Sophont class preview
Last changed on
I think the wall has dissipated and I can now reveal a (non-polished, non-finalised yet) Sophont class.
This one has been and still is difficult to design, imho:
- It must feel nice and the progression must look meaningful, from both perspectives of game mechanics and flavour.
- It must be dense, but not so dense as to overwhelm ships, stations, other modules and units, etc.
Flavour progression
As a result of my overall tastes, vision, etc. the class gradually evolves from healthy humans, to augmented ones (either via cybernetics or genomics or both), to beings with variable anatomies, etc. all the way up to beings pretty much ready for their collective ascension (which is one of the "endgames").
Here is a list of names with abbreviated descriptions:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Human - Male | A continuous biological organism that follows a natural male human development in frame, strength, and vulnerability. |
| Human - Female | A continuous biological organism that follows a natural female human development in frame, grace, and vulnerability. |
| Cyborg - Male | A male human-shaped anatomy where living tissue and machinery cooperate to share the work of motion and perception. |
| Cyborg - Female | A female human-shaped anatomy where living tissue and machinery cooperate to share the work of motion and perception. |
| Genomorph - Male | An organic male body whose metabolism and physical capabilities arise from authored biological design rather than unaltered descent. |
| Genomorph - Female | An organic female body whose metabolism and physical capabilities arise from authored biological design rather than unaltered descent. |
| Bioborg - Standard | A human-like body where redesigned biological tissues and machinery are grown together as one stable, legible anatomy. |
| Bioborg - Robust | A dense and rugged fusion of flesh and machinery built for endurance, force, and structural certainty. |
| Bioborg - Graceful | An elegant hybrid anatomy that expresses strength through efficiency, balance, and refined economy of motion. |
| Cyborg - Adaptive | A cybernetic body built for reconfiguration, allowing actuators and sensory filters to retune themselves for changing tasks. |
| Cyborg - Flux | A fluid cybernetic host that maintains stability through continuous dynamic shifts in movement, perception, and output. |
| Nanocyton - Male | A male body whose stability and repair are managed by a dense internal ecology of nanic agents woven through the flesh. |
| Nanocyton - Female | A female body whose stability and repair are managed by a dense internal ecology of nanic agents woven through the flesh. |
| Exobiont - Gracile | A non-human living organism whose anatomy has settled into an alternative logic of slender, efficient, and fluid movement. |
| Exobiont - Massive | A non-human living organism that expresses a stable logic of life through heavy load paths and concentrated bodily strength. |
| Exobiont - Radial | A non-human organism that arranges limbs and sensory organs around a distributed centre for all-direction action. |
| Synton - Lean | An efficient frame that relies on machine-linked structure and nanic upkeep to preserve responsiveness and reduce bodily drag. |
| Synton - Dense | A reinforced frame where everyday stability rests on the concerted action of mechanical structure and distributed nanic regulation. |
| Synton - Precision | A highly ordered body tuned for exact control, fine timing, and the reliable execution of subtle tasks. |
| Biomorph - Anthropic | A human-shaped organism whose internal function is guided by an intimate collaboration between redesigned biology and nanoscale intervention. |
| Biomorph - Adapted | An organic body that carries specialised adaptations openly in the visible logic of its limbs and internal pathways. |
| Biomorph - Divergent | A coordinated organic whole whose proportions and supports have moved into an entirely new and unfamiliar bodily grammar. |
| Neomorph - Predatory | A body capable of rapid adaptive rewriting biased toward sharp action, direct force, and decisive physical response. |
| Neomorph - Mercurial | A versatile organism that meets changing conditions through swift re-patterning, subtle adjustment, and repeated transformation. |
| Neomorph - Hyperplastic | An extremely responsive host ready to undergo sweeping reconfiguration and remake its active bodily logic on short timescales. |
| Triune - Balanced | A versatile embodiment sustained through the enduring equilibrium of rewritten biology, cybernetic structure, and nanic support. |
| Triune - Optimised | A highly refined host where tissues and interfaces are arranged with tight integration for heightened performance. |
| Triune - Resilient | A fault-tolerant body designed to endure disruption and preserve continuity under strain through interdependent survival systems. |
| Metabiont - Stable | A changing organism that utilises controlled internal remodelling to undergo measured and orderly structural revision. |
| Metabiont - Plastic | A plastic body that accepts broad internal reconfiguration and transformation as part of its natural condition. |
| Metabiont - Recursive | An organism whose continuity is preserved through layered self-revision, where each transformation informs the next. |
| Lithomorph - Articulated | A programmable synthetic body with many coordinated segments that can alter its geometry and surface function. |
| Lithomorph - Monolithic | A unified synthetic host that reorganises its internal rigidity and form as a single coherent engine of presence. |
| Lithomorph - Lattice | A deliberate synthetic framework where mobility and strength emerge from intricate, reconfigurable, and patterned connectivity. |
| Holobiont - Clustered | A distributed living body where personhood persists through the coordinated redundancy of semi-autonomous living assemblies. |
| Holobiont - Filamentary | A resilient living network whose threads and connective tissues maintain one enduring intelligence across a broad reach. |
| Holobiont - Webbed | A living network of intersecting redundancies that ensure sensation and action remain intact even after significant damage. |
| Polybiont - Swarm Fine | A sophont identity spread across a great number of fine-moving parts acting in concert for broad environmental reach. |
| Polybiont - Swarm Heavy | A collective identity expressed through fewer, more substantial bodies capable of greater local force and independent function. |
| Polybiont - Swarm Modular | A distributed person functioning as a mobile ecology of bodies specialised into recurring roles for movement and repair. |
| Autarch - Male | A male human-form instrument whose tissues and internal arrangements answer directly to deliberate inward command. |
| Autarch - Female | A female human-form instrument whose tissues and internal arrangements answer directly to deliberate inward command. |
| Autarch - Sovereign Neutral | A human-form host refined toward deliberate bodily neutrality and simplified to answer chiefly to chosen embodiment. |
| Cohereon - Compact | A dense and sharply bounded presence sustained by the active alignment of force and relation rather than passive matter. |
| Cohereon - Diffuse | A softly extended field of presence that maintains stable embodiment through a wide, gentle alignment of living coherence. |
| Cohereon - Layered | A depth-structured host built through the stacked interaction of several interdependent shells of gathered presence. |
| Anabiont - Anchored | A conscious topology that preserves its durable selfhood through one primary and dominant embodiment locus. |
| Anabiont - Distributed | A self-binding conscious pattern that maintains coherence and organised being across several concurrent embodiment loci. |
| Anabiont - Recursive | An embodiment held together by loops of conscious structure that continually reaffirm and reconstruct their own continuity. |
That list is of course likely to change…
Attributes progression
As of today, attribute ranges progress in fairly linear fashion and this may be wrong. What is meant by that is that, given the investment in time, research (and probably risk) to reach higher-tier variants, the progression should be much stronger. But that is something that can be gone back to very easily. The important point being: the logic and the skeleton both seem to be well in place.
Attributes overview
Sophont attributes are of course very different from those of ships, reactors and other pieces of equipment and are organised in the following more or less broad families:
- Reproduction regime outcome: two transient (non persisted) attributes resulting from faction governance quality that determine the chances of getting higher rolls on "birth".
- Physical characteristics (as in physics): mass, volume, etc and longevity.
- Physical attributes such as strength, health or agility, and even a concept similar to "hit points"
- Mental attributes such as intellect, willpower or charm
- Gravity tolerance attributes
- "Nature attributes": these ones will get their own subsection see below.
- Identity-related attributes: same, see below.
- Comfort needs and metabolism-related attributes
A few notes on males and females:
- You will have noticed that the notion of gender slowly disappears; that is because faction populations can slowly - and optionally - shift from the world of sexuated reproduction to enter the world of fully artificial (and sometimes immaterial) reproduction. By which time the word "reproduction" has taken on a wholly different meaning.
- Males are stronger, consume more and are overall more resistant; females have far stronger native social capabilities, consume less but require a little bit more comfort and have very slightly better agility.
Nature attributes
Nothing natural about them, except perhaps one :-). You be the judges:
| Attribute | Symbol | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Biologism | BIOG | Degree to which existence depends on living biological tissues, organic repair, and life-process metabolism. |
| Syntheticity | SYNT | Degree to which existence depends on engineered non-biological substrate, mechanisms, or artificial structural support. |
| Corporality | CORP | Degree to which normal existence depends on sustained physical embodiment in a concrete material envelope. |
| Virtuality | VIRT | Degree to which continuity, function, or operation depends on computational, simulated, or substrate-light runtime processes. |
These are important because they determine the level of compatibility a given sophont has with habitats, overall installations for leisure/entertainment/social gatherings. In other words:
- A baseline human has
BIOG == 1and will not be able to fully enjoy installations lacking in this domain: perhaps they lack showers, restrooms, or perhaps even tables, doors or even floors! - Likewise, a Cohereon with
BIOG == 0is unlikely to take full advantage of an habitat initially designed for cyborgs or humans.
Other mechanics are … being …err… designed right now, to integrate the nature of Sophonts into various parts of the engine. Lots to do!
Identity-related attributes
This hits an interesting point, one that will deserve more details in a future post perhaps, but worth mentioning here.
In the engine, Identity is distinct from Entity. In game terms, this means an identity can switch from one bodily envelope to another, be it a Sophont or the command core of a ship. Said core or body can also serve as a host to several identities (depending on its attributes).
Of course depending on overall tech level.
I think this is very nice on two fronts:
- Mechanically, it will open very diverse ways of playing and handling a faction's population.
- And this goes well hand in hand with the flavour of "this has evolved a long way from human beings as we know", which is intended.
Those attributes are:
| Attribute | Symbol | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Identity host capacity | IHCP | Maximum number of identities or active identity-links the host can sustain at once. |
| Identity stability | ISTA | How reliably the host preserves coherent identity function without drift, corruption, or collapse. |
| Identity transfer capacity | ITCP | How well the host can receive, bind, and sustain non-native or transferred identity occupancy. |
Perhaps ITCP is redundant and IHCP's quantitativity, ISTA's qualitativity are enough - I am still undecided on this; we shall see.
No materials in Sophonts
Yes, there is no manufacturing process here - even at high(er) tiers. While this may seem to contradict flavour and the artificiality of Sophont vessels at these tiers, the reason is first and foremost the following one:
Sophont complexity must not overshadow that of other higher-order entities such as ships, stations or vehicles.
This rule is reinforced by one undeniable fact: in any faction, Sophonts will outnumber ships, stations, etc by around 2 orders of magnitude. Which leads to the natural and logical conclusion: subjecting Sophont "creation" to the same design choices as for, say, ships, would only have two negative effects:
- It would diminish the importance of the crafting mechanics for those big shiny things that are ships and stations
- Perhaps even worse, it could introduce crafting fatigue, which would kind of defeat the whole point of having such an intricate crafting system for ships, stations et al.
Plus, the whole point is to play a faction. A whole. Not an individual or a series of individuals.
… and so back to Habitats!
Which have been designed around the definition of their potential inhabitants. Logical and making way more sense. I am still not 100% satisfied where they're at but a few very interesting design time choices will have to be made, which makes habitats very… modular.
In conclusion
And that's it for this post. Just so you know, the following unit-layer classes have also been worked on and are now finished or very close to it:
- Gravity generation units
- Tactical shields
- Sustenance production units
- Recycling
- Habitats
- N/space navigation
With the following at drawing board status:
- Surface navigation
- Atmospheric navigation
- H/Space navigation
- V/Space navigation
- H/Space locomotion
- V/Space locomotion
- Surface piloting
- Atmospheric piloting
- N/Space piloting
- V/Space piloting
- Detection systems
And why no H/Space piloting? Well because the taxonomy assigns "Navigation" to strategic movement and "Piloting" to tactical movement. Given there is no tactical movement or notion of agility in H/Space… there is no need for piloting in that medium!
Thank you for reading and as always, please feel free to comment or drop a constructive feedback message here or directly on Discord.
Please signin to add your comment.