While I read Destiny's post in "A celebration of Freespace" an idea just popped up in my head; what if FS ships were treated as "animals" and that they were the "species"?
Let's see how this works and use the Terrans as an example;
Firstly, creatures need to eat. How? I actually don't know, this is the rub. We could make ships "eat" from the carcasses of "dead" enemy ships. But this means a ship has to be disabled, not destroyed, to be eaten.
The idea is that, should food be taken from the "carcasses" of dead ships, a transport should dock with the dead ship to give the idea that the transport is consuming it.
The transport then has to unload all the food it took in an Arcadia installation; installations would serve as the storehouse for all the food in a pack of ships, as well as its base; in ant colonies, it would be the ant hill.
To construct a base, a mass effort needs to be done by harvesting asteroids; these asteroids would be taken by Triton-class worker ships. Then, as the Tritons near the colony's installation, they are "processed" by Zephyrus "construction ships" and then built into an Arcadia. Now, this can't be fully demonstrated, as there is no "construction" animation in Freespace.
Then we have the roles. Firstly, to reproduce, ships need to mate. Mating procedures involves the "docking" of two ships to one another like done on insects; a "male" ship has to dock on a "female" ship, making the female ship lay eggs/become pregnant.
However, I choose to select the Colony mentality; much like ants and termites, there needs to be a "queen" of a specific pack of ships. The "Queen" would be the destroyer; another ship, possibly a corvette, has to dock with the destroyer.
The Destroyer will then give birth to escape pods which will come out of the fighterbay.
I thought of the Escape Pods as the "larva" stage of the ship; defenseless and weak. Over time, the escape pod has to reach the "pupa" stage by engulfing itself in a armor; and equip a gun for self-defense; they become sentry guns.
As the escape pods develop inside the sentry gun, they finally become fighters; they reach adulthood. The purpose of fighters would be the "warriors" of the colony; they defend the base, destroyer, etc. as well as hunt for food.
However, alternatives are possible. This is because we also need some to develop into warships, freighters, and transports. So the idea is that baby warships are Posiedons; remember, Poseidons are known to be rather deadly as it has a somewhat good gun positioning and a fairly heavy armament for ships of their size. Poseidons further become cruisers (Leviathans/Fenris/Aeolus) as they reach adulthood.
One of the cruisers has to develop as a consort for the "queen" destroyer; so, one of them will become a corvette, which will constantly mate with the destroyer.
Baby freighters would be...hmm...don't actually know. The idea is that freighters are kind of the "beasts of burden" in a pack of ships; in the ant world, they are the "worker ants". What would act as their baby version I don't know (anyone suggest a small freighter that isn't the Poseidon?)
Baby transports would, of course, be Elysiums. Then they get larger and mature as Argos.
The Vasudans would probably serve as another species and an occasional ally/enemy of the Terran ships; take note, Terrans aren't exactly one pack; they form different colonies. Terran Colony A, for example, can ally with Terran Colony B, to fight the combined forces of powerful Vasudan Colony A and Traitor Terran Colony C...something like that.
Shivans, the most feared, are the apex predators of the universe; with superior technology, they have hunted other species to extinction and endangered many more. They also capture some and make them their slaves for amusement which they call "pets". They are the most plentiful and the dominant force in the galaxy (humans in the real world).
So, what do you say?
