The Nomad War: Redux

[Boss]

That depends whether you use game mechanics or roleplay as your source.

In roleplay, the nomads are pretty much dead. Their forces were already too weak to take over Sirius in Freelancer. They had to resort to espionage and cause internal choas among Houses before they could openly strike and even then, they were defeated by a few outlaw factions.

Not entirely true. We could have picked any one of the houses and smashed it in a matter of days, if not hours. We're all linked at the speed of thought. Tactics aren't an issue, whereas with traditional fleets there's a bit of hesitation over controversial orders, plus comms lag. Trent just abused a game mechanic to shut down our server, is all.

In Discovery they have returned with more advanced ships, but look at the roleplaying background. Nomads need land to thrive on, 99% of it has been taken. They need artifacts to learn from, Corsairs have dug it all out and sold it. They need cardimine in order to nurish their young. Guess who sniffed it all out? Nomads have to resort to guarrila warfare and are currently repelled by the Order -- a tiny naval force that is simultaniously fighting a war with BHG.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. Go read the Lore, please, before making spurious assumptions.

By comparison, the Liberty Navy is probably a hundred times more powerful than the Order and by that logic could easily overwhelm what's left of the Nomads. The question is: do they need the barely habitable worlds of the remaining alien systems?

Again, read the freakin' Lore. We do NOT use planets, they're a pain in the arse to deal with for a species designed to live in the depths of space. We're spacefaring creatures, not terrestrial like humans.

Also, when were there Nomads in Sol?

See: Extended intro.

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Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.

[Ash]

Spawn has a point. It took them longer than 40 or so years to prepare for their attack in 801. And that was with a much larger force. Yes, they have a much smaller force now but their more focused on growth and expantion to the empty and dormant places they left in sirius as of present. Omicron Iota and what they have installed there is a prime example of what they've been doing.

Their defending their working and constructive force, their in no position to make a mass offence. I'm sure they'l think twice now after they got spanked last time too.

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[DAnvilFan]

Quotation marks don't seem to work.


That's not an extended intro. That was the original introduction before it was canned. When you work on a production, you end up with a lot of ideas in the trash bin. Nomads being super powerful creatures was one such concept. It is not part of cannon RP and given how easily the Nomads were defeated in Freelancer, I'm not sure what this "extended intro" is doing being incorporated into the Discovery mod.

[Ash]

Well weather you like it or not. The "Extended Intro" has been pretty much integrated into discovery as much as the original.

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[Tenacity]

That depends whether you use game mechanics or roleplay as your source.

I was using both. Nomads existed before humans were even crawling out of the primordial muck, and we were having a lovely nap before you sods came along and started digging up our toys.

In roleplay, the nomads are pretty much dead. Their forces were already too weak to take over Sirius in Freelancer. They had to resort to espionage and cause internal choas among Houses before they could openly strike and even then, they were defeated by a few outlaw factions.

You're wrong here, again. In vanilla, most of the nomads in sirius were 'asleep' still, only the few that had been woken by the archaeologists in rheinland were participating in the war on humanity. We werent 'resorting' to espionage, it was the best tactic - it always is when you're outnumbered, even if you have a bunch of backup on the way.

In Discovery they have returned with more advanced ships, but look at the roleplaying background. Nomads need land to thrive on, 99% of it has been taken. They need artifacts to learn from, Corsairs have dug it all out and sold it. They need cardimine in order to nurish their young. Guess who sniffed it all out? Nomads have to resort to guarrila warfare and are currently repelled by the Order -- a tiny naval force that is simultaniously fighting a war with BHG.

We dont need land, we need space. We dont have to learn from artifacts, we can learn just like any human (only far more efficiently). We dont need cardamine to 'nourish our young', we feed on solar radiation. We arent 'resorting' to guerilla warfare, we prefer it, it's the most efficient tactic when the enemy outnumbers you.

By comparison, the Liberty Navy is probably a hundred times more powerful than the Order and by that logic could easily overwhelm what's left of the Nomads. The question is: do they need the barely habitable worlds of the remaining alien systems?

The Iraqis outnumber American troops drastically, but we're winning the war over there. Why? Superior technology.

The same applies between the order and liberty. Liberty might have the numbers and the fleets, but the order has the tech - each order ship is magnitudes above standard liberty naval ships in terms of technological advancement - and the nomads, similarly, are several magnitudes above even the order.

Also, when were there Nomads in Sol?

Watch this video, which was the -original- extended intro for freelancer made by DA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWPFUzxgRU

The extended intro was cut out of the retail product, but it's still cannon. Only moments after the sleeper ships left for Sirius, the "sol nomads" (which physically look more aggressive than sirius nomads, there's concept art of them from the game's developers) destroyed earth with the suncrusher.

The one ship you see leaving after the supernova in that video was piloted by the man who started the Order of Cincinnatus in liberty - which eventually became what we now know as the order.

EDIT: Heh, didnt realize combine had already linked the video.

That's not an extended intro. That was the original introduction before it was canned. When you work on a production, you end up with a lot of ideas in the trash bin. Nomads being super powerful creatures was one such concept. It is not part of cannon RP and given how easily the Nomads were defeated in Freelancer, I'm not sure what this "extended intro" is doing being incorporated into the Discovery mod.

The original introduction was cut because the DA devs only wanted players to see the human side - they wanted the first showing of the nomads in-game to be a complete surprise.

If they had shown the nomads in the intro, every player that went through the campaign would have first seen nomad npc's and gone "oh, hey, was wondering when i'd get to fight those."
Instead, with the intro cut, the typical reaction was "OMG wtf are those! halp!"

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[DAnvilFan]

If they had shown the nomads in the intro, every player that went through the campaign would have first seen nomad npc's and gone "oh, hey, was wondering when i'd get to fight those."
Instead, with the intro cut, the typical reaction was "OMG wtf are those! halp!"

I assume you read this from one of the Developers?

[Tenacity]

That's not an extended intro. That was the original introduction before it was canned. When you work on a production, you end up with a lot of ideas in the trash bin. Nomads being super powerful creatures was one such concept. It is not part of cannon RP and given how easily the Nomads were defeated in Freelancer, I'm not sure what this "extended intro" is doing being incorporated into the Discovery mod.

The nomads were 'defeated' in the original freelancer by a gimmick - a one shot artifact that no longer exists.

To explain things in a technical manner:

-The city at the center of the dyson sphere was the original 'hardware' location for the mindshare - the network which connects all nomads. That mindshare node drew power from the sphere itself - the dyson sphere was designed to capture 100% of the local star's energy so that it could be used to maintain the node.

-When the order used that trinket, they activated what is known as a hypergate - a jumpgate of sorts which links two galaxies, rather than two systems. Hypergates require massive amounts of energy, and when activated the hypgergate drained all of the reserve energy that was being used to power the mindshare node.

-With no power, that mindshare node was disrupted, and the nomads were no longer connected by it - they began to act confused, only able to operate on their own rather than in unison.

-A new mindshare node has been established (several, actually), now we're all thinking as one again and have begun the war against humanity once more. There's no trinket or hypergate to stop us this time - and had it not been for that artifact, the order would never have won the 'war' or become what it is today. The order existed of one tiny settlement and one battleship in the campaign, which would soon have been wiped out by the sheer numbers of nomads in the omicrons at the time.

I assume you read this from one of the Developers?

Most of the nomad lore in discovery is based off of direct commentaries, concept art, and extended information that was not included in the original game - nearly all of that from the DA developers themselves.

There were many things this game was meant to be that it never achieved simply because microsoft pushed the game to retail instead of allowing DA to finish it properly. All of that extra 'junk' that microsoft threw out the window to get a product they could sell has slowly been incorporated into disco, most of it relating to the nomads and their intended purpose.

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[kuth]

I do agree that the Nomads are smarter and have much much better technology. However the point still stands. They were defeated by a ragtag group of people who didn't have the backing of even a House sized group. The Nomads defeated in 801 don't paint their brothers and sisters in the light of being able to crush all of Sirius ever.

If you factor in the Sol type Nomads then humans are rather screwed, but remember, humans are survivors. Who says that 'suncrusher' will survive in Sirius long enough to end humanity?

Who says there aren't other human colonies out there? I hope development isn't going to portrain the Nomads as some super amazing uber powerful alien. They aren't; their (old) masters however probably are.

Just my two.5 cents.

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Lurker

[Treewyrm]

A little but significant correction to above post: they were defeated by Daam K'Vosh artifact that triggered opening hypergate in Dyson Sphere. Nomads were aware of that (after all they destroyed Freeport 7 for that very reason, later imposed artifact ban in Liberty and made other houses to adopt the same policy) and whole single-player campaign was about them trying to recover it.

[kuth]

A little but significant correction to above post: they were defeated by Daam K'Vosh artifact that triggered opening hypergate in Dyson Sphere.

And who caused that and how did he get there? Please don't try to avoid the fact that a ragtag group of people did indeed defeat the Nomads in 801. Meaning they were smart enough to do it once.

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Lurker