Demiansky

[quote who="DrJBHL" reply="149" id="2657428"] Species Hybridizing: The concept that we can mix and match whatever organisms you'd like is probably the most enduring plot device in the sci-fi genre, and it's completely and utterly impossible. Only members of a biological genus can hybridize, and no amount of gene tinkering can make it happen otherwise. So yeah, no repto-bird-bug-humans. Actually? I was thinking H. sap. and a truly intelligent species.[/quote] As of ou

STardock double posted me :-)

Neat, my topic is hot! Anywho, I think it's important that everyone understands the difficulty of genetically modifying organisms (since this is where the topic seems to have have, which is interesting in and of itself.) Unfortunately, in most science fiction movies and literature biological technology like genetic engineering and reproductive cloning are depicted falsely and outlandishly. Now don't get me wrong, I love science fiction and curiously, it's generally t

[quote who="Mandelik" reply="14" id="2654254"] Quoting larrypeters, reply 6 Having played plenty of CivIV games where the computer just makes gigantic stacks that you can't possibly defend everywhere against, I have to say I want limits in the game. In Elemental, as in other fantasy games, giant stacks could just be giants with clay feet. Once spotted, they can receive some spell as "Rain of Fire", "Poison Cloud", "Cloud of Death", "Earthquake" and

I'm more and more under the impression that city management will spiral out of control as soon as you start building an empire. In beta 1 and as I'm seeing in beta 2, it's already becoming a bit tedious. Of course, having to go back to cities constantly to build things like "houses" is an empty feature that sucks up time and jars the player constantly away from the things he/she would actually prefer doing. I think city building based on spamming specific kinds of build

[quote who="IROKONESS" reply="49" id="2645222"]OK, no waiting. Just say No. There would be no situation to perceive if we didn't create them....And what a damn waste of perfectly good man-made tax money!!! We don't need it anywhere else anyways. [/quote] I wouldn't bring back a Neanderthal for the sake of just doing it. Having a Neanderthal to study could help us cure psychological or infectious diseases.

[quote who="RedneckDude" reply="26" id="2644994"]Personally, I am against cloning of humans altogether. I may be a redneck, but I see neaderthals as human. Creating life is for God only. Oops, I introduced religion into this topic, my bad. But I am a firm believer in Christ and I believe creating life (cloning) is playing God and should not be done. Since I have opened this here can of religious worms, let me back up my stance with a bit of logic.

[quote who="seanw3" reply="32" id="2645040"]I would be skeptical that we really have the advancements required to recreate something from its DNA. Last time I checked the methods used for cloning necessitated eggs and sperm that could then be split. My question is about the process and our ability to do so. Beyond that, nature is merely a fluid construct of humanity. Today's technology will be tomorrow's nature as our nature today is full of yesterday's technologies. The quest

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="7" id="2644835"]Well, Neandrathals were actually another species of humanoid that died off, while at some point they lived parallel with homo sapiens (same time period, occasional territorial battles?). I'll agree with the essence of the previous posts though ... its kind of useless to clone a Neandrathal because he or she would be too human-like- it wouldn't be able to live a happy life among humanity, and it would be too humanlike for us to feel good a

The title says it all. As of now, we actually have the technological advancements to do it, as well as a fully sequenced Neanderthal Genome (at the moment, a few minor techniques are in the works that would make it easier). So if we could clone a Neanderthal without error, would you be okay with it? Why or why not?

Well first off, I'm not so sure your dichotomy between life and death / creation and destruction is necessarily true. I would argue that humans have created more than they have destroyed. We've simply done more with the room and resources we've got. In a stable ecology at a given point in time, your position may hold true. But just think Richard Feynman: there's always room at the bottom! Insteading of "burning old books" in the library to make room for new ones,

I like the idea of scholars giving tech bonuses, definately. I think what would be even more interesting, though, is if scholar tech bonuses were made more versatile and conditional. For instance, you could leave your scholar at home and let him give you a small bonus, or you could send him adventuring with your other heros. If you successfully raid a dungeon and a scholar is present, you might unlock a big tech bonus "chunk" that's locked away in the dungeon ("Wow, wou

Looks great so far! But you know, something about the map doesn't strike me right. I mean, the world was quite scholarly before the Apocalypse, so why not represent the unexplored part of the map as a portrait of what the world looked like before the apocalypse? For instance, what was once known as verdent farmland would become, as you explore it, spoilands and blighted expanses. An impassable mountain range might be what was once known on the old map, but whe

I definately like certain upgrades requiring requisite of certain techs. I think Fall From Heaven 2 did this pretty well. And of course, I like Morpheus's idea to make certain upgrade requisites weapon based.

[quote who="warrich" reply="2" id="2630202"]I think this is a terrific idea, as it models technological progression in a realistic way. If your society values warfare and devotes a lot of time to it, then a lot of your best and brightest people will probably be in the military. Those people would want to innovate (create new weapons, tactics, etc) and find more efficient ways to apply their existing weapons and tactics, thus progressing military technology independently from the academic rese

So one thing that gripes me in most strategy games is the total anhialation effect in warfare. Essentially, when you declare war on someone there is generally an incentive to fight the war until one side is completely defeated unless the war escalates with other factions becoming involved. Unfortunately, this tends to be bad for cultivating national rivalries like that of Carthage and Rome who fought many wars over the course of hundreds of years.&nbs

Interesting question of moral. Personally, I would prefer that moral persist even after a battle is over. What do I mean exactly? Well, I think that moral sticks with a unit from battle to battle throughout a campaign. When invaders are on alien soil, their moral gradually begins to decrease. When they win a great victory, moral increases. Win a costly victory and moral decreases. Only after they spend time on home soil does

So this is most certainly too little too late and I recall a few months back this topic was visited already. But I thought we'd visit it again :-) So I've been reading these forums for a long time, and if there is one big thing people seem weary of its the technology system. While it is somewhat different than the Civilization series, it's virtually the same at the roots: you accumulate points from your "base" and once you reach a certain threshold, you

[quote who="TarponCrest" reply="64" id="2628427"] Quoting Demiansky, reply 60 Quoting TarponCrest, reply 59I am glad to see that I am not the only one that sees Elemental in this way I sure hope there will be dungeons for that will give us the tool for modding many other things that may not be practical for vanilla Elemental. Nice Goldstripe Maroon Clowns, BTW Thank you, but I wish I could claim it was mine I hav

Well, I'm very happy to hear about the turn based tactical change, but I'm wondering just one thing: once we see massive armies deployed onto the field, at what point does it get tedious/overwhelming commanding your units? With X-com and MoM it was no big deal--- there was rarely more than 9 units on the field on either side at a time in X-com and never more than 9 in MoM. I think a way to create and move block formations in battle would be a handy short cut, but I guess we'll hav

[quote who="TarponCrest" reply="59" id="2626466"]I am glad to see that I am not the only one that sees Elemental in this way I sure hope there will be dungeons for that will give us the tool for modding many other things that may not be practical for vanilla Elemental. [/quote] Nice Goldstripe Maroon Clowns, BTW :-)

[quote]Making the world seem alive would not be an impossible task. It would be incredibly time and resource consuming, however. Things like giving monsters 'motivations' beyond "I am monster, I eat thing, must find eaty things" is a rather. . .foolish request. Monsters as a general populace of a shattered land, especially things like trolls or orcs, don't need "motivations". Their brains have enough to keep up with finding food. (This is assuming we don't have some sort of super-trolls here

Lol, I agree with you completely Nathikal, but be careful when you use words like "random" on these forums. Discussing Randomness is like discussing abortion or religion. I think what you are asking for isn't really randomness at all, but predictable patterns of growth that add spice to the game.

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="114" id="2626986"] Quoting Demiansky, reply 113 ...From the start I've never suggested giving mobs anything more than very limited AI algorithms. To be honest, I don't care about monster backstories or backgrounds at all. Rather, I care about monster objectives. That's what I mean by giving monster's "motives." Give them objectives that they are trying to fullfill and allow the player under cer

[quote who="Myles" reply="112" id="2626908"] Quoting Demiansky, reply 109 If Elemental were a straight strategy game, the units and landscape could be represented by abstract geometric shapes for all I care. But it's not. It's a strategy game in an RPG setting. In civilization, suicidal barbarian that appear out of thin air is fine. It's not fine for Elemental. I think making things have a '