Post by helioskitty on Jun 15, 2016 16:05:43 GMT -5
I'm currently rounding out the setting for a pure Dragon Ball game (it's taking place in one of the other 10 universes that apparently exist anyway, so hooray creative license!) and one of the various ways I'm changing things up while still using the original races is having an intergalactic war going on between three of said races. Namely, Changelings, Saiyans, and Namekians.
Each race is meant to have their own advantages keeping them in the running. Currently in my head, I have it imagined that the Namekians and Changelings should be roughly equal, while the Saiyans are struggling to stay relevant. The Saiyans' main advantage is replenishment; they reproduce much faster than either Namekians or Changelings and, thanks to Zenkai and their nature as a warrior race, have much shorter training times than the other races. They're individually stronger than Namekians on account of this, and while their potential is rarely as high as that of a Changeling, the Changelings age and train up much more slowly.
On the other hand, the Changelings again typically have much more individual power, as well as by far the best technology in the galaxy. Where the Saiyans have basic space travel capabilities, low-end battle armor, and standard healing tanks, the Changelings have power armor, extremely advanced cybernetics and pure android-making ability (to the degree that one of the Changeling leaders effectively built himself the Big Gete Star and rebuilds himself with improvements after every lost fight), physics-bendingly fast and powerful space battleships, and the regenerative technologies to fully restore anybody who isn't killed rather thoroughly.
So how do the Namekians, who are on average a bit weaker than Saiyans, probably at least not starting out much better technology-wise, and rather unusual and much slower about reproducing, supposed to be the equals of the Changelings? My answer to that was "ruthlessly abuse the living hell out of the ability to make Dragon Balls." And I want to know the best way to do so.
If I have to change this I probably can force the square peg into the round hole, but at the moment, my opening plot hinges substantially on the Earth's Dragon Balls (which are the same as the canon universe's remade Earth balls in how often they can be used and limitations against repeat wishes, but much stronger in terms of wishes that can be granted) being leagues better than anything available elsewhere in the universe. (The fact that this information got out to the wider universe brings the initial big bads to Earth in the first place.) So I'm currently imagining the Namekian Dragon Balls actually being much weaker than in the original Dragon Ball, about a four Action Dice equivalent that's only as powerful as the three-Dice balls but can be used once every 127 days (based on the original Namekian planet's year length) and making up for the lack of power in bulk. They'd probably have sets across a couple dozen of their big planets, which they would abuse relentlessly in order to fight the Changelings and Saiyans. Like I said, I can make them more powerful if absolutely essential, but I'd prefer we can find uses for them that bring them up to matching the Changelings within this power range.
Thus we reach the crux of the thread. What sorts of things could the Namekian empire wish for on their many sets of Dragon Balls to make themselves into an intergalactic contender despite their disadvantages? Please bring in the maximum of your creativity and make full use of the "roughly equivalent power" clause of Limited Wish, because I'm very open to stretching things as long as the end result still leaves the Earth Dragon Balls much more powerful.
(And yes, before anyone feels the need to remind me, I know that relentlessly abusing Dragon Balls multiple times per Earth-year across dozens of planets is an awesome way to suddenly end up with hundreds of Shadow Dragons in your universe. This may or may not become a plot point.)
Each race is meant to have their own advantages keeping them in the running. Currently in my head, I have it imagined that the Namekians and Changelings should be roughly equal, while the Saiyans are struggling to stay relevant. The Saiyans' main advantage is replenishment; they reproduce much faster than either Namekians or Changelings and, thanks to Zenkai and their nature as a warrior race, have much shorter training times than the other races. They're individually stronger than Namekians on account of this, and while their potential is rarely as high as that of a Changeling, the Changelings age and train up much more slowly.
On the other hand, the Changelings again typically have much more individual power, as well as by far the best technology in the galaxy. Where the Saiyans have basic space travel capabilities, low-end battle armor, and standard healing tanks, the Changelings have power armor, extremely advanced cybernetics and pure android-making ability (to the degree that one of the Changeling leaders effectively built himself the Big Gete Star and rebuilds himself with improvements after every lost fight), physics-bendingly fast and powerful space battleships, and the regenerative technologies to fully restore anybody who isn't killed rather thoroughly.
So how do the Namekians, who are on average a bit weaker than Saiyans, probably at least not starting out much better technology-wise, and rather unusual and much slower about reproducing, supposed to be the equals of the Changelings? My answer to that was "ruthlessly abuse the living hell out of the ability to make Dragon Balls." And I want to know the best way to do so.
If I have to change this I probably can force the square peg into the round hole, but at the moment, my opening plot hinges substantially on the Earth's Dragon Balls (which are the same as the canon universe's remade Earth balls in how often they can be used and limitations against repeat wishes, but much stronger in terms of wishes that can be granted) being leagues better than anything available elsewhere in the universe. (The fact that this information got out to the wider universe brings the initial big bads to Earth in the first place.) So I'm currently imagining the Namekian Dragon Balls actually being much weaker than in the original Dragon Ball, about a four Action Dice equivalent that's only as powerful as the three-Dice balls but can be used once every 127 days (based on the original Namekian planet's year length) and making up for the lack of power in bulk. They'd probably have sets across a couple dozen of their big planets, which they would abuse relentlessly in order to fight the Changelings and Saiyans. Like I said, I can make them more powerful if absolutely essential, but I'd prefer we can find uses for them that bring them up to matching the Changelings within this power range.
Thus we reach the crux of the thread. What sorts of things could the Namekian empire wish for on their many sets of Dragon Balls to make themselves into an intergalactic contender despite their disadvantages? Please bring in the maximum of your creativity and make full use of the "roughly equivalent power" clause of Limited Wish, because I'm very open to stretching things as long as the end result still leaves the Earth Dragon Balls much more powerful.
(And yes, before anyone feels the need to remind me, I know that relentlessly abusing Dragon Balls multiple times per Earth-year across dozens of planets is an awesome way to suddenly end up with hundreds of Shadow Dragons in your universe. This may or may not become a plot point.)