Matrix Games Forums

What the creature is and what it looks like
Not much is known about what a Siren is made of, it appears as a gaseous, ethereal looking cloud of shifting and glowing shades of green, red and blue. It is quite beautiful to behold.

What it does
The Siren feeds off of the energy of passing ships. It devours shields quickly as it feeds off of their energy and then gets to work absorbing the rest of the energy from the ships vital systems. The creature is corrosive and so ships are damaged and destroyed if they remain enveloped in the shroud for too long.

Anything special about it
The Siren affects the minds of the crew members. Strange sounds are heard, like sweet singing before a crew member is affected. The crew members desires and emotions become overwhelmed and he or she is unable to think rationally. Crew members can be found gorging themselves in the kitchen, making love in the corridors, gambling away all their money in the rec room and even savagely attacking and killing other crew mates to who they harbour even the slightest grudge.

When this happens the ship is disabled as the chain of command breaks down. The more intelligent races such as Quameno are able to resist this control for much longer than those with less developed minds such as the Teekan or Boskara.

Backstory
Legends of this creature date back to ancient times, when the Shakturi warred with the races of the galaxy. After the retreat of the Shakturi and the decline of civilisation, as space travel became a rarity the creatures became a myth, a thing of legend. Now the galaxy is thriving once more and ships can be found almost everywhere these creatures have started to appear around gas giants and in gas clouds, as if they were hibernating, awaiting the spread of civilisation so they could feed once more.

Cool concept Woodman.

That would definitely give the races a new card to play...
I like it...

I don't get it -

You essentially have a storm, but in this case it's boundaries are even more poorly dictated by the vagaries of what's considered "within" the cloud and not (one planet? multiple systems?).

And you can do nothing about it - so if it appears on a major trade route, your economy shuts down as your civilian ships make suicide runs through it... or if the cloud envelops your homeworld - you're essentially rogered roughly from behind with a particularly splintery piece of wood.

This is ... fun? Maybe I'm missing something here, but "fun" does not seem to apply.

"...gambling away all their money in the rec room..."
Hah! In case of Ugnaris that wouldn't be anything special. "Keep playing guys, it's those stupid sirens again. Who's dealing?"

Nice idea. Regarding what Kayoz said; presumeably this "creature" could be only damaged by energy and/or ion weapons. That how I imagined it.

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

I don't get it -

You essentially have a storm, but in this case it's boundaries are even more poorly dictated by the vagaries of what's considered "within" the cloud and not (one planet? multiple systems?).

And you can do nothing about it - so if it appears on a major trade route, your economy shuts down as your civilian ships make suicide runs through it... or if the cloud envelops your homeworld - you're essentially rogered roughly from behind with a particularly splintery piece of wood.

This is ... fun? Maybe I'm missing something here, but "fun" does not seem to apply.

[:D] No you certainly don't get it... It's a little sequence of .png files animated like the current space creatures, it's not a huge cloud it's the same size as the current space creatures, attacks in the same way... moving on top of you, there is no need for suicide runs through it with freighters [:D]

I kept it simple because I believe this is what Elliot would prefer.

Nice idea. Regarding what Kayoz said; presumeably this "creature" could be only damaged by energy and/or ion weapons. That how I imagined it.

Well again, I didn't post anything complicated because I wasn't sure Eliott would want to implement new game mechanics for a single creature about 2 weeks before release. But I suppose conventional weapons would be less likely to hurt it if you wanted to go down a more complex road.

Excellent idea, Woodman! I love it.

ORIGINAL: WoodMan
Well again, I didn't post anything complicated because I wasn't sure Eliott would want to implement new game mechanics for a single creature about 2 weeks before release. But I suppose conventional weapons would be less likely to hurt it if you wanted to go down a more complex road.

Elliot really needs to be more specific, then - does he want scripted behaviour or not? Does he want specific options opened or not (ex: option to build a ram-scoop to capture the creature, allowing one to breed them and potentially release them back into the "wild" ("wild" being systems inhabited by annoying neighbours).

I think you've hit the nail on the head - what exactly IS Elliot after?

Woodman, this is a really creative idea. I think Kayoz definitely has a point about the specifics. If we knew that we can only think up creatures that fit with existing game mechanics then the limitations would be clear.

I would change that name or expect to get the Sword the Stars2 developers very upset.

There is a creature called Siren in SotS2? 

I always like the mix of ancient myth and sci-fi, like Star Wars, so I took a creature of ancient myth, the Siren and adapted it to sci-fi.  Obviously we can't have a woman singing on the rocks though, because the rocks in this case are asteroids [:D]  Which is why I made it a gas cloud.  Also, SotS2 wouldn't be the first to have Sirens in sci-fi, they appear in Red Dwarf too [:'(]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

I would change that name or expect to get the Sword the Stars2 developers very upset.

SotS2 is vapour-ware at the moment. I wouldn't be too bothered with upsetting them over what they MIGHT do.

Also, as it's out of mythology, I can't see them being upset - it's not like they made it up all on their own!