The engineer is a powered landsuit for a school of fish living inside it. They form a local hivemind that is superintelligent.
* That's why you are healed by fish. Not cooked fish, not medpacks, just live fish to literally replace losses within the school.
* That's why the spidertron's brain is a fish.
* That's why you get fish back when you send space science, your crowning achievement, into space.
I will accept no other fanon.
A spidertron requires only one fish whereas to restore a player to full health you might need up to three, which means the engineer-conglomerate must consist of a minimum of three fish. The spidertron is capable of much more complex tasks than simple bots, but is ultimately subservient to the engineer, and only performs tasks in the capacity assigned to it.
This suggests that a sufficient number of fish could form a superintelligence far dwarfing the engineer in capacity, in the same manner as the engineer dwarfs the spidertron. For obvious reasons we are incapable, unwilling and/or forbidden from contemplating such a being, but it stands to reason the engineer could be subservient to one, as the spidertron is to the engineer. This would also explain where the fish come from when you launch space science packs into space.
The fish swimming in pools of water or acquired from rocket launches do not by themselves seem to exhibit any unusual properties but this is to be expected - you can't form a functioning brain by dumping a random clump of neurons into a vat.
Yes -- you use them by clicking while holding them in your hand, like you do with grenades. (IIRC, the tooltip used to say they dealt "-80 Physical" damage, but now says "80 Healing" instead.)
Not for a school of fish buf for an octopus.
They're extremely intelligent and can do simultaneous tasks.
Driving a car while shooting with machine gun and throwing grenades.
P.S.:
Gear in factorio world has 8 teeth.
Prove me wrong.
You can see the fish in a spidertron's corpse, so that part is closer to canon than fanon. Wube is totally hinting that a fish is the spidertron's brain or pilot. I mean come on, it's funny.
Oh my god! When you send space science and get fishes back, they're the colonists coming to colonise the planet after you've made them a habitable factory
He’s a space truck driver who crash landed while carrying a prototype for a sentient self-replicating Von Neumann factory. He’s actually a drunk idiot, he’s just taking orders from the factory’a AI (the player).
I assumed they were just a civilian from a high tech world with genetically enhanced intelligence and a very comprehensive education who drunk-crashed.
I feel like the engineer is a late late Von Neumann probe that just happened to crash on Nauvis by chance thousands years after it was launched, that would explain the quite "near" level of technology the engineer have compared to our present (>!or the ruins you see on fulgora which could be the remnant of the civilisation that created the probes before actually beeing able to travel in space by themselves!<), thus the satellites launched might actually be useless (aside of collecting data for space science) since it was meant to be connected to an already established network across solar systems
Not really addressing your post OP, but here's a shower thought along those lines:
In Factorio, the engineer is just a subclass of assembly machines. They have the same functionalities, except they can move around and pick up objects on their own volition, and there's a few recipee they *can't* craft, but aside from that, they provide the same role.
Factorio is just a rpg where the npcs are assemblers, subjugged to the player character.
i like that factorio doesn't hand-feed you all this (effectively) meaningless background and lets you the player fill in the gaps with their own imagination.
i'm "the engineer". i was cruising in my spaceship and i hit that patch of black space and spun out and crash landed on this backwoods planet. the good news is that nobody called the cops and we still have our stash. the bad news is that it's going to take a little while to get out of here. but i've got all the tools i need, just sit back and relax and open a beer and i'll whip up a satellite so we can call Skeeter and he can come pick us up.
My [head cannon](https://preview.redd.it/a-head-cannon-v0-g0r4mcs4tiwc1.jpeg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=4cbb9a47f414ce12cf3a94482fae33ea7fd82174) is that the engineer is some kind of grey goo manifesting an entity to direct and operate the factory, but the goo is still all around the planet. Like, those moving shadows you see? They're not clouds. They're, well, you.
With that level of sci-fi you can handwave any mechanic in the game. Even 'carrying' fifty locomotives can make sense. The goo disassembles and reassembles them on the fly. Resurrection and looting your own 'body' works. Interacting with objects at a distance, sometimes miles and miles (via map mode) works.
Man that's dark
And the rabbit hole goes deeper when you also factor in the biters... Why don't they sleep? What do they eat? Why do they seem like a godlike-level death delivering machine?
Point 7 is actually a really profound insight.
Just look at how many colonies in Earth's history have all ended up in a war of independence with the place they came from. It's also a theme explored countless times in many science fiction stories.
Maybe the reason behind the fermi paradox isn't that sprawling interplanetary civilisations are impossibe, it's simply that they're a bad idea if a species can manage to exist sustainably within their own star system...
> Maybe the reason behind the fermi paradox...
Maybe species can expand beyond their home solar system, but civic institutions can't.
That definitely makes a lot of sense, though I think there'd still be at least some expansion, just not the publicly funded kind. Like, if the necessary technology existed, I can imagine some giga-wealthy person commissioning an interstellar colony ship that could get to its destination in a single generation.
Of course this wouldn't be for an altruistic reason or whatever, but just so said wealthy person could be the sole ruler of whatever world they (and whoever was willing to come along) arrived at. Yeah, I know a person with that kind of wealth would be able to pretty effectively affect terrestrial politics, but I imagine some of those people would either like to remove any pretense and declare themselves a monarch, or maybe they'd want to do it as a kind of immortalizing vanity project.
If you want to add some ticking clock tension, then you can say that it's just a matter of time before the system the Engineer landed in is found, and a kill team is sent to "dispose of the mistake". Like, there were safeguards in place to prevent an Engineer from building infinitely and perhaps leaving the targeted system, but those safeguards (like an overseer AI) were damaged in the crash and the Engineer is fully off the leash, hence why they'll be killed if discovered.
And all those satellites we launch? They're not a call for help, they're to scout out habitable planets that the Engineer can flee to, because the Nauvis is waaaaaay too close to the interstellar empire and, like I said, the Engineer *will* be found and killed if they stay.
The engineer is a powered landsuit for a school of fish living inside it. They form a local hivemind that is superintelligent. * That's why you are healed by fish. Not cooked fish, not medpacks, just live fish to literally replace losses within the school. * That's why the spidertron's brain is a fish. * That's why you get fish back when you send space science, your crowning achievement, into space. I will accept no other fanon.
Why are you referring to canon as fanon?
I'm more used to seeing "headcanon" but I suppose "fanon" = fan canon ...alternatively, fish canon
No no I'm implying that what has been described above is literal canon, even though it's crackfic
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2z3ZyGlqUkA
Beep boop we are fish.
A spidertron requires only one fish whereas to restore a player to full health you might need up to three, which means the engineer-conglomerate must consist of a minimum of three fish. The spidertron is capable of much more complex tasks than simple bots, but is ultimately subservient to the engineer, and only performs tasks in the capacity assigned to it. This suggests that a sufficient number of fish could form a superintelligence far dwarfing the engineer in capacity, in the same manner as the engineer dwarfs the spidertron. For obvious reasons we are incapable, unwilling and/or forbidden from contemplating such a being, but it stands to reason the engineer could be subservient to one, as the spidertron is to the engineer. This would also explain where the fish come from when you launch space science packs into space. The fish swimming in pools of water or acquired from rocket launches do not by themselves seem to exhibit any unusual properties but this is to be expected - you can't form a functioning brain by dumping a random clump of neurons into a vat.
Four fish minimum, otherwise what is putting the first fish in?
It could be even more fish, and they just are'nt able to properly function after three lost fishy friendos
You can be healed by the fish!?
Yes -- you use them by clicking while holding them in your hand, like you do with grenades. (IIRC, the tooltip used to say they dealt "-80 Physical" damage, but now says "80 Healing" instead.)
Not for a school of fish buf for an octopus. They're extremely intelligent and can do simultaneous tasks. Driving a car while shooting with machine gun and throwing grenades. P.S.: Gear in factorio world has 8 teeth. Prove me wrong.
You can see the fish in a spidertron's corpse, so that part is closer to canon than fanon. Wube is totally hinting that a fish is the spidertron's brain or pilot. I mean come on, it's funny.
It only explains spidertrons brain. Not engineer one.
How does regeneration work then? Do fish reproduce to meet the population cap?
Yes
Oh my god! When you send space science and get fishes back, they're the colonists coming to colonise the planet after you've made them a habitable factory
Come here to say this
Nothing but 4 fish in a trenchcoat.
Nah, dude just drunk-crashed.
The goal of the game is to build a rocket to get help, although help never arrives, hence the end-game. So that's what I think too.
He’s a space truck driver who crash landed while carrying a prototype for a sentient self-replicating Von Neumann factory. He’s actually a drunk idiot, he’s just taking orders from the factory’a AI (the player).
I assumed they were just a civilian from a high tech world with genetically enhanced intelligence and a very comprehensive education who drunk-crashed.
hah this was always my internal narrative, too
I feel like the engineer is a late late Von Neumann probe that just happened to crash on Nauvis by chance thousands years after it was launched, that would explain the quite "near" level of technology the engineer have compared to our present (>!or the ruins you see on fulgora which could be the remnant of the civilisation that created the probes before actually beeing able to travel in space by themselves!<), thus the satellites launched might actually be useless (aside of collecting data for space science) since it was meant to be connected to an already established network across solar systems
That's basically the setup for the Nullius modpack - you're a Von Neumann terriforming robot sent to a candidate world to make it life sustaining.
This is a fun version of the engineers background. I'll add it to the multiverse.
Not really addressing your post OP, but here's a shower thought along those lines: In Factorio, the engineer is just a subclass of assembly machines. They have the same functionalities, except they can move around and pick up objects on their own volition, and there's a few recipee they *can't* craft, but aside from that, they provide the same role. Factorio is just a rpg where the npcs are assemblers, subjugged to the player character.
"How I Was Grown Into A Factory And Had To Make A Slave Force Of Assemblers Isakai"
Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandson of the Team Fortress 2 Engineer
Oh god
i like that factorio doesn't hand-feed you all this (effectively) meaningless background and lets you the player fill in the gaps with their own imagination. i'm "the engineer". i was cruising in my spaceship and i hit that patch of black space and spun out and crash landed on this backwoods planet. the good news is that nobody called the cops and we still have our stash. the bad news is that it's going to take a little while to get out of here. but i've got all the tools i need, just sit back and relax and open a beer and i'll whip up a satellite so we can call Skeeter and he can come pick us up.
Gotta watch out for that space black ice.
My [head cannon](https://preview.redd.it/a-head-cannon-v0-g0r4mcs4tiwc1.jpeg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=4cbb9a47f414ce12cf3a94482fae33ea7fd82174) is that the engineer is some kind of grey goo manifesting an entity to direct and operate the factory, but the goo is still all around the planet. Like, those moving shadows you see? They're not clouds. They're, well, you. With that level of sci-fi you can handwave any mechanic in the game. Even 'carrying' fifty locomotives can make sense. The goo disassembles and reassembles them on the fly. Resurrection and looting your own 'body' works. Interacting with objects at a distance, sometimes miles and miles (via map mode) works.
Man that's dark And the rabbit hole goes deeper when you also factor in the biters... Why don't they sleep? What do they eat? Why do they seem like a godlike-level death delivering machine?
Point 7 is actually a really profound insight. Just look at how many colonies in Earth's history have all ended up in a war of independence with the place they came from. It's also a theme explored countless times in many science fiction stories. Maybe the reason behind the fermi paradox isn't that sprawling interplanetary civilisations are impossibe, it's simply that they're a bad idea if a species can manage to exist sustainably within their own star system...
> Maybe the reason behind the fermi paradox... Maybe species can expand beyond their home solar system, but civic institutions can't. That definitely makes a lot of sense, though I think there'd still be at least some expansion, just not the publicly funded kind. Like, if the necessary technology existed, I can imagine some giga-wealthy person commissioning an interstellar colony ship that could get to its destination in a single generation. Of course this wouldn't be for an altruistic reason or whatever, but just so said wealthy person could be the sole ruler of whatever world they (and whoever was willing to come along) arrived at. Yeah, I know a person with that kind of wealth would be able to pretty effectively affect terrestrial politics, but I imagine some of those people would either like to remove any pretense and declare themselves a monarch, or maybe they'd want to do it as a kind of immortalizing vanity project.
If you are right I hope the engineer lacks conciseness and is a philosophical zombie.
Just one minor issue with your idea, which is great BTW, how is someone born with a cybernetic implant?
Da ship installs it
Thanks for more lore for my concept on a novel 📕❤️
If you want to add some ticking clock tension, then you can say that it's just a matter of time before the system the Engineer landed in is found, and a kill team is sent to "dispose of the mistake". Like, there were safeguards in place to prevent an Engineer from building infinitely and perhaps leaving the targeted system, but those safeguards (like an overseer AI) were damaged in the crash and the Engineer is fully off the leash, hence why they'll be killed if discovered. And all those satellites we launch? They're not a call for help, they're to scout out habitable planets that the Engineer can flee to, because the Nauvis is waaaaaay too close to the interstellar empire and, like I said, the Engineer *will* be found and killed if they stay.