are in the eyes of ringers; the only cost to the ringers is an economic one. And it would give credence to the Ranx as well and make for a more interesting interplay between the Ranx, the Ringers and the CW (and ferians by extension), something I think would be fun to expand on in TSB and the Ranx official extension as well.

[Prophet]

Farming ferians is done primarily to obtain the ore and is one of the best sources of Rin. I feel the Rin ecomony needs some attention, specifically, more options to make a profit.

A trade route would be excellent:

Ferian hive (ore) -> Teraton Fabricator (trade goods) -> Ringers (profit)

Perhaps the player could try to tame ferians by dropping crates of ore and coaxing a ferian drone to collect it with a chance that the drone would choose to follow the player for a short time?

I think the Ringers should accept ore that the player obtained unethically from destroying drones, and only be upset if a hive is destroyed. I'm unsure what the exact relationship is between them or how invested the ringers are, but destroying an entire hive would almost surely be frowned upon.

[ThePrivateer]

Thanks for all that George!

Farming ferians is done primarily to obtain the ore and is one of the best sources of Rin. I feel the Rin ecomony needs some attention, specifically, more options to make a profit.

A trade route would be excellent:

Ferian hive (ore) -> Teraton Fabricator (trade goods) -> Ringers (profit)

Yeah, I think most of us would agree the rin economy is pretty poor - they buy next to nothing from the player.

I like the idea of Prophet's traderoute -- but it would be interesting if that player could not sell the ore to the ringers. Thus, the only way of exploiting the ferians is by going through the teratons.

[Ttech]

it might be poor but they end up having more useful supples and got a quite hard to get started with

[Aury]

Some zoanthropes were formerly humans who decided to live a simpler life.

I also presume that they would not be part of the two zooanthrope factions seen so far, the dwarg's zoanthropes and the ferrians, as they would be unlikely to be exploited like that. Not to mention the Ferrians seem to be definitly of the created kind, specifically by the ringers in this instance to be the most effective miners.
I'm thinking they would probably have formed their own communities. I'm thinking there would be 4 behevioral patterns that would be most commonly observed:
1) producer: these zooanthropes would focus around subsiding from things of their own creation; ie, they would probably have primitive agricultural stations on asteroids, and few if any ships. They would likely only occur in the region TSB calls the Borderlands, or in the extremities of the Frontier, as they would be unlikely to have any strong defenses and can easily be taken out at range w/o many ships.
2) consumer: these zooanthropes would be more predatory, with their own subgroups, ranging along a scale of more "herbivorous" pirate/masquerader-esq groups that take on easy targets such as large freighters or "producer" type station (of any faction; not necessarily a producer-type zooanthrope station), to more predatory groups (or even individuals) much akin to my player character who simply blows everything up and then salvages the loot from it, generally going after powerful ships: I could even see small groups working together in "packs" of sorts to take out large targets that individuals could not destroy on their own [ie, a bunch teaming up on a deimos and killing it, wheras if a single ship tried that, it would not have stood a chance].
3) salvager: sort of like the salvager nomads & gaians as they are now, simply exploiting pre-existing wrecks for loot/materials to subside off of. Of course, this niche is already filled, even if its not with zooanthropes.

[PM]

One enhancement I almost did to Ferians in Playership Drones, but did not due to filesize, was let the player buy their ships at a hive (and pilot them if desired). Ships would cost rin due to the Ringer connection.

[Aury]

Split thread for the ferian discussion

[Amilir]

Could you spell it the way GM does? I wince every time I look at this title.

[Aury]

That was a typo, but I'll let some other mod handle that because I have to go now.

[Drako Slyith]

I'm thinking they would probably have formed their own communities. I'm thinking there would be 4 behevioral patterns that would be most commonly observed:

You posted 3. Was that a typo or did you forget to post the other.

[Aury]

>.<
That was a typo as well.

[Atarlost]

I think the ferian warrior fix is good in principle. Making the Ringers punish ferian farming blocks the easiest entry point into the rin economy. To discourage ferian farming I think the best thing to do is to make the other entry point easier.

Teratons are a very good rin source, but are hard to get into because they're dirty thieves if you don't already have an expensive high end reactor. I'd either remove the mugging mechanic or provide an alternate way to get respect.

If the Teratons are barbarians who respect power then reacting as a barbarian with power should earn you respect not emnity. You should be able to get them to pay danegeld and/or return stolen goods by destroying their defenses and severely damaging their stations. If they aren't barbarians they shouldn't rob people who show up to trade with them.

[Amilir]

I think ringers not buying stolen ore is perfectly fair. An easy 'fix' for the rin economy would be to have teratons buy shields and armor, albeit at very poor prices. Something like 10-20% would be enough to buy basic supplies, but would not fund high level equipment.

Oh, on the side, objGetCombatPower is really just dependent on reactor? I'd love to know the formula.