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For the Swarm! (Zerg - Multicross SI)

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Back from class. Lessee what we have while I work on the next story bit.

kaazmiz said:
John Prodman. When?
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He's canon and I'm a nerd so soon.

shade argost said:
But don't you want those abilities, you have to study them to get them, although you people are right, Warframe is a scary place but the Zerg should be able to fight off at least one of the truly big threats, or at least fight on equal terms, the technocyte, the major reason the Corpus and Grineer are a threat to the Tenno is because of the Tenno's small numbers, for the Tenno you could do either diplomacy or send a constant stream of Zerg at them to bog them down, the Corpus and Grineer are most a threat because of their tech disparity, you've already faced that with the Corpus and it can be overcome with numbers (see Zerg vs Protoss, the Zerg should be resistant to plasma and laser weapons anyways because they had to fight the Protoss and Terrans who had those things), the biggest problem I see you having is with the sentients, annoying bastards one and all with the technocyte being the only one coming close to that.
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Wobulator said:
You know... I'd like to point out that there really isn't much in the Origin System that poses a significant threat to the Zerg.
The Tenno? They're great at surgical strikes, sure, but even that's only because apparently, nobody has radios. The moment one enters a Leviathan, it can expect a few hundred banelings rolling towards it.

The Corpus already showed that they're no match, and the Grineer really aren't any further ahead than them.
The Technocyte fundamentally preys on disorganization. Against, say, the Zerg, they just lose because they can't win a straight-up fight and they can't isolate and pick apart the Swarm.
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The Grineer and Corpus have a stupid level of industry in-system to the point where they could probably out-Zerg the Zerg right now especially since Generic-SI hasn't got time to build up yet.

The Infested are, well, I'll leave that for later.

The Tenno and Sentients are also, well, one's a von neumann machine and the other killed the von neumann machines. Also leaving that for later.

If Generic-SI had an ample amount of time to hatch shit on a barren asteroid or something then yeah, the Zerg'd kinda stomp lmao. Trick is getting that time in the first place.

This arc was never meant to be a long one anyways.

Lenimentus said:
Nice to see this. Not really familiar with warframe, how would Sarah do against one of them?

One thing that's always bugged me about Zerg SI is the lack of tech. I know Zerg are all about biotech but why limit yourself like that? You shouldn't have that inbuilt distain that most Zerg seem to have for tech.
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Eh. That's not really a comparison you can make. Sarah's a psionic WMD. Warframes are army-killers but they're more surgical when it comes to these sorts of things.

Basically, Sarah's more like a super-sledge and Warframes are like scalpels if we're making this comparison. You wouldn't use a scalpel to bash someone's head in and you wouldn't use a super sledgehammer to perform heart surgery.

... Biggatons though Sarah can blow up starships with nothing but her mind and some psionic techniques she's overcharged so Sarah's got the better feats. :V

I think your second question's come up before in-thread and i answered it but I can't remember what I said. Mmph. Lemme get back to you on that one.

Decim said:
Also, I have some speculation as to what we're gonna see. From Moriarty, we know that he's made some new strains for the Swarm, so here's what I'm thinking. First, the sectoid is probably going to largely stay the same minus getting the Zerg treatment (armor, claws, a couple other nasty things). It's still going to be a low-level psionic unit focused around debuffing the enemy. And is typical for the Zerg, is totally expendable.

Second, the Viper is going to have to change to be more of a specialist unit if kept at all. While agile and maneuverable, the Viper does not have exceptional physical strength nor innate weaponry and relies on ADVENT's beam weaponry to provide most of its killing power. The only good things it does have is the ability to spit poison clouds (which the Roach does better with acid), the ability to pull enemy units out of position (which the Swarm's own Viper from HotS already does), and the ability to put an enemy unit in a bind (which is of questionable value). That said, a use could be found for the Viper by converting it into a pure capture unit or infiltration specialist. The former because the Zerg can use more Psionics, and having the ability to capture more of them can only be a good thing. Assuming you're suppressing your morals anyway. The second is more because the Zerg are pretty much lacking such specialists entirely outside of Changelings. Changlings are good, but when shit goes down, they're found to be sorely lacking. A team of Vipers going in as a Vanguard and causing as much chaos as possible sounds fun.

The Muton and the Berserker are both things that I'm not entirely sure about. I'm having a hard time coming up with anything that the Swarm would like about them. At best, any useful essence will be copied and transferred into something more useful. One thing I can think up though would be the addition of glands producing Overdrive Serum. The Zerg's version of Stim Packs basically.

Archons and Chrysalids? Don't make me laugh. They're either pointless or obsolete as hell for the Zerg.

Gatekeepers though? Powerful psionic essence. Limited in terms of utility in comparison to the Sectoid, but eh. It'd probably be for the best to fold it's abilities into another unit, perhaps the Sectoid, Queen, or maybe even the Overlord if you want to be really evil about it. I mean, really, what could possibly go wrong with Overlords reviving Zombies everywhere?

Lastly, the Avatar. Oh, boy. Oh, boy! I see that Sarah and Moriarty have already dissected and fully examined an Avatar corpse. The greatest benefit from the Avatars and the Black Site vials is the ability to pretty much have everything necessary for Moriarty to make Avatar's for the Swarm. Before Starcraft 2 introduced Amon and retconned a lot of why the Overmind did what it did, the reason the Zerg went after the Terrans was for their Psionics so they could face the Protoss on a much more even ground. With the Queen of Blades, it even succeeded pretty spectacularly... but then it never mass produced its own psions for some reason.* But now? SI!Generica has everything needed to create Avatars and a need for them.

unintentionallyhorrifying.jpg

*As a side note, Kerrigan eventually figured out how the Overmind and Abathur managed to infest her in the first place and used the process to infest a human who she thought was a powerful psionic (he wasn't). After the guy fucked up, he was cut loose from the Swarm and left for dead. Spoiler alert, he died. Presumably the only reason she did it at all was so she would know how she herself was infested.
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Actually Generic-SI never ended up fighting Chrysallids.

I wrote things like that on purpose.

Also it's less new strains and more 'a couple new strains and some generalized 'improvements' to other strains of Zerg.'

Ryune said:
Well, strictly speaking, hard tech simply doesn't fill any needs the Zerg have while also being very low tolerance construction. And strictly speaking, the Zerg don't do low tolerance construction. Everything they make is grown which makes it fast, simple and cheap. Hard technology is hard. Even just a modern day gun is stupidly complex and requires a massive amount of precision that the Zerg simply don't have in their production methods. Now, as mentioned they can totally make use of technology when they want to. It's just that they don't produce it because the costs simply outweigh the usefulness and it doesn't fit with their combat paradigm.

If he were to get his hand on the technocyte though the game is off. They do use technology and I'm fairly sure they can grow it. That, in and of itself may assist in changing the Zerg's combat doctrine. After all, they simply couldn't produce hero unit level Zerg. And while he has Sarah, for whatever reason he can't use her as a basis for more "hero" class units like terrans.
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Technocyte Virus can infest robots yes. T'was a mutation Alad V induced.

The Technocyte Virus is literally Space Cancer though so like eh.

I think your second point's also come up in thread before but I can't remember what I said at the time.
 
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Ryune said:
Well, strictly speaking, hard tech simply doesn't fill any needs the Zerg have
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Right, but what about the SI? I don't know about anyone else but I like to have certain comforts around. A computer with a few games for those long interstellar trips. Maybe a sound system and some music. A nice digital library with some of my favorite authors. All work and no play makes me a very grumpy person.
 
Garryl said:
"Eh," indeed. Space cancer just isn't enough for the Zerg. Your cancer has to have something really cool, like being anti-gravity or causing nuclear fission or cutting guns in half with its mind for the Zerg to even look at it.
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Generic-SI: I mean it assimilates technology-

Moriarty: Infested Command Centers. Infested Bunkers. Infested Terran Structures.

Generic-SI: Wait the Zerg already have a-

Moriarty: Yes.

Generic-SI: ...

:V
 
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Generic_Generica said:
Generic-SI: I mean it assimilates technology-

Moriarty: Infested Command Centers. Infested Bunkers. Infested Terran Structures.

Generic-SI: Wait the Zerg already have a-

Moriarty: Yes.

Generic-SI: ...

:V
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wait a second! you can make antigravity cancer, just make your overmind body produce that and you can be a flying brain! or make the leviathan make it to use it as a pseudo eezo to increase its agility and speed.
 
Yeah, but that last one got swamped in zerg stuff, like half of it looked like it was zerg biomass filling in the holes blown in it. The other stuff I'd say is at least partially just infested pilots/drivers/etc.
 
To be fair it's less 'technological assimilation' and more 'zergy shit is growing around the technology.'

So honestly the Zerg're cheating again.

But then.

It's only cheating if you get caught.

:V
 
torroar said:
Yeah, but that last one got swamped in zerg stuff, like half of it looked like it was zerg biomass filling in the holes blown in it. The other stuff I'd say is at least partially just infested pilots/drivers/etc.
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If Zerg can infest "Command Centers, Terran Structures, Siege Tanks, Banshees, Diamondbacks", it tends to reason that they either infest the users/pilots or the computers.
 
MTB said:
If Zerg can infest "Command Centers, Terran Structures, Siege Tanks, Banshees, Diamondbacks", it tends to reason that they either infest the users/pilots or the computers.
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They dont really rely on Infested stuff that much
Stukov is the only one who really look at the stuff and say " hey, let comebine the Zerg and Terran shit together, but this time, let add more to the mix then just people"
who would have though to stick a Thor and an Ultralisk together would resulted in such BS
 
Generic_Generica said:
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Point is if I could pee, I would have peed. I would've filled an ocean with my pee. My pants would've been brown.
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Actually, if you do manage to fill an entire ocean with Zerg pee,
that would be no less terrifying a feat than Sarah carving chunks out of enemy ships with her mind. :o
Especially if the pee is highly corrosive like Zerg-produced fluids tend to be.
...

tri2 said:
wait a second! you can make antigravity cancer, just make your overmind body produce that and you can be a flying brain!
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Actually, the flying brain thing has happened in canon. sort of.
During the invasion of Aiur, the Overmind dive-bombed from high orbit onto the planet.
As for how exactly it did that, that's up to interpretation.
It's initial trajectory makes it unlikely that it was simply dropped from a Zerg ship onto the planet.
Some kind of propulsion was likely involved.

or make the leviathan make it to use it as a pseudo eezo to increase its agility and speed.
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Leviathans can probably already use some kind of anti-gravity.
It's a good explanation for how a leviathan can maintain altitude very close to the planet's surface while staying still in the air.
It might even be generated by the same system that enables a leviathan to make warp jumps like Terran and Protoss ships.
Again, this is up to interpretation.
 
Generic_Generica said:
Also it's less new strains and more 'a couple new strains and some generalized 'improvements' to other strains of Zerg.'
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On that note: I hope that you don't go with either only using other settings to upgrade the things you have now or only picking things up directly from those settings. Doing either of those things, or even both, are good ways to display a lack of creativity.
Generic_Generica said:
To be fair it's less 'technological assimilation' and more 'zergy shit is growing around the technology.'

So honestly the Zerg're cheating again.

But then.

It's only cheating if you get caught.

:V
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With how you are in a setting that has tech that can make both more of itself and biological material will you be doing something with bionics? Insect carapace isn't made out of living material after all so there is biological precedence.
 
Marcus.D.Basterd said:
With how you are in a setting that has tech that can make both more of itself and biological material will you be doing something with bionics? Insect carapace isn't made out of living material after all so there is biological precedence.
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That's a false dichotomy.

Technically speaking, a great deal of your body isn't made of "living materials"- your bones are the obvious example here.
It's still made by your body and is an integral part of it, so...
 
The technocyte virus is really fucking weird. On the one hand a good bit of the Infested we see in-game are horrific amalgams of pre-existing units.

Like the charger, and crawler and Ancients. So that makes you think it's similar to the Zerg Hyperevolutionary virus in that it infests pre-existing shit in order to create horrible monstrosities.

But then we have shit like the Juggernauts and the Boilers and Broodmothers. And infested Moas and Ospreys. And Jordas, don't forget about Jordas. So not only is this virus somehow capable of influencing and interfacing with fucking robots and AI, it's able to create new horrible creations from scratch or... Something.

Not to mention Warframes are also made out of infested flesh, it's very clearly stated multiple times plus we've got Nidus. Except they don't look anywhere near as infested. Except for Nidus, because Nidus is the infested Warframe. Warframe composition is weird too, we still don't know how the hell they're built. Or grown or whatever.

So like, I have no fucking clue lmao.
 
Generic_Generica said:
The technocyte virus is really fucking weird. On the one hand a good bit of the Infested we see in-game are horrific amalgams of pre-existing units.

Like the charger, and crawler and Ancients. So that makes you think it's similar to the Zerg Hyperevolutionary virus in that it infests pre-existing shit in order to create horrible monstrosities.

But then we have shit like the Juggernauts and the Boilers and Broodmothers. And infested Moas and Ospreys. And Jordas, don't forget about Jordas. So not only is this virus somehow capable of influencing and interfacing with fucking robots and AI, it's able to create new horrible creations from scratch or... Something.

Not to mention Warframes are also made out of infested flesh, it's very clearly stated multiple times plus we've got Nidus. Except they don't look anywhere near as infested. Except for Nidus, because Nidus is the infested Warframe. Warframe composition is weird too, we still don't know how the hell they're built. Or grown or whatever.

So like, I have no fucking clue lmao.
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Bio-tech with a good helping of cybernetics and "nanomachines, son" is my best guess. Something like si-fi flesh golems.
 
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