Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Assassin714 on July 01, 2021, 08:57:40 am
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I want to know if something like this has been done before.
The idea is that the GTVA creates a new superdestroyer controlled by an AI system designed to need a minimal crew and be faster and more efficient than a ship controlled by Terran or Vasudan pilots. It also has squadrons of remotely-controlled fighters that can coordinate and work together with amazing effectiveness.
However, during a combat test, the AI goes rogue and kills all of the crew aboard it by venting its atmosphere into space, and then destroys many other GTVA ships before jumping out to an unknown destination.
The campaign focuses on hunting it down, defending ships, stations, and planets from its raids, and finding out why it malfunctioned. (The answer is that they used Shivan computer technology when designing it, and couldn't properly predict its actions). The final battle involves the AI superdestroyer, having stolen the blueprints for Knossos technology, attempting to build and stabilize a node into Shivan space, to cause a new Shivan invasion, and you have to stop it.
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Sounds a lot like Derelict, if you replace the GTVA superdestroyer with a Lucifer. It even does the same thing of trying to stabilize a node to cause a Shivan invasion.
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Sounds a lot like Derelict, if you replace the GTVA superdestroyer with a Lucifer. It even does the same thing of trying to stabilize a node to cause a Shivan invasion.
Ah, guess then I need to work on the concept a bit more...
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You could instead have had it that one of the scientists that created the AI was recruited from the ranks of former NTF members, a la Project Paperclip, and he's trying to fulfill one of Bosch's other secret plans. In that way, the Shivans aren't the ones controlling it, his programming is. Unfortunately, that plot takes a lot from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
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I had a similar premise years ago, under the Workings of the Warp-umbrella, when the subspace cataclysm that kicked off the main arc of the campaign was still so extensive as to break the entire jump node network: An AI project to create a programm to understand the way the Shivans generate strategic objectives would become rouge and emancipate itself from the GTVA that created it. Running wild through the GTVA fleet and overpowering ships with electronic warfare in order to avoid being captured by its creators.
However in my version it turned out to be effectively benevolent - in essence, while it would not want anything to do with GTVA, as it would strive for an existence not bound to the militaristic objective it was created for - it would also play a role in bridging the gap with the former NTF officer now acting as sort-of liason to the Shivans - as they just wanted the GTVA to get out of the way of real Shivan objective in that scenario.
However, that doesn't factor into anything I do anymore, as I went into a direction regarding the alieness of the Shivans that would make it impossible for their technology to serve as the basis of an AI, e.g. no need of an interace layer to manipulate their technology as they themselves don't have personal individuation (i.e. the concept for the "I" would be absent from their version of the "I think therefor, I am"-argument), which escalated in them no being distinct from their technology in any meaningful way.
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Karajorma might remember me mentioning my idea about mission featuring a rogue AI cruiser using ED209 ambient sound.
I did make a mission but it was never going to be polished enough to release. 15 years or so ago.
How time flies 😂😂
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The idea sounds solid, and hardly any works of fiction are 100 original nowadays since so many things have been done already. So don't feel bad if something like it has been done before. you could distinguish it from Derelict by having the AI ship succeed - although Reunion does something similar.
Just spitballing here, but what if the A.I. succeeded and the Shivans came through... and attacked the A.I. since it wasn't Shivan enough? I know this is basically ripping off one of the Dalek storylines from Dr Who but it might make for an interesting dynamic. Will the A.I. align with the GTVA to face a common foe? Or would it be three-way fighting? Or perhaps... stay with me here... the Shivans align with the GTVA to defeat the A.I. ? ;7 ;7 ;7
One way you could make it unique from a gameplay perspective is to have the A.I. ships act differently. How about them having full six degrees of freedom movement like in The Babylon Project or Descent? That would probably make fighting them a very different experience. You can get a taste of what that would be like by playing Exile or Ben Cavalgar, both of which have the Shivans pulling off atypical moves, such as circle strafing at point blank range, flipping 180 degrees to fly backward and shoot you in the face if you follow them too long etc.