[OXP Idea] Beenri: Thargoid Homeworld

[Nexus-Hex]

First of all, I read Incursio and Finis and they're awesome.
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All species have a homeworld. Rodents, Frogs, Lizards, Lobsters, Birds, Humanoids, Felines and Insects.
Some even have a home "galaxy"

But Thargoids...they don't even have a homeworld.

At least, that's was GalCop wants us to believe.

According to Daddyhoggy, from the Ordimean Library:

“The twenty-fourth century was the start of many things. A genetic breeding programme or a failed experiment. Humanity’s legacy, for good or for ill, was to bless or curse the native species of Earth with consciousness and enhanced intelligence, so as to ease the loneliness of the void. For many decades it worked. Animal and human societies coexisted in harmony. Colonisation proceeded apace. Each species adopting planets as they found them suitable.”

“The early years of the twenty-fifth century were times of terror if you weren’t human. The authorities on Old-Earth declared all intelligent creatures other than themselves unclean and began their programme of… cleansing.
All the genetically modified species would submit to regressive gene therapy to tame predatory and violent tendencies. It took years but it was finally agreed”

“The Thargoids. They refused to accept the compromise. Of all the species they insisted on remaining who they were. As such they are the most intelligent, most aggressive of all the outcomes of that one experiment seven hundred years ago. Attempts were made to reason with them and later subdue them. All were ineffective.”

“For Galcop to remain in existence it was a condition of the Old-Earth administration that all animal species be subject to the compromise. Galcop had little choice but to attempt to subdue them. Within a short time Galcop, driven by desperation, committed similar atrocities to those perpetrated by their ancestors from Old-Earth. The Thargoids were declared a threat, targeted and relentlessly pursued. They were declared enemies of Galcop. Enemies of humanity. A menace to be exterminated. Propaganda and brainwashing ensured they were vilified within a generation”

Let's give the Thargoids a home.
Beenri, to be exact.

Is it possible to program a system populator to populate Beenri with "Trader Thargoids" (harmless Thargoids) that arrive and leave the system?

Also to remove the Coriolis Station from Beenri. The only way to access them is landing in their planet (Planetfall required).


I know it sounds like too much work but I can help, you just have to guide me.

Is this even possible?

[Smivs]

Let's give the Thargoids a home.
Beenri, to be exact.

Why Beenri? Just interested, that's all - who says they even have to have a home planet?
By the way, when planning things like this it's a good idea to check the list of planets used in OXPs - I think Beenri is OK but you don't want to make somebody elses mission-critical panet into the Thargoid Homeworld.

Is it possible to program a system populator to populate Beenri with "Trader Thargoids" (harmless Thargoids) that arrive and leave the system?
Also to remove the Coriolis Station from Beenri. The only way to access them is landing in their planet (Planetfall required).

Harmless Thargoids! No such thing.
Also, be thoughtful about dependencies for other OXPs. If a player doesn't like the dependent OXP it might put them off using yours.

Is this even possible?

Mostly I think, yes.

[Nexus-Hex]

Let's give the Thargoids a home.
Beenri, to be exact.

Why Beenri? Just interested, that's all - who says they even have to have a home planet?
By the way, when planning things like this it's a good idea to check the list of planets used in OXPs - I think Beenri is OK but you don't want to make somebody elses mission-critical panet into the Thargoid Homeworld.

Is it possible to program a system populator to populate Beenri with "Trader Thargoids" (harmless Thargoids) that arrive and leave the system?
Also to remove the Coriolis Station from Beenri. The only way to access them is landing in their planet (Planetfall required).

Harmless Thargoids! No such thing.
Also, be thoughtful about dependencies for other OXPs. If a player doesn't like the dependent OXP it might put them off using yours.

Is this even possible?

Mostly I think, yes.

Beenri is the Thargoid homeworld according to Incursio.

By Harmless Thargoids I mean making an AI which uses the Thargoid Ship (like replacing the Thargoid AI with TraderAI, but in this case, we have to give it a new name like ThargoidTraderAI)

[Smivs]

Ah, well you see I don't do Oolite fiction. In my head/game the Thargoid homeworld is a mystery and will forever remain one.

[Nexus-Hex]

Ah, well you see I don't do Oolite fiction. In my head/game the Thargoid homeworld is a mystery and will forever remain one.

Sooooo...
That means you could help?

[Smivs]

Ha, no, sorry.
I don't like the idea of the Homeworld being known, because it spoils the mystery. Also, what good would it be if you did know? You couldn't really go there - Thargoids are merciless and surely it would be so well defended you'd be dead before your ship had even fully emerged at the witchpoint.
The whole concept of a 'known' Thargoid homeworld is a non-starter for me I'm afraid.

[Rustem]

Thargoid Homeworld was from other sectors, or even may be from another galaxy. If oolite will expand up more 8 sectors, then homeworld will possible to attempt. There is another option - interstellar space and very deep space.

[Smivs]

interstellar space .

That's my guess - one of those odd wandering planets perhaps.

[phkb]

Maybe it's not a planet at all?

That's no moon. That's a space station.

[Cody]

That's no moon. That's a space station.

That's no space station, that's a Thargoid Saucer!

[Disembodied]

They may not even be a single polity … there were all those reports, some years back now, of Thargoid ships fighting each other!

[Astrobe]

To be honest, I find the premise a bit weak; but on the other hand it's difficult to work with something that somewhat lacks imagination - that is, alien species looking like Earth species. To be fair, on the other-other hand, the alternatives might be just too alien.

The theory of Panspermia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia ) may come to the rescue here. If we acknowledge that micro-organisms indeed contaminated Earth among other planets throughout the galaxy, then it is possible that those micro-organisms evolved in similar ways in similar environments. Except that different species won the intelligence race.

It's still a mystery (at least for me) why there wasn't a race for intelligence on Earth when one sees the ridiculous advantage it gives us over all other species. We even freed ourselves from natural selection. It's not like advanced intelligence is a just a miracle. We see some signs of it in elephants, dolphins, octopuses, and crows to name the most famous cases.

[Redspear]

It's still a mystery (at least for me) why there wasn't a race for intelligence on Earth when one sees the ridiculous advantage it gives us over all other species.

Perhaps there was. Besides the hominid 'race' that probably existed between various species during prehistoric times, consider that the race throughout evolutionary history may have been fiercer than you think (if rather slow) until one group was able to aquire a significant advantage which it was able to press over other species.

Such an advantage may have been achieved in many seperate instances - don't forget that our time here has been very brief and even if we were go on to colonise other worlds it could be argued that it would be no greater a breakthrough than colonising the land (which required some intelligence in many cases, if rather less).

We even freed ourselves from natural selection.

Popular misconception methinks. We may be able to influence natural selection but then so does every other living thing on earth.

It's not like advanced intelligence is a just a miracle.

I'm not gonna touch that one

We see some signs of it in elephants, dolphins, octopuses, and crows to name the most famous cases.

True but then consider some of their environments and adaptations. There's a distinct lack of opposable digits in that cast list. Dolphins have no fingers at all, crows have fingers adapted into wings, and elephants walk on their 'fingers'.

Elephants can do amazing things with their trunks but these feats pale in comparison to those of the human hand.

Octopuses are really quite intelligent, as are some other molluscs, but generally speaking their mode of locomotion and body type (soft bodied and requiring water/damp) has probably restricted their whole phylum in terms of development.

By comparison, although some hominid groups may not have been in direct contact with each other, they never the less collectively managed to spread rapidly over most of the land surface of the world and prosper in many of it's habitats.

[Nexus-Hex]

Soooooooooo.....?
Anyone would help with this?
Someone?

[phkb]

Parts of your outlined plan are easy, but other parts are difficult. Changing the species and planetary description of an individual planet is just a matter of creating a planetinfo.plist file with your changed values.

Removing the main station and only allowing planetary landings is trickier. In the core game, the only time a system is populated without a main station is when the system has gone nova.

But does it actually make sense to remove the main station? If these creatures are known to be peaceful traders, why wouldn't GALCOP want to encourage trade by maintaining a station of some sort?

Following the logic of making this the Thargoid home world, if GALCOP wasn't wanting to encourage trade, wouldn't it instead be populated with Navy forces besieging the planet? It just feels like you're suggesting a mid point on a line that doesn't actually exist. Either GACOP accepts Beenri as a peaceful race, or they would be attacking it as the home world of the Thargoid threat. There doesn't appear to be a middle ground here.