New enemy group, self-replicating robots.

[kevingranade]

Belteshazzar mentioned automated fabricators on the forums, and of course my first thought was fabricators gone HORRIBLY WRONG.

My proposal is a new monster type, replicating_robot (not really distinct from copbots, turrets, etc as far as function, more of a faction).

These robots would as a group want to consume resources, build more robots, and spread. The overall tone is up in the air, are they combat robots, or just a replication experiment gone bad? Are they directed by an intelligent AI, or perhaps a survivor, or do they merely represent another mindless force that wants to expand and consume? Finally, are they a localized threat that sweeps the area around their factory, or will they spread across the whole map if left unchecked?

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[oddbjol]

Would these robots actually go around collecting materials and building new robots, or would they act like metallic fungaloids?

[darth-servo]

Would they be hostile to all organic life? Just the player? Or indifferent? It would be verrry interesting if the replicating robots spread out from a central point, like a factory, and physically transformed the terrain (a la Queen Triffids), but localized around where their base/spawner is at... If the region spreads into an area with metal/salvageable material (like a car, refridgerator, tv -- hey why are there no TVs or computers in houses???) then a new mobile robot could spawn,

It would be very fun to be chased down by a multi-tile blob of robotic horror that fire alone couldn't stop...

[darth-servo]

Also, what would power the things and could that power source be salvageable? Perhaps the way to defeat the base/spawner would be to either steal, disable, or destroy their power source. Ooh, how awesome would it be if the robots weren't necessarily active at the start, but were accidentally or unwittingly triggered by a player's actions? "You feel a sense of foreboding as the factory machines hum into life."

[kevingranade]

I was thinking they'd need to convert raw materials. Their hostility level is up in the air, they could either kill everything they encounter, or become hostile when interfered with in some way. Good point about the power source, perhaps the factory would have one, and if they find the correct raw materials they could make new ones. And yea, it should be salvageable. I was also thinking the factory should have working fabricators and perhaps other construction equipment. Player-triggering could work as one option, as long as there are some instances of them that are active no matter what, because the alternatives are for the triggering to be unavoidable (seems cheap), or avoidable (lets experienced players game the system)

[TheDarklingWolf]

I'd like to see them be indifferent actually. They'd already pose a challenge simply by consuming all of the resources in an area in order to expand, it'd be interesting to have some challenges in the game that don't just consist of things that try to eat your face.

[KA101]

OK, I'm not sure I understand the scale here. What I took away from the forum post was something on the order of a nanomachine colony pulling uncontrolled replication. Comment 2 is based on that. If it's a macro-scale factory producing tripods or somesuch, then that's a different story. Clarification requested.

1) What good would the power source be? Huge pile of plutonium cells? Solar storage batteries? Whay would I want it, aside from "the nanobot swarm doesn't have it"?

2) Why shouldn't flamethrowers/shotguns work? Area-effect is the only reliable way to deal with nano swarms--they'd hard-counter melee and precision ranged.

[kevingranade]

Not nano anything, just self replicating. This would be a variety of small to large robots whose primary menace is their replication when raw materials are available. I'm thinking the power source would be very significant, like some kind of minireactor, but probably not portable.

[illi-kun]

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