Hadley"s Hope Simulator [Beta]

[fitzley]

"Posted at AvP Outbreak on 10.12.2005 at 08:20:16

I post here not to necessarily call for completion of this, although it is very interesting.  
 
But I wanted to speculate on what people thought the modus operandi for the aliens taking down Hadley"s Hope.  
 
Assuming that the facehugger that took down Newt"s father chestbursts and escapes--once it grows to full size, what is its first moves?  
 
Does it kidnap victims one at a time and transmute them (that is if you accept this possibility given in the DC of Alien)?
 
Does it return to the derelict to collect eggs which it can transport back to the colony?  
 
Now, I assume the colonists reaction is very similar to the crew of the Nostromo. The chestburster escapes and the colonists think that they can try and track down this small alien lifeform and trap it. Not expecting that the thing grows to full size in a matter of hours. This would be the first mistake that works to the advantage of the alien.  
 
It is also possible that the colonist send another team out to the derelict to investigate further, thus exposing themselves to more possible implantations. This might also explain how the colonists have several face huggers alive and dead that they have in the labs.  
 
Just watched Aliens again and thought of this simulator, so I was curious what your thoughts were on how the colony was overcome. Because it seems to me that in the beginning stages of the alien takeover, before the aliens reach a population greater than 5 or 10, that the aliens survival is very much in the balance.  
 
Any thoughts or speculations? "

[maledoro]

"Posted at AvP Outbreak on 10.12.2005 at 11:57:14

According to James Cameron:
 
In my Version of the Alien life cycle, the infestation of the colony would proceed like this:
1. Russ Jorden attacked, they radio for rescue.
2. Rescue party investigates ship...seveal members facehugged...brought back to base for treatment.
3. Several "chestbursters" free themselves from hosts, escape into ducting, begin to grow.
4. Extrapolating from entomology (ants, termites, etc.), an immature female, one of the first to emerge from hosts, grows to become a new queen, while males become drones or warriors. Subsequent famle larvae remain dormant or are killed by males...or biochemically sense that that a queen exists and change into males to limit waste. The Queen locates a nesting spot (the warmth of the atmosphere station heat exchanger level being perfect for egg incubation) and becomes sedentary. She is then tended by the males as her abdomen swells into a distended egg sac. The drones and warriors also secrete a resionous building material to line the structure, creating niches in which they may lie dormant when food supplies and/or hosts for further reproduction become depleted. (i.e. when all the colonists are used up). They are discovered in this condition by the troopers, but quickly emerge when the new hosts present themselves.  
 
"

[SM]

"Posted at AvP Outbreak on 12.12.2005 at 06:36:11

Trying to work out what the hell"s happening, then when they get some idea - do something about it, then when they realise the situation is hopeless, try to survive in the Ops/ Medical wing.
 
In Newt"s Tale, a number of colonists went over to the AP Station to find their companions only to get obliterated by the Aliens. "

[deezelboy]

"Posted at AvP Outbreak on 12.12.2005 at 11:21:43

on 10.12.2005 at 08:20:16, fitzley  wrote:

I post here not to necessarily call for completion of this, although it is very interesting.

There"s a new version, a complete rewrite, on its way.  It"ll probably turn up here in the new year.  It should contrain a lot more settings - all of Cameron"s "possible solutions" plus super-facehuggers and the like.
 
But, yeah, I"m kinda interested in which of Cameron"s "possible solutions" works to give the Hadley"s Hope scenario we get in Aliens.
 
It"s interesting to note that Cameron"s also got the same problem with the current simulations, in that the Queen"s useless - it needs the normal Aliens to gather hosts for her.  So Cameron"s got a rescue party also getting infected within the same timescale, which I find a bit iffy.  Hence the simulation idea - find out what variables affect the Aliens" population growth and see of there are any other, if not better, solutions.
 
But, yeah, early on in the development of the Alien colony they"re incredibly vulnerable. "

[fitzley]

Posted at AvP Outbreak on 12.12.2005 at 18:58:57

Cool. I look forward to it.

[NERMAL]

Posted at AvP Outbreak on 23.12.2005 at 10:06:13

Didnt van buren say threre were 100 families on hadleys...?

[Sebastian]

Posted at AvP Outbreak on 23.12.2005 at 10:26:47

I think it was 60-70 families.
 
-Rusty Nails

[chris_the_cynic]

"Posted at AvP Outbreak on 15.01.2006 at 05:02:53

on 10.12.2005 at 08:20:16, fitzley  wrote:

But I wanted to speculate on what people thought the modus operandi for the aliens taking down Hadley"s Hope.

I think that it would go like this:
 
Newt"s father"s chestburster escapes.
 
Chestburster matures into drone who captures unspecified amount of colonists (perhaps only one) and turns them into eggs.
 
The first egg to hatch becomes a queen bearing face hugger, and then implants a colonist.
 
Queen is born, and produces eggs.
 
Drone captures a few colonist and brings them in, they are "implanted" and more drones are born, they go out and do the same.
 
By the time the colonists are able to identify the problem and locate the hive it"s too late, they"re on the defensive, and all is lost.
 
-
 
It makes sense to me that the drones would have the ability to create queen bearing eggs, but only do it when there is no queen.  As for what happens to the other eggs, the drone made eggs I mean, I would think they would simply be kept away from hosts, in storage for when the time came. "

[NERMAL]

"Posted at AvP Outbreak on 19.01.2006 at 13:57:12

This is from Newts Tale, so is far from accurate. Between the time (Go)Russ is facehugged and the hatching, a group is sent to the derelict, some are facehugged, then return to Hadleys just in time for Russ to pop. His alien escapes. Now the details are sketchy as its from Newts perspective, but some of the info refers to "missing livestock" that they find along with some missing colonists in the nest, and that they retreat to a sub-level and barricade in while waiting for the Marines. There isnt a major assault by the aliens, preferring to "pick colonists off one by one", until a group is sent into the processor and they find the nest. That triggers the final attack that wipes out the rest of the colony. "

[deezelboy]

Click the red Run Simulation button to, er, run the simulation:

<a href="http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h167/deezelboy/Flash/hadleySim_vB-01.swf" target="_blank">http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h167/deezelboy/Flash/hadleySim_vB-01.swf</a>

This is an old version, but newer than the one released previously.

It's statistical in nature, which means it works better for big populations than small ones. 

As a result, I've set it up for the population of Gunniston, Colorado, as suggested by O'Malley in the Saving the continuity thread of the AVP2 board.

Feel free to experiment, and be amazed at what a limiting influence the Queen is when she's turned on!

I don't think the instructions have changed since the last version, so I'll just quote them again:

 Population - staring population for each type.
 
 Lifespan - given in days, except the colonists which is in years (but won"t make any difference as it hasn"t been patched in    ).
 
 AvG Prey - the number of hosts the Alien can capture in any one day.
 
 Gestate - the number of days it takes for a host to be impregnated and give birth to an Alien.
 
 Transmute - the number of days it takes for a colonist to be transformed into an egg, ala Brett.  If this is set to 0, the Aliens cannot turn people into eggs, ala the sequels.
 
 Queen On/Off: 1 means that the simulator supports Queens.  The Aliens will produce a Queen as soon as possible, but only one Queen is allowed.  0 means that it"s old school Alien, no Queens allowed.
 
 Queen Development:the number of days it takes fro a Queen to develop to egg laying capacity.  This includes any extra gestation time, ala Ripley"s experience in Alien 3.
 
 Queen Egg Rate: the number of eggs a developed Queen will produce in a day.
 
 Queen Lifespan: not implemented.
 
 Graph:Human Filth, Aliens - whom I admire for their purity, hosts, or productive human filth, poor sodding humans being turned into eggs like Dallas in Alien, eggs, the kindergarten stage of the Alien lifecycle, queen - brood mare for the holocaust, sounds a bit like John Inman.

Obviously concerned about my own safety, I increased the population size to 55,000,000 - approximately the population of the UK - and found that we'd all be fucked within 57 days if we did bugger all. Cool!

[Hudson]

Apparently takes about 34 days for my city to be irradicated completely.

[fitzley]

42 days for the city of Tucson to be eradicated.

Edit: Haha...love the "Building Better Hives--Carter Burke Investment Ltd."

[O'Malley]

Following the likelihood that AVP2 will feature a Queen, the Aliens will live longer than three days (I set it at 200, as per O'Bannon's own belief) and no hosts will transmute, it will take a total of 227 days for Gunnison to be overrun.  If hosts do transmute, it will only take 18.  However, I seriously doubt Shane Salerno put that much thought into it (that's our job!).  Besides, they seem to be taking signifcant liberties with the town's geography already, so they'll probably do the same with its population...and pretty much everything else.

Great work, deezelboy!  Any chance we can see this uploaded to the site?

[deezelboy]

Remember that O'Bannon wanted them to live for 200 years, but they'd only be the Aliens we know and love during their most infantile stage.  The '3 days' figure doesn't have any reasoning behind it, other than that was what I was using to bug-test it.

Also, I very much dount that Aliens let loose in a town or city would restrain themselves to an average of two hosts per day.  And there's no allo0wance made for when Aliens get a bit miffed, and start killing rather than capturing, as happened with Lambert, Parker and most of teh prisoners in Alien 3.

But I would like to point out that the Queen makes the Aliens a hell of a lot less dangerous in their rapaciousness.  The Queen's a limiting influence - without it, the Aliens spread like a virus; with it, and they spread like mammals, their population entirely restricted to their sole parents capacity to reproduce.

Great work, deezelboy!  Any chance we can see this uploaded to the site?

Erm...

I'm working on a vastly different one at the moment, rather pointless but quite fascinating to me, anyway.  A lot mopre graphical and in-depth - probably too in-depth.

Yeah, I could stick this, and an indiviuallly modelled one (for small populations - Nostromo to Hadley's Hope) on the site, but I'd probably need to write it up a bit and clean the design and some non-implemented stuff and bugs up.

[alvspr]

How the hell does that work.

If you turn the queen off and also turn Transmute off there is still a growth in the number of aliens.

So aliens are now being born from thin air?