NewWorld Infantry Rifle!

[Carthaginian]

Your mega-squid has been tried by the BBC... and later admitted to be a failure.
Now, you might be able to have animals that pull themselves along with tentacles... but they would be so agonizingly slow on land that any kind of large animal with a bone structure would be vastly superior. Cephalopods simply don't have the internal structure to make it on land.
Evolving an 'exoskeleton' would make them heavier, and thus even more awkward on land! We'd go from a mass of goo pulling itself along slowly to a rock filled with goo pulling itself along even more slowly!

Now, I think the idea of seas/coasts ruled by invertebrates is an impressive road to take- imagine semi-sapient Cephalopods who can use tool even better than their RL cousins! Giant squid unhindered by sperm whales becoming the apex predators of the seas! Jellyfish colonies the size of aircraft carriers! That would be fun.

The development of tortoises kind of fits into my reptile/avian evolution image. They would be one of the major herbivores, and perhaps have a few carnivorous species. It would be very scary to know that somewhere in the woods lived a tortoise the size of a Volkswagon who would happily snap your arms off!

[Valles]

I'll admit that I kind of got the idea from that program, but my memory is that those critters relied on muscle tissue and hydrostatics only, which isn't my intention here; instead, I'm suggesting a line where the sucker-plates have ended up evolving into a structure much like a spinal cord - functionally, the skeleton would end up looking kind of like a christmas tree with a beak on the bottom, supported by about a dozen tails.

[Carthaginian]

I'm reviewing those very shows- plus any other I can come across that have any ideas about alien creatures. I'm also drawing pretty heavily on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri... an oldie but a goodie.
If you can think of anything more, let me know.

We can start hammering out the ecology of the planet. :)

[Valles]

OK, so. Here are my thoughts:

Most land animals on Hellworld, by species count, are arthropoidalikes - insects to everyone but a really dedicated nitpicker. Flying, crawling, always stinging, often implanting eggs or living larva... mosquito netting has always been an absolute necessity of life for the human settlers, and primitive decontamination chambers - and sealed suits, like a beekeeper's - have always been in use for anyone who has to work outside.

Even with five-cycle cleaning, breath masks, and so on, Outside Men tend to die young. 'And it's go, boys, go. They'll time your every breath, and every day you're in this place you're two days nearer death.'

Those plant species that don't have poison thorns tend to scatter hyperallergenic pollen, acidic or neurotoxic sap, or infesting spores. Poisoning the native life only works when it's things like caustic industrial chemicals, that organic life can't create or handle with anything resembling safety - and those are ultimately counterproductive. Chemical warfare is more likely to involve the harnessing of biological agents than industrial production of chlorine, just because nature's bounty is so much nastier. Since people are also more used to coping with it, probably it will balance out.

The arrival of humans has been a huge boon to those species that use periodic fires as part of their life-cycles; by the modern generation, humans usually react to them like ragweed or poison ivy, rather than keeling over stone dead on contact or inhalation. Some of the insectoids have even started treating people like a commensal species rather than an intruder.

The upside is that the vast majority of plant and insect species cannot cross large amounts of open water, and have a hard time spreading long distances unassisted. Burning an entire island to black ash and baked earth will wipe out everything but the pyrophiles, which tend to be fast-growing but less aggressive in other ways. Turn the temperature up enough, and keep it there, and you can even get them. So it is possible to clear land more-or-less permanently.

Expensive, though.

'Large Game'-wise - critters large enough for humans to react to and interact with as themselves rather than 'tiny buzzing things' - venom is again common, even in herbivorous species (as a defensive measure).

I figure that, like on Earth, there are several 'classes' of large, complex life, paralleling the differences between fish, mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, though not necessarily as given to environmental classifications. What I'd like to do, though, is say that their 'separation points' are deeper than those seen on Earth - every critter I just listed has a default of four limbs, a skull, jaw, ribs, and spinal cord. I'd like to have at least two 'planform groups'.

The one I've been 'developing' in my head place their head at the bottom of the body, whose skeleton is grown in a kind of cage-shape. Twelve legs, each with nine joints, are evenly spaced around the head. Deleting joints or entire legs, or repurposing some of the ones that are kept to perform specialized tasks, are common features of individual families. Large species typically have six or eight 'pillar' legs with limited flexibility, but some 'dual-purpose' the entire array. Clawlike roles tend to be served by extended, pointed, horn-sheathed final limb segments - icepicks or mantis claws. The joint structure is, by default, less fixed than in terrestrial animals - less durable, not as strong, but more flexible as fits something evolved from a tentacle - though of course individual adaptations can often give that up. Another variance point is whether the mouth stays centered in the limb cluster, or moves to one edge, sometimes allowing the entire critter to tip onto its 'side'.

Keep in mind that the number of limbs means that you can see things with a limb for every occaision; one nasty that comes to mind is a 'jumping squid', that specializes two limbs into titanic springs, then comes flying out of the night, leading with ten giant steak knives.

...Huh. You could sell Starcraft's Ultralisks as the result of this evolutionary path. Four legs, four 'battle arms', and four vestigial/feeding arms.

Leathery egg sacs put them somewhere between reptiles and amphibians in terms of dry adaptation, which feels about right.

[Carthaginian]

breif because phone dying. Totaly new critters are hard to make up. A few would be cool, too many will delay game. I was thinking less of the air is hazardous than the critters are. Will elaborate at home.

[Valles]

For the most part - aside from the things interfering with aircraft - I don't think that the particular varieties of native life will be anything but fluff; all that's needed to know mechanically is that it's dangerous and what it costs to deal with it. We're just going on, here, to flesh things out and help 'realize' the world - like in a computer game, how it's the models that tend to matter, while we're filling in texture maps.

[Carthaginian]

Ok... back to a proper keyboard and unlimited power!!! ;)

I know that the flora and fauna are less important than the ships and the $$$, but we at least need to know what things look like- lest one player writes about killing bears, while another has mini-cthulhu crawling around eating his farmers. At least establishing some of the more common or more threatening plants and animals is a necessity... as necessary as having economic rules.
After all- a game is worthless if it has a great engine, but just wireframe models... the textures make it believable.

I do like the idea of a cephalopod-based species, and a giant arthropod/crustacean creature inhabiting coasts and swamp areas would be very believable. It would have only one real weakness- the fact that to prevent it form being too heavy to walk, it would have to have a relatively thin shell... thick enough to stop any smaller 'swarming' creatures, but too thin to keep the largest predators from punching holes in it- but there would only be a few able to do it. Having them look somewhat 'Zerg-like' would enforce their sense of being threatening.

Some of the more 'interesting' creatures are the 'killer plants.' They can be compared to plants like the sundew and venus fly trap. They are able to absorb necessary nitrates from their victims, and allow the corpses to rot near their roots to act as additional fertilize. Some are small and eat primarily insects... but a few species are large enough that they can eat creatures up to a hundred pounds or more.
Most plants reproduce by spores- too heavy to spread by the wind, and largely depending on direct contact with animals to spread them. Thus, if an area is sterilized, the area tends to stay free of native life unless roaming creatures are allowed to return... especially if the area is a island, as they are hard for creatures to return to.

My biggest focus is a mega-fauna stage; it's easier to believe that animals are a threat if they are 10x bigger than you!

[P3D]

Way back (N2verse- N3verse), I had a big-game-cartridge service rifle for Orange, with a lighter rifle/carbine introduced 1912-ish.

[Kaiser Kirk]

I've been thinking megafauna with armor combined with some small fast poisonous flying critters, thick vegetation (short sight lines), burrowing leeches, and some fungi which have aleopathic properties fatal to terran vegetation.

Thus making terraforming via flamethrower- just for standoff distance and to allow vegetation to grow, necessary.

In that environment, Shotguns for the small flying stuff- or slugs- might be useful, while a big bore rifle to penetrate and take down the big stuff might be the combo.
For that role I'm intrigued by the Gustav m/42 - a 20mm recoilless rifle with AP or HE capacity.  At 1.4m long and 11.2kg, it's portable, and with a 108g bullet at 950m/s it would take just about anything.

I'm also inclined towards some sort of infantry body armor- perhaps useless against firearms, but if the foe is something that pops out of the brush and bites you...