Kaiju idea: Goldbacker Gobbo

Oct 16, 2019
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#1
Idea for a Treasure Goblin-style kaiju:

Goldbacker Gobbo

Goldback goblins are small, relatively tame space creatures that feed on currency in order to grow a lustrous golden shell on their backs. This shell is prized for both its aesthetic value, as well as its properties as a highly conductive alloy material. Almost anything recognized by a large group of entities as "currency" can be used to feed goldback goblins, though this process is not entirely understood.

Feeding on currency of any form will cause a goldback goblin to slowly grow in size, along with their shells. Typically, a standard goblin is anywhere between 6 inches and 2 feet tall. Once they reach this point, they are considered "mature," and begin exhibiting increased aggressiveness, to the point that they will start to violently attack things in order to obtain more food currency. Thus, while they are sometimes kept as pets, particularly by the vastly wealthy, they are also a type of creature that is "farmed," being raised to the point of maturity and then slaughtered for the shells.

Gobbo was a goldback goblin once owned by as a pet by a wealthy merchant's daughter. During a trip between planets, tragedy struck their spacecraft, in the form of an unpredicted space anomaly, sending the spacecraft through a portal to crash land on an unidentified planet. All passengers were killed in the crash, with the exception of Gobbo. This planet was extremely rich in crystals and precious metals, allowing Gobbo to feed uninhibited, quickly growing much larger than the initial maturity stage. As he grew, he became progressively more violent, and continued ransacking the planet for all of its mineral worth.

Years later, now a tremendously enormous size for a goldback goblin, a strange storm struck the planet that Gobbo was residing on. Due to the nature of his shell, the storm mercilessly struck Gobbo over and over, horribly wounding him, and seeming to follow him even as he made his way into underground tunnels to escape it. Maddened with pain, Gobbo unleashed a power he never knew he had, opening a portal to another place. The space anomaly that had struck the merchant spacecraft all those many years ago had also triggered this power.

Arriving on this new planet, still in extreme pain, Gobbo rampaged around, until he finally came in contact with the local inhabitants - the Gatestriders. The Gatestriders successfully fought Gobbo off, until he once again created a portal to run away from their attacks. However, before leaving, he had noticed that the planet was replete with "food" for him, and vowed to himself to return and exact revenge on these tiny creatures that attacked him.

Having used his portal power twice, now, Gobbo slowly gained a sense of how to activate it at will. He was thus able to travel to various other planets, finding new sources of food. Always, however, he remembered his promise to return to the planet with the Gatestriders, and devour everything there.

While the Gatestriders did not know where he came from, they recognized Gobbo as a form of goldback goblin, and simply assumed that he was brought to Em-8er in the same manner that the Tsi-Hu summoned other kaiju. Afterwards, they simply called him the Goldbacker Kaiju

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Goldbacker Gobbo is an event kaiju, opening a portal to random locations on Em-8er to exact his revenge against the Gatestriders. Due to the strange nature of what goldback goblins consider "currency" for their food, nearly all of the resources that players interact with would be considered as a form of "currency," and are thus a target of Gobbo. He will be extremely attracted towards large structures such as forward bases, to destroy and eat them.

At the same time, due to his large size, the material of his shell is extremely valuable in crafting. Players must split their attention between damaging his flesh - to drive him away - and damaging his shell - to obtain crafting materials.

As Gobbo is nearly impossible to actually kill, since he will run away through a portal once enough damage has been dealt, he will always be back to eat another day, each time larger than the last.

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Special Properties -
Grows larger, deals more damage, and has higher defenses the more currency he eats (numbers can be altered, these are examples):
- For every $1 spent backing the game during pre-release (including packs, skins, crowdfunding, etc.), Gobbo's in-game size will be increased by 0.01% (every $10,000 is a 1% increase)
- For every $1 spent on the game at launch/post-launch (including box sales, skins, etc.), Gobbo's in-game size will be increased by 0.001% (every $100,000 is a 1% increase)
- For every $1 spent on the game at any period by certain special community members *coughcough*GIGABEAR*coughcough*, Gobbo's in-game size will be increased by 0.1% (every $1,000 is a 1% increase)
 
Oct 16, 2019
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#3
Would have to depend on the dev team; I imagined it being linear based on whatever base model size they decided to use prior to the % increases. If they chose a fairly large size to begin with, and took the increases down by a factor of 10, they could probably do exponential and be relatively okay.
 

Pandagnome

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#6
As Gobbo is nearly impossible to actually kill, since he will run away through a portal once enough damage has been dealt, he will always be back to eat another day
I like it to spin and bounce of things time to time and if its shell breaks i'd imagine it would sound like a elk and bull frog

The realization of shell broken stage

The annoyance stage followed by the escape!
 
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zdoofop

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Jul 26, 2016
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#11
or make them non-sentient.

Consider: Instead of Gobbo being able to portal at his leisure, we do something else. You see, we've mined so much time ore that it's doing more than releasing Tsi-Hu; It's creating rifts throughout the time-space continuum itself, portaling creatures from other dimensions onto Em-8ER. Or something like that.
 
Oct 16, 2019
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#12
The Tsi-hu were the first sentient life that humanity has discovered beyond Earth, however the ruins on Em-8er would seem to indicate other species exist that we haven't encountered yet.
I haven't really read into the lore of Em-8er yet, so I didn't know this. Generally speaking, however, if humanity had come across any planets prior to Em-8er that had an actual biosphere and were in the habitable zone of a system,- i.e., they weren't just rocky resource planets - then they should have encountered flora and fauna of various types. In this regard, I don't know if "sentience" would be the best term to use. Even small things like mice, fish, and birds are generally considered sentient. They should have come across at least a few things that would meet the standard definition of being sentient, unless every planet they came across had either no biosphere, or was so young that absolutely nothing had had time to develop. It would be extremely rare for that to be the case for *all* planets they had come across.

The Tsi-hu would probably better be described as the first intelligent life that they've discovered.

I akin the goldback goblins more towards nominally being animals, rather than actually being "intelligent." Gobbo might be a bit smarter than average, considering how long he's stayed alive, but his usage of his portal ability would be more along the lines of how a dog might learn to open a door by accidentally pulling down on a door handle while scratching at the side of the door. He's not so much "intelligent life" as "old dog learned a new trick."
 

Gigabear

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#13
I haven't really read into the lore of Em-8er yet, so I didn't know this. Generally speaking, however, if humanity had come across any planets prior to Em-8er that had an actual biosphere and were in the habitable zone of a system,- i.e., they weren't just rocky resource planets - then they should have encountered flora and fauna of various types. In this regard, I don't know if "sentience" would be the best term to use. Even small things like mice, fish, and birds are generally considered sentient. They should have come across at least a few things that would meet the standard definition of being sentient, unless every planet they came across had either no biosphere, or was so young that absolutely nothing had had time to develop. It would be extremely rare for that to be the case for *all* planets they had come across.

The Tsi-hu would probably better be described as the first intelligent life that they've discovered.

I akin the goldback goblins more towards nominally being animals, rather than actually being "intelligent." Gobbo might be a bit smarter than average, considering how long he's stayed alive, but his usage of his portal ability would be more along the lines of how a dog might learn to open a door by accidentally pulling down on a door handle while scratching at the side of the door. He's not so much "intelligent life" as "old dog learned a new trick."
I was using the wording of the Gatestrider Novel, which seems to use sentience as a stand in for intelligent life, and makes mention of predatory fauna that had been encountered as not qualifying for sentience. You are right that sentience is too broad of a term to use to refer only to the tsi-hu.

The Gatestriders have encountered many living organisms. Indeed much of their terraforming process involves seeding the world with them.

Although I kinda like the idea of Gobbo being a bit smart. If he has a brain the size of one of our frames, it would make sense. We need not know what he was on the first encounter.
 
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Oct 16, 2019
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#14
I was using the wording of the Gatestrider Novel, which seems to use sentience as a stand in for intelligent life, and makes mention of predatory fauna that had been encountered as not qualifying for sentience. You are right that sentience is too broad of a term to use to refer only to the tsi-hu.

The Gatestriders have encountered many living organisms. Indeed much of their terraforming process involves seeding the world with them.

Although I kinda like the idea of Gobbo being a bit smart. If he has a brain the size of one of our frames, it would make sense. We need not know what he was on the first encounter.
He would absolutely have a large brain, considering his size, so he would have some sort of smarts. It might just be more extensive animal intelligence/instincts. This could actually be a feature of him as a game mechanic - as he grows via monetary input to the game, his AI could be continually iterated to make him more difficult over time, simulating that he was actually "learning" and becoming smarter.

I could see not know exactly what he was on the first encounter. In my head canon, even though the Gatestriders would know of Goldback Goblins as a species, they would absolutely never have encountered any that were nearly the same size as Gobbo. Beyond just the size/extensiveness of his growth, he would likely also be somewhat mutated due to the space anomaly accident, as well as all the various environments he has spent time in via portalling. In a sense, you could imagine it as kaiju-ifying a normal Goldback Goblin - similar, but definitely more monstrous in many ways.
 

Pandagnome

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#16
I actually hope this idea ends up referenced somehow. My earlier posts don't adequately convey how much I liked it.
We can show this through the rate of delight (Rod)
This is from a scale 1 - 10

E.g.
1 = tsihu
10 = A small mek in a medium mek that is in a big mek

What if Gobbo has a twin who is not so smart but because looks like gobbo we cannot tell because its brain can pop out and go to the other gobbo

 
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