FORENOTE: After an admittedly large error by myself in the process of writing this up, it's become necessary to say that this is not yet official server canon. This is a rough first draft of a concept that can be discussed by the community and voted upon. Bio-ForgingFloran Bio-Forging is the process of manipulating plant growth into a desired shape or outcome. Only a few Florans know how to do this well enough for the result to be useful. Bio-Forging can be broken down into a few separate categories. BALLISTIC WEAPONS These are any grown object that can launch or throw a projectile, usually a sharpened spine of some sort. Growing these is a complex, time-consuming, care-intensive process that requires a very high level of skill and care. Instead of growing a single item, the Forgers grow separate parts. Floran bio-forged firearms consist of several pieces including the barrel, stock, handle, primitive trigger system, and natural gas-filled organ capable of propelling the needles, spines, or other projectile out of the weapon. Fire rate and power all can differ depending on the intended use and intensity of the ‘gas-bag’ inside the stock. ‘Needlers’ are a common example of Floran automatic weapons, with the gas-bag constantly propelling a stack of needles out of the barrel. Comparative to a carbon-dioxide vial in an airsoft gun, the gas-bag imparts the kinetic energy into the projectile. They can be tuned to fire small, fast needles or even single, large projectiles such as acidic pods. The gas-bags can refill themselves over time, although Florans have been known to carry multiple of theses gas bags in case they run out of ‘charge’ in the middle of a fight. Floran weapons do not have much, if any, penetrating value, instead relying on the kinetic energy to wreak havoc in their enemies. Stopped by most body armors, they are inferior to nearly all conventional kinetic weapons, but can wreak havoc on unarmored foes. For a reference, the gas-bags work like a CO2 canister in an airsoft gun, propelling the projectile alongside a magazine or stack of the projectiles shoved into the weapon. STRUCTURES OR RIGID ITEMS These are any sort of house, chair, lamp, bench, ramp, bridge, or solid, non-moving, rigid item. These things take much longer to grow than the weapons, but only due to the size they need to be grown to. They do not require nearly as much minute care and attention, as they can simply be grown around a frame or coaxed along as they grew. Objects grown from living plant matter are usually stronger than their wood counterparts, and can be compared to brick or hard clay. They are not as susceptible to fire as wood, since they are usually still alive and therefore damp and wet. Luminescent objects such as lamps can also be grown, however they require a different set of skills to enable to plant to emit the light constantly while still growing as is wanted. SHIPS OR MOBILE STRUCTURES These encompass any plant-matter growth that is to be used as a vehicle, ship, or other mobile structure. Floran spacecraft are mostly reverse-engineered ships scavenged after they have crashed on planet. However, it is possible for a very highly-skilled Forger to grow the basic structure of a spacecraft. It takes years, and requires very minute care and attention. The growth must be inspected to make sure it is airtight, and must be kept alive until it is complete. Florans are not capable to growing machinery or engines for their ships, so scavenged FTL systems, engines, displays, navigation systems, and other electronic devices must be taken from other ships. Any mobile Floran structure is comprised completely of dead plant-matter, and as such care needs to be taken by the entire Floran ‘crew’ to make sure the ships does not decay away. Floran plant-matter ships are therefore extremely rare, belonging only to the biggest, strongest tribes with grunts to waste. If you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to post. The lore is flexible.
I can accept bioforging small things. Like the Needler and furniture or creating huts and buildings from plant matter, sure. But even if it takes years, plant matter ships make no sense, because there's zero oxygen in space, and I'm pretty sure if you tried to have plant matter survive in space it'd shrivel and die in days. And if it's made out of dead plant matter, what's even the point? Why not just scavenge bits for the body of the ship as well as the internal systems?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardening_(botany) I'm sure florans would be capable of producing plant matter with hardening to survive the cold temperatures of space. A floran spaceship, much like a tree in winter, could simply be dormant as it goes through space, wasting as little energy and gases as possibe until it enters a planet's atmosphere once more to refill, as Recon already proposed in the other thread. And if you are still asking what possible use a floran would have of a bioship instead of just a scavenged spaceship, remember that florans are only capable of reverse engineering, not of production. A ship whose hull is composed of planet matter as strong as steel will still not compare to an actual hull made of steel of durasteel, but the important part is it will be able to regenerate after a battle once a floran lands it and allows it to flourish.
The problem with making a ship (the hull, specifically) out of plantmatter is that it is pretty much impossible to make plantmatter airtight.
This exactly. So basically as long as the ship doesn't take too much damage it can be regenerated with little to no repair? Even if plantmatter isn't as strong as steel, a ship that can regenerate hull integrity seems a bit much.
I think this is a good note to have as part of the progression of a Floran tribe. This is likely where these weapons start, and although I have reservations towards supposing plants are capable of compressing gas, I think you're on the right track. I think this would be best used for projectiles that don't care about speed (sludgy lumps of acid soaked, clingy weeds). Using this as a dart gun would also be plenty viable, but moving into the automatic territory feels a little questionable. I feel like any tribe that killed someone with a gun would dissect it and find that combustion is a much better method of projectile delivery. Using the "tastes like, looks like, smells like" method of investigation, I wouldn't say it's too far off the suppose they could produce a rudimentary gunpowder. I've said a few times that I think it's fair to see how a decent Floran tribe could produce arms and ammunition analogous to flintlock rifles through "bioforging". I agree. I get a little lost at that last sentence, since the lamp could simply reach maturity and luminesce at that point. Saying an individual "Forger" is capable of crafting a spacecraft is a no go (though you correct this later in your paragraph, so give that a one-over). The number of experts it took to design Human's first spacefaring vessels, and the progression up to that point is not a leap Floran society as we harbour it on the server is capable of. You need a literal country of Florans to support such a project. What a small tribe can do is take a mostly working ship and get it space worthy. Emphasis on mostly working, needing repairs. The biggest issue with Floran ships is the atmosphere, and not in the way you think. Before you get into the vacuum of space, you need to escape your planet's gravity. This is accomplished by going really, really fast. I think temperature is an issue at this stage, but it's actually unreasonably difficult for me to find temperatures for a shuttle at escape velocity (everything is reentry, which is another thing entirely for Florans). I don't understand how you hope Florans would leap all the way forward several thousands of years to develop their own technology to supplement a ship with missing engines or half it's hull missing. Yes, Florans are great reverse engineers, but keep in mind how much reverse engineering is required to go from rocks to space. There's all the years of development of refining, machining, and logistics that have gone into the technology they are looking at. Do they understand how it works? Sure, but that doesn't mean they can instantly build it by sewing a few seeds. It would take generations upon generations of working with the plants to advance to the level required. I know how a pair of scissors works, and I know how to make them, but to produce anything on the level Humans craft them today it would take me years to also build the equipment and gather the materials to make them myself. Even with the Floran's advantage in that they have plants as a very mutable material, don't get too excited and look past everything that goes into how it's made.
Do plants regenerate or grow without proper feeding, photosynthesis or fertilizer? No. In the same way, a floran would have to land his ship and, along with what remains of the crew, feed the tree/plant that creates the hull, tend to it, make sure it grows in the right way, etc. This is by no means a quick process, but like I said before florans cannot create starship-grade hull, only scavenge it, so they must settle for this if they wish to have a ship that can be maintained. It goes without saying that any core ship element, like the FTL drive, that is incredibly advanced cannot be replaced with plant matter and the ship would have to be abandoned.
Honestly, you can argue how much sense you think ships make all you like but I'm never going to think that it's a good idea. It is fundamentally flawed at the concept level.
Well, I'm looking at the voting and you don't seem to be majority. This is all supposed to be discussion, but if yours is just going to boil down to stubborn refusal, there isn't much that can be agreed on.
@Sermane. Yes, re-entering atmospheres and leaving atmospheres would have a huge impact on the floran space craft. What I was thinking, is once the ship was made, they could wrap it in very thick vines with metal plating and such. Obviously, the vines would not survive. But, the metal plating would help to prevent such intense damage on exiting. The metal plating falls off, and the ship may then enter 'safely.' However, apon re-entering, the ship would take lots of damage, and would need to be repaired once again.
So modern spaceship use silica tiles, which is basically compressed sand to dissipate heat. Metal gets rather liquidy at the temperature of reentry. The best chance you have at using a plant in space is designing a plant that secretes materials that harden into something actually decent. Anything bigger then a tardigrade that is cellular will not survive naked in the rigours of space. That's just the nature of how specialised multi-cellular organisms are. For a plant to be capable of entering space, it would need to produce non cellular materials, and what those materials could be is sort of hard to define. Space travel is very complicated, and a lot of the mechanisms are not straightforward. I'll nestle a good explanation of reentry here: To say that a Floran would be capable of learning this information by just having a reentry pod is, in my opinion, ludicrous. This applies to most aspects of space travel, even more so since in Starbound there's been some great discovery that has pushed technology waaaaaay forward. Advanced tech does not stand alone, it's built upon by the thousands of years of learning before it. It would take more than one hundred years of pointed study by a Floran tribe towards space travel to even begin to consider making it plausible that they could produce their own ships. My end verdict, the largest tribe that could be possibly represented on the server "may" be capable of repairing a ship. Player run tribes may be able to with a great amount of good RP and work (thus becoming accepted by the community). I have very rarely seen anyone use this model, which is pretty dismaying. If you take the time to build your thing, involve all sorts of people, and make it something people remember fondly then you're doing it right. We should not be endeavoring to bring in special cases from outside of our rp, the point of these discussions should not be to allow people to just assume Florans can make ships. We should be trying to explain "If you want to have a ship, this is what we need in order for our stories to coexist". It's not about shutting people out, it's about making sure that we all are thinking closely enough and agreeing enough that we feel like we can include eachother in our writing.
Completely agree with you Sermane. I would say that would be a great thing to add to the potential official lore. Truly, it should be very difficult.
That I do agree on. I did put on my first post on floran bioforging that bioships are the absolute pinnacle of it, hence a vast majority of floran tribes would not be able to produce them.
I think it's important to have a distinction between world lore and server guidelines. If you wanna believe that Florans can make pigs fly if you get a thousand of them together? Cool, that doesn't effect me because it can't happen on the server. Same with entirely plant ships. If you OOC believe it's possible, and IC believe it's possible, I can just IC not believe you if I OOC disagree. Living Human beings believe IC that the moon landing was a hoax, so anything can be rationally irrationally disbelieved. It's more important to focus on what is good for the server, not even what we want to see in it. Peeling away the concept of reality is in the long run bad for the server, as what we think spreads further and further apart. Because Starbound does not have extensive back lore that we could learn from, we have to pull from very small doses of server lore and from the reality and science we all know and have access to. I don't think this is incredibly limiting, if you take a good look at all the pretty astounding shit that is out there.
