Steltek Physiology

[spiritplumber]

and this is why I'm NOT doing plots for wcu i'm not a good script writer. I'm just working to make sure that the universe is "ecologicvally stable" and flyable around so that people can plug plots in easily.

does the steltek fighter look a little better?

 

[BradMick]

does the steltek fighter look a little better?

no.

 

[spiritplumber]

thanks ^^; well, what do you suggest i do to improve it?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

It should look more like this:

(That said, the Steltek fighter is several billion years old, no one is ever going to find one flying around in the 2600s. So you really should make it look like nothing.)

 

[spiritplumber]

wow, that kicks ass!!!!!


As I said, Steltek and Nephilim ships aren't contemplated in the autogen, meaning that they won't spawn by themselves. Neither faction has production points. So as it stands, if in WCU you see a Neph ship, or a Steltek ship, it's because you are flying a plot mission that features it


(this said, i'd really rather use your render than mine, any day! wowness!)

 

[Chevieblazer]

hmm, i must say that the similarity of this "steltek" and the nephilims is truly intriguing. however, the steltek technology is clearly mechanical, the nephilim one(like the one of shadows-all similarities between nephilim, shivans and shadowsx are of course totally coincidental )appears mostly organic.
if this is indeed a steltek, it could be argued that there is or was a connection between them, much like between romulans and vulcans. maybe the nephs did not agree with the peace-policy of their race and moved away, slowly chnaging over eons of seperate technological evolution...

 

[spiritplumber]

I have to disagree there, if that was the case the Nephilims would be EONS ahead of Confed technologically.

This said, it's fairly clear to me that the Steltek have a very automated culture... (self repairing drones that last for millions of years mean that they were designed to be very autonomous) maybe the Nephilim are a species that stumbled upon some steltek stuff and incorporated it in their biology. something like the techno-organic ships in Lexx maybe.

(I'm mostly talking out of my back end here, eh.)

 

[Shipgate]

The problem with all the fanfic about fighting evil Stelteks is that its very nature destroys the single thing that makes the Steltek in any way remarkable -- the idea that they became so advanced that they decided to give up their weapons alltogether.

Or wasn't that at least one of the theories as to what happened to them? That they surrendered all their power? It's actually what I like to think happened to them cause it's hard to believe a species so supposedly advanced as they to find reason to engage in a civil war with each other. But you never know.

And then whatever reason they did disappear it does seem to make sense to me that they would become the galaxie's hermits and want to erase all traces of themselves. Growing weary of their power. I wonder in what all aspects they surrendered their power. Cause I would think they would also give up all their technology. Yet there is that one Steltek ship and it made me wonder if they kept some of their ships just to retrieve any traces of their existence such as the space station.

 

[spiritplumber]

Well, obviously that's the case for the Steltek scout you meet in Priv.... it is manned after all, and it's built more neatly than the drone (the metal doesn't have any irregulartities) so maybe they did advance their space tech a bit more past the time the drone was built. On the other hand, the derelict and fighter look like they were made a lot earlier.

About a Steltek fighter being billions of years old... well... the drone still worked, didn't it? And the gun on the fighter -- well enough that someone who probably doesn't have a lot of engineering training beyond emergency repairs like Burrows could just "plug it in" to his ship's powerplant. I get the idea that Steltek stuff can keep itself in repair (nanotech perhaps) and even adapt itself to other stuff. If Burrows had flown to Delta Prime in a bigger ship and hauled the whole fighter home, there's a good chance that he could have hired a few engineers and pulled an Independence Day on it.

Then again, Retros (of all factions!!!) were able to replicate the steltek gun in only a few months. Either the Stelteks weren't that far ahead of Confed when they "retired", other than the amazing reliability, or the Steltek Gun can self-repair (which I think is the case since it never seems to get damaged) and the Retros tricked it into duplicating itself, maybe by building a "skeleton" and putting parts of guns on it, then feeding it materials to "fill itself up".

It's also possible that the Steltek gun copies only replicated the basic idea behind the original and didn't have all the detail work, so that they'd break down every few months instead of surviving the ages.

I'm against the player being allowed to fly superships, but I don't see why not the Steltek legacy can't be expanded at least a bit... for one, we know for sure that Confed has some Steltek stuff (they found it on Mars.... where's Swartzenegger when you need him?)

 

[Shipgate]

Even charged, the Steltek gun wasn't that powerful was it. Like these new emoticons.

 

[spiritplumber]

A charged steltek gun was exactly the strength of a proton torpedo... so you got unlimited torps, basically.

 

[ChrisReid]

Either the Stelteks weren't that far ahead of Confed when they "retired", other than the amazing reliability, or the Steltek Gun can self-repair (which I think is the case since it never seems to get damaged) and the Retros tricked it into duplicating itself, maybe by building a "skeleton" and putting parts of guns on it, then feeding it materials to "fill itself up".

Holy cow, why would you invent such a ridiculous theory? Are those really the two most likely scenarios you concocted? I can already hear the "but nothing says they don't self-repair!" replies coming too. Maybe the Retros had a time machine and went back two billion years where they forged an alliance with the Steltek and learned all their engineering secrets. I don't see people's fascination with spinning crazy tales about things that we don't know much about. It's a lot more reasonable to assume the gun simply wasn't very hard to get working and was very sturdy. This isn't some contest to see who can come up with the most silly elaborate explanations for things.

hmm, i must say that the similarity of this "steltek" and the nephilims is truly intriguing. however, the steltek technology is clearly mechanical, the nephilim one(like the one of shadows-all similarities between nephilim, shivans and shadowsx are of course totally coincidental )appears mostly organic.
if this is indeed a steltek, it could be argued that there is or was a connection between them, much like between romulans and vulcans. maybe the nephs did not agree with the peace-policy of their race and moved away, slowly chnaging over eons of seperate technological evolution...

And here we go again. Same thing as above. The Steltek and Nephilim stuff aren't that similar, and the Prophecy documentation makes a point of specifically saying that the Nephilim stuff doesn't appear to have any connection the Steltek. No crazy theories needed.

 

[Chevieblazer]

chris, that's what i said!
their pysiology (if that pic up above is really a steltek) is similar, NOT their tech.

i'd say the most likely case is that when origin was cooking up the nephilim, somebody found that old(and apparently unsupported) steltek drawing and modelled the nephs after it.

as for the organic technology, it certainly looks very organic, though i have to admit the nephilim don't have the same aura of invincibility the shadows or shivans emitted

 

[Quarto]

chris, that's what i said!
their pysiology (if that pic up above is really a steltek) is similar, NOT their tech.

Except that it has been specifically pointed out, in this very thread, that that pic is not a Steltek. It's just some generic alien that the guy making the manual drawings came up with - and Origin decided not to use.

i'd say the most likely case is that when origin was cooking up the nephilim, somebody found that old(and apparently unsupported) steltek drawing and modelled the nephs after it.

Except that Origin did not "cook up" the Nephilim. They got Syd Mead to do it - and they most certainly did not send him five-year old drawings of a generic "alien black marketeer". The similarity is coincidental - and in any case irrelevant, because as has been pointed out, that drawing does not represent a Steltek.

as for the organic technology, it certainly looks very organic, though i have to admit the nephilim don't have the same aura of invincibility the shadows or shivans emitted

You know, I always say the same thing about my keyboard. It certainly looks very organic, having been made of an organic material called plastic, but I have to admit it really doesn't have the same aura of invincibility the shadows or shivans emitted .

 

[spiritplumber]

well.... I did say that I was talking out of my back end about Steltek tech I was just trying to figure out how is it that Retros, who should have the least familiarity with technology, managed to reproduce a weapon that has the ability to work "out of the box" after having been sitting there for longer than there's been life on earth, and on top of that work with a completely alien wiring scheme etc.

So, either Burrows was channeling McGyver when he was in Delta Prime and figured out how to put together an interface for the Steltek Gun out of one of his normal guns (you do lose a gun when installing the Steltek afterall) and the gun's operating principle was in itself simple to copy, or the Stelteks have extremely good self-repair technology.... just my two cents. I guess it kinda snowballed from there.

About Neph ships: I think that they work like the Stingers in LEXX in that the hull is grown rather than built, but the weapons and flight systems etc. are then built in the normal way inside a hollowed (or semi hollowed in case of the Lexx itself) shell. It's possible that a Neph ship is mostly a hollowed shell with mechanical components installed in, and maybe an organic life support system for the pilot (do we have ANY idea what an individual Nephilim looks like?). The Prophecy manual seems to corroborate the "organically grown" theory at least for hulls.

The reason why I assumed that Steltek machinery can self-repair is that YOUR ship has a repair droid, and it's not even that expensive considering the amazing job it does, so they probably either have (had) some sort of equivalent mechanism, or they just build stuff so tough that it doesn't need maintenance. And since your Steltek gun never seems to take damage in the game, well, maybe it does fix itself.

Also, the Steltek scout upgrades your gun without ever touching you; I personally believe that what happens is that the scout uploads some firmware into the gun's repair systems (nanobots or something similar) and those reconfigure the thing in such a way that it can punch through the drone's shields. So here we have a gun which is self contained enough to:

* Be upgraded remotely.
* Last practically forever.
* Be extremely simple to interface with systems that have been designed by a completely different civilization.
* Not take visible damage compared to other guns.

(Sounds a bit like a Linksys router).

Sorry but I would think that this thing is smarter than your average pea shooter internally.



Of course another possibility is that the Stelteks were so amazingly clever that they built a gun that's very efficient, very simple to build/replicate, in fact simple enough that one would look at the design and think "Of course! Why didn't our engineers ever think about doing it this way, oh, here's where the power goes, it's obvious".

Sorta like the story on how the Americans spent millions on developing a space pen and the Russians figured they'd just use pencils.



To (mis)quote Terry Pratchett, the rarest kind of genius is that which produces stuff that everyone could have thought of, except nobody else did....

actually yeah Chris, this is a much cleaner explanation you got me.

 

[Chevieblazer]

@ quarto: aura of invincibility refers to the fact that it took the good guys a long time before they could even think of openly attacking both shivans and shadows, because they were pretty much invulnerable to standard weapons.

and how many nephilim do you blast in the first mission of wcp?

organic was referring to their ships looking like living matter, not something made from carbon, though you definition is chemically correct.

and i said:

(if that pic up above is really a steltek)

since bandit had already indicated it might not

 

[Dyret]

You know, I always say the same thing about my keyboard. It certainly looks very organic, having been made of an organic material called plastic, but I have to admit it really doesn't have the same aura of invincibility the shadows or shivans emitted .

I had a keyboard that was quite invincible, but then it was exposed to coffee and died. Hey, i think i just found a way to obliterate the nephilim!

On topic: I don't get why all these people seem to think that nephilim and steltek are related. As i pointed out in a thread half a year ago or so, The humans and kilrathi have alot more in common then the steltek and nephilim. Me and Loaf also mentioned a lot of differences between the nephilim and the steltek. I can't remember what we said but I'll add a list at the end.

Let's first look at what they have in common: They're both mysterious aliens... Well, both the kilrathi and the mopoks are well known aliens: OMFG THEY MUST BE RELATED.

Lets look at the differences: Steltek are seafood-like while the nephilim are bugs, Nephilim speaks funny english, the steltek speaks okay, Nephilim ships are rugged and shimmering, steltek ships are smooth and black/gray, the steltek didnt kill or capture Burrows for dissection, the nephilim probably would, one steltek could take out a human fleet, one human could take out a nephilim fleet ect...

 

[Bandit LOAF]

You know, I always say the same thing about my keyboard. It certainly looks very organic, having been made of an organic material called plastic, but I have to admit it really doesn't have the same aura of invincibility the shadows or shivans emitted .

Sounds like you need an IBM Model M. Mine is nearly as old as I am and has watched dozens of its lesser cousins pass on over the years.

I was just trying to figure out how is it that Retros, who should have the least familiarity with technology, managed to reproduce a weapon

It's odd that you're only familiar with certain elements of Righteous Fire. The game also explains that Mordecai Jones took over the church after starting out as an especially gifted engineer/ship technician.

About Neph ships: I think that they work like the Stingers in LEXX in that the hull is grown rather than built, but the weapons and flight systems etc. are then built in the normal way inside a hollowed (or semi hollowed in case of the Lexx itself) shell. It's possible that a Neph ship is mostly a hollowed shell with mechanical components installed in, and maybe an organic life support system for the pilot (do we have ANY idea what an individual Nephilim looks like?). The Prophecy manual seems to corroborate the "organically grown" theory at least for hulls.

"Organic" does not mean 'living'; as Quarto already pointed out, plastic is an organic material. When the Prophecy manual says that the analysis of Nephilim wreckage has determined that it's an organic material it is not claiming that the ships are grown.

We see both Nephilim regulars and Warlords during the course of Prophecy (it's kind of hard, at the very, very, very least, to have missed the Warlord at the end of the game...).

The reason why I assumed that Steltek machinery can self-repair is that YOUR ship has a repair droid, and it's not even that expensive considering the amazing job it does, so they probably either have (had) some sort of equivalent mechanism, or they just build stuff so tough that it doesn't need maintenance. And since your Steltek gun never seems to take damage in the game, well, maybe it does fix itself.

Faulty logic: my car has never been in an accident, therefore it repairs itself.

Of course another possibility is that the Stelteks were so amazingly clever that they built a gun that's very efficient, very simple to build/replicate, in fact simple enough that one would look at the design and think "Of course! Why didn't our engineers ever think about doing it this way, oh, here's where the power goes, it's obvious".

Sorta like the story on how the Americans spent millions on developing a space pen and the Russians figured they'd just use pencils.

Well, yes, because the space pen story is a silly urban legend: http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

On topic: I don't get why all these people seem to think that nephilim and steltek are related. As i pointed out in a thread half a year ago or so, The humans and kilrathi have alot more in common then the steltek and nephilim. Me and Loaf also mentioned a lot of differences between the nephilim and the steltek. I can't remember what we said but I'll add a list at the end.

People don't understand the idea behind the Nephilim. They're not all powerful mysterious aliens like... the Steltek or the... whatever Babylon 5 fighters. They're space *insects*, and the scary thing is supposed to be that they have a seemingly endless supply of footsoliders whose deaths they worry nothing about. As the Prophecy manual points out, the Nephilim fighters are in no way superior to those of the Confederation - the intention wasn't to create a super race that would always win.

 

[Quarto]

organic was referring to their ships looking like living matter, not something made from carbon, though you definition is chemically correct.

Yeah, well, that's my point. Everybody always seems to automatically assume that because Nephilim ships are described as organic, they must be alive, or at the very least made out of big chunks of meat or something. And yes, that's undoubtedly a possibility (particularly in light of SO's bacterial plot)... but given that organic technology could simply mean their ships are made of plastic, I think it's a good idea to not assume too much.

 

[spiritplumber]

Re space pen: Whether the story is true or not, it makes the point...

Re organic ships: Well, look at insects on Earth, especially ants and termites.... usually when they need a technology, they evolve a subspecies or a particular caste to fit the bill. (yeah, i know, evolution isn't directed, etc.... work with me for a second here). It's possible that the Nephilim have a caste, or have bred another species of insects to, grow, die, and leave a nicely made spaceship shell when they die. Or maybe not die but lose all internal organs except for those which would be good to have in a spaceship, like an oxygen rebreather (or whatever it is the Nephs breathe). Again, I'm shamelessly thinking LEXX here.....

hmm, Michael McManus in a WC interactive movie. Drool.