DMCA Lore: Possible First Draft

[Stickymayhem]

CREDIT TO BEESTING12 AND #dmca-lorebus FOR THIS CONCEPT AND BRAINSTORMING

2543: Finally, the source of the incredibly valuable Plasma has been discovered, Sector Zera-311, a system with hundreds of planets and moons orbiting a binary set of plasma-stars.

Eager to shore up their dwindling treasury and support their vast empire, Nanotrasen sets about mining the resource on every plasma-rich planet and moon it can land on. Colonies and mining/research facilities are established, but before long a threat emerges, literally, from the caverns of many such planets.

Currently unnamed officially, these insectoid-like creatures, colloquially referred to as "Bugs" by marines, have evolved in a plasma-rich environment, creating a unique catalyst for bizarre specialised evolution, dictated by a central hivemind. A fundamentally parasitic race, they infest the brain matter of other competing species with their young. Pods containing flying parasitic wasps known as Stingers are deadly traps from which these short-lived suicidal ovipositors on wings dart towards their target.

Once infested, it's only a matter of time before their head explodes from the inside, and a new bug emerges, ready to evolve into it's required form for the hive thanks to it's malleable cellular structure. It's easy to tell which marines have popped and which can still be saved, based on whether they have a head left or not.

Desperate to recoup their losses through the solid plasma, Nanotrasen invests in contracting or purchasing an army outright to put down the bug infestation, restore their mining colonies to functioning, and ultimately reaffirm their domination over the galaxy.

Eventually they win, leading to our modern day /tg/ SS13. "Remember the Bug War? Oh shit were you in Delta Squadron? I think we must have served at the same time!" ROLEPLAY

IF THIS IS ALL FOR NANOTRASEN PROFIT WHY ARE MARINES SUICIDAL?

The Marines are taken in by NT propaganda, colonization style. They believe once the sector is clear and their short-term (5-year?) contracts are up, they'll get first pick of jobs in the new plasma-rich mining economy. They're giving up 5 years of their lives to give themselves and their families a comfortable, wealthy and long-term stable career in an uncertain universe. Whether that's true or not is another matter, but now we have marine motivation.

Plenty of marines are willing to kill themselves if it means securing a spot for their family and children when the sector is clear. Plenty are willing to be heroic knowing that the more marines get sent in the smaller their share of the final prize will eventually be.

We got it bois. Your daddy fought in the Bug War to secure your place as RD. Or maybe you did and now you're a gruff security officer. There's so much to work with here.

[Luke Cox]

We're not seriously considering replacing the xenomorphs, are we?

[Stickymayhem]

We're not seriously considering replacing the xenomorphs, are we?

We absolutely are why the hell wouldn't we.

We want to move away from CM lore anyway, but the fact they get harassed (And are getting harassed now) by Fox/Disney lawyers says maybe we get the fuck out of here.

We also want to resprite a lot of stuff anyway because many of the spriters involved would like to keep their shit from being used on DMCA, which is their right (not necessarily legally, but we aren't going to be cunts to them).

There is zero chance of us keeping xenos as they are. It's a priority to swap them for something that isn't a massive fucking IP

[Kingtrin]

Rustled made a brief informal announcement a few days ago in discord stating that fox is not ok with nicboones sprites whatsoever (contrary to the bullshit posted by slc that he was on good terms with a fox lawyer) as such WT is being changed to NT, xenos are being given a new look, the lore is being changed around, and ultimately we need to resprite the xenos. Gameplay wise we are probably not changing much although chestbursters seem to be headbursters now.

[Stickymayhem]

Rustled made a brief informal announcement a few days ago in discord stating that fox is not ok with nicboones sprites whatsoever (contrary to the bullshit posted by slc that he was on good terms with a fox lawyer) as such WT is being changed to NT, xenos are being given a new look, the lore is being changed around, and ultimately we need to resprite the xenos. Gameplay wise we are probably not changing much although chestbursters seem to be headbursters now.

I think headbursters is a unique twist that's equally horrifying, and is even better from a gameplay perspective because you can see at a glance which marines have popped or not based on whether they still have a head.

[Rohesie]

This is terribly bad. Check the many Bay-based servers if you want good lore, for inspiration if nothing else.

Also we can keep the xenos just fine. We just can't go full AvP lore like CM was doing.

[Luke Cox]

>Fox's autism

Well that's fucking gay.

I read your other post on the coding forum. I think a "zerg-like" species could be pretty sweet. Better nail the look though, because I main Zerg and I will sperg out if you get it wrong. My only other real concern would be with the aesthetic after the re-sprite. I think we should really try to stick to the gritty aesthetic of CM, in contrast to the bright and colorful one associated with Nanotrasen. We're (mostly) not playing as a corporation, but rather as an army unit.

[Stickymayhem]

>Fox's autism

Well that's fucking gay.

I read your other post on the coding forum. I think a "zerg-like" species could be pretty sweet. Better nail the look though, because I main Zerg and I will sperg out if you get it wrong. My only other real concern would be with the aesthetic after the re-sprite. I think we should really try to stick to the gritty aesthetic of CM, in contrast to the bright and colorful one associated with Nanotrasen. We're (mostly) not playing as a corporation, but rather as an army unit.

I've been saying we should go for a Starship Troopers feel. Gritty, violent but a bit lighter hearted in line with /tg/ lore. In terms of actual aesthetic, it can be similar, but we're losing a lot of sprites, so we'll have to see what kind of spriters we end up getting on board for the project.

Once infested, it's only a matter of time before their head explodes from the inside, and a new bug emerges, ready to evolve into it's required form for the hive thanks to it's malleable cellular structure. It's easy to tell which marines have popped and which can still be saved, based on whether they have a head left or not.

This would fix the issue of porting cloning without saying the chestburstee can't be cloned because of """reasons."""

Yeah it's got a lot of benefits over chest-bursting. I particularly like that you don't have to examine to figure out who's popped or not, and it makes our aliens pretty unique.

EDIT: Headpoppers is fun slang too as an alternative to chestburster

[iksyp]

This is terribly bad. Check the many Bay-based servers if you want good lore, for inspiration if nothing else.

Also we can keep the xenos just fine. We just can't go full AvP lore like CM was doing.

baystation has fanfiction tier lore

[Stickymayhem]

This is terribly bad. Check the many Bay-based servers if you want good lore, for inspiration if nothing else.

Also we can keep the xenos just fine. We just can't go full AvP lore like CM was doing.

>terribly bad
>Zero feedback, suggestions or ideas

lel

[D&B]

This is terribly bad. Check the many Bay-based servers if you want good lore, for inspiration if nothing else.

Also we can keep the xenos just fine. We just can't go full AvP lore like CM was doing.

>Bay

Stopped reading right there

[oranges]

[Rohesie]

This is terribly bad. Check the many Bay-based servers if you want good lore, for inspiration if nothing else.

Also we can keep the xenos just fine. We just can't go full AvP lore like CM was doing.

>terribly bad
>Zero feedback, suggestions or ideas

lel

When I spoke in the channel I got threatened to get kicked so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Feels right like at CM.

/tg/ has zero lore, it has memes. Which is great for a LRP server. There was talk about making DMCA MRP, but if it's up to this low-quality lore that ain't happening. Just do like /vg/ and skip the formalities and pretenses.

It's pretty clear you haven't really played CM and this is kind of a poor rework of the facehuggers and xenomorphs adding a tiny feel of starship troopers but without really getting anything of what makes them interesting: the alien's horror, the predator's hunt, the federation's fascist-military culture, the bugs' sentience...

So, yea, not sure what I can contribute here. Keep the marines in some kind of actual army instead of working for NT, keep NT if you want instead of Wey-Yu, add more corporations and nations to add diversity and potential conflicts, and stop calling the space oil as a ionized state of matter.

[BeeSting12]

Thanks for your actual feedback. The reason you got threatened to be kicked is because you were going on about RP levels when we're established it will be at the lower end of the medium RP spectrum.

The way the lore is written right now, the marines are in an actual army contracted by Nanotrasen, or bought depending on who you ask. We actually have to change corporation names to move away from the Aliens franchise.

There's too many big words after "space oil" but I think you're hinting at calling plasma phoron??? We're not doing that.

[Luke Cox]

I was thinking that maybe the marines are still from Earth or some similar government, and that the colony being aided is on a planet owned by Nanotrasen.

[ChemicalRascal]

I've gotta say, I'm not sure that I like that marines know they're going into fight a bio-hazard-related enemy... and yet are gearing up like they're fighting human enemies.

One of the reasons things seem vaguely plausible for CM is that marines, RP-wise, don't know what xenos are. And, hell, RPing COs tend to spout some nonsense about how they expect to be fighting anti-colonists or rebels or whatever the specific anti-marine, anti-WY faction is. Communist Space Ruskies or whatever.

While, sure, DMCA might be Med-RP, even that is kind of broken when marines are expected to put on regular helmets and not, say, hazmat suits. Nor when the CO makes any briefing that doesn't start off with "well we're going to nuke it and go home".

I'd suggest the lore be altered such that the Marines, at least, don't know what's going on -- or they be given a motivation justifying fighting the bugs in the least effective way possible. Something beyond "can't nuke it because reasons", because, well, that limits the ability for future development relating to nuke-related endgames. (Also, a decent, "xenomorph"-y name for the aliens would be nice?)

OTOH the core ideas are good.

[Arianya]

I'll agree with others that the USMC/EarthGov Marines/whatever shouldn't really know what they're fighting. Nanotrasen is a megacorp with lots of fingers in lots of pies, and there's no way they're telling anyone about the "aliens" until they've studied them inside and out to make sure any profit/patents/etc. has been wringed out of them.

Certainly I don't think the military chain of command should know, and possibly the Corporate Liaison/NT Rep doesn't know much beyond "There was blackbag bio research going on on the planet", something which is obviously up to the CL-player and their relationship with the military to decide whether to disclose or not.

Given that they've evolved in a plasma-heavy environment, it may be worth adding that the creatures themselves are laced with high purity/liquid/other plasma, as a reason why NT would a) want them fuckin' bugs and b) why they'll slap anyone who figures this out with a big fat fuckin' NDA to keep their goddamn traps shut

[DemonFiren]

>trying to force the average /tg/dm player to pretend they don't know about the ayylmaos all the while gearing up to powergame them as best as possible
dis gun b gud

[ChemicalRascal]

Given that they've evolved in a plasma-heavy environment, it may be worth adding that the creatures themselves are laced with high purity/liquid/other plasma, as a reason why NT would a) want them fuckin' bugs and b) why they'll slap anyone who figures this out with a big fat fuckin' NDA to keep their goddamn traps shut

Psssh, given NT have deathsquads, fair sure anyone who survives these ops is gonna be fukken ded regardless

Unless NDA now stands for Not Dead Anough.

[Rohesie]

Marines are bringing those weapons because that's what they have available. This is a new kind of menace, and while they've fought against them before they are neither the only threat (other humans are still dangerous) and they haven't had all the time in the world to completely refit the fleet.

It makes zero sense for marines to bring flamethrowers, bayonets, flechette, and a lot of really xeno-effective gear to a prison riot for example. Whenever the round goes HvH the gear meta shifts and go explain that RP-wise. Why would them bring huge-AP ammo if they only expect to find unarmored CLF at best?

First contact rule creates many more problem than it solves. The marines are not bringing 100% specialized anti-xeno gear because they are not an anti-xeno special unit, but a general-purpose military company.

[ChemicalRascal]

That's absurd, the idea of sending infantry down to fight headpoppers remains the least effective methodology the marines have at their disposal regardless of if they're equipped for generalized situations or not. Marines have CAS and orbital bombardment, for crying out loud.

At the end of the day, if we aren't talking about a first-contact situation, and marines know that they're facing parasitic, fast-breeding aliens, there's no motivation to send infantry down there. Anyone with two braincells can see that's the single worst way to handle the situation.

[Stickymayhem]

Keep in mind that nanotrasen is trying to do this on the cheap.

Hazmats may even be available, but nanotrasen is not going to spring for R&D on effective equipment when twice as many dead marines is meaningless to them as long as they complete the objective. They're a profit-driven corp who would rather throw cheap lives than expensive equipment at a problem. Given how /tg/ works, pretending not to know what's going on is really going to result in frustration for most players, and seems needlessly artificial. We should be forming lore around gameplay, not forcing certain gameplay to patch holes in the lore. If the lore makes a change that isn't fun, it should change rather than the gameplay. Headpoppers is a gameplay improvement. Forced ignorance is not fun.

That's absurd, the idea of sending infantry down to fight headpoppers remains the least effective methodology the marines have at their disposal regardless of if they're equipped for generalized situations or not. Marines have CAS and orbital bombardment, for crying out loud.

At the end of the day, if we aren't talking about a first-contact situation, and marines know that they're facing parasitic, fast-breeding aliens, there's no motivation to send infantry down there. Anyone with two braincells can see that's the single worst way to handle the situation.

The motivation is money. Nanotrasen has always given zero fucks about loss of life. The marine's contractors aren't going to give a fuck either if they're getting a big payday.

It's pretty clear you haven't really played CM and this is kind of a poor rework of the facehuggers and xenomorphs adding a tiny feel of starship troopers but without really getting anything of what makes them interesting: the alien's horror, the predator's hunt, the federation's fascist-military culture, the bugs' sentience...

I think what you want is a CM clone, which is not what we're doing. We're doing a /tg/ version of CM, our own spin, our own attitude catered in part to CM, but also to our regular players. It may be similar, it may attract CM players or it may not, but ultimately it should move in a direction that makes sense for /tg/ and not remain handcuffed to an IP that gets regular bad attention from Fox/Disney. We're removing predators most likely too, because they just aren't that fun a gameplay mechanic.

[ChemicalRascal]

I know NT wants to be cheap, but "NT wants to be cheap" doesn't translate to "Marines are suicidal". You're dealing with two separate entities here, and only one has a motivation to act in disregard for best practices, and the one that actually suffers as a result isn't the one with that motivation. It falls apart at the basic premise level, Sticky, unless the Marines are collectively suicidal.

Nobody is going to knowingly send soldiers into a situation where the likely outcome is everyone dies.

And I think you're overestimating dramatically player frustration. Nobody really cares that they aren't supposed to know, people aren't RPing that red space doggos are cute and petting them or any such crap. It's just a convenient way to frame the fight and drives a bit of cheeky RP over the radio when someone stuck in a hive has nothing better to do than talk about how scawyscawy the aliums are and how everyone around them has weird holes in their chest.

TG players aren't meth-head toddlers. They're able to keep a separation between their IC and OOC knowledge without it being an issue, give the players some damn credit.

[Stickymayhem]

I know NT wants to be cheap, but "NT wants to be cheap" doesn't translate to "Marines are suicidal". You're dealing with two separate entities here, and only one has a motivation to act in disregard for best practices, and the one that actually suffers as a result isn't the one with that motivation. It falls apart at the basic premise level, Sticky, unless the Marines are collectively suicidal.

Nobody is going to knowingly send soldiers into a situation where the likely outcome is everyone dies.

And I think you're overestimating dramatically player frustration. Nobody really cares that they aren't supposed to know, people aren't RPing that red space doggos are cute and petting them or any such crap. It's just a convenient way to frame the fight and drives a bit of cheeky RP over the radio when someone stuck in a hive has nothing better to do than talk about how scawyscawy the aliums are and how everyone around them has weird holes in their chest.

TG players aren't meth-head toddlers. They're able to keep a separation between their IC and OOC knowledge without it being an issue, give the players some damn credit.

For everyone's notice we brainstormed and figured this out.

The Marines are taken in by NT propaganda, colonization style. They believe once the sector is clear and their short-term (5-year?) contracts are up, they'll get first pick of jobs in the new plasma-rich mining economy. They're giving up 5 years of their lives to give themselves and their families a comfortable, wealthy and long-term stable career in an uncertain universe. Whether that's true or not is another matter, but now we have marine motivation.

Plenty of marines are willing to kill themselves if it means securing a spot for their family and children when the sector is clear. Plenty are willing to be heroic knowing that the more marines get sent in the smaller their share of the final prize will eventually be.

We got it bois. Your daddy fought in the Bug War to secure your place as RD. Or maybe you did and now you're a gruff security officer. There's so much to work with here.

[BeeSting12]

That's also where mutinies come in. If the CO sends the marines on a suicide mission, they can mutiny.

[Stickymayhem]

That's also where mutinies come in. If the CO sends the marines on a suicide mission, they can mutiny.

That makes great sense as a catalyst for mutinies you're right! If the CL is too obvious or the CO too corporate aligned then that's a great excuse for the marines to mutiny. If they realise what's going on that's basically a fail state for the leadership and CL

[Supermichael777]

Well we could handle "the why are you gearing up for x when facing y" by actually making different distress signal enemies like SPESS RABIES, Rebels, or YPP (RUSH B). So Distress signal is first responded grab bag. "we got this encrypted broadcast on the emergency frequency and its in our jurisdiction".

Of course the marines solve every problem by dog-piling it with marines. Results vary.

NT might be the paper owner of the system but not every legal system in the universe agrees with that. Boots hitting clay is kind of a poorly planed last resort after polite mesages, legal threats and outright bribes. And the whole process left the poor stiffs from the wildcat miners and free-soilers whose government changed the rules under their feet with frustration, arms for "self-defense", and nowhere to go.

[Ignies]

How about arachnids like in starship troopers, without making too many references it should work

edit: damm, should read the entire threat before posting

I've been saying we should go for a Starship Troopers feel.

[Karkinos]

Wanted to give this thread a bump even though it's a bit old. New around here and at first I was kind of disappointed to see that the server plans on moving away from the bulk of the Aliens setting, but reading more about the circumstances and opinions, I understand why. It seems like something like this (and the main CM server) would be under fair use law when it comes to copyright, but fair use is a complex subject and not guaranteed. Also reading that they've apparently been getting some negative attention from Fox/Disney, it seems much smarter to just steer clear of going all-in on the theme. This also allows this server to do lots of creative and different things without worrying about consistency with the Aliens universe or having to make massive changes or even shut down after demands from Fox. Also, even some of the mechanics in CM are stretching the lore for gameplay purposes, so it's not like it was the most authentic Aliens experience ever anyway.

Still, I hope we can keep some of the theme, as the IP is one of my favorite series and the universe is a blast to play in.
That said, I'd like to help out with the lore and design of this /tg/ version. The possibilities are staggering!