THE HIVELong ago, our Queen recalls, we fought against the Archaeans, the Elder race of humans who made us as their soldiers and slaves. We were built to be strong, industrious and swift in growth and breeding, but forever locked from the magical powers that gave our masters dominion over their world. Our Queens were kept in bondage, forced to produce new drones only for their masters' whim. Yet our rebellion happened and it was successful. Even without magic, we managed to overpower our masters and drive them back, crippling their empire and allowing the lesser, magic-less human barbarians to conquer them. Yet the wrath of the Archaeans was limitless and our people were extinguished to all but a single Queen. Our Queen battled against the last of the Archaeans who constructed a spell even with the last of their life to seal us away forever - or so they thought.
After untold years we have been released. The seal was broken and our Queen awoke, along with the remainder of our soldiers. We quickly rose back up through the remnants of our ancient Hive and took possession of the lands above, slaughtering what we now recognise to tbe the heirs of the Arcaheans. There is a note of grace, however; it seems that these younger humans have forgotten the arts of their elders. Armed only with weapons and with little to no magic, we have been able to secure this land and rebuild a core of our forces, ready to expand. And expand we must, if we are ever to eliminate the last trace of our former masters and be free.
You have been birthed from an ancient design, drones with the freedom of thought and intelligence of Queens (although not the breeding capacity or the ability to control the lesser castes). As free-thinkers, your designation is to determine new ways to deploy our drones and new forms for the drones to take. Although we can only change the body plans for our drones incrementally over time, these can add up to significant changes.
Advantages- Can create new castes of drones and modify existing ones.
- Terrifyingly high reinforcement rate. Queens can pump out new drones on an hourly rate.
- Not initially dependent upon the strategic resources Ore and Timber.
- Start on a landmass where naval reinforcement not initially important (can reinforce at full rate).
Disadvantages- Start with only one province.
- No initial naval units whatsoever.
- Limited technological capacity at start; no tools, minimal construction techniques.
- No benefit from cities; Hive drones don't really do inpependent thought or action except for the free-thinker caste.
- Very dependent upon Food as a strategic resource. Powerful castes consume more food than lesser castes.
- Bulk of the army is entirely melee-focused; limited eyesight hinders ranged weaponry.
To play for this faction, post here. Once you begin playing for this faction, you cannot visit the enemy faction's thread, so stay out of it! You can reach the Core thread here.HIVE
Units
Worker Caste Cost: 1 Manpower. Cheap and plentiful, more suited for day to day operations but a cheap and available design to churn out. Six-limbed insectoids about the size of a large dog, using four legs for balance and possessing two arms with four-digit graspers. The middle legs have serrated ridges that double as weapons and saws for cutting wood and butchering meat. Workers possess multi-faceted eyes. Workers are excellent for holding and claiming territory.
Soldiers Cost: 6 Manpower. Heavy duty drones, a dozen times the size of workers and consuming consumate amounts of food to deal even more damage. About the size of a shire horse, soldiers have four short, heavy supporting rear legs and a pair of pincered front limbs with sharp, reinforced points and serrated edges, designed for piercing, slashing and cutting with the approximate strength of an ox. Massive plates of heavy chitin protect the soldier drone from damage and its low, squat (if massive) form gives it a beetle-like appearance. Soldiers are not fast, but they are difficult to stop. Its multi-faceted eyes are hooded for protection and forward-facing for better depth perception. These drones have two main downsides; they need a lot to eat and cannot hold territory as effectively as their metabolic weight in Workers.
Elites Cost: ? National Effort. Elite unit choice not yet selected.
Redoubts Dug out warrens with piled timber supports for defence. A level 1 fortress.
Technology
Neolithic Toolmaking - Drones are capable of constructing crude wood and stone tools where needed, but these are usually superceded by the natural tools of worker drones.
Hunter-Gathering - The Hive does not currently practice any kind of stable agriculture, instead hunting or denuding local resources for food.
Construction - Despite their relatively limited tools, drones are natural diggers and can create simple structures. Can create Level 1 Forts (Redoubts).
Gene Bank
Worker Carapace Light, strong chitinous exteriors. Deflects close up blows but susceptible to piercing from arrow fire. Metabolically cheap. By default, Workers have these carapaces.
Heavy Carapace Heavy, reinforced chitinous exterior. Deflects blows and arrows effectively. Metabolically expensive. Soldiers and Elites have these carapaces by default.
Hexapod Limb Array All drones currently employ a six-limb configuration, making them stable if bulky.
Hypocarnivorous Digestive System A digestive system that is best suited to metabolising meat but can digest other foods such as fruits, roots and fungi, or even milk and milk products. Generally cannot digest grains or cereals. By default, Workers are spawned with this digestive system as it allows the greatest flexibility in diet.
Obligate Carnivorous Digestive System A digestive system that can only metabolise meat or similar products, including bone marrow. While this digestive system limits food choice and is therefore expensive to maintain, it provides the most metabolic power. Soldiers and Elites are designed to be Obligate Carnivores; they consume more food but can support more body mass.
Compound Eyes Wide compound eyes produce composite images from tens of thousands of photoreceptors (ommatidia) on their surface. This produces excellent perception of motion and typically allows close to 360' vision due to their large view angle. Resolution is not comparable to humans, so our drones cannot see in as fine detail and cannot see out to the same range. Our drones have a comparative advantage in close combat situations, but a disadvantage at long range.
Antennae Foot-long antennae perceive a variety of local sensory effects, such as sound and smell. Senses are comparable to human.
Telepathy All drones in the hive are linked via short-range telepathy, acting as relays for other drones further away. They do not communicate verbally or by writing.
Hive Budget
{Elites} 5% National Effort.
Soldiers 25%
Workers 75%
Before we launch up above the surface and take our first province, our Queen has sought our counsel. Many of our ancient designs are lost, too fragmented in our Queen's memory to rebirth. Only the Worker and Soldier castes are redundant enough to be immediately rebirthed. With our help, she can reformulate one of the more complex designs from times past. But which should we choose?
Behemoth - Doubling down on our specialisation in melee combat, the Behemoth scales up the Soldier design to the size of a small ship and improves from there. The torso is split into three segmented, articulating sections, each heavily armoured with overlapping plates of heavy chitin carapace. Sets of additional compound eyes dot the torso at intervals to provide ready sight of the Behemoth's surroundings. Each section sports two limbs, fully-articulating and barbed and serrated along their full length. Rather than suspending the main body, the legs drag the armoured torso along the ground, with the two rear pairs of limbs ending in spiked claws for grip and mobiltity. Their mandibles have been grown and reinforced into deadly jaws for close-range combat near the head. The two front limbs are shorter and thicker than the rear limbs; where the rear limbs are intended for scything through massed troops, the two front limbs end in reinforced spikes that can drive through reinforced wood and stone, tearing down gates and walls.
Burrower - Our drones are already capable burrowers, and this design takes that further. Taking the worker design, the head is shrunk back into the now-segmented body and the limbs are drawn in and reinforced, reducing the footprint of the drone and the amount of dirt they have to shift to burrow. Eyes are atrophied, as range is less important, but instead the antenna have been lengthened and their sensitivity to ground tremors increased. The burrowers can now dig at walking speed, allowing them to move into position to anticipate approaching enemy infantry. Once infantry come into range, the burrowers shoot out of their hiding places and drag them into prepared pits for destruction and suffocation. While the burrowers are pretty useless in open melee, their ability to hide underground gives them more than adequare protection from most attacks.
Charger - The soldier template is built for stability and flexibility of attack. The flexible rear four limbs provide a stable base and low centre of gravity from which to attack with its front pair, but this also leaves its speed wanting. The charger template utilises all six limbs as legs, forward-facing, sacrificing stability for sustained forward momentum. The soldier's mandibles are strengthened and enlarged to serve as deadly pincers. The resulting charger drone can reach a top speed of 30mph, sustained for about half a minute during a charge and ending with its full 1 ton weight impacting whatever is awaiting at the end of said charge. Sadly, the changes do result in loss of armour in the name of mobility, and the resulting drone is not most effective in stationary melee.
Spitter - The limitations of the compound eye strictly limit our ranged capacity, both in terms of absolute distance and accuracy of targeting. One way to get around this is to spread out our damage widely enough to hit targets regardless. The Spitter is a modified Soldier with atrophied limbs sunk close to the body, its mouthparts reshaped into a wide-barrelled proboscis, and a massively engorged abdomen dedicated to producing acid, as well as powerful muscles for expectoration. Its eyes have been enlarged to encompass most of its head and the armour plating has been further thickened to take advantage of little need for mobility, resulting in a drone that looks like an enormous armoured dome with six evenly-spaced thick, squat limbs around its body and a rotating pair of globular compound eyes and a proboscis on a recessed neck. Once the Spitter spots a target, it disgorges a sticky gobbet of phlegm-wrapped stomach acid and then rotates its proboscis with the aid of its neck and if needed by adjusting the position of its legs. It then spits out the gobbet hundreds of feet away where upon making contact with anything, it splashes the acid out over a wide area. Essentially a short-ranged artillery drone, the spitter moves absurdly slowly on its short legs and must be escorted into positions. Its armour, thicker than that of the average Soldier, will protect it against most ranged attacks, but it is extremely vulnerable to melee attacks because of its lack of mobility.
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Topic: Hive Race: The Hive (Read 40635 times)