Questions About Ns Fiction
Crotalus
Join Date: 2003-12-02 Member: 23871Members
Join Date: 2003-12-02 Member: 23871Members
<div class="IPBDescription">bleh</div> The questions I wrote below are just opinional. I just wanna see different people's opinions on the NS Universe; I want to get a feel about how the storyline part of NS works out. Remember, all questions don't pertain to real life...
1. What are the "severe long-term" effects of medkits? (Read inside manual)
2. Are Kharaa A. a bundle of veins or B. actual organs, etc...
3. Once a Marine dies, is he simply replaced or reborn?
4. How do Sensory chambers "cloak" stuff?
5. About how smart are the Kharaa spieces?
1. What are the "severe long-term" effects of medkits? (Read inside manual)
2. Are Kharaa A. a bundle of veins or B. actual organs, etc...
3. Once a Marine dies, is he simply replaced or reborn?
4. How do Sensory chambers "cloak" stuff?
5. About how smart are the Kharaa spieces?
Comments
2. They are, as far as our scientists know, made of bacterium. They have no organs, and their external features seem to be more for show then anything. This may explain why the aliens do not seem to take any severe damage when shot in the head or the torso - in order to kill one you must disrupt the bacterial framework enough so the creature can no longer function and it dies. If we had a weapon that could disrupt the bacterium communication, it would be a highly effective tool, but the technology is beyond us at this time.
3. Sadly, we havn't mastered the use of medical nanites to reanimate a dead person. All reinforcements are beamed in from a dropship near the installation using infantry portals.
4. Our knowledge of the kharra's personal cloaking remains an utter mystery, and the sensory chamber's capabilities have made us rethink what few theories we had discovered. We feel that the aliens may not actually be cloaked, but sensory chambers interfere with our brain's ability to "see" them on an elecronic level, or they could possibly be bending light around themselves somehow - we can't know for sure.
5. This is another question we have yet to answer fully. The kharra are clearly a communal species, they should suffer both the advantages and disadvantages of a hive intellect. However, not only do aliens show an alarming amount of independent thought at times, but their tactics seem far too complex for the sorts of entities that they seem to be. Our final analsys of how a cluster of bacteria can make tactical moves that leave our own commanders stumped is "beats the hell out of us".
A morbid question just pooped into my head:
Does anyone really know the average marines killed in a average NS game?
1. death
2. most like B. I think
3. Replaced (infantry PORTAL, not infantry spawner)
4. They emmit a combination of chemicals making Kharaa things confuse the rines' optical sensors and the hud displays a preprogrammed view of the area so as to not freak out the rine. This effect is negated when the lifeform makes any sudden movement/attack.
5. Varies by exact genetic code(STEAM id#) I've seen some pretty ****** awesome aliens and then also two different onos who died to either a lone HA/hmg in close quarters or two LA/shotgunners in a wide open area and deal minimal or zero damage in either case.
2. Kharaa imo are rogue nanites that evolved into aliens and developed sentience
3. Every marine is has nanites floating around their body. These nanites monitor the body life functions. When the life functions flatline, nanite instantly teleport the body and put it into stasis into the comm/nanite system. THis explains why the can still see and communicate with otheres. While the body is in suspended stasis it is being treated. The IP which controls this respawn system, will spawn the marine when his body is fixed.
4. When sensory chamber is dropped, the hive senses that a sense chamber has been dropped. The aliens cells learn a new trait. Alien cells become transparent <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->. If the aliens are in th range of a sense chamber there cells become stimulated to be transparent withouth having to contact with the hive (gestate).
5. As smart as marines.
Everything in a ship is connected to the nanite system. So dropping things from thin air isn't actually teleportation its nanite reshuffling. You can't drop a giant wall to seal off alien hive because there is no schematic for it. If u read the manual you learn that one cannot make anything without nanites if you dont have a schematic for it. Why would a nanite system be programmed with a random wall, that doesnt make sense. You cant drop grenades and bombs because, once again from the manual, you can only drop an empty shell of the bomb or grenade. A marine must "use" it so that the nanites inside trigger and work. Robots arent as reliable as humans. Plus how can robots control the nanites. The tecchnology of teleportation is state of the art and military only. Also, the TSA is a rather small organization, so they cant afford to use all their marines for one mission. Their nanite stores must also be fairly low so they can't afford to equip all their marines with nanites so that they wont die.
there everything and everything is explained with nanites. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
As was correctly stated above, you can't do this; only the shell of a structure would be dropped.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->nd nano slude geysters in these big technologically advanced ships, which you mine to get resources?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Those geysers are there to aid construction on board ships and stations. They supply the materials required for nanites to construct a vast array of products. The TSA mines them because they have very little in the way of funding; the Frountiersmen Charter and the Constellation program give them enough funds to train and partially equip soldiers, not enough for them to rock up to ever encounter in HA with lvl 3 guns.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->And why not use robots to fight instead of have people get slaughtered... they have robots right, if they have the technology to make things appear out of thin air and can teleport - teleportation in itself defying the laws of physics.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Robotics is not highly developed; the Expansion Period didn't have a great need for them as they had a great supply of manpower on Earth and nanites. Once you have nanotech the need for robots is negligible; nanites can fullfill most tasks larger robots would undertake (I mean they are robots). The whole teleportation factor is essentially suspensionm of belief, though I would hasten to add that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistingishable from magic and we're constantly discovering new theories about physics.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->And does that mean that NS - era humans have teleporters everywhere? No need to drive to work, just step into your teleporter?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Major teleporters exist between colonised systems. Generally each system has only one. They consume a MASSIVE amount of energy and resources to construct and run. Most of the nations and corperations involved in the Expansion period were sent nearly bankrupt just running the things. Personal teleporters, as is stated in the official story, have been talked about for ages but never gotten off the ground, probably for cost reasons.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->And if infantry portals bring in reinforcements from a dropship, the first group of marines in knows that they will all eventually die and be replaced with their buddies back in the dropship? Why not just bring in everyone at once and overwhelm the aliens?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why doesn't the US airlift every one of it's troops to Iraq to quell the uprisings? Because those troops are needed elsewhere. The TSA is fighting a war on multiple frounts that are constantly emerging and collapsing. When they get a distress signal that a station or ship is under attack, they send in a small force initially to assess the situation. It might be a false alarm, it might be a business dispute between rival corperations, it might be pirates, it might be an asteroid collision. They don't have the money or the manpower to send in hordes of Frounterismen to every potential situation. During battle, reserves are sent to a whole array of battlefields all of which are in high demand. The TSA has limited resources and they are stretched far and wide.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> NS storyline is gameplay oriented. Seriously... nanites the answer for everything?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Cheap, easily produced nanotech developments would, quite literally, change our entire lives. Disease and sicknesses eradicated, construction costs slashed, any environment habitable. You would be within an era of nanotech; it would be as epoch-making as the onset of the nuclear age. Nanotech would govern life to a massive degree; is it any wonder then that it plays such a pivotal role in the NS universe as computers and information does in ours?
Also, the manual said that small teleporters such as IPs and other stuff were top secret things because it would be to dangerous to release into the wrong hands.
2. Are Kharaa A. a bundle of veins or B. actual organs, etc...
3. Once a Marine dies, is he simply replaced or reborn?
4. How do Sensory chambers "cloak" stuff?
5. About how smart are the Kharaa spieces?
1: Addiction, powerful painkillers lead most personel to rely on the effects, also some may induce vomiting due to the nanites trying to flush any poison out of the body (other symptoms include: Dry mouth, dhiarrea, nausea and most commonly: Death)
2: Kahraa are, as stated, bundles of bacteria which are colonial, each organism is a group of bacteria, which all feed off the same source (which explains how D. Chambers work) this also explains why theirs so much 'Gunk' around Sutiable hive areas, it also explains why hives can only be built at some parts.
3: To prevent the risk of kahraa boarding and overunning a dropship, and possibly gaining co-ords to a planet, we beam our troops over, ala Startrek style, this is a boon and a curse, teleportation takes on average 30 seconds, and in those seconds a base could fall. Marines are killed, since we do not have the technology to re-animate corpses yet.
4: There are many theories about this, one, as stated, is that they release cerain horemones into the air to confuse our optical nerves. Most likely, uit could be a chemical that makes the bacteria disperse making them harder to see (which accoutns for some very special marines to be able to see them)
5:Kahraa are a very intelligent hive, well we should call them a Collective, since each one seems to be independant, but psionically linked. Each colony of bacteria (Hives, Gorges, skulks, etc) can make their own choices in what to do, but they can allc ommunicate through means unknown.
#2: Organs no doubt. No life-form that large could survive without them. Heart, lungs (or equivalent) and (probably) brain are vital, and they obviously have muscles, ears, eyes and nerves.
#3: Replaced, I imagine. I guess he could in theory be teleported out (in the same way beacon, IPs and PGs work) if vital signs becomes too low and thus some can be saved, but it's a long-shot.
#4: Microscopic scales on skin are adjusted and re-coloured to match the background picked up by a sensory cell on the opposite side of the body. Cloaking requires special section of brain to be evolved (cloaking upgrade) or central brain to properly adjust scales (SC). Best guess I can think of.
#5: Lack intelligence on individual level. Either form a collective mind or is organized by central mind (read: hive) which communicate by sending chemical signals throghout the bacterial network (which, as stated in the manual somewhere, cover the entire infested location).
But, meh. It doesn't work out in the end. Magic is probably as good an answer as any.
Also, the manual said that small teleporters such as IPs and other stuff were top secret things because it would be to dangerous to release into the wrong hands. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
There was something like this in the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy... the infinite improbability drive. It made nearly impossible things happen, such as every molecule of your ship jumping 3.2 lightyears in direction X (simultaneously) and a pair of nuclear missiles turn into a sperm whale and a pot of petunias (2 miles above a planet's surface nonetheless).
-1. What are the "severe long-term" effects of medkits? (Read inside manual)
From what I can tell, there don't appear to be any. When medkits do the job, they do the job. Only thing I could think of would be a possibly weakenned ammune system or other self-repairing body functions, as the body tends to lose the ability to do things over time when other things do it for them. AKA, if you sniff drugs to open up your nazel passages too often, your body stops doing it for itself, and you become reliant.
-2. Are Kharaa A. a bundle of veins or B. actual organs, etc...
Actual organs. From what we can tell, the species within the Kharaa appear to have once been seperate entities, mutated and formatted to suit the Kharaa's needs. Or, invented monsters for show... whatever you'd like. However, they do have organs. We've all seen the inside of an Onos stomache, yes? Perhaps this isn't a shared experience...
3. Once a Marine dies, is he simply replaced or reborn?
Replaced. My consept for this is that each marine has a team attached to him in particular. This team studies what he goes through by watching his helmet feed from the dropship. Therefore, when he dies, a person can beam from the party and replace the unit with all foreknowledge and orders he received. These replacements are called "ghosts," and the active person in the field is a host.
4. How do Sensory chambers "cloak" stuff?
Nobody knows, yet. Most likely, as someone said before, it doesn't. Rather, it messes with our ability to see things. This would explain better why sensory chambers have a cloaking "field of effect."
5. About how smart are the Kharaa spieces?
The thing that makes the Kharaa so frightening, other than the fact that we do not know where they come from, is that we have no idea what their motivations are. We could say that they are simply trying to protect themselves, in which case they are still very smart. Still, when Kharaa "win," the ship they are on usually finds itself piloting into a star or some destructive element. Abundently so. Kharaa seem to "randomly" appear onboard vessels, and if they are successful in attaining it, are quick to destroy it and themselves. This leaves room for a much larger picture. It is possible that a much larger mind, or at least a much larger plan, is at work. For all we know, the Kharaa are an instrument, and the real enemy has yet to even be discovered. Puppets of a puppeteer.
Any way though, the Kharaa are remarkably tactful and independant, with a human-comparable sense of creativity and... wickedness.
....hey, that was snazzy, I think I'll quote myself and use it in something.
2) Both, the human body has both in it, so does the Kharaa. The only biological difference is that they have no limit to their evolution, almost a direct control over it.
3) Ah, but what does it mean to "die" grasshopper? IMO a nearby spaceship makes clones of a person and their conciousness (aka all of their brain activity) is transferred by the nanites into a new body. The body is quickly checked and then sent back into battle with IPs. (this theory was developed a few days ago on pondering respawnning in UT2k4)
4) A combination of several things. Their area of effect is caused by their advanced light manipulation abilities. Individual "evolved" cloaking evolves part of an alien mind into a mini sensory chamber. A marine's HUD clears out and focuses the picture and often leaves out these small disturbances in the air. However, when an alien moves quickly, the HUD recognizes the movement of air and sound and produces a clearer image. In fact, while in the area of effect or having evolved cloaking, aliens are always invisible. Marine's HUDs only recognize them when they create major changes in the atmosphere.
5) The Kharaa's intelligence cannot be measured using our scales. where humans are tought how to do things, the Kharaa get an inherited intelligence, expand upon it, and transmit it to their Hive, which then spreads to the entire species.
6 (because i say so) Teleportation is not simple. It involves the nanites rapidly breaking down the object to be teleported (marine) and transfering them through the ship to where a reassembly station is located (phase gate). IPs work by changing the matter into a small beam and sending it to a remote location. This explains why you need a CC, it has the ability to recieve these beams. The beams are then descrambled and rematerialized into the marine. Accidents do happen, especially when other matter exists in the place that the reassembly station is trying to put the new matter. (stupid n00b telefraggers)
as far as i can tell, these make some sort of extreme scientific sense. meaning that by taking physics, biology, chemistry, electricity, and mechanics to their absolute extreme forms, everything in NS is possible.
I don't that that the huamn mind can think of anything that is impossible.
A. No long term effects are experienced due to the extensive programming of the nanites. Medkits are a package of super rich nutrients, that are usable by nanites in the same way that nanite sludge is purified for use as resource by the comm.
Nanites break done the medkit nutrients into individual component parts. The external injury gets molecularly developed skin, the torn mutilated tissue is individually rebuilt, the blodd vessel walls, the internal organs, internal tissue, etc.
The nanites are very sophisticated little computer controlled machines that constantly roam the body doing continual work. They are capable of moving to any part of the body and rebuilding most damage.
The only time they fail in their never ceasing battle to keep the rine alive and functioning is when the trauma is too massive, there are a couple of scientific names for this destructive process. The names are:- banning, disconnection, termination of signal, packet loss, etc.
The nanites are so efficient because they have only one body-map to contend with. The programming for this one body has been so extensively mapped over time that almost every mistake has been eliminated.
This will explain why all rines look the same, rine bodies in the field are phased (spawned) to an IP in the trouble spot, while the individual minds of the rines are phased (connected) to the new clone body. This is why a delay occurs when spawning.
The mind, being energy, connects with a rine in the field due to sympathetic vibrations, this is why rines see what a fellow rine does after failure of their clone body, and before they reassimilate into the new body. The old clone body is dissolved into the nanite resource pool back on the mothership via the link of the dropship.
Massive trauma mentioned in an earlier paragraph is the only known process disruption possible. The original bodies of the rines are in storage (the process was developed after scientists saw old films from Earths nineteenth/twentieth century).
<b>2. Are Kharaa A. a bundle of veins or B. actual organs, etc...</b>
A. Organs. The Kharaa bodies are assimilated back into the biomass called bacterium, this process is almost instantaneous. The process is similar to the human, with the exception that the hive mind/s spawns the memory/mind into the newly evolved being.
The original memories are stored in the Mother mind/s on the home planet/s of the Kharaa. The home planet/s location/s being unknown makes this just an educated guesstimation.
<b>3. Once a Marine dies, is he simply replaced or reborn?</b>
A. As explained in a previous paragraph, the individual rine is "renewed" into the new clone body, his mind assimilated into the new body at time of spawning.
<b>4. How do Sensory chambers "cloak" stuff?</b>
A. It has been debated regularly, and most theories touch on part truths. The sensory chamber is really an extra-dimensional biological machine, that causes the being/s, chamber/s to partly phase into a fold in the dimensions as we know them.
The mother hive mind/s, further protected the species by giving them photoreactive cells for individual cloaking ability, this is only stimulated when the first sensory chamber is built and is lost if the appropiate hive and chambers are lost.
This is why the home world of the Kharaa hasn't been discovered. It is phased out of our dimension by massive or massed sensory chambers. We will only find the home world by literally bumping into it, a ship of huge proportions with huge scanning systems, billions of smaller probes being fired into each planetary system as we search, or maybe massive use of laser, light based searching equipment.
<b>5. About how smart are the Kharaa spieces? </b>
A. This researcher believes the Kharaa have hive mind, individual mind as well as racial memory. I will explain each seperately.
<u>Hive mind</u>: No-one has heard the Kharaa "speak", yet a disturbance/contact to an isolated hive or individual is known by all Kharaa instantly. Evidence by the sudden mass action/attack by the Kharaa at the scene of the disturbance/contact.
Movement chamber phasings by Kharaa to an attacked hive. This has been checked and double checked by numerous teams, usually fatally.
<u>Individual minds</u>: Watching the Kharaa by means of the many recordings, we have noticed that new beings spawn into conflicts and display many and varied responses. Indicative of individuality. Proof - watch some of the new spawned beings, some wander the buildings/structures as though lost, where others speed straight to trouble or strategic/tactical spots.
Further proof: the haphazard evolutions to higher lifeforms and the lack of co-ordination. No central mind would/could be as mentally demented to order evolutions/tactics as seen when our rines win the conflict in the first minutes of contact.
Racial memory: This researcher believes the Kharaa have racial memory that is carried in the most minute spore of bacterium.
Proof: The places that have been cleared by the TSA/Frontiersmen only to have outbreaks re-occur adds credence to this conjecture. Some/most of the outbreaks can be talked away as re-infection by new contact with an infested ship.
Please explain the re-infestations on isolated, cleared, secret/secure installations that have not had contact until the rines are sent in. The only known way an outbreak could occur would be if the Memory of the race is carried by the smallest unit of Kharaa, a spore of bacterium.
Which makes the answer to the last question, unknown, but as smart as the human race, if not smarter.
This treatise is offered for your collective perusal, dissemination, study, and discussion, and is the sole work of Scribe nooby of the OldF University, after careful reading/study of many texts, studies, theories, video footage, records, articles, etc.