General Race ideas

Ok, so this thread is just a collection of any ideas anyone has about races that could be put ingame.
Set it up like this:
Race name: self explanatory. If you can’t think of one, thats fine
Theme: What are their ships look like? examples: Organic, insectoid, robotic, cyborg, birds, hippies, etc.
Bonuses: what are they good at? what bonuses (this could be specific or general, like ‘faster’ or ‘75% speedboost’) do they have?
Backstory/other: Who are they? what do they look like? were they inspired by anything? where did they come from? Why have they thrown themselves into the GSB Universe’s bloodbath? Where they inspired by anything. Optional.

If you want, then just post something general rather than that.
EDIT: After reading the Ender’s game series, I decided that with any race I create, I will think about it with Valentine’s Hierarchy of Exclusion (you don’t have to know what that is :P) Here it is:
Utlanning: A stranger from the same species and same culture.
Framling: A stranger from the same species, but a different culture.
Raman: A stranger from another species and culture, but the two species can understand each other (their way of life and worldview, not physically like translating language)
Varelse: A stranger from another species and culture, but there can never be any understanding. The only possible path is war.

So feel free to also include that in your description of the race.

My ideas
Race name: The Hive
Theme: Organic, insectoid
Bonuses: each ship has its own purpose, no real overarching bonus other than -80% hull cost
Backstory/other: A hive mind with queens and then the central queen. Yellow ships and an expensive queen ship with even better armor than usual. Inspired by the Buggers (or Formics) from Ender’s Game.
“The Hive lived in peace on their homeworld, Qeensvit, for thousands of years. But when they faced overpopulation, they moved out. Thousands of colony ships are now passing through, and there is no way to stop them, except to fight. They cannot be negotiated with, or bribed. They are varelse, and we cannot live with them.”
Each of their ships is alive, and they are each part of a sub-hive: The Queen ship, which produces INSANE power so the entire fleet is destroyed when it is destroyed and has space for huge mega turrets. The Soldier Ships, with stronger hulls and more turret spots than usual. Worker ships, perfect for their Frigate Nurseries (carrier bays) with their many standard slots and for tanks with their armor boost. Nurse Frigates, with their power boost and speed are good for zipping around finding fellow hive-ships to help with the Hive Shield Support beam and also helping the drones to recover from battle. The drone fighters produce large amounts of power and have a speed boost, so they work for dogfighters.
Scientists are not quite sure whether the ships or their crew are the intelligent life forms.

Race name: The Mystics
Theme: An energy based race, but every ship is one member of the “swarm”, i mean they are not really “ships”, but energy forms protected with mixed advanced metal-energy armour.
Bonuses: hmm, i really dunno, this was a race i was planning to mod in a future (with sketchup), maybe more power output, extra armour (for the advanced enrgy-metal armour), and negative bonuses on integrity. Maybe a speed bonus will fit good too, but then i will need to add another negative bonus, maybe in the shields (since its a race that rather should use shields…). I dunno.
Backstory: They are just very advanced fellows, 1 millenium ago they evolved into energy pure forms, but they needed some guidance and protection systems, since they realized that in pure energy form, they could be affected by a lot of space distorsions and anomalies The space was too dangerous and was the first time they flew along the galaxy like pure starships. Thats the reason they built special armours, with extreme protection. They felt too comfortable and protected than they just avoided to remove the effective armour. This fatal mistake cost the race for about another millenium to depend almost exclusively of their energy-metal armours, and without it, they will not last much longer in the open space.

I didnt know how to call the armour, meta-energy is an example. The first material is an example, it could be organic-energy or something else -.-

Here I come with a wall o’ text.
Most of these are just ideas that pop around from time to time so I won’t consider them stolen if somebody makes anything really similar to any of them and doesn’t give credit

Race name: The Haerkym
Theme: Cyborg, ancient, stone-made
Bonuses: High integrity but low speed and high cost. They do not need crew for their ships.
Backstory/other: Ancient Haerkym ruins have been found scattered around the whole universe. It’s unknown for the young races who they were and what wiped them out, their only knowledge about them is that they date back to a million of years before the Empire creation and that none of the most preeminent scientists have been able to understand how their technology works. What none of them know is that in each of those “ruins” there’s Haerkym guardian; sleeping, waiting until The Watcher falls to awake in order to protect the universe from its destruction.

Race name: The Seorgshi
Theme: Organic, insectoid, fish-like
Bonuses: Low integrity hulls with increased speed. Their modules require high crew amounts (organisms) but have lower power consumption. They have a wide variety of sizes.
Backstory/other: There are many myths about monstrosities roaming the centre of the galaxy. From swarms of small shark-like creatures which are said to slowly devour a hull and then feed with the remains of its crew to colossal monstrosities rumoured to be able to devour entire leviathans; the Seorgshi are normally conceived as exaggerations created by the few survivors from the armadas sent to the central systems in order to control those territories. They may be just products from traumatized imaginations but nobody has managed to recover much more from those systems than escape pods covered in sticky goo.

Race name: The Dargion
Theme: Dark, undead, macabre, gothic
Bonuses: They have great shield systems but their ships have a hard time producing power.
Backstory/other: Directly native from the “Madness dimension” known as Insoid, this characteristic legion enjoys suddenly opening a dimensional rift near civilian ships and colonies and terrifying the crap out of everything with their noisy weaponry. They aren’t that bad guys, really, they are just a bit bored over there.

Race name: The Crysdei
Theme: Crystal, gems
Bonuses: Really low integrity but their ships are able to reflect most enemy fire (high armour). Their ships are somewhat small.
Backstory/other: Another race native from the Insoid dimension, the Crysdei is a race of art lovers which just ended up in the wrong place. They handcraft every one of their ships, weapons, modules… and each one of them is considered a piece of art. They also consider art each explosion, and each death, and… well it’s called the “Madness dimension” for a reason. Due to the dangerous nature of the dimension they lived they had to find a resistant material in order to avoid constant griefing to their work. Nobody would have thought that damn crystal could withstand the strongest beams and even bounce them back.

Race name: Unnamed D: (apocalypse race)
Theme: Demonic, bloody, red, horns and spikes everywhere
Bonuses: Heavy boosts in every field, really expensive ships that can only be fielded one by one. Their ships are colossal.
Backstory/other: The self proclaimed rulers of the “Madness dimension” Insoid and many others, they are feared in every corner of every existing dimension despite their low numbers. Is rumoured that a single one of their ships is able to wipe out an entire universe on itself. Only a fool would dare to oppose them with only a couple of ships

Race name: The Fallen
Theme: Transparent, ghostly, mix of races
Bonuses: Absurd quantities of integrity and power output. They are completely unable to use shields nor armour and they are really slow.
Backstory/other: Every race has religions which considers the existence of a soul in each living being and a place for it to rest (or suffer). Some ships captains go further and even believe that their entire ship has a soul. It may be a bunch of nonsense, but the existence of a race of angry howling spirits which suddenly break into this dimension with fleets formed by billions of ghostly versions of ships that were destroyed in the battlefield (some of them being ships that were reported to be without a single scratch until yesterday) gives them some credibility. The existence of detractors to this theory may be because nobody has managed to get close enough to ask them without joining them shortly after.

Race name: The Geom
Theme: Ideal geometric shapes layered like a temple, stone-made
Bonuses: Improved shielding and armour but considerably increased costs.
Backstory/other: The Geom is a bizarre race formed in its entirety by mathematics teachers. Their main goal is to force the other races to learn their every one of their calculations and then use them as calculators for getting all the decimal numbers of Pi and several other numbers. Anything that opposes them is obliterated in a matter of seconds thanks to their completely exact calculations and ideal geometric ships.

Race name: The Champions of Doom (CoD)
Theme: Villains and infamous characters from any book, comic, film, videogame… using a ship looking like or symbolising them
Bonuses: They are supposed to be OP
Backstory/other: CoD is formed with the most terrifying, macabre, evil, badass or really dumb beings in the entire existence. They have endangered dozens of times their worlds with their actions and most of the time they have nearly been successful countless times. They’ve also been beaten countless times too. Completely tired of always being defeated, all the evil masterminds, minions and every existing being which is just fed up of those damn heroes has united under a single banner. Bowser and all the Koopas (Super Mario Bros); Ridley, Mother brain and Metroids (Metroid); Creepers and Ghasts (Minecraft); Ganon/dorf (The Legend of Zelda); GLaDOS (Portal); Dracula (Castlevania) and many more have united to achieve their ultimate goal, score a victory against those heroes for the first time.

Race name: The Bringers of Hope (BoH)
Theme: Heroes and saviour characters from any book, comic, film, videogame… using a ship looking like or symbolising them
Bonuses: They are supposed to be OP+1
Backstory/other: BoH is formed by the most benevolent, brave, honest, morally “good” or really naive beings in the entire existence. They have managed to save their worlds dozens of times from evil against all odds. They are the good guys, but alone they can’t defeat the new threat of CoD so in order to avoid that their enemies achieve their goal, all the heroes, friends and every existing being which thinks evil is bad has united under a single banner. Mario, Luigi and Yoshi (Super Mario Bros); Samus Aran (Metroid); Steve and a legion of farm animals (Minecraft); Link and Zelda (The Legend of Zelda); Gordon Freeman (Half-Life) and many more have united to achieve their ultimate goal, quick the ass of the villains again.

About these 2 last ones, the idea was to make ships inspired in those characters featuring symbols or characteristic shapes from them. They would also use weapons inspired in their weapons, actions or movements. It’s something I wanted to make someday when I got a good amount of time.

That’s lots of stuff. Many of those would probably need to wait for GSB 2 and the improved moddability I expect the sequel of such great game would bring.

It should be clear now why I can barely focus in a SINGLE mod…

awesome ideas!
Race name: Poseideides
Theme: Organic, jellyfish like cruisers, with fast frigates and super fast but super weak fighters.
Bonuses: Slow cruisers, fast frigates and fighters. Long range bubble weapons. Nothing needs power.
Backstory/other: Some short fiction: Federation Mining vessel Calypso drifted slowly towards the swirling turquoise surface of the gas giant below. It reminded Captain Henderson of Neptune in his native solar system, which reminded him of Earth, which reminded him of- No. Now was not the time to focus on old pains. Now was time to find what they came for. “Anything yet?” he snapped, rather impatiently, at the science officer who was supposed to be scanning the gas giant for irascibilium, so named for its tendency to spontaneously explode. The science officer shook his head slowly. “No sir, although there are some unusual energy readings coming from the southern pole. It could just be irascibilium reacting with the hydrogen, but who knows?” Henderson nodded. Those infernal Tribe hippies were always looking for new ways to ‘save the universe, maaaaan’. “Shields up. Yellow Alert,” he said calmly. “Sir!” The science officer sounded relieved. “Sir, we found some. Its near the southern pole, in fact. It was just the reaction.” Henderson felt relief too. He never let it show, but he, too, had stress. “Shields down, green alert. Prepare for descent,” he said with a smile. Engineering would be so pissed off. “Sir, theres- I don’t know what it is.” The science officer was confused, which was worse than worried: Science officer Kelly had studied just about every science you could name. Or make up, for that matter. “Theres a heat signature moving towards us, but it has no electromagnetic readings.” Kelly was beginning to perspire. “It looks Alliance, but even they have power generators. I thikn its organic, but we haven’t seen an organic ship in years, not since…” They all remembered what happened last time an organic ship had been seen: Everyone who saw it firsthand was dead the next millisecond. Henderson tightened his grip on the command chair. “Shields up, power weapons. Orange-” The tactical officer interrupted. “Sir! Unidentified projectile approaching fast at 10 o’clock! Unknown type, unknown payload, unknown shield penetration!” Henderson could now see it on the screen. Whatever it was, it was glowing. Glowing was not good. “Evasive maneuvers Theta Five! Track projectiles origin and fire accordingly.” Henderson watched as the glowing object drew closer and closer, then vanished. “Sir?” everyone was looking at him. Then there was light and-

Race name: Puff
Theme: I want to make floating kittens just for lols, but cropping images with furs seems a bit too stressful.
Bonus: All kittens have super starting power so they EXPLODE!!! And DEATH RAYS.
Backstory: Do they really need one?

I am reminded of “Mr. Flibble” from the early seasons of Red Dwarf. That alone is a crime against taste and sanity.

[indianajones]
Space kitties…why did it have to be space kitties…
[/indianajones]

EPIC races, really i love every one of them
here is another with a good backstory:

Race name: The Ancient Shadows
Theme: Black ships like shadows, very very very very advanced look.
Bonuses: No shields, super-mega-ultra-giga-universeruler Armours, Low Hull integrity, medium speed.
Backstory/other:
-They are the last race of a very old universe, the oldest of all. A universe that has long since lost its light, the beauty that we all wonder, an incredibly huge universe previously filled with glorious planets full of life and civilization, each and every one dead. A universe that the stars no longer exist as we know, there are only dark bodies that radiate less energy than a toaster every minute and that black holes have already begun to disappear, to evaporate because of the lack of food.
This race, extremely old, has lived millions of centuries to evolve steadily. But evolved alone because his home planet belonged to the second last living star, as we know it.
Quickly, in less than two hundred of years of losing his last star and discovering that they had nothing in the universe, they created a machine that could open a portal into another universe, but this machine needed a lot of energy, so this race, put in orbit with its last resources, his last space station surrounding one of these dead stars, the largest they could find, and waited.
They waited for millions of years, generations passed, colonies on other dead world were lost, the dark universe kept dying.
But after 1.3 billion years, the device is fully charged and the gate opened.
The anxious and a changed remainings of this civilization crossed throught him, coming to a young universe, full of stars, galaxies and beauty long long ago forgotten, a universe full of life, but they were not alone, arrived in a galaxy full of war and conflict, with all its worlds inhabited by these young races.
They do not want to wait any longer, they just want the world to live, but now they are corrupted by the ambition to reach a world full of wealth, and they want more, they they plan to conquer a world, then two, then a cluster, then the galaxy, then… well, we fear that we can not stop them, we must make them think Admiral, do they realize that they are not invincible. Good luck…-
______________________________________________________________________________________________Federation Supreme Commander

Nice history uh? It comes to me after watch a History Channel Documental about the “life of the universe”, from the big bang, tho the dark era.

The Helios Trio:

Race name: Helios
Theme: Plasma weaponry, heat, light.
Bonuses: super good armor because anything that touches it is destroyed, no shields, slow.
Backstory/other: “We began life as small clouds of plasma, floating over the surface of Helios, our star. Bound together by the electromagnetism that keeps us alive, we grew bodies. And then we betrayed Helios, stealing from him the hydrogen plasma that kept him alive. We built great plasma ships to go and colonize other stars, so that we might do the same thing. No other star had shown any signs of life; most were to cold, too hot or too dense to support life. None of their planets, or the planets’ moons, showed any life. And yet life we met. Life that was cold, frozen solid in their cold planets and in their metallic ships. They did not understand us; we did not understand them. Our first encounter burned their ships to ashes. And they came back, prepared for war, and we had no choice but to return the favor. They seemed to be warlike, never responding to our electromagnetic waves pleading for peace. The Cold Ones froze our ships, our expansion, our way of life. I hope that someday, the truth shall be illuminated by our glow.”
-Qua-Vi-Zksh, as translated from Helios Artifact No. 68944

Race name: Temple of Hyperion
Theme: Plasma beams, light (lots of it)
Bonuses: concentrate more on shields, have fast ships that have very little hull/armor strength.
Backstory/other: “In the beginning, there was Hyperion. He created the star upon which we arose, and lived in it. He populated the Universe with stars, so that we may live forever. He raised us up from ignorance and gave us the gift of starflight. But He did not give us this gift for our own pleasure; He gave it so that we may erase the Cold Ones, who crawl miserably upon the waste of the great stars. Our task is not to enjoy life, but to carry out the acts of Hyperion, the most true god that ever was, is and shall be. May it ever be so. Qi’Zesh. <xeno-archeologists beleive this means ‘Peace’, however the text does not support that theory>”
-Qui-Za-Quem, as translated from Helios Artifact No. 89434

Race name: The Extinguished
Theme: Black holes, similar to Ancient Shadows, no light
Bonuses: very high defense, however it is very slow and produces no power.
Backstory/other: Helios artifacts refer repeatedly to “The Extinguished”, most extensively in Artifact No.s 64545, 64325, 95854, and 26179. They also mention the “Extinguisher(s)”, and Artifact No. 64325 reveals that they are the same, as “They seek to destroy all those who shine with radiance, for their once gentle souls have been corrupted. They are our ancestors who look upon us not with pride, but with hate and envy.” Xeno-archeologists believe that the life forms of Helios have 2 deaths, their first a compression into a very dense but very much aware state, which they seem to call the “Extinguishing.” The second death is the slow fading of an extinguished Helios, named the “Waning.” The Extinguished appear to be determined to Extinguish the other Helios out of jealousy, and their weapons are unknown, however we know one thing: All contact with the Scotch, York III, and Silvan star systems has broken off after a tremendous energy surge in the star and oddly, no visual confirmation of an enemy.
-The People of the Plasma; what we know about Helios, by William DuBoise, professor of Xeno-archeology at the University of Xenological Studies, Sirius.

lovely history, i believe in the posibility of enegy based lifeforms.

EDIT: I definitely LOVE the Helios trio

not just possible, it has happened: Scientists made plasma cells that could move around in their environment and absorb stray particles to become part of themselves. Thy even communicated electromagnetically.
EDIT: Aha:

Full article: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/P/plasma-based_life.html

Aha, I finally remembered what that race was that was nagging me for a bit:

Race name: The Lost
Theme: A combination of the Nomads and Alliance
Bonuses: High Speed, High armor, however it has low speed, low shields, and hulls barely produce power and they don’t give any crew.
Backstory/other: Basically they are called The Lost because they are a Nomad fleet that was separated from the main group in a massive battle with the Alliance. They badly needed repairs and so they cannibalized Alliance hulks and found their advanced armor technology. They also captured some alliance drones and queens. Then they went out in search of the main fleet. After a couple thousand years, they found them. However they had been interbreeding with the Alliance bugs, so they were almost unrecognizable. Their ships had also been constantly upgraded, and so were very different from the rest of the Nomads. The main fleet was scared and attacked, sparking the Lost’s anger against the universe and their destructive rampage.

bug/nomad hybrid. the only combination none have dared to imagine…

i quite like the idea. i will add it to the list of mods i will consider, unless nobody else comes first.

I just noticed how everyone else was making hybrids, but no one was doing alliance or nomads, presumably becasue they have the styles that are the most… unique. Or at least hardest to put together. However, I have a plan to make a part-based hull creator…

Race name: dah reesaykluhrs. (they don’t care about spelling a lot, plus, recycling sounds like a high-quality process.)
Theme: basically, garbage, waste and other forms of junk welded, taped and glued together, usually in spherical shapes.
Bonuses: most ships have high hull, but as all their technology is scanvenged together (or assembled from scavenged parts.) and said stuff is usually mostly broken, nearly everything sucks. also, because they find a lot of stuff that isn’t worth anything, they fire it into the engines and weapons of enemies to jam said things. and because they are such an resistant species, they have crew modules that take up nearly no power.
Backstory/other: the scavengers are a race of highly resistant species, since their planet was blown up long ago, so they had to survive in their slowly degrading ships. all this time, they collected their materials from blown up ships of other species (obviously, they never really had to worry about running out of metal). since they wanted to have something higher quality for a change, they decided to get it by blowing up some ships on their own.

Hello there dragem, welcomme to the modding forum!

but isnt the scavangers already modded? i could swear that ive seen it on moddb…

yes, i checked, and turns out this is true, i’ll go check the thread out now

Yes, that was one of the very first mod races introduced to GSB, courtesy of our forum. Eich is the author. The Scavengers thread can be found here. Its backstory is somewhat like that proposed by dragem.

i haven’t checked the mod besides looking at the thread (partially because i have no access to the game on this computer.) but it doesn’t quite look like what i had imagined (rusty hybrid ships, instead of big balls of junk, ducttape and welding.).

ah, I think I understand. They don’t use the parts of the other ships, they use the raw materials?

EDIT: If im right, “The Recyclers” is a possible name

i suppose the recyclers might be a decent name for them, but then again, does welding random junk into huge balls with engines and guns count as recycling? i’d guess it does.