Hognose9 wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2024 10:55 am
Here's my unrealistic guess:
Every planet has their limitations, Nauvis is ridden with biters, Vulcanus has lava pits and some hints at similarly unhappy natives. But who or
what is on Fulgora to stop you?
The precursor aliens fought a war, and they were losing. The enemy had disabled their anti-spacecraft capabilities and had begun landing en masse for an invasion. The aliens, lets just call them Fulgorians, knew something had to change, or else they would be overrun by their hated enemy. The Fulgorians had technology and resources, but lacked manpower. One experiment was of particular interest, it had previously dismissed as a waste of time and manpower, but the military was desperate.
Their enemies had these disgusting biological beasts, known today as biters. They were not man-made, rather a product of the clearly inferior ecosystem run by their enemies. These things could live off the land, and they would attack Fulgora's incursions into enemy planets, but that's nothing a few plasma blasts couldn't stop. The Fulgorians copied this idea, improving upon it. Using their plentiful resources and advanced AI, they made a mechanical version. Like ants, these mechanical biters would take chunks out of enemy structures and bring it back to the Fulgorian Empire. As the war situation deteriorated, drastic measured were taken. The mecha-biters were updated to live off the land, making colonies and manufacturing copies of themselves.
This proved to be extremely effective, as the enemy's flamethrowers and lasers could barely damage the mechanical biters. The war continued on for years, but one fateful day it all changed. The enemy were fed up, causing a civil war on their home planet. Overnight, their military capabilities collapsed, so they evacuated their forces from Fulgora.
Every Fulgorian was celebrating and cheering, they had finally won! All they had to do was disable the mecha-biters. The scientists issued a recall of all mecha-biters, causing thousands of early models to come home and be shut down. But something was off, there had to be millions more out in the wild. Most of the mecha-biters were created by other mecha-biters from captured enemy materials. Only a few of these returned home.
The scientists captured a wild model, and upon analysis found the recall code had been removed. They had evolved. The Fulgorian Empire tried to remove the wild mecha-biters by force, but encountered stiff resistance. The mecha biters had been designed to evolve to new threats, and they had just turned on their creators; the Fulgorians were threats. Wild mecha-biters swarmed the undefended mechatronics lab, causing a battle between man-made and wild mecha-biters. The millions of mecha-biters quickly overwhelmed the man-made ones, killing all scientists they found.
With the scientists dead, nobody knew how to shut down these mecha-biters, sparking a war between Fulgorians and their mecha-biters. Unprepared, the Fulgorians were annihilated, with their materials used to make more mecha-biters. Every last kilogram of pure material was used by mecha-biters to make more of themselves. After entirely removing any semblance of a threat, they climbed into their caves and hibernated. For centuries, the only time they emerged was to consume stray meteorites that landed.
Until one fateful day, they sensed a disturbance. They emerged to find a fiery haze; the engineer's rocket was landing.
For now, they are rusty and barely working, but this new threat will galvanize them.
The idea:
The mecha-biters do not care about impure materials, that's why they left all this scrap lying around. But this scrap is just as useless to you as it is to them, and you'd like to recycle it. By nightfall, they hide from lightning in caves they have excavated. During the day, they scout around in search of pure material. They will steal iron, copper and other basic resources off belts, taking it home like ants. If you do not have any, they will take chunks out of your buildings. If they cannot get any, they will learn and come back until they get their metals.
You could import large amounts of raw resources to feed them, but their numbers will slowly grow until you can't afford to feed them anymore.
You may choose to go on the offensive, but their caves are reinforced. Flamethrowers cannot flush them out, as they are heat resistant and do not require air. Explosions can seal the caves, but they will just dig a new way out. But maybe if you use a large amount of explosives, you could collapse the cave permanently.
The mecha-biters are not all bad though, they will happily dine on materials you do not need, and they even pose a research opportunity. You could reverse engineer them and make your own larger versions. They would require a multitude of advanced materials, trading flight for carrying capacity, range, speed and combat ability. Perhaps their heat resistance and ability to cross rough terrain will prove useful on Vulcanus.
It's not the sinister random danger then, rather another game sin, where you can not entirely purge an enemy.