machine ships design

[Helicopter200]

will machines will have own ships design,stations and more? cuz its weird to play machine empire with organic's ships

[NixBoxDone]

Hard to say, but my gut is saying yeah. If they can come up with sufficiently awesome machine designs, I can't see them not cashing in on those 5 to 10 bucks.

[Dr. Loan Lee]

Originally posted by NixBoxDone:

Hard to say, but my gut is saying yeah. If they can come up with sufficiently awesome machine designs, I can't see them not cashing in on those 5 to 10 bucks.

Machine are as good with or without the ships designs and pretty sure that won't prevent people from getting the DLC or playing machine.

[Garrett]

Closest to machine ships are humanoid and mammalian. Closest to hivemind looking ships are def rock boi ships.

[NixBoxDone]

Originally posted by Kaycha SoulWrath:

Originally posted by NixBoxDone:

Hard to say, but my gut is saying yeah. If they can come up with sufficiently awesome machine designs, I can't see them not cashing in on those 5 to 10 bucks.

Machine are as good with or without the ships designs and pretty sure that won't prevent people from getting the DLC or playing machine.

Yeah, but you could also play humanoids before that ship set became a thing. Nothing says they can't introduce a machine ship set without tying it to the existing DLC. >_<

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Would love to see this as well. Haven't even been able to find a decent machine-themed shipset through mods, and it just doesn't feel right for machines that "evolved" for centuries on their own to be using the same ships as everybody else.

[NixBoxDone]

The problem here is that machines themselves aren't really that generic. You could argue that machines wouldn't design ships to be aerodynamic or sleek because they favour form over function.
You could just as easily get away with making them really sleek and predatory if they're determined exterminators and adopted the aesthetics of their fallen creators though.

What looks like machine designs might differ a bit from person to person.
What I'd love is if they introduced visual changes for your ships depending on which ascendancy path you picked/certain key traditions or perks.
I really want my ships to have a visible psionic shield/wave effect going if I'm dealing with the shroud or take on a more organic look as I delve deeper into the mysterious of gene sculpting.

This would also help differentiate other empires and give some visible clues about what they chose.

My personal ideal for robot ships would probable be similar to the Borg or Contingency designs. Simple (perfect) geometrical designs lacking windows, but with plenty of visible power lines glowing with the energy to sustain the massive supercomputers housed within.

[Garrett]

Whole point of machines is that they copy after their creators. Why would they make their own? It would be very hard to come up with ideas for "machine ships"

Even some can argue "Determined exteriminator hate their creators and refuse to look like them" Oh really? Look at terminator then. for any other machine empire. Look at the matrix machines. Even their infantry look like humanoid/ human like robots.

Humanoid ships are just fine for machines and so are mammalian ships

[NixBoxDone]

The point is that there's no reason for AI hiveminds to have ships stuffed with robot bodies of humanoid size that use doors and buttons and handles like we do. It's inefficient and only makes sense if each humanoid actually has a mind and would resent being deprived of a job, but as a gestalt consciousness you really don't NEED swabbies. If anything, ships could probably be much more efficient if you just had small roomba sized drones for the odd repair or manual activation in case of network loss and the rest of the ship being fully automated, walkways only for battle repair access and nothing else.

You're thinking of individual bots like robot ascension (where it's really just the creators themselves piloting each robot to get rid of that pesky mortality and therefore designing the robot bodies in ways that are familiar to them for ease of use) or Skynet when humans are still around or just a few short generations after wiping them out, when according to the backstory you're supposed to be long past that if you start as a Gestalt.

Sure, there's nothing that says a gestalt consciousness HAS to deviate from the taste and art direction/design philosophies of it's fleshy creators, but if you really think about it many of those choices heavily depend on feeble organic bodies. Their size determines interior design, their needs for protection and nourishment (both air and food intake) take up much of the space as well and what they look like depends on what senses are strong in the species designing it, all of which are things that either become obsolete or change radically once machine bodies/sensors enter the picture.
Logically you should really see almost all of those choices change as the gestalt consciousness comes into its own and realizes they no longer serve any purpose outside of maybe nostalgia.

[Garrett]

Originally posted by NixBoxDone:

The point is that there's no reason for AI hiveminds to have ships stuffed with robot bodies of humanoid size that use doors and buttons and handles like we do. It's inefficient and only makes sense if each humanoid actually has a mind and would resent being deprived of a job, but as a gestalt consciousness you really don't NEED swabbies. If anything, ships could probably be much more efficient if you just had small roomba sized drones for the odd repair or manual activation in case of network loss and the rest of the ship being fully automated, walkways only for battle repair access and nothing else.

You're thinking of individual bots like robot ascension (where it's really just the creators themselves piloting each robot to get rid of that pesky mortality) or Skynet when humans are still around or just a few short generations after wiping them out, when according to the backstory you're supposed to be long past that if you start as a Gestalt.

Sure, there's nothing that says a gestalt consciousness HAS to deviate from the taste and art direction/design philosophies of it's fleshy creators, but if you really think about it many of those choices heavily depend on feeble organic bodies. Their size determines interior design, their needs for protection and nourishment (both air and food intake) take up much of the space as well and what they look like depends on what senses are strong in the species designing it, all of which are things that either become obsolete or change radically once machine bodies/sensors enter the picture.

Star wars says other wise.

Maybe you need to do some research on the confederacy of independent systems.

"inb4 star wars is not realistic" neither is stellaris lmfao. Especially putting stuff like habitats over blackholes lmfao.

CIS had a navy that had AI machine humanoids operating ships. Like b1 battle droids and OOM commanders.

They had even more intelligent Droids like super tactical droids which were also humanoid. a machine is a machine. AI is AI

[NixBoxDone]

You do realize more than one Sci-Fi universe exists, right? If we're going to play that game then we really need to discuss why we're not having a Force Ascension instead of the Shroud. "Star Wars say it works this way" isn't an argument unless we're talking the Star Wars universe.

Btw, I'd absolutely love a Force Ascension. Jedi gecko people inwards perfectionists was one of my first race designs. >_<

[Garrett]

Originally posted by NixBoxDone:

You do realize more than one Sci-Fi universe exists, right? If we're going to play that game then we really need to discuss why we're not having a Force Ascension instead of the Shroud. "Star Wars say it works this way" isn't an argument unless we're talking the Star Wars universe.

And many other sci fi universes work the same way. Robotic humanoid machines working ships and battle stuff. Matrix, terminator, star wars, star trek. Even stellaris.

But i will admit there are AI controlled stuff too. But not to common compared to what i mentioned

machines in stellaris lack alot of flavor and on the point of borderline boring anyways hiveminds are even worse in that aspect

[NixBoxDone]

They do. Others don't though. I'm not saying it's impossible or anything, it just seems inefficient unless you're planning to also have humanoids living or working on your ships at some point, which most of those universes also feature but which doesn't seem to be the case for Stellaris barring the odd robot ascension or assimilator/caretaker shuttling meatbags around.

The Borg use humanoids because they're literally free and they have to plug them in to steal their knowledge anyways, so they might as well. Well, that and the whole hivemind thing which doesn't really make them the best example because they're not "pure" machines. (nitpicking, but eh)

[anaphylactic god]

of course they will.
for 19.99$

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Originally posted by Garrett:

Whole point of machines is that they copy after their creators. Why would they make their own?

The issue with this train of logic is that it is held up entirely by the assumption that the machines' creators ever got to the regular spacefaring phase, which it seems quite obvious they did not or otherwise you wouldn't start on just one planet with only corvettes available.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Originally posted by NixBoxDone:

Originally posted by Kaycha SoulWrath:

Machine are as good with or without the ships designs and pretty sure that won't prevent people from getting the DLC or playing machine.

Yeah, but you could also play humanoids before that ship set became a thing. Nothing says they can't introduce a machine ship set without tying it to the existing DLC. >_<

Sure, the machine ship set would be usable by any culture, but if one's made it'll still be the price of at least the plantoids pack (maybe cheaper if no new portraits).