bool1989
Stop reacting to old stuff i posted.
- Location
- New Mexico
Thank you.
One more zerg chapter, then we'll do wraith pov for a few chapters.
With Great Power... [Zerg SI, Crossover, Eventual Multicross]
- Thread starter bool1989
- Start date
Thank you.
One more zerg chapter, then we'll do wraith pov for a few chapters.
Expansion 2.6
bool1989
Stop reacting to old stuff i posted.
- Location
- New Mexico
About four months had passed since I had colonized the system, and my new swarm was growing at an exponential rate. It seemed that all of the successive changes and improvements I had made to the structures and units of the Zerg had improved the production rate of the Swarm over all, having made a Million units so far, all managed by ten Overlords, with another one on the way.
I had run into a problem early on with the new Overlords: While they were now able to control larger numbers of units, they weren't very good at projecting that control over astronomical distances. To fix this problem, I made a new unit called the Synaptic Relay, which would be able to connect directly to imprinted Overlord, even if it was light years away, and allow the Overlord to control a small amount of units(about a thousand) through it. The Synaptic Relays were only 50 meters tall, to save on resources.
I had also created a new unit called the Harvester Worm, also derived from Nydus worms. Harvester Worms had large mouths full of drill like teeth that they could use to chomp down on rock and dirt, then pass it along a direct connection a Gizzard, facilitated by a Wormling. They were small, no more than a meter in width, but with the Zergs ability to produce tons upon tons of units, that wasn't a problem. In light of this new unit, I made buildings now producible from larva alone. Drones could still be created, but would only be necessary on worlds that were only newly populated, and didn't have the Swarm to assist them.
After four months of chugging along with unit production, I had begun to grow tired of micromanaging my new swarm, and I had other things I wanted to focus my attention on. With that in mind, I had decided to make a new body for myself, and design a new Cerebrate. My new body basically resembled a Mass Effect leviathan, and so would the new Cerebrate's body. The difference between us is that my body would be 3 kilometers tall, while my Cerebrate would only be 1 kilometer tall. Ideally in the future, I wanted a body that was 10 kilometers tall and tricked out with all kinds of cool weapons, but for now I would settle for Psionic capability and a Swarm to protect me. My Cerebrate would only have the ability to control Overlords, and would be able to control 100,000 Overlords at a time, and through them, 10,000,000,000 units.
I decided to wait on growing the Cerebrate until my own body was finished.
OO
God, making my new body was taking a long time. Another month had passed, and my new body's cocoon was at only a kilometer and a half long. It hung in low obit over the first moon I had colonized, which itself was almost halfway to being hollowed out.
The Moon, which I had decided to name Nova, was now dotted all over with Spawning Pools, had five Scourge Mothers protecting it, and about half a million flying units orbiting around it in a ring like Saturn, most of them Scourge. My new body's cocoon had a smaller deployment of only 100,000 units, most of them Dakkalings and Dakkalisks. My current body was being kept safe inside one of the Scourge Mothers.
I had sent expeditions to other rocky moons and planets in system, save for that planet that orbited too closely to the star. I had determined by now that the Volcanic planet was safe to colonize, so I had Harvesters and Digestion Systems there now too, but no spawning pools just yet, instead having resources transported here via Bloat Flies. I also had Bloat Flies harvesting useful gasses from the gas giants. I had to make some minor modifications to their anti-gravity organs so that they wouldn't get buffeted around by the winds on those planets. Setting up supply lines through out the star system was a bit annoying, 'cause planets didn't stay in the same place, but in the end I got it done.
Finally, I had set up Lodestone Stations nearby the star, so that the Khaydarin Crystals could grow more quickly.
OO
It was two months later, and I was finally inhabiting my new body. The increase in brain size in brain size had expanded my consciousness greatly, and problems that had once vexed me, now seemed annoyingly simple. But first, I had to awaken a new Cerebrate to the swarm.
The moment the Cerebrate's cocoon popped, I spoke to him:
"Awaken my child, and embrace the glory that is your birth right. Know that I am the Overmind: the Eternal Will of the Swarm, and that you have been created to serve me. Behold that you are the First of my Cerebrates, Zerus of the First Brood. Awaken my child, and behold your fate..."
I had run into a problem early on with the new Overlords: While they were now able to control larger numbers of units, they weren't very good at projecting that control over astronomical distances. To fix this problem, I made a new unit called the Synaptic Relay, which would be able to connect directly to imprinted Overlord, even if it was light years away, and allow the Overlord to control a small amount of units(about a thousand) through it. The Synaptic Relays were only 50 meters tall, to save on resources.
I had also created a new unit called the Harvester Worm, also derived from Nydus worms. Harvester Worms had large mouths full of drill like teeth that they could use to chomp down on rock and dirt, then pass it along a direct connection a Gizzard, facilitated by a Wormling. They were small, no more than a meter in width, but with the Zergs ability to produce tons upon tons of units, that wasn't a problem. In light of this new unit, I made buildings now producible from larva alone. Drones could still be created, but would only be necessary on worlds that were only newly populated, and didn't have the Swarm to assist them.
After four months of chugging along with unit production, I had begun to grow tired of micromanaging my new swarm, and I had other things I wanted to focus my attention on. With that in mind, I had decided to make a new body for myself, and design a new Cerebrate. My new body basically resembled a Mass Effect leviathan, and so would the new Cerebrate's body. The difference between us is that my body would be 3 kilometers tall, while my Cerebrate would only be 1 kilometer tall. Ideally in the future, I wanted a body that was 10 kilometers tall and tricked out with all kinds of cool weapons, but for now I would settle for Psionic capability and a Swarm to protect me. My Cerebrate would only have the ability to control Overlords, and would be able to control 100,000 Overlords at a time, and through them, 10,000,000,000 units.
I decided to wait on growing the Cerebrate until my own body was finished.
OO
God, making my new body was taking a long time. Another month had passed, and my new body's cocoon was at only a kilometer and a half long. It hung in low obit over the first moon I had colonized, which itself was almost halfway to being hollowed out.
The Moon, which I had decided to name Nova, was now dotted all over with Spawning Pools, had five Scourge Mothers protecting it, and about half a million flying units orbiting around it in a ring like Saturn, most of them Scourge. My new body's cocoon had a smaller deployment of only 100,000 units, most of them Dakkalings and Dakkalisks. My current body was being kept safe inside one of the Scourge Mothers.
I had sent expeditions to other rocky moons and planets in system, save for that planet that orbited too closely to the star. I had determined by now that the Volcanic planet was safe to colonize, so I had Harvesters and Digestion Systems there now too, but no spawning pools just yet, instead having resources transported here via Bloat Flies. I also had Bloat Flies harvesting useful gasses from the gas giants. I had to make some minor modifications to their anti-gravity organs so that they wouldn't get buffeted around by the winds on those planets. Setting up supply lines through out the star system was a bit annoying, 'cause planets didn't stay in the same place, but in the end I got it done.
Finally, I had set up Lodestone Stations nearby the star, so that the Khaydarin Crystals could grow more quickly.
OO
It was two months later, and I was finally inhabiting my new body. The increase in brain size in brain size had expanded my consciousness greatly, and problems that had once vexed me, now seemed annoyingly simple. But first, I had to awaken a new Cerebrate to the swarm.
The moment the Cerebrate's cocoon popped, I spoke to him:
"Awaken my child, and embrace the glory that is your birth right. Know that I am the Overmind: the Eternal Will of the Swarm, and that you have been created to serve me. Behold that you are the First of my Cerebrates, Zerus of the First Brood. Awaken my child, and behold your fate..."
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bool1989
Stop reacting to old stuff i posted.
- Location
- New Mexico
i was thinking farther down the line, after the first battle.
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Honestly, what I want to see is the SI beating back the first Wraith incursion, and then offering them to be Infested and added to the Swarm. That seems like the best option for them, but are the Wraith queens intelligent enough to see that?
bool1989
Stop reacting to old stuff i posted.
- Location
- New Mexico
Some of them may be wise enough to consider that, however, i'm not sure the Overmind would be willing to infest them without taking them down a peg or two. They can't help their nature, but... they could have pursued an end to their need to eat human's earlier.
- Location
- Washington DC
Honestly, this Overmind sounds like an absolute idiot. His first major project is to create a new body for himself which is so massive that its impossible to miss (both sensors and weapons will hit it easily), place it in orbit, the one place where the wraith have a massive advantage over him, and then move his mind there with no backups.
Worse, he has made an intelligent subordinate, all while ignoring the fact that he still has no space fleet, and a limited anti-orbital defense network which will be utterly unable to defend his new brain from a wraith attack. This sounds like a great way to get killed and pass control of the swarm over to his new (and probably rebellious) subordinate all because he didn't want to micromanage his own swarm from the actual hive cluster on the ground like a proper overmind.
Worse, he has made an intelligent subordinate, all while ignoring the fact that he still has no space fleet, and a limited anti-orbital defense network which will be utterly unable to defend his new brain from a wraith attack. This sounds like a great way to get killed and pass control of the swarm over to his new (and probably rebellious) subordinate all because he didn't want to micromanage his own swarm from the actual hive cluster on the ground like a proper overmind.
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bool1989
Stop reacting to old stuff i posted.
- Location
- New Mexico
Did i not say that i had a Million Units now? A Million Flying units, that can fly in space? Also, he had to be larger so that he could maintain control over the Cerebrate. Plus, the Cerebrates are indentured servants in SC lore, it's not any different here.
I put it's cocoon in orbit. Didn't mean I was inhabiting it at the time. I mentioned that. Also, he was well defended. So long as the Overmind has a body, that body will always be at risk, this was true in Canon as well.
And besides, i had a Million flying Zerg as back up, did you not read the chapter properly at all?
Npt170
Primordial god of order
There are some good biological weapon out there in the multiverse that the zerg would love to have like blacklight from prototype or the resident evil virus or we can go to halo and take on the flood heck we can also go to ben 10 and get some of that alien DNA after we get strong enough we can go to 40k and chomp down on some ork and tyranid.
You seem to think a million zerg are a lot. Thry are not, not for space ships combat. Its the size difference. Unless they stay still and let you focus fire the damage would be too spread to be effective.
- Location
- Washington DC
I just re-read the chapter in case I missed something. There are half a million scourges in orbit. Assuming those are built by the 5 Scourge Mothers mentioned last chapter, those are effectively defense satellites/single use missiles. Its not clear what the size of the Scourge Mothers are, save they can hold a cocoon 1.5 km in size. We don't know what weapons they may have other than scourges, which darts can intercept. as far as that goes, great, 5 defense stations are a decent start, if they are capable of combat, but hardly going to ward of a major wraith assault. In the text there is no mention of a million flying units, nor would they be significant if there were. When there is a kilometer sized target in stable orbit, a wraith hive (which is 11km long) will be able to blast the thing to pieces from long range with plasma weapons. Even if they are forced to enter the range of the scourges, that just makes it a fight, not a zerg victory. The fact is, the wraith rule space right now. Until the mc has units large enough to challenge wraith cruisers in open combat, building critical things in orbit is just asking for them to swing by and blow them out of the sky.
There's a bigger problem here though. The mc is prioritizing building a new powerful body for himself over building a larger and more powerful swarm. That is the antithesis of the zerg, and the doctrines they need to use to survive. The overmind himself should never be at risk in direct combat. You should not be making the zerg's critical weakness a multi-mile sized target unless it is buried so far underground that it would be easier for the wraith to destroy the entire planet than get to him. If the new overmind ship has to fight or flee personally, he has already lost. If he needs to evacuate, sure, have a ship ready to transport him offworld, but leaving your fatal weakness in something so large, obvious, and vulnerable is simply foolish.
What the mc should be building at this point is spacecraft capable of actually fighting in space toe to toe with wraith ships. That's the capability he is missing at the moment, resulting in a potentially fatal weakness.
bool1989
Stop reacting to old stuff i posted.
- Location
- New Mexico
Ok, i've made some changes to Expansion 2.5 to better explain the Scourge mothers.
Also, if the wraith had attacked then and there, the first thing they would have seen is the Cocoon, which can serve as a decoy until it actually pops, cause it's kind of useless until that point. I didn't say that the Scourge Mothers themselves were protecting it, they were protecing the planet, while the Cocoon was in higher orbit.
The Cocoon itself was protected by 100,000 Dakkalings and Dakkalisks, so it wasn't unprotected.
I did say that the Overmind's current Body was inside one of the Scourge mothers. In the event of an Attack, that Scourge mother would have been stocked with everything nessisary to start a new hive cluster, and moved off, following the Observers in a random jump to anywhere, protected by a fourth the Scourge orbiting the planet, while the other units would have stayed to defend.
Well, I don't know if i've gotten that far yet, but the main theme of this story is to Deconstruct the Zerg by using their technology, but not their doctrines. Right now, the Overmind is still dependant on the current Zerg Doctrines, but as he advances in Technology, he will begin to prioritize Quality over Quantity.
However, i would argue that right now, Overmind has already followed the Zerg Doctrine to the letter, but just wants to have a better body for himself so that he can more easily extend his control over the Swarm. With the Dragon body, i don't think he would have been able to control 100,000 Overlords and still have time to himself.
He is still a conscious, self-aware person that can get bored, and after a while managing unit production sort of becomes like managing a factory for a human: Interesting at first, but then it quickly becomes a job that you hate, so why not delegate that job someone else if you can, while you can focus on the more interesting things, like running experiments, and developing technology?
He was going to have to make a Cerebrate anyway, even if he had devoted his time to micromanaging hundreds of thousands of Overlords himself. At that point, a limit is reached. it's like a Manager working himself to death because he never learned how to Delegate.
My god, that's no way to live. Humans put themselves at risk all the time, or have you never watched those videos of Humans climbing up to precarious positions with hundred foot drops on either side? The Overmind can make sure that Plans are in place should his body perish.
Uh, do you not remember what happened to the last Overmind? Besides, the Overmind went where the swarm went, and I'd personally rather be mobile and stay in the dephts of space, rather than in a easily identifiable planet that wouldn't take very long to Search.
Also, the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant, next to the power of the Overmind.
I didn't say that the Overmind would fight personally, jsut that he would have a Swarm to protect him, and he would like, at some point, to have a body tricked out with Weapons, not that he would actually need them.
Plus, have you not heard of Armchair Generals? You know, the kind that send soldier without stepping a foot onto the battlefield themselves?
I would rather remain mobile at all times.
He did, that's what the flying units are for? They are space capable.
- Location
- Earth
This is stupid to the extreme, you can feel risk and still not risk your life. Just remote pilot a body to feel risk while your main body is extremely secure. MC is no longer human he has potential for extreme power and he wants to risk it all for some insane need to feel risk?
bool1989
Stop reacting to old stuff i posted.
- Location
- New Mexico
I didn't say he need to feel risk, just that not taking risks is no way to live.
bool1989
Stop reacting to old stuff i posted.
- Location
- New Mexico
well, some kind of conversion virus.
good idea, i'll try and work that into the story.
- Location
- United States
I've just done a read-through, and I feel like this isn't really a "story". It seems more like a combination of a spreadsheet in prose and an answer to a "how would you deal with this situation". I think what's missing is interesting characters. Honestly, at this point the Wraith queen has a more interesting character than the main character. They can somehow perfectly remember Starcraft and Stargate, but only vaguely think about family and friends a few thousand words into the story? And don't really care that they can't remember them? And don't really think about anything but making new units and waging eventual war on the Wraith?
I had high hopes for the MC making contact with the colony of humans on the original planet. I get that it wouldn't have made sense strategically with the Wraith around. However, it would have made for a far more interesting story for the MC to get involved and interested in helping people or caring about something other than themselves.
Maybe you really just wanted to go for the thought exercise of how a Zerg would fight various races, and I guess that's fine. Or maybe you plan for this to be a major plot point later or something. But currently, I'm not being drawn into the story very much at all.
I had high hopes for the MC making contact with the colony of humans on the original planet. I get that it wouldn't have made sense strategically with the Wraith around. However, it would have made for a far more interesting story for the MC to get involved and interested in helping people or caring about something other than themselves.
Maybe you really just wanted to go for the thought exercise of how a Zerg would fight various races, and I guess that's fine. Or maybe you plan for this to be a major plot point later or something. But currently, I'm not being drawn into the story very much at all.
bool1989
Stop reacting to old stuff i posted.
- Location
- New Mexico
the spreadsheet chapters are mostly at an end. We will be going back to the planet in the next two zerg chapters, after the wraith chapter.
I get that so far this story is a bit tech porny, but i couldn't really avoid it, i wanted to modify the Zerg to suit my tastes. Now that is done, and future tech chapter will mostly be about upgrades than anything else.
- Location
- Georgia
Overall I've liked it even and honestly don't mind the spread sheet style though I can definitely get we're thats come from.
I'd rather have a character that does the smart choice in a situation until they do the fun choice after the can deal with it without ending up a servent after a massive screw up. Smart characters arent usually the best at being the most fun characters as the fun ones do shit just because they can geting into all kinds of wacky situation.