Everything Trying To Kill You! - The Crisis Ideas Thread

[corny.1234]

End game crisis: the galaxy becomes so populated that it's eating all your ram memory resources, slowing down the game until there is no movement anymore and you reached the lowest point of the kelvin temperature scale making every interaction between particles impossible.

 

[abaddondespoiler]

End game crisis: the galaxy becomes so populated that it's eating all your ram memory resources, slowing down the game until there is no movement anymore and you reached the lowest point of the kelvin temperature scale making every interaction between particles impossible.

The game was SO hot that it now seems like I'm able to spread bread with my CPU

 

[Yenzen]

The Giant Crystalline Community of the center of the galaxy find out that almost all their little chryslings across the galaxy have mysteriously died out in the past few few centuries.

They're not too impressed and decide to turn the galaxy back to its proper mineral state, before these disgusting bags of mostly water started ruining everything.

 

[longb0w]

Hyperspace Flux/Disturbance

• no ships can enter hyperspace, all ships in hyperspace transit to their destination and are then stuck there for an amount of time or have a random chance of being destroyed
  
• Hyperlanes and wormholes are very unstable but warp travel is affected too (shorten range)

Planetary Orbit Shift/ Migration

• forced by gravitational scattering (space drifting masses like black holes, red dwarfes, hot jupiters) one of your colonized worlds changes orbit to its sun, so climate, habitability and rotation will change rapidly
• can be have more pos. or neg. effects (icy planets change into ocean for e.g.)

Star catches Head Cold

• a central sun produces heavy solar flares with badly causes for a whole star sytem (radiation.. arrrg)

 

[Zentay]

Some of these ideas might be better as minor galaxy wide disasters rather than a true endgame crisis akin to extragalactic invaders.

 

[SgtSmuckers]

End Game Crisis - The Gooble Gobble - This End Game Crisis triggers when the Event chain "One of Us" is finished, causing you and your empire to gain the ethos of Fanatic Xenophile/Militarist, happiness boost for all planets and sectors, resource, research, fleet boosts, but the catch being you now must be at war at all times to assimilate others and make them a part of you, gooble gobble. (AI are able to trigger this event)

 

[Saviour of Galaxy]

Space Zombie Parasites, von Neumann killer probes and Apex Killer Organism are the one I think would be best suited.

 

[Abayonett]

Maybe researching and following the quests regarding precursors could lead you to a dead world full of with bio weapons Prometheus style. A sort of galactic plague engineered by the precursors that is unleashed thanks to you or an AI poking his nose around. Maybe a xenophobic fallen empire might decide that genocide via plague is the best way to purge the galaxy or maybe it is the left over of the previous war between the precursors and the threat from another galaxy. Anyway, some doomsday bio weapon gets accidentally (or voluntarily) released/ awoken in the galaxy.

 

[Plague109]

Some can play as the plague-sprayer, by trying to mutate and adjust to the plague. Others can try to "slash and burn", destroying the infected ones. Some others are making the antidote, some trying to migrate, leaving infected worlds on their own. (*some more trying to pray*)

There are actually many ways to play with such a scenario

I would actually prefer a diverse array of crises which all require different responses, not just military responses. A plague, be it biological, synthetic, psychic, or whatever would likely demand a technological response, or as Abaddondespoiler suggested a culling of the infected.

The question for me is whether this constitutes a galactic crises or a local crises. Yes a plague could spread throughout the galaxy but not without empires sharing open borders policies with one another. Otherwise it would seem very strange to have a biological disease spread through space from planet to planet and to cross empire borders. As Abaddonespoiler said one empire may attempt to propagate the disease which could backfire on themselves as well. But this feels like less of a crises as the threat would only come in after the disease was released and reports had suggested the disease was no longer controlled and spreading quickly.

 

[Melrahel]

I would like to see something like the Wraith in Stargate Atlantis, a uplifted species with an advanced technology and more positive traits than you can normally have (ex : super strong + intelligent + adaptive, in fact genetically superior in everyway). That would be a crisis for the social/genetic type of research.

 

[SenatusPopulusqueTerrenus]

Space monsters that reproduce and feed on colonies.
MoO2 terms: mix of space eels and space amoeba, but deadlier to planetary inhabitants. American Godzilla in space?
Military and/or science solutions possible?

A singular, mighty sentient something that invades the galaxy in search of planets to eat.
Think "Galactus" or "Unicron", but could also be a sentient black hole of unending hunger.
Alternative would be a sentient giant star running out of gas, seeking out gas giants or/and stars to consume (with the visit having devastating effects for other planetary orbits).

Supernova chain reaction:
Stars are going supernova, killing all life within a set radius (or at least within their star systems), and a solution must be researched - ideally before your empire is struck, but possibly after tragically affecting other empires.

Repellant void:
Interstellar space is, for unknown reasons, starting to repel physical objects which fall into star systems. First only comets, eventually also sprinkles of planetoids. Bad news for planets.
I told you "comet sighted" was a bad omen!

Galactic overmind:
Research in psionics may eventually lead to the creation of sentient worlds where all inhabitants are connected to a shared worldmind (with individuals as "cells" in a "body", having autonomy but not independence and sometimes coercion for the greater good). What if the worldmind wants to expand and encompass the entire galaxy?

 

[Mitchz95]

Stars across the galaxy unexpectedly start to die prematurely, turning into red giants or even supernovae that fry any planets in orbit. Researching the situation eventually leads to you discovering that there are some kind of alien beings feeding on the stars for sustenance, not knowing that there are billions of life forms who depend on them. To resolve the crisis you have to build some kind of massive structure that allows you to contact them and let them know they're killing you. This device would have mind-numbing mineral and energy requirements, so it's a race to build new stations and colonies to get everything ready before you run out of stars.

 

[mrinku]

The rampant use of FTL drives could be triggering some of these. I know Jump Drives have their own DOOOM scenario built in, but no reason all that Warping, Hyperspacing and Wormholing might not disturb the space-time continuum... possibly (or even probably) at faster than light speeds...

 

[Yenzen]

How about this:

Full on Star Trek 'evil dimension' invasion. So you're a fanatically collectivist xenophile empire? We'll your goatee-clad (or alien equivalent) counterpart fanatically individualist xenophobic democracy selves just crossed the dimensions to teach you the wrongness of your ways... and want to conquer your galaxy because they kind of... accidentally ruined their own.

 

[Tim O]

The Giant Crystalline Community of the center of the galaxy find out that almost all their little chryslings across the galaxy have mysteriously died out in the past few few centuries.

They're not too impressed and decide to turn the galaxy back to its proper mineral state, before these disgusting bags of mostly water started ruining everything.

I like this one a lot.

 

[Nomad93]

A variant on the extra-galactic invasion:

instead of sending waves upon waves of ships the moment the end game crisis starts, they infiltrate races and pit them against each other (massive malus to relations with everyone). Eventually everyone declares war to everyone, resources are spent on conflict and races who manage to survive this are inevitably reduced to the tiniest fraction of their former power. Then the enemy fleet comes from another galaxy and starts wiping out the leftovers. Best of luck surviving this.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Galactic plague would be interresting but they are two problems that come in my mind:
1: If it's a late game crisis you can't make a biological super weapons (if a DLC with super weapon come)
2: How can you deal with it? I mean all late game crisis we know by now can be stopped with military force, plague can't be stopped by nothing more than an galactic research and antidote spread. I don't know how that could be added in game.

This is a good point. Maybe make the space plauge something like a galaxy-wide zombie apocalypse? Or something like the Flood?

Oh, and I was thinking about the Von Neumann Berserker idea somebody floated... it'd be really cool if it didn't precisely play out as an event? A single mother probe just sort of... floats into some small empire; nobody but them is notified of its appearance. Ideally, the game would select a starting location the probe is capable of devouring solo, though a player could conceivably beat if if they were good/lucky enough. The rest of the galaxy doesn't hear about it until after it happens, or if they happen to check that particular corner of the galaxy and notice that there's a chunk of unclaimed territory where that empire used to be, and by then it's getting ready to send out a whole wave of probes.

 

[the1sean]

Antaran-style attacks from an ANGRY precursor civ living in a pocket dimension. Maybe certain ship sizes create mass signatures that they can home in on more accurately.

Xeno infestation cult that spreads along trade routes
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Genestealer_Cult

 

[Gwayne]

Found an world with ancient machines and if it fails to be researched properly it starts to genetically convert living beings on other worlds into androids that start to conquer the universe..

 

[Rowan_Oathsworn]

The Duststorm: A massive galactic-scale cloud of particles, some of which having the size of sand while others might be the size of planetoids, hits your galaxy. Ships without adequate shields or armor that are in realspace are shredded by the high velocity particles. Space stations and mining facilites are also severely damaged or destroyed, resulting in a severe lack of resources. Planets might be endangered by many approaching astroids that don't burn up in the atmosphere, chances being that many pops will die or the entire planet might even be destroyed. For a period of time the entire galaxy is in turmoil, with stronger races possibly weakened by the storm and others all but annihilated. After the storm has left the galaxy, the races will have to pick up the broken pieces with smaller races given a chance to battle their formerly stronger neighbours.