Wouldn't Bio-warfare...infecting a Nomad, completely KILL it to the point of no regeneration? ...It could very well be a giant one big strike and then end of all Nomads. You would kill a Nomad one by one, but ever thought of side effects to one that is infected?
Nomad numbers slowly dwindling...can't grow more as fast as humans are killing them? So don't go all evil and edit the lore so it could not be in question. That just ruins some fun.
This is just a discussion for fun, we are not here to fight.
We all know Nomad will end when Discovery ends. Everything has an end.
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' Wrote:And what would you assassinate? An individual Nomad entity? There are no "leaders" so to speak, no key figures to assassinate that would cause things to topple down. There is no hive queen. Hive model is heavily centralized, Nomads' is decentralized, akin to distributed peer networks.
Now I don't want to sound rude, but the bottom line is that as the nomads' lore editor I can always push the "down-it-goes" red button flushing all your "biological warfare" dreams since it's all based on assumption they have similar structure (which they don't) so mechanics would be similar too. Unless you have actual suggestions and ideas that would be interesting in long-term use I have no interest in arguing here. If you'd like to be constructive I'm all ears, until then solid "no" stamp goes there.
How Nomads will end in Discovery and when (if ever) is a different subject and I believe you are not a candidate for the discussion of it, nor this is a place for it.
I just enjoy hypothetical discussion, plus I'm doing a A Level course in biology that I can't actually use for anything at the moment. So it's getting flushed out here.
But the point is, it's silly to just say 'no, Nomads are autoimmune to all diseases/pathogens', because nothing is - engineered or not. The DK probably would have given them inbuilt immunity to the various diseases that were about in their day, but consider mutations, and it's a completely new disease. Fair enough, at least they'll be able to adapt to and recognise native proteins, but if it's say, a pathogen dragged over from Sol... That's unknown ground.
Y'see the thing is, it's because humans and Nomads are different that they'd be vunerable (see the proteins thing above).
Unknown/unrecognisable proteins means no corresponding antibodies which means no immunity. Fair point on the leaders as well. I know Nomads don't have leaders due to the Mindshare, and the only Nomads that would be missed if murdered are tucked away in distant and well protected facilities that humans wouldn't be able to get at.
Still, can you see the side affects of a long range Order bomber wing downing a battleship's shields then hitting it with a mutagenic/cancerous flesh eating bacteria? True, there's no future for this ingame, but it might be cool for RP stories (where both sides have consented and are participated - no call for powergaming...).
As I said, I'm just venting theory that is jammed up in my head. And I like arguing. As I said.
EDIT: I have read it, so I know the mind of the afflicted Nomad would just be redownloaded from it's last 'save' and placed back into a body. I'm just saying that wasting Nomad resources is good for humans, as is taking out heavier craft. Sure it'll be back later, but it just means you don't have a battleship and cruiser group knocking at the door there and then.
And I'm not interested in determining the Nomad's end. I'm here for the theoretical argument.
@Immunity: Once again, I'll repeat myself by saying that how Nomads will end in Discovery, if ever, is not up to you, period. Furthermore I see you haven't been attentive to the lore given that you do not realize that individual Nomad node and physical manifestation aren't the same thing. Come back when you've read it.
@jammi: Now if only your "flushing" of A Level course in biology would be useful here for anything other than arguing... But like said I have no interest in arguing, nor have a need to, my knowledge in that field is very low, hence I drew inspiration for the Nomads from other fields, heavily influenced by various computing network structures. I'd be more happy if your knowledge would instead benefit the lore rather than wasting my time in argues, case point turning it into something constructive and useful.
Also battleships are pretty much limited to Omicron 99 starting from 4.85, cruisers are way too rare sight at all given no NPC flying them. Opposed to the previous version where battleship patrols were a lot more common. Their numbers are diminishing somewhat, in terms of overall roleplay, reflected by that change, but not because of biological warfare. And I don't recall those kind of ships knocking at the door often enough (none in terms of NPCs and very rare in terms of PCs) to make these kind of weapons actually useful. Too many downsides and little point in them. May be just a single prototype for a story and that's all, frankly I can't see such idea going farther than that.
Discuss "what if" cases and so on as much as you want for as long as it's explicitly specified as being not related to Discovery (hence goes different forum section), no problem with that.
OOOoo Twilight zone there Jammi? Into the unknown great beyond!
Oh wait! ...a whole new race. Thou I'm not good enough writer to do that, but hmm...I think for my free time I'll be creating a whole new race, most likely will be put down by Igiss, but It'll still be fun to do it. Except my race won't be Biological, or an energy entity. Like this whole other dimension opened up in Siris, letting out a few new "species" It'll make the game a bit more interesting.
I'm reading your lore right now Tree, you did a good job on it as well. Alot better then what I would have done, I'm only 17 and hate writing long drawn out things.
Same thing that humans would use on nomad could end up killing more humans then nomads, we all know how humans reproduce so it would harm humans more then nomads so humans stopped all research about biological weapon they could use on nomads.
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' Wrote:Biological weapon = bad
Same thing that humans would use on nomad could end up killing more humans then nomads, we all know how humans reproduce so it would harm humans more then nomads so humans stopped all research about biological weapon they could use on nomads.
End of discussion.
Laser cannons = bad
Same thing that humans would use on nomad could end up killing more humans then nomads, we all know how humans reproduce so it would harm humans more then nomads so humans stopped all research about laser weapon they could use on nomads.
If a nomad were to somehow be 'captured' while still alive, it could simply terminate it's own form. Each nomad 'ship' is nothing more than a limb, a finger or a thumb or an arm, of a particular nomad entity. Some nomad entities within the mindshare can control a dozen or more 'limbs' at once. Whenever a particular nomad ship dies or is destroyed, any knowledge or experience that it had gained up to the point of death is 'saved' to the mindshare, and a new form can be grown to replace it.
Because of this, nomads are for all intents and purposes immortal. Killing a nomad ship doesnt kill the nomad itself, because the intelligence behind that ship is basically saved to the mindshare 'hard drive' and can be loaded into another ship once one is grown or made available.
So, even if you managed to cut off it's connection to the mindshare, everything it knew up to that point will already have been recorded/saved within the mindshare, and the entity can simply disable or kill off that particular limb. The nomad 'ship' that you captured would become inactive/dead, and you would gain nothing from it.
What tena Said. They cant die. Its like killing a starfish by chopping off tentacles: they just grow back. I would say if the Slomon K'hara were diminishing, it would simply bve that they havent grow as many of the bigger limbs, so to speak. Plus, veil bacteria would probobly have an antiseptic effect, meaning that in 20 odd seconds from any virulent bacteria infection, it would be purged. That is of course assuming they would care enough givin that they are mostly energy.