Sure. Lore-wise the eaters are just that. Mindless leech-like creatures that eat cosmic bodies like moons, asteroids and planets. Gameplay-wise we can either have them for clickable stardust OR for more challenge they slowly creep to the planet and if you don't kill them on time they steal a portion of your stardust. As for the eaters' relation to the overlord and the guardians, well i think the guardians and their corrupt empires were too lazy in dealing with these space vermin and just focus on their planets' protection. The overlord just woke up one day and said 'im gonna deal with these things myself'
I really like the direction you’re going with. The idea of having threats that create gameplay outside the main planet feels like it could add some nice tension.
I’m definitely going to explore how something like this could fit into the current mechanics. At the same time, this kind of concept makes me think about the protagonist’s starting point and backstory - like whether Earth was already conquered, or if these space vermin nearly wiped it out and the Overlord was the one who saved it, essentially becoming the leader of Earth before going on to conquer the rest of the galaxy.
Because it’s such a significant part of the story, I feel like it might need some gameplay connection rather than just being pure lore. I’ll have to think about how to tie it in properly.
Feel free throwing more ideas on this.
Here's the lore I've been thinking about and the reason why our Overlord targetted them specifically. I was thinking our boy is from a Earth-like planet that was ravaged so hard by the eaters. Feel free to expand into their respective guardian stories.
Nova Serena - Let the eaters 'live in peace' causing them to wreck havoc in space stations, colonies and nearby planets. Her reason is that these are just animals that have the same right to live as sentient beings.
Pyra Valeria - Extorts colonies and stations for protection money (resources) in exchange for dealing with the eaters. Abandons poor colonies that can't pay with tech or resources.
Glacia Yuki - 'Guides' eaters with black ops soldiers (so that she has plausible deniability in case they are caught) into other planets then feign ignorance when those planets suffer damage and loss of life.
Kessa Sundari - Hunts moon-eaters and claims she is a powerful hunter (even if a well equipped squad can deal with these). She's actually scared of the bigger ones like planet-eaters and sun-eaters but hunts the lesser eaters so that others won't call her out.
Nyx Isolde - Too nihilistic to deal with the eaters as she saw both rebels and councils unleash the eaters on each other throughout the centuries.
That sounds great! I really like the direction you’re taking with this.
I’ll definitely be using parts of it in the lore, especially the Nova Serena angle. The whole “they’re just animals that have the same right to live” pacifist reasoning fits her character perfectly.
The ideas for the other guardians are also really good, but I probably won’t include most of them in the main dialogue. I want to avoid making the eaters feel like the central focus of the story. That said, I really like what you did with Nyx. In my mind she’s someone who was once a good person but eventually gave up fighting against the corrupt system. I can see her being forbidden from dealing with the eaters as part of the Obsidian Core’s war doctrine - letting them weaken smaller civilizations without the elites having to lift a finger.
heres an idea on the earth conquered/save part. its a split. just like how we spend stardust on upgrades and even DM. we can use those very resources to the planet (ironically if we really wanted to it could also lead to a change in how we see the planets we already have. for instance we currently farm resources off the planets but what if after we destroy them we actually rebuild them?) and thats what Segways into the whole earth saving mechanic split where we are attempting to build the planets stronger so the eaters couldnt actively destroy them (this could also lead to a defending mechanic where 1 planet that has been rebuilt gets attacked by eaters and we have to actively protect that planet. *this type of thing would happen maybe every 5-10 minutes* and when a planet isnt protected it doesnt get completely destroyed *just set to the minimum of 1HP* but does have to be actively healed which would cost resources) tbh this feels like it would strangely to some degree solve the DM over-farm issue since the planets could use it as the resource for rebuilding/healing. since the planets rebuilt status would be reset each prestige (aside from earths for the reason of having the defense mechanic to always be active but its stats are reset) and it could also lead to a system where you start at a future planet thereby skipping earlier ones (these skipped planets would be classified the same way as earth in the defense mechanic since they were skipped their defense would always be active but stats would be reset each prestige) and this is just the start of the idea of defense and rebuild that i can foresee *tangent/off topic* i told you i'd let you know when i get an idea lol.
oh and you could add a deployment of the guards for each planet rebuilt (primarily the guardians associated with that planet *ie novas serena for the novas serena planet* the guardians would defend the planet and it would be a successful defense but the defense would take 2x as long as the active defense *guardian stats are halved for defense and is why it would take twice as long but would still lead to a flawless defense if at max stats* deployed guardians would also allow for autohealing of said planets so long as one had the resources *there would be 2 paths for this 1 would be DM: requireing about 1/100th of its stardust value and 2 would be the stardust: price varies based on how destroyed the planet is*)