The Networkers of VGAP 4.0 Race Design

((( Designer's Concept )))

I designed the Networkers to fight the most annoying type of battle. They fight a defensive war. Defensive campaigns tend to be drawn out and can only be won by a skilled tactitian. This is something I noticed a few years back while I designed a space war game, not much like VGAP and work started long before I had even heard of VGA PLANETS, and I got the AI routine working.

Unlike many programmers, I consider my AI to have reached "sentience" in my war games when, playing against themselves, they declare peace. That's a more "colorfull" way of saying that they reach a standoff. A friend of mine tested the game and I found his defensive war tactics effective, however, they would have drawn me in blindly. That's what I want the Networkers to do.

Their ship designs should be simple. Having no hands, Networkers do not really build their ships--they grow ships. These designs have to be very geometrical because they draw their extancy from the crystaline solution that they're grown from. Ships in the Networker fleet have microcoded DNA built into the strands of their hulls. Such ships could regenerate, however, they would lack the raw materials to do so once they are in deep space.

Networkers are energy specialists. The main racial power I can think of for the Networkers is that they could make fuel in space. Not like a cobol or a Refinery ship, I had it envisioned as being like the Cyborg regeneration. A ship cannot move while creating fuel, and has to have at least 1 Kt of fuel on board to work. This leads me to design the Networker shields as intense enough to qualify as armor and their ships to be fragile without them.

An additional designer threw his hat into the ring by designing a series of ships at the end of this document. My Tvity is really a modification from one of his designs, which I accepted. His main premise was that Networkers can absorb the abilities of the hosts they bond to. Including Amorphous Worms. I put his designs, except the Tvity (my name and artwork), at the end in case you will accept this. I tried to cripple the Networkers and design them into viability.

Incidentally, Networkers absorb prisoners. They have no need of a ship log, but the ship may have its own memories. My second choice for a race power is the ability to make colonists in space. It's really lame, yet I had no other ideas.