Generic_Generica
Notice me Senpai~
- Location
- Right behind you
Generic-SI: Ew.
Overmind: Disgusting.
No. No mind-babies.
Or any babies.
For the Swarm! (Zerg - Multicross SI)
- Thread starter Generic_Generica
- Start date
- Crossover
Generic-SI: Ew.
Overmind: Disgusting.
No. No mind-babies.
Or any babies.
The Dark Esper
Watching With Interest
- Location
- Britain
Not even baby zerglings?
Generic_Generica
Notice me Senpai~
- Location
- Right behind you
Akuma-Heika
The Devil Exists Within
- Location
- United States
If memory serves, don't the Tyranids need new DNA (and thus creatures to consume) to evolve (and survive)? In that case, the Zerg has them beat, since they can evolve while doing Mime interpretation lol. Since they can evolve using intelligent design, they could likely survive and thrive even in a "dead" zone (and did to a degree, in the case of Primordial Zerus). If memory serves, the Tyranids needed to enter hibernation to survive when they were put in the same situation. With the capacity to evolve at the same rate as the Tyranids, as well as direct and enhance their evolutions, while I believe a war between the two would be the mother of all Wars of Attrition, I would give the edge of victory to the Zerg.
Just my thoughts on it. This is the second Overmind SI fic I have found, and I am eager to read it.
Curious to see if he is going to create multiple Abathurs, since he used plural pronouns while talking about them.
hahahahahaha
I love the characters description for the Zerg units.
Agreed on the Zerg Control issue. The Overlord Boost from Kerrigan was one I used pretty much the entire campaign I had it, except for when I was working towards achievements. Doesn't make much logical sense either, since Zerg units have the brain capacity to live. OL only need to coordinate them, and, as shown by the Roman Legions, one man could direct over 5000 troops. Similar principle here, at least in my opinion. The fact the main character is the OM which the Zerg has a genetic need to obey should make it even easier.
or evolve to be able to do so...that is actually the more likely scenario, but it would be unpleasant.
The biotinker segment was also great :lol
Sad it took me so long to start reading this. Keep up the great work!
It would probably matter to the primordial zerg before Amon's shenanigans, but to Primal or Corrupted Zerg, not so much. It is DNA/Essence and the latter breeds of Zerg utilize it. The Primordial Zerg were like the antagonist species of Animorphs except it also evolved their hosts...and didn't need to leave their hosts bodies once in them. A merging of that race and the Symbiotes from Marvel.
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Nid's need biomass to make more Nid's and need to use the DNA of other creatures to make evolved strains, Zerg don't.
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
NO! That thing is too overkill, even for the Zerg /sarcasm.
More seriously, it actually isn't that dangerous because it's only been shown to chew through steel chainmail and maybe plate. This is nothing to the kind of force needed to be relevant in the settings we are going through.
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Haifuri had mice that were a gestalt and could infect other species by biting them (and controlling them), thus adding to their numbers.
Like this you could infect a planet by airdropping mice (or something smaller), and infecting the entire planet, have its occupants politely line up to be absorbed and replaced with proper swarm strains.
Like this you could infect a planet by airdropping mice (or something smaller), and infecting the entire planet, have its occupants politely line up to be absorbed and replaced with proper swarm strains.
Virian
Sage of Reason and incomplete information
- Location
- Where logic has never been before
- Pronouns
- he/him
The Ultralisk is cute. Now I want a pet ultralisk
Tyranids have also been described as being able to weave new bioforms without assimilating more creatures.
The REAL difference between them in terms of evolution is in their balance of powerful gene pool vs powerful mutation.
Tyranids can and have accumulated more than one galaxy's worth of useful genetic material.
when they need to field a new strain, they can usually draw upon this large gene pool for solutions, with some modifications as appropriate.
Need plasma guns and swords? mass-producible psychic artillery? mass-producible kaijus? one monster to kill them all? there's already a nid strain for that.
On the other hand, for the Zerg, it's questionable whether they can accumulate that much essence.
In the first place, the size of the Swarm (and thus how much genetic material it can retain) is limited by the range of its controllers.
(it's an important reason why the Swarm has not expanded to conquer the entire galaxy, though it's still possible that there are feral Zerg colonies/ independent broods all over the galaxy)
And then there are examples of essence getting dropped/lost for whatever reason. Such a thing has obviously never happened to the nids.
The Zerg make up for this with their insane rate of mutation.
Every known attempt to develop a bioweapon against the Zerg has backfired tragically because of this rapid mutation.
e.g. Developing a virus to kill off all Zerg creep? The creep sample you're using mutates, jacks your brain and uses you to kill your fellow scientists.
On the other hand, there's more than one example of a Tyranid invasion being beaten back by a biological countermeasure, implying that all the nids involved (from the sample used for developing the bioweapon, to the invasion fleet itself) could not mutate fast enough to immediately no-sell the bioweapon like the Zerg do.
And then there's the related fact that Zerg biotinkering happens at the speed of plot.
A Protoss ship has just fled your blockade? No problem. Spin some new sequences, pull the resulting larva out of your ass, sneak it onto the Protoss ship and let it overrun the ship, using new abilities perfectly suited for this purpose.
This would be unthinkable for the nids. Afaik, if the Hive Mind decides to create a new bioform in response to an unprecedented challenge, it has to wait till the next battle to field that new bioform.
Now it's probably futile and hypocritical for me to say "let's not start an actual vs debate here".
So let me try to conclude the debate now by saying this:
even though I'm mostly a Zerg fan, I believe that in a conflict between the Tyranids and Zerg, the nids are going to win in the end.
The reason is simple and decisive: the Shadow in the Warp.
The Hive Mind's psychic presence is so powerful that, as a passive effect, it causes psychic disruption to enemies within lightyears of a Tyranid fleet.
And what are the Swarm Zerg weak to ? Psychic disruption.
Whenever the Swarm tries to engages a Tyranid hive fleet, it's going to suffer from the Shadow's effects, making it hard for the Zerg to capitalise on any other advantages they might otherwise have over the nids.
Now the Primal Zerg might be unaffected by the Shadow, but they're likely too disunited to deal any significant enough blow to the nids. (not to mention that the Primals don't have their own FTL travel ... yet)
And the Overmind itself might be able to fight the effects of the Shadow, but it's questionable whether it can protect the entire Swarm at once.
...
Usually, I'd describe the primordial Zerg as a cross between Goa'uld from Stargate SG1 (i.e. body-snatching parasitic worms) and the demons from Devilman (I.e. being able to merge biologically with another creature and mutate it)
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Akuma-Heika
The Devil Exists Within
- Location
- United States
We follow ancient zerg custom, and evolve it at several dozen thousand speeds faster than normal while giving it Zerg physiology. It will be chewing through Neo-Steel and practically teleporting before we are even done.
That was a wonderful explanation. Similar thought processes although I used ID (with possibly eons of knowledge, experience, and experimentation) to describe what you called the speed of plot.
I point out that the Zerg Psionics are connected to/enhanced by the Void...which is like the Multiversal Warp.
Its limited numbers and expansion capacity would be mostly explained by the fact Amon wanted to win in the end and if the Overmind could keep producing Cerebrates or evolving itself to be able to handle the load, it would be unlikely it would be killed, since it could hide thousands of lightyears away from the Protoss with the intervening space filled with Zerg and a far larger invasion force attacking the Protoss. At this point, the Overmind would likely be far to strong to input more directives as well, and thus Amon would lose and the Infinite Cycle would continue...based on his motives and dialogue, I am not sure he could even stomach that thought.
This will likely be my last comment on it. If you hadn't had such a wonderful post, I likely would have stopped as it was.
Now last night my PC...froze wouldn't be the perfect term for it, but close enough, so I forcibly shut it down and went to sleep. Now I must continue reading, FOR THE SWARM! lol
Wasn't that more because they were just taking their time evolving Banelings from scratch? It was shown at the end, that they had the capacity to take it out at any time after all.
Back to point, I am unsure if Blizzard has ever given us direct numbers...whenever we get the "space bugs" motif, it is rare for the number crunching to be added by anyone.
That is called a Leviathan. They exist, and in HotS we couldn't use that ability. I was pissed.
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Decim
On again, off again lurker.
- Location
- St. Louis, MO
Soft lock? Like, your PC was obviously still running, but glitched to hell and back so that you couldn't really do anything?
Makes some sense.
Limits placed on the Overmind by Amon or his followers is one handy way to explain the strange shortcomings of the Swarm.
For example, given that the Overmind knew even more about Khaydarin crystals than the Protoss and could apparently use them,
why hadn't the Swarm already integrated Khaydarin crystals with its biotech even before the invasion of Aiur?
Sort of.
Remember that they were trying to turn a mold that causes tooth decay when eaten too much into an explosive capable of wrecking the bridge of a capital ship.
It's not a simple case of assimilating an organism to get its useful trait.
...
As for the topic for which you were replying to Generica (which I had missed because I was simply trying to reach the latest chapter back then and ignoring the discussions on the way
),i.e. how fast do Zerg reproduce:
there's the long term sustainable rate and the short term rate.
For the long term sustainable rate:
In the short story Broken Wide (where the baneling evolution example comes from), one hive sent a new wave of "hundreds" of prototype banelings every day against the Terran base. And this went on for several months.
From there we can roughly infer that, at this one hive,
either hundreds of larvae were morphed together into new Zerg within each day,
or a larva was produced and morphed into a new Zerg every, say, 24/200 of an hour or faster,
or something in between.
This is probably constrained more by how fast the hive was obtaining and processing resources rather than the potential growth speed of the Zerg, due to my next example:
For the short term rate:
In the short story Just an Overlord, the titular overlord led an attack on a squad of marines near the top of a building.
Some of the marines tried to escape by taking the elevator downstairs.
Noticing this, the overlord immediately ordered some larvae in its hatchery to morph into new zerglings, hydralisks and roaches, who then tunnelled into the building in time to intercept the fleeing marines shortly after the latter exited the elevator.
In this case, the game mechanics seem to be canon. (assuming a real-life range for how fast the elevator ride was)
This does not contradict the previous example because, it's one thing to spawn a new squad RTS style, it's another to keep doing that every day for almost a year using just one facility and not run into resource issues.
As for how fast a hatchery can be grown without creep,
in Just An Overlord, it took about two days for the overlord to find a drone, morph it into a hatchery, spawn a flock of mutalisks and banelings, and start attacking the marines.
We can take that as the absolute upper limit for how long it takes a hatchery to be grown, but it's unlikely to have really taken that long, especially considering the following example:
In the Ghost Academy manga series, there's a scene of a drone morphing into a hatchery, which has sound effect words implying that the drone practically balloons into a hatchery in real time. (i.e., once again, game mechanics seeming roughly canon)
Of course, it's possible that the time taken does vary depending on how fast the drone can absorb the necessary raw materials to use for its transformation.
e.g., on very "good" ground, with the optimal combination of "nutrients", it could grow into hatchery within minutes, but on an inert, barren ground (e.g. the surface of a space platform), the transformation might indeed take more than a day.
As for the case when there's already a vast supply of Zerg biomass to use (e.g. a plain of creep), there's no doubt that a Zerg structure can be grown in real time.
In the short story Cold Symmetry, the Protoss zealot protagonist saw a spire growing right in front of his eyes.
but the best example is the nydus worm. It extends forward by growing forward, and one need only look at the Kerrigan vs Narud fight cinematic in Heart of the Swarm to know just how fast a nydus worm can extend.
And how fast does creep itself grow ?
In the novel StarCraft: Uprising, it's remarked that a little tub of creep expanded to cover the entire interior of a room "in minutes".
On a larger scale, it can be estimated, from novel descriptions and the SC1 campaign, that it took the Zerg about 18 days to go from no noticeable presence on Mar Sara, to covering most of the planet in creep.
Anyways, in crossover fanfics, one can always significantly tone down Zerg growth speed and explain that away as being due to, say, the lack of vespene gas.
(or conversely, boost Zerg growth speed due to finding a superior resource)
...
Now you guys may be asking: if Zerg growth rate is that fast, how can the Terrans or Protoss deal with them?
First off, scary as the growth rate may seem, it's not always the decisive factor in war.
e.g. when the Terrans and Protoss decide to glass the planet, there's usually nothing the Zerg can do about it. (unless the Zerg already have space defenses in place)
Secondly, the Terrans and Protoss make up for their slower growth rate with other ways of efficiently reinforcing their armies.
e.g. the Terrans used to "train" new soldiers by grabbing some convicts, putting them into special tanks and reprogramming their brains,
and the Protoss use their teleportation to get troops to wherever they want near-instantaneously.
And while the Terrans and Protoss cannot reproduce biologically as fast as the Zerg, the speed at which they manufacture their robots, vehicles, fighters etc has been implied on more than one occasion to be quite fast as well.
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Akuma-Heika
The Devil Exists Within
- Location
- United States
This could likely end up being a boon. Each unit would be mutating and evolving with stressors speeding it up. E.g. we could have are Zerglings obtain Metabolic Boost speeds, without actually giving are Zerglings that evolution which means when it is given we might get a compounded effect (best case), added effect would likely be worst case.
The Queens (especially SC2 Queens) should have some sentience.
I am unsure if I have seen this...then again the natural speed is absurd, so it is hard to tell when it is sped up.
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I thought they had a hivemind of their own, why would they radio instead of using it?
Never played XCOM, but I have read pieces of the wiki, and I am confused on their motive of attacking us instead of collecting samples for experimentation.
...Hyper-Evolutionary Zerg, combined with 1:1 Matter-Energy Conversion which allowed a non-hyper-evolutionary species to evolve very quickly, insane regeneration, insane psionics, clinical immortality (which we already have, but redundancies), and a much better "digestion: system. The Zerg were fast with their hax mitochondria as it was. It is now going to be terrifying...maybe made worse if they consume humans of Eva verse as well. Combined it is suppose to remake their Progenitor God-Race after all. Likely will not match up to Xel-naga just from the age difference (with the Xel-naga having outlived many universes from beginning to end), but still, alternative Purity of Essence (Fruit of Knowledge) and Purity of Form (Fruit of Everlasting Life).
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Yeah, most Terren buildings were built on site in prefab pieces IIRC, that's why I want to see a Terran version of this using adjutants, it would be scary but not quite as bad for other people as a Zerg one.
Sonifri
Is this the face of a villain?
- Location
- Texas
The real problem that Terrans have is... how old is their entire species and then contrast that vs the zerg and protoss?
If Terrans were an equally old species it would become Supreme Commander vs Starcraft.
From an in-universe perspective Terrans being able to compete on any level with Zerg or Protoss is baffling.
If Terrans were an equally old species it would become Supreme Commander vs Starcraft.
From an in-universe perspective Terrans being able to compete on any level with Zerg or Protoss is baffling.
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- Location
- Voidbetweenstars
Well in StarCraft 1 terrans couldn't really do so, (not counting the U.E.D who are from earth mind you) it's only in Starcaft 2 when plot/shitty story basically ruins it.
Z000
If this is trash, then find me in the dumpster
- Location
- Viet Nam
they don't
when the Zerg feel like it ( Kerri got pissed), the Terran get steam roll
Mengsk threw everything at her and she go through them like butter
when the Protoss feel like it ( or Alarak since the rest doesn't go around being dick) The Terran have to resort to a LV 10 Ghost and the Best troop arm with the latest tech and alot of stealth to even push them back
this is just 1/4 of the Protoss ( Tal'darim)
The Terran survive is cause:
A) The Zerg and Protoss were busy with one another
B) The majority of the Protoss aren't dick
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Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
They should be fully able to hold conversations with minimal changes, they are actually known to occasionally direct the Zerg alone. Overlords and Queens seem to be the "brains" of Feral Zerg.
First off, a distinction needs to be made between technical sophistication and military/industrial strength.
Sure the Terrans are not good at teleportation, can't power all their machines with light or psychic energy etc,
but they have blown up moons with their nukes, and had built a scaffolding into an entire planet (New Folsom) to mine an important metal from it.
In terms of firepower and scale of their engineering projects, they are just as impressive as the Protoss, if not more.
The Terrans make up for their lack of sophistication by being much more aggressive as a species.
(When the Protoss first noticed the existence of the Terrans, they were appalled at how the Terrans went about stripping resources from planets.
The Zerg were not the Space Locusts in StarCraft. The Terrans were.)
Secondly, the Protoss being more "ancient" is made less relevant by the Aeon of Strife, in which their civilisation regressed significantly.
To the point that they had to "rediscover" writing in 500 bc, when the AoS ended (according to the Dark Templar Saga).
In comparison, humans have had writing since 4000 to 3000 bc.
As for the Tal'darim, Legacy of the Void has shown that their MO is to raid other Protoss factions and steal the latters' technology,
so once again how "ancient" they are is not so relevant anymore.
As for the Swarm, we don't exactly know how long it has existed in the first place.
We know that the Overmind was a very knowledgeable being, and the Swarm probably did not have to limit itself to the kind of "organic tech" it had been using,
but that's the limit it seemed to have adhered to.
A few reasons can be given. For example, just like Dehaka in Heart of the Swarm, Zerg in general despise non-living machines.
Either way, it suffices to say that while Zerg biology is hax, it's also, by its nature, limited in some ways compared to what Terran and Protoss tech can do.
Most obvious case in point: the Swarm has never shown the capability to glass an entire planet from orbit the way the Terrans or Protoss do.
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Sonifri
Is this the face of a villain?
- Location
- Texas
Good points all around.
Just on that last one... if SI overmind can warp an asteroid away from a planet couldn't the old overmind warp an asteroid right to a planet? That's glassing levels of bombardment I think.
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Generic_Generica
Notice me Senpai~
- Location
- Right behind you
Eh. Possibly.
Honestly I could come up with several methods of exterminatus. I did come up with several methods of exterminatus when I was writing this fic.
There's a reason why the old overmind wouldn't bother with glassing levels of bombardment though.
One word. Essence.
Can't assimilate the Protoss or Terrans if the Protoss and Terrans are nothing but space-dust.
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