that would be...preposterous, yet terrifying

Anyone else think that while the Vasari were doing some experiements in Phase Space, they screwed up royally and made a hole into another deminsion or something? And the thing that came through was....


Yivo. Whoo, go Futurama. Anyways, back on topic...

But seriously, assume that the Vasari, being all phase-space savvy and whatnot, managed to develop some new form of Phase Space technology that rips across deminsions to get to the target location much faster than before. Imagine that in SOASE2 (because Stardock would be friggen stupid not to make it) you discover the technology(such as the last one you can receive). You build one teleport-pad-thing in one system, and another halfway across the galaxy. You fire em up, and send some ships through. The ship travels through the Dimensional Phase Rift (lets just call it that) and out to the other Phase Rift Generator (the device that creates the Phase Rift). It essentially allows you to travel from one star system to another in the blink of an eye (or, if you have my computer, after several driver crashes because my computer sucks monkey).

Although getting from point A to point B very fast is nice, the Dimensional Phase Rift does what its name entitles; creates a rift through another Dimension. Assuming that the other deminsion has some other life form in it, we can safely say that it is possible for the other creature to get through the Rift that you created. Lets also assume that this race from another deminsion is highly powerful, has ship capabilities, and hates Vasari.

Viola! You have the Vasari Menace. Lets just say its one ship, but every time you jump across in a Phase Rift Generator, there is a chance that the Menace will appear through your rift. The weaponry we use will not do a ton of damage to it, but it can be taken down if you continue to pummel the hell out of it. You could even have an acheivement for killing it.

This design raises some problems however. Assuming that only the Vasari can have this technology, that means that only the Vasari have to deal with this problem. That is why I propose coming up with two other ideas for the TEC and Advent, and another for the mystery race that they will Include in SOASE2.

The Vasari were messing with chemical formulae to make people (or, aliens that the vasari had conquered) calmer and easier to control. Unfortunately, it made them too calm - 90% just sat down and died; while the other 10% became hyperviolent and took to the stars in a fleet of cannibalized warships.








(With apologies to Whedon)

For some reason I think that the plotline goes like this, and poo on me for taking it seriously:


TEC > Desert Planet > Finds Vasari > TEC, initially losing the battle, gets stronger, managing to exile the populace of Vasari. (Remember Vasari are slave owners) So for several thousand years pass, with the TEC after the Vasari who are on a run for their lives. The Vasari call back their Fleets on the front, which get the crap pounded out of them by the TEC. TEC send first generation of warriors home. At this point, a section of the Vasari had already branched off, and began to purify themselves and liberating other Vasari-owned planets, making the original Vasari race's run even more desperate. Over a thousand years these Vasari who have branched off became very astute with psionics became powerful enough to not only get behind enemy lines (TEC) but make their way to the TEC home planets.

And thus we have the story we have right now. The reason there is no campaign mode is because we are supposed to live out the story (kind of) as we play the game.

This sounds allot like stargate but I think that what is chasing them is a super advanced sentient NANO-bot of their own creation thats coding got messed up and started to replicate to form together into larger NANO-celled organisms and eventually beings, somehow being able to enhance the vasari's technology beyond their comprehension making the NANO-bots unstoppable, forced them to flee their home galaxy, think about it the NANO-bots would be able to drive the vasari crew insane by penetrating their minds at the cellular level.

Edit: someone beat me too it

We will get the answer someday with the sequel or expansion to Soase.
Just think about something that will fit in the most. What new features could an expansion to SOASE have?

New Ships and technologies for the already existing races? Probably. A new playable race (the menace)? Maybe. But if thats so the new menace race, can't be too uber strong. There must be a chance for every of the other 3 races to defeat it.

But then again maybe the menace race will be introduced as something... like advanced Pirates. They show up every now and then and try to kick someones ass. Maybe as an added extra they can even take over planets and become a permanent nuisance to the other players. (Can Pirates take over planets? They never managed to do when I had them)

But maybe... its like this.
The Menace is a race of spiritual beings. There is real space, phase space, and spiritual space. Centuries ago, a highly advanced and now extinct species, managed to not just travel through phase lanes, but entered the spiritual realm as well. The spiritual menace used this to invade our reality. They drove sentient beings into madness, and then took over their bodies... inhabiting and using them like their own. The precursor race was losing this battle and there was only one last desperate thing they did to defeat the spiritual menace. They managed to fight their way back to the systems of origin, the places where the interdimensional fabric was torn apart and the spirits entered our realm. There they set up the phasejumpinhibitors to BLOCK off travel to and from the spiritual dimension. The spirits already resident in our world could not get back, but no new spirits could enter our realm either. In order to get rid of the spiritual menace already here, they only found one solution. Remove all hosts. So they developed a virus to kill their own species the only advanced sentient beings around at that time, leaving the spirits to dissolve eventually.

Centuries later the Vasari discovered the only heritage left behind by the precursors. The phasejumpinhibitors they left to protect our world from the spiritual invaders. Not knowing about its purposes the vasari only discovered one of the systems side effects... slowing transition into phase space. They never knew about spirit space so they could not observe any effects on it. Then 10.000 years ago, a secret vasari laboratory successfully managed to reverse engineer one of those inhibitors. They experimented on it and tried to create a device with an adverse effect. A device that doesn't slow down phasejumping but one to speed up the process. And they did it. But not just that, the device was no longer blocking access to the spiritual realm. It was granting it. And now the spiritual menace is back to take over our bodies. And there are sooo many of us now. Tasty!

The Halo rings have been activated!!! ...or not, and its The Flood kicking ass...

Well, they released the two expansions, which didn't not have no 4th race not not present. What a shame!

 

I think that the Vasari were experimenting with a new form of space travel (hence the transport facility above 'Kron' in the cinematic). This would 'fold' space so the ship literally needn't travel the entire distance.

However, when the crew traveled through, they were subjected to all kinds of supernatural (or just messed up) forces. Hence, driving them crazy. The ship came out the other end and spread the craziness to the core worlds. Like a virus, it spread at an alarming rate and even lay ruin to the ancient Vasari homeworld. The Dark fleet tried to organise a blind assault, but failed miserably, with only one ship surviving, the crew mad with fear after witnessing the supernatural forces at work.

I'm actually rather disappointed that the Vasari Empire crumbled into the dust. They are so cool!   OK... get the message?

BTW: "event horizon" movie would make this clearer to you all.

If any one read the manual and looked at the phase jump inhibitor for the vasari you would notice that the vasari found them. so it would mean  that something else made the phase jump inhibitors before the vasari came. but what i dont know maybe whoever made the phase jump inhibitors came back.

How could you bring back a two-year old thread?

There are so many others like this...

Sorry didnt mean to do that.

i heard it was a bunch of dudes looking for kyle

Im not angry or annoyed, I was chuckling.

Sorry if you thought that it was a statement made in anger.

 

He's about this tall...

The Intro of the game showed a Vasari experimental transportation lab on the planet Khron that exploded after the operator pushed the button. So I would go with the Extra Dimensional Menace theory. Hmm... I wonder if the next expansion would include the Extra Dimensional fleet.

Think, everyone. What is one enemy that you can not escape if you encounter? One enemy that can silence entire worlds quickly and at an exponential rate? One enemy that will know your technology front to back, find a weakness to it and obliterate any ship it crosses? One enemy that can strike enough fear into the hearts and minds of ship crews to make them go insane?

 

 

 

Given their expertise in nano bots, I'd imagine the thing that's chasing them is a nano swarm of some sort.

who cares, it serves its purpose as a plot point

By the way, the Borg use nano bots for assimilation