Any progress on creatures/magic/technology? Sry i haven't checked in, big deadline coming up - its getting pretty close to crunch. I have an outline of the tech development paths so far - only 3 at the moment, but if we can make em, we can call it good enough for version 0.1:
Cybernetics:
Focuses on inflicting syndromes on creatures, similar to the nagic stuff bleep_bloop has been working on for me - however, better types of cyborg can be developed. Some syndromes may only work on animals, so the nanobot fluid for Enhanced War Dogs will not create humans with enhanced abilities. This tech path will leave the creature vulnerable to hacking - hackers will be a special syndrome, necromancer-type thing that can be learned by adventurers, and it lets you do damage to any cyborg creatures - but it will have no effect on humans or biological creatures. Other than vulnerability to hackers - who should, if possible, have the POWER tag so they take over civs - there should be a custom material that does extra damage to robots and cyborgs - EMP bullets which will have a material force multiplier of at least X3. This will be custom railgun/coilgun ammo. The second path, other than cybernetics and robotics(maybe make it so you can also craft robo-minions?), will be that of biotech. This will involve physical and mental advancements on a biological level - while cyborgs end up with things like metal body parts and enhanced strength, bio-enhanced individuals will be able to recieve animalistic traits, such as the head of a lion or reptilian claws, as well as hyperdensified muscles and similar things. (is it possible, by the way, to make it so just one body part of a creature is made of a specific material?) This will also include Psionics, the higher tier abilities gained from bio-enhancement. Abilities can include psychic assaults that wrack an enemies head with pain, telekinetic attacks, and even Pyrokinesis. Biotech will have two paths - after you have achieved relative expertise with enhancing humans physical traits, you can either go down the route of Psionics or Abominations. Abominations will be monsters under your control created by your mad scientists - at top level, there may even be Megabeast strength monsters. These creatures might be a little harder to control than you think, however...
Lastly, there will be energy tech - working with plasma, lasers, electricity and magnetism. At the lowest level you have railguns and the like, but you can move on to things like a Plasma Cannon which will fire Plasma Bolts that deal high damage to all biological life forms(all biological carbon based lifeforms have a 2X multiplier vs. Plasma, which will proly for now just be a metal, maybe one with a low melt temperature like quicksilver. Or the Mega Railgun, a giant ballista-sized weapon that fires huge chunks of metal capable of killing the most fierce of beasts. Or (if thhis is possible) the Beam Cannon, which fires a continuous... beam... of energy that decimates foes(ideally like a normal crossbow, but take only a fraction of a second to shoot, so you can actually hit with it 10 times for each time an enemy can shoot you. Other uses of energy tech will include Power Armor and Forcefield Projectors, which will be equipable items that give you much more defense than standard flak/kevlar gear.
So - any thoughts? And any progress on the magic workshops?