DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Life cycle type

Poll ended at Fri Mar 20, 2009 4:27 am

Type A
1
5%
Type B
5
26%
Type C
2
11%
Type D
11
58%
 
Total votes: 19
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Mikey »

Or, more simply - a lifespan that long leads to a slower metabolism, and thus far lower production of spores over time than a terrestrial fungus.

(BTW - I showed that pic of the Elder Things first!)
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Sionnach Glic »

Or, more simply - a lifespan that long leads to a slower metabolism, and thus far lower production of spores over time than a terrestrial fungus.
Aye, that could work.

That said, I still stand by my belief that we should have chosen lifestyle and population growth in different polls.
(BTW - I showed that pic of the Elder Things first!)
Yup, but I felt like stealing credit. :lol: :P
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Tsukiyumi »

Rochey wrote:...Or maybe they're a very aggresive race...
I have yet to meet a mushroom that disagreed with me. They seem quite amicable, when they're going in my stomach, that is. :wink:
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Deepcrush »

Lets see you try that against one who has a phaser rifle... :poke:
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Tsukiyumi »

Deepcrush wrote:Lets see you try that against one who has a phaser rifle... :poke:
Or acidic spores... :worried:
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Deepcrush »

OH! Thats a good one!
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Tsukiyumi »

One of the polls should be about physical characteristics, including natural defenses.
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Deepcrush »

Well, we still have time so we could always add more to the species.
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Reliant121 »

The original idea i had was one major fungus that breeds like hundreds and hundreds of them.
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Deepcrush »

But then we lose the basic gene growth and adaptations over time.
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Reliant121 »

Fair point.
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Deepcrush »

I still think that maybe they should be based off of both male and female spores but both spores are released from a single parent. A male releases more male spores and a female puts out more female spores. This covers the problem of both gene growth and means that you won't have to worry about single crewmen spreading massive cullings around the ship.
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Grundig »

Maybe the OP wanted to prevent us from creating a wanktastic species? So he gave us a trade off between longevity and fertility.
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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Monroe »

Grundig wrote:Maybe the OP wanted to prevent us from creating a wanktastic species? So he gave us a trade off between longevity and fertility.
Exactly. And in nature it usually is short lives and many offspring or long lives and few offspring. That's just how nature works.

If long life span and few children this could mean that the fungus is only capable of reproducing during certain periods. Maybe during its spring it releases a chemical naturally that allows for reproduction. And then only a few spores are released instead of the thousands we all imagined, with the possibility that one might survive but more often than not none do. Perhaps they need a certain climate that isn't found in too many regions of the native world. If the creatures release say five spores with each one having a 5% chance of taking route once a year then we have ourselves a description which fits with the polls.

Its not the best situation I admit but that's what we ended up with :P


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Re: DITL Species 5- Type of Lifespan

Post by Coalition »

One stunt is that the Elder Brain fungus uses the initial spores as its troops, laborers, servants, caretakers, communications, etc (like an insect hive), and the sheer losses from that are acceptable. If it wants to share information with another Elder Brain, it sends out a communications critter with one of its neural nodes with the appropriate questions and responses built in. So it will understand when other nations offer to exchange diplomats, though the Brains will be curious about how the diplomat manages to change its responses without reconnecting to its Brain (while other nations will appreciate the number of diplomats available, though annoyed that they need to wait for a new diplomat when they talk about a new subject).

So you could have wars that only kill the spawn, but an attack that kills the Elder Brain is victorious. So the Fungus race sees nothing wrong with using (or killing) expendable Redshirts, but the main starship is where the other race's Brain lurks, so it is less likely to engage that. Similarly, attacking and killing the combat spores is a minor irritation to an Elder Brain, but killing an actual Brain puts the whole society on a war footing.

Their history could be full of similar stories and technological regressions, where wars involving thousands of combat spores fight over a square mile of territory occur regularly; but a single Brain gets killed and technological progress in the selected area declines. This would affect their psychology as well, where wide ranging combat is not a problem, but if you want to change a culture you kill the leader. Low-level combat troops might not have much initiative, but will be tough. The key problem the Elder Brains will have in combat is that once you kill the enemy leader, the subordinates start taking over and running the battle themselves. That will give it a serious shock, when it realizes that all of the enemy troops are effectively 'brains'.

Given the ability for the Brains to store data in distributed nodes, could it be possible for other critters to kill the Brain and absorb the information in one of the nodes? So attacking a Brain to steal a node would be regarded as intellectual theft, rather than murder.

Basically the number of intelligent children is extremely low, but the number of expendable drones is high.
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