Messages

1

Design / Alien Dietary regimens

« on: April 03, 2010, 02:00:37 pm »

Basically, the idea behind this is that Aliens are likely to require chemical compounds or elements in their diets which are either rare or unavailable in terran biology, and are likely not to survive without the proper foodstuffs. So your scientists, if they wanted to keep them indefinitely and maintain the hive mind, would need to figure out what their 'natural' diet was, what, if any exotic chemicals they needed in this, as well as proportions of such things as sodium, potassium, taurine and other amino acids, fatty acids, iron, that sort of thing, so to prevent malnutrition, as well as any substances to avoid. To research a diet, you'd need both autopsy data and at least one live individual in containment. Without a diet for a species, after a certain period of time, varying between species, there would be an X% chance each day, cumulative, that an individual that it would die of malnutrition or toxicity. Some would be pretty fast to die, like anything which needed arsenic instead of phosphorus. I figure a good thing to study would be animal diets in zoos and how they get some animals to feed.

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Design / Re: why no nuclear stuff?

« on: April 03, 2010, 01:43:25 pm »

But what makes depleted uranium so useful for ammo and to a lesser degree, armour, is that the stuff takes a LOT of energy to change it's states. I had forgotten that it caught fire.

The trouble with depleted uranium is that the stuff is quite toxic. Not the sort of thing you'd want to throw about in inhabited areas. Not unlesss one was quite desperate. One of those Godzilla threshold things. A list of known effects is in the following link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Effects

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Offtopic / Re: Jesus, in 3D!

« on: April 03, 2010, 02:55:42 am »

Aside from the fact that the shroud of turin is a fake, I rather like the idea of mocking animation with this. Imagine what the mudkips brigade would do with this. WIN!

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Offtopic / Re: Other Free Games?

« on: April 03, 2010, 02:51:48 am »

The Ur-quan Masters.
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
Aleph 1.
http://source.bungie.org/index.php?title=Get_Marathon

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Design / Re: why no nuclear stuff?

« on: April 01, 2010, 02:27:43 pm »

It doesn't explode. It's useful because of it's density. For armor, ammo, radiation shielding.

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Offtopic / Re: 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense (In Science)

« on: March 30, 2010, 06:45:45 pm »

I'd think darwin is justly famous. Anyone who can figure out a theory that is still used 150 years later with no changes to the core ideas is pretty awsome. Not to mention he's one of the few greats of the time who wasn't a complete asshat. Sure, by modern standards, he was racist. But he was a paragon by the standards of the time. Abolitionist, you know. His familly was involved pretty heavily in the movement.

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Offtopic / Re: After several *years*, finally purchased a couple of commercial games

« on: March 30, 2010, 06:40:04 pm »

Half-life and most things Source. And Overlord! I'll play anything. Play X-com or UQM for a while, then go over to my new muscle machine and play some Stalker.

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Offtopic / Re: hint X-COM remake in the works with 2K

« on: March 30, 2010, 06:37:23 pm »

I think they could do it. But they'd better not bodger it up. Hope that old curse that follows X-com spirtual sucessors doesn't strike again. /X-com fan that remembers interceptor. and UFO. 

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Design / Re: Fusion: not in ten years, but now...

« on: March 30, 2010, 04:26:39 pm »

So we revise the dates a bit. Won't change the technology too much. Hell, that might have been what got them to move in. They could have been planning infiltration for some time. They just picked up the pace when we lit a fire under their arse-analogs, so to speak. Wanted to get the job done before we could pose a major threat.

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Design / Re: Fusion: not in ten years, but now...

« on: March 30, 2010, 02:43:17 pm »

Er... where did you hear this?

11

Design / Re: Storyline - Research/XVI Census: No sense at all

« on: March 30, 2010, 01:35:13 pm »

Could there even be a possibility that at one of those phases it could order the "cell factories (was it bone marrow?)" to make more of itself?

No. Blood cells are daughter cells of bone marrow. I don't think you could do that. Besides, it wouldn't take too much modification between strains if it scavenged cells for materials, rather than having to accomodate the cellular machinery of several different biologies. Granted, that's still a lot of work. Like, say, if one alien's biochemistry used arsenic rather than phosphorus. But doable.

As for amount, that isn't necessarily contradictory. It could be that transfusion is the quickest way to induce the load of infection necessary to cause subversion. The single drop would be slow. It would take a long time for XVI to reach critical mass. That might be how they turned Dr Eisenhower. An agent of theirs pokes him in the street with a modified umbrella before he reported for duty at PHALANAX. He doesn't notice. Not knowing that his time as an independant intelect is limited. Not sure if it is sudden or if he would start feeling something wrong before total subversion. Wouldn't be surprised if there were other symptoms. He might have been running a fever. Nothing dramatic. Something that would be mistaken for a mild Flu or a cold. Different styles of infection for different purposes. Be good for story and atmosphere. The bloody hatchet and the poisoned jab. Good paranioa fuel.

12

Design / Re: Defending downed DROPSHIPs?

« on: March 29, 2010, 11:11:12 pm »

Pretty good idea. Maybe make it so if the bugs capture any of your men, there would be a ?% chance of the bugs finding out the location of the base which launched the dropship, so there would be extra incentive not to bodger it up.

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Design / Re: Storyline - Research/XVI Census: No sense at all

« on: March 29, 2010, 11:03:55 pm »

I have read the wiki. But a virus and what you are describing here are completely different animals, so to speak. I don't think you could have a eukaryotic cell invade another cell and override the victims metabolic processes to assemble more of itself. Or, rather, there is no biological precedent. Viruses are simpler than dirt and much more lifeless. This sounds like a fairly complex organism.

I figure XVI looks and behaves very much like malaria. (hell, you could use pictures of malaria cells as placeholders on research) Parasitizes red blood cells. At least until it reaches the CNS (although I'm not sure how it'd find out) Then it leaves the red blood cells and begins to invade the brain, switching into a different phase of it's lifecycle, possibly specializing into several different forms. The lifecycle of this creature could be a mini-tech tree in of inself. The trouble is, how does it avoid the immune system going apesh*t and causing the victim to keel over with encephalitis? Maybe it secrets immunosuppressants and one possible symptom of infection is anomalous immune depression. Or it grabs the hosts own antigens and coats itself so the hosts immune system views it as self? It could have a very detailed life cycle. Another question is: how transmissible is this critter? Blood to blood only? Mucus membranes? foodborne? Mosquitoes?

I'm just trying to harden up your bioscience up to the levels that the rest of the project shows. That, and people screwing up their biology winds me up.

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Design / Re: Storyline - Research/XVI Census: No sense at all

« on: March 29, 2010, 01:42:07 am »

Reproduces like a virus. Hmm. Not if it's a Eukaryotic cell which is what it sounds like, since viruses are basicly a bit of DNA or RNA in a protein shell which infiltrate cells and cause it to make copies of itself till the viruses' genes cause the cell to make enzymes to burst itself.

However, there are genera of bacteria and even protozoa which infiltrate cells, for example Chlamydia, Rickettsia Coxiella some varieties of Mycobacterium, such as Tuberculosis Plasmodium (Malaria) and Leishmania.

XVI might pull the exact same trick as these guys. It'd be an excelent way to cross the blood-brain barrier, which it would have to do to have it's effect. The best choices would be red blood cells or macrophages.