There’s already pretty much everything that’s needed to make a Super AI faction, so why not?
I suggest a special type of lab or bunker that has the AI core at the bottom, heavily protected by robots and turrets.
The one thing we need is some sort of lore and motivation for the AI.
What the AI would definitely need are resources, so they could randomly spawn groups of scavenging robots. For that we could add a special worker drone type of thing. Another bit of lore might be the exterminating nature of the AI, whether it arrived at the conclusion that biological life is just too destructive itself or its last order was vague enough to include humans.
Also, would it be possible to make either special NPCs that are really just robots, or robots that appear to the player like NPCs? Terminators in the apocalypse anyone? :DDDD
Btw, I mean a faction as in an ant/triffid/mycus/zombies class.
An AI would probably dig into the magma sea, make a tunnel between two seas of different elevation, build a magma wheel, and live off the “hydroelectricity” produced by the flowing magma. This is a defensive strategy.
It might also cooperate with the blob, and make zombies rebuild the world and reinstall the Internet. Since zombie is better controlled and of much lower maintenance than human, no catastrophe could happen anymore, ensuring the AI’s safety. This is an aggressive strategy.
Rogue AI seems good, it can either have become self-aware on its own, or it could have been tampered with by extraterrestrials.
It doesn’t have to want to exterminate humans, at least not at first. It could just mind its own business and try to be self-sufficient unless another faction (including the player… especially the player) tries to mess with it.
It has the potential to be the most rational faction around, capable of either cooperating with or opposing the player and humanity in general depending on its interactions.
Maybe we could even have a side-quest where we give the AI access to all the rogue robots and get them to stop attacking humans (or at least be neutral to them). An AI with human reasoning would be capable of getting the original IFF settings right so they attack Zombies and not people…
As for Aliens, perhaps they were attracted by the Cataclysm in the same style as RIFTS?
Aren’t there hints ingame of the hyper-aggressive nature of a lot of the robots being a result of cyberwarfare from foreign agents? Could easily just be a military control program that’s been hacked to consider all americans as enemy combatants.
Possibly complete with “DEMOCRACY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE.”
Never heard of this, could you site some of these “Hints”? From what I know, the nature of the robots was caused by a mass reprogramming to get them to attack zombies. Originally, this didn’t work at all, and just made them attack humans and completely ignore zombies. This was retconned to killing zombies and humans when faction infighting was programmed.
Originally, there was an attempt to reprogram the robots when the AI change made them go psychotic (and I believe the robots were a crapshoot already, because subjective thinking is something that doesn’t program easily), but the robots responded by overrunning the command center and killing everyone inside. I found this tidbit in a Newspaper.
To be honest I don’t remember where I heard it. It might have just been speculation before any of the details were confirmed. Looking at snippets.json, it looks like your interpretation is correct.
I’m fairly certain that the aggression of the robots is because they’re in what is essentially both Martial Law (citizens are evacuated, anyone on the streets is probably compromised by the blob) and anti-riot measures. Since those who could countermand those orders are dead, converted, or both they have remained in their offensive stance.
It would be nice to have an AI faction that could be interacted with - Both as an opponent and as an ally. The AI could function as an ongoing source of pre-cataclysm tech (having the core manufacturing capabilities). As an ally, this would be by trade of tech and raw resources, as well as services (deals would favor the AI and need extensive balancing). As an enemy, by salvage.
Quests could include hooking up radio towers and stations to the AI for greater control range (thus expanding the domain of the machine,) negotiating with other human factions (or making war on them alongside/on behalf of the machine,) and of course surgical strikes on alien invaders.
I heard a bit going around a while back that the blob was already everywhere; in the water supply, in the wildlife, and, of course, in people. I don’t know whether it’s accurate, but it could be the basis of a “kill all instances of the blob” prime directive backfiring, and causing the AI to turn against everything, because it detects blob in everything. This could justify having very advanced technology on the AI, because the only entities that would know the blob exists, let alone know enough about it to program a machine to target it, would be XEDRA, and other large military installations.
I saw an entry somewhere, I think it was a lab computer, where one of the executives in the labs issued an order for the scientists to carry around bottled water, because they discovered that the blob was in the water supply. This implies that it began pervading at least the laboratory, before most people were aware of it, so it is possible that an AI could have been made to target it before it was well-known that it was already everywhere.
Thoughts?
Edit: It was already everywhere before the Cataclysm, that is.
The machine would also serve as the only native faction(s) that isn’t compromised by the primary invaders - The blob, mycus and triffid have no purchase on their inorganic nature. Some of the other nether forces might have the means and reason to influence them, though.
