Omake: Military Matters.
The Cerebrate looked over it's current military forces and their activity. The Swarm was growing nicely in numbers. Still they were rather limited in troop composition. The only combat forms being the Zerglings and the new Spinelings. Once again it was reminded of work that needed to be done.
Neither of these forces were meant for heavy combat. The former was meant to be a mass produced speedster unit. To harass and bring down enemies with large numbers. The latter were still untested in live combat situations. A quick and dirty anti air unit. Created purely because the hydralisk strain was currently unavailable for use. Still they were all it had to work with at the moment.
It directed it's attention to it's deployed forces. After the recent clash between enemy forces it had made preparations. Namely for when the victors of said clash came back. If they did anyway. That was still uncertain all told. Still it was better to be prepared for that possibility. So it had laid out plans for an ambush.
The reasons for this action were several fold. One was to simply gather more biomass from their corpses. Another was to gather more information on them. Namely their combat capabilities. The infested ones would be good for interrogation.
None of its units even with increasing numbers were well suited to direct combat right now. Especially against enemies whose abilities were still unknown. So it had prepared the ambush approach to handle that issue. An enemy caught by surprise was far less dangerous. Namely much easier to wipe out.
The idea was simple in practice. One that it had pulled off many times in the past. The idea was to simply have a sizable force burrowed underground. This was no issue for the Zerg. They often burrowed when looking to conserve energy. That and this enemy would likely not think to look for attacks from underground. Either because they had not encountered the Zerg before or because they had already crushed the enemy there.
The Overlords would be monitoring for any incoming enemies. Hiding themselves with dark clouds from the volcanic activity. Doing so was no hindrance to their advanced senses. They would maintain telepathic communications with burrowed units. Once the enemy arrived the burrowed units would awaken and wait for further instructions.
Once the enemy landed they would wait for them to move into the right area. Namely being surrounded by the burrowed units with few in their vehicle. After that they would emerge and attack. The zerglings would go after those on the ground. At the same time the spinelings would target the vehicle. Intending to bring it down to prevent cover fire, communication, or escape. After that they would assist their cousins if necessary.
With luck that would eliminate all enemies. Hopefully it would also discourage efforts to investigate. However if they did so be it. If needed they could do this again. Hopefully by then the defensive morphs would be fully restored.
@Planetary Tennis
A daunting task (edited)
Cerebrate was an old mind of the swarm, and mind for one specific purpose, that being war. They were made many centuries before the war with the Protoss, fighting in countless conflicts to expand the swarm, to enrich it with more essence, and to better the collective-self. It was good at this, having done well against foes of the greater collective, fighting against countless foes of the swarm. You were an experienced commander and tactician, highly adaptive and patient, serving you well in your service to swarming.
But you were simply that, a commander and tactician, nothing more nothing less, and you were 'happy' with that. But circumstance has now changed, and now you were alone, transported to an unknown world, and with fragmented gene memory. now you must establish the swarm, to restore to its true glory, an ever-growing swarm, in constant evolution. This was a daunting task, one you lack the capabilities to do.
You had much done, with many potential threats against these efforts, that could slow your pace of development, or could result in your meager swarm end. The primary threat is those unknown sentients that you had discovered upon this world, a worrying development. Even if they were rather primitive by the standard of interstellar civilizations, these new entities could prove your end. With your gene memory fragmented, you lack more formidable and heavier combat strains of swarm, this need to be rectafied.
But your plans are proceeding, your economy is expanding, your hives are growing, and new research options are being opened. Soon you will have defenses to handle an orbital threat, soon you should have enough forces to handle most threats. But that was the problem, it was soon, so many projects, and so little time. So you began work on something hopefully to accelerate this growth, at least for your clusters and economy.
You had remembered an offshoot of the queen, called brood queen, a more durable if still weak support unit for the swarm. The engram was fragmented and damaged, it would take time to repair, but it gave you a new idea for a new morph. the main body had been reinforced and armored, instead of the webbing and light armor of brood queen was a heavy carapace, and made larger and longer, with a large abdomen, able to lay eggs. It was able to lay rapidly growing eggs, mostly smaller morphs about the size of zerglings, but still effective and could be refined for more complex forms. Torso had been bulked up and reinforced like rest body, aside from being larger and bulkier stayed same, keeping the spines of the brood queen. To accommodate this larger, bulkier form legs had faced a redesign, making them larger, more armored, and larger than the original form, as well change it to 8 legs. This change greatly increased the stability of this strain, and able to impale infintary that get in to close a good defense mechanism. This new form you called the major, a very durable unit able to take large amounts of damage, and directly reinforce the front by harvest biomass, an effective form with many good uses.(heavily armored and bulked up version of SC2 queen, about the size of swarm host, able to lay eggs to produce units by harvest biomass, and decent defense abilities)
To help increase expansion, you had designed a new chemical mixture for the gene weaver to make use of. This new mixture was called amber, thick semi-liqud, with high amounts of nutrients that also increased the growth of zerg forces. It was able to infuse buildings, increase their growth, and creation of forces, including larva, as well increased natural regeneration of swarm as a side effect, minor but useful. This was very useful, but took time, and devoting the gene weaver to the task, but only a minor drawback. This would greatly enhance swarm, by increasing the speed of development and expansion of their new swarm. (Speed growth, increases the growth of buildings and some larger forms like a cerebrate, as well able to heal buildings, but has to dedicate its turn to growing stuff)
Things were going well, pieces were moving into place, his clusters were developing, he was developing a capable rapid attack force, and his swarm was establishing itself. But there was always more work to be done, hives to expand, development on you numerous of projects, and creation of a proper swarm. But you were content, was evolving as it should, progress was being made, and soon his swarm shall be rebuilt and reconnected with greater collective.
(Please give feedback on this, point out errors, and give some better names)
Omake: Electric Bug-a-loo
The Cerebrate examined the Lenses held up by the Zerglings, examining the thermal damage, the warping of the Lenses effecting both accuracy and coherence of the Laser fire.
Work was already underway to develop different types of Lenses, from stronger composite materials that were larger and sturdier for repeated use, to smaller more gelatinous Lenses that were only good for one shot, but that could be rapidly grown and replaced for further Laser fire.
The Cerebrate was also exploring larger gelatinous Lenses and smaller composite Lenses.... No Evolutionary path was useless after all, even failures could prove to be informative and helpful in furthering knowledge.
Hmmm.... A Zergling among the Salvage expedition, had found a transparent device filled with liquid and that held Aquatic adapted Plants, as well as Aquatic creatures swimming within it.
Oh. The Plants filtered waste from the creatures and oxygenated the fluid medium that they all shared, while the Plants were also able to Photosynthesis light.... Which seemed to be generated by a technological device of some sort attached to the simulated environment in the clear container.
Yet interestingly, the insects inside the tank were bioluminescent and the fish with tentacles that preyed upon them, used Bio-Electrical charges to disable them and feed.
Hmmmmm.....
Perhaps the Spineling could be modified to grow and hurl Spines with an internal Organ, something able to hold a powerful Bio-Electrical Charge? It could be very useful to disrupt Technological Devices, if used on living things, then still a very effective weapon too.
Ah! Ideas they arise!
Yes....
If the Laser is made less powerful, then it can be used differently, to pierce the atmosphere, create a temporary vacuum channel and then send a powerful charge of Electricity down the Vacuum medium.... An Electro-Laser, damage inflicted at range via the Electricity, instead of direct damage via the Laser beam itself.
A pleasing development indeed, though a directly weaponised Laser is still a valuable pursuit for the Swarm. An Electrolaser for now however, is very much to the benefit of the Zerg, even if it is only useful within an Atmosphere.
Hmmmmm.... That Bio-Crystalline material for the Hardier types of Lenses, could be of use for other things also.... The Terrans utilised Optical Computing in some of their facilities, Fibreoptics too.... We could do something similar with our biochemistry and synthesised materials.
Perhaps a useful path for larger Zerg may even be to use multiple smaller Lasers instead of being focused on a single Laser weapon of Larger scale?
Multiple Lasers could be combined together, each aimed at the same target point, the damage inflicted being equal to a single large Laser weapon.
An Overlord with a battery of small Bio-Lasers would be much easier to Bioengineer, while a large singular Bio-Laser is more than likely to be both heavier and to be in need of a bespoke Creature to be integrated with forthe Swarm to be able to utilise it for best effect.
Hmmmmm.... A type of Lense using metallic particulates would allow for Electrical currents to be laid through it, this would allow an Electromagnetic Field to be generated, this could allow for a strengthening for the Lense as long as the right material composition is formulated.
Electromagnetic Field manipulation could also be used on a variety of Composites for Armour as well, with very strong fields able to be used for Repulsion effects.
That new material found in the raid of the Xeno Base, could that be of use?
It should absolutely be analysed and tested too.
Hmmmmm.... The Tentacles of that Fish remind me, perhaps some form of Tentacles could be something useful to add to the Swarm soon as well, more options are always a good thing to have available, especially if capturing live samples is something we need to do anytime soon.
You can each choose between
1 Free die for next turn
+40 to a roll of your choice
+25 Vespine
+50 Biomass
+1000 Minerals
If you want instead
Ancient you could choose one of the above or one of these
+5 Hydraliks
+1 Queen
+2 Neural Parasites
Grim you can choose one of the main or one of these
Unlock Spawn Frenzy Ability for Gene weavers.
Unlock Swarm Queen Research
Or ???
Omni as above or
Unlock Bioelectric Research
+50 to Biolaser research
x2 armor to all units.
x1.5 to Biomass Production
