The Zoanthope Army Project

[Song]

Ok. I'm not much of a person for challenges. Well, apart from using autons and pacifist conduct and suchlike. But recently I tried starting to make the zoanthopes actually DO SOMETHING. Apart from die, obviously. Which they do exceedingly well. And so the Zoanthope (or however it's spelled) Army Project began....

In case anyone just hasn't noticed or bothered, they're the little lemming ships (and the very big reflective lemming ships) that hang around you once you kill their dwarg overlords. And they are *very* annoying, especially the little ones. So, without modding the game is there any way that breakers-of-the-game can try using these little expendable units as their very own semi-controllable army? I aim to find out, and if anyone else wants to try, here's my method for Operation Supreme Benevolent Loving Leader II, the second attempt at trying to exploit the hell out of zoanthopes. It's not the "only" method possible, there's probably others out there, but this is the one I myself am going to be attempting, since it's the second I came up with, and seems the most likely to succeed.


First, the important factor in this is the way in which zoanthopes work. They'll follow ANY ship, if it's landed the killing shot on the dwarg whatever that's controlling them. This is exploitable with the use of autons to add some basic "stay almost still(ish)" and "ATTAAAAAAACK" orders to them, at the cost of a squad not unlike Dwarves in Dwarf Fortress: Once they get near something, they'll rush it on an individual basis with not thoughts of self-preservation. This means they're harder to manage than a Fleet-AI squad, but you can have a LOT of them, because since they aren't ordered, there's no upper limit on the number you can (in theory) manage in this way, short of how many you can get around each auton.

So:

1. Find your dwarg/zoanthope swarm. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE AUTONS, at least two of which should be a 1M/i, and several should be killing autons. I'd suggest the 210 Aegis, but the 300D and 1M also work. Standard Autosentinels probably do *not*, because they die. You want LOW damage, and preferably some ability to withstand damage...because you don't want to *kill* all the oppressed underlings. No. Those are your prize, and your killing autons will be the "brains" that (might) make them useful in combat.
2. Take a single 1M/i and two "lethal" autons with you, and get that dwarg ship EMP'd. Then weaken, but DO NOT KILL IT, with your ships weaponry.
3. Send both lethal autons and the 1M/i to continuously attack the dwarg ship. If one gets killed, replace it with another. Autons are cheap and (sometimes) easy to get and carry around. Try to avoid killing your future expendable minions.
4. If this has worked, one of the lethal autons will have killed the Dwarg ship, and will have its own little cloud of Zoanthopes. There will also be some still-hostile minions who have not seen the wisdom in following you. Kill them before your new minions get killed prematurely. YOU want to decide them they die in a hopeless battle.
5. Keep this auton out of action for now. It's got its own little lemming squad around it, and that little squad will rush at anything nearby....and ONE squad isn't that useful. You want TEN or so.
6. Repeat with each and every auton you want to have as a "squad leader".
7. If you're trying to get multiple Behemoths around a single auton......good luck. Try using an EMP to disable the friendly ones while the auton grabs the rest, maybe? I'm not sure if they're still able to be disabled like that.

If this has worked out right, you should have an army of 50-100 little lemmings that can each be more or less ordered as a set of squads. Order individual autons to hold position and/or attack to set up your engagements. Personally (and I've only set up one squad, and it's centered around Rama so I'm not anticipating it surviving long) I'm intending to set them up around larger stations, then order a simultaneous attack by 3-5 squads at a time. Just to keep some reserves in place in case things go wrong for the first lot.

Oh, and remember that if the squad leader gets killed, the squad will go and follow the thing that killed it. That might cause some issues, but hey, this was never going to be an efficient tactic, and you've got your own guns (and your other little brainwashed mooks) for that. Efficiency (or even effectiveness) is not the point.

The point is that there's a cap in the transcendence engine on how many autons and/or wingmen you can order around at once that I regularly hit. I want to get around that and have a fleet of 100+ little modified human slave-crewed ships ready to die in battle whenever I want them. Because hey, they're gonna die otherwise, and rather than have them get in the way, annoy the black market and/or get me blacklisted by the corporate bodies....why not kill them all at once when it might just result in the biggest space battle in the entire game? Especially if I can get behemoths. Those would be AWESOME.



(I'll be trying this soon, possibly on my next playthough as a technical pacifist....although I've got RL stuff coming up that may prevent me from getting around to it. Anyone else who tries this.....good luck, and if it works, make a video of your new fleet attacking something stupidly big.)

[shanejfilomena]

I worked with the Zanthrope orders in Stars And Sovereigns : it was a Blast to do , annoying at the same time but still fun and funny.

During my testing I know that the Autons can take over the Z but if an enemy ship kills the Auton : I learned that my beloved Zanthropes turn against me instantly.

What I would like and I have done it before but the CPU is always a concern for my Dell : I have had Ranx, various Pirate ships, Urak and Dwarg mining.... But I do agree that there is an entire universe of opportunity for factions to do more and for existing code to be exploited in ways that profit the player, say if Ferians which are Zanthropes , could be "had" and service the Player's ore stockpile ( you would need a station : but possibly if you take out a Ferian Colony then dock : you can set off a reset of the station so it " rebuilds " and goes active as a player station....... Just a thought, I already did " Free Ferians " ( George mentioned them and I found the post after I had done it : so it was a short lived item ) but outside of a Player station they could become Free ferians : they would require supervision because they are not that smart and could probably be taken over by any Sovereign that destroys the station.....