[B18] The Mantodean insectoid race. (Test release)

Started by Sig, February 06, 2018, 05:29:20 PM

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Sig


This is a test release, I would appreciate if you can report bugs and give feedback about balancing the race.

I'd like to thank Jamaicancastle specially, without his help I wouldn't have been able to make this mod work.
Thanks to Mehni, the insect jelly maker is now working perfectly, wouldn't have been possible without his help. Check his mods Here

Warning, read the Gameplay and Tips sections before playing the starting mantodean scenario. They don't have an usual playstyle.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
I wanted to create a race whose gameplay felt mid way between animals and regular civilized species, and so the mantodean were born.
The mantodean are sentient beings that scientists classify within the insectoid family, closely related to Megaspiders.

THEIR SOCIETY
Mantodeans gather in hives, in which the queen is the only one allowed to reproduce, and whose decisionmaking is left in the hands of a hive administrator, chosen among his/her peers due to its cunning. The hive divides its members by the role they play in their society, and everyone is expendable.

The fact that their main diet consists of raw meat, and that they don't consider hunting and eating other sentient species as something unethical, their relations with other civilizations are generally poor.

THEIR GENETICS

  • Specially adapted to live in warm climates, they quickly succumb when exposed to cold temperatures.
  • Their bite is poisonous, due to an organ called the acid gland, which produces chemicals that are sent to the fangs.
  • They are very strong, able to carry more weight than any other species, and fearsome in hand to hand combat.
GAMEPLAY

  • Their comfortable temperature range goes from +7 to +120 degrees celsius.
  • They can't wear clothes, (I'll add custom apparel for them that fits their body, and that doesn't protect from the cold, to not make them 4x4 for all temperatures)
  • They can only eat raw meat, corpses, animal products and kibble (won't get any negative thoughts from any of them). Neither will they get bad thoughts from butchering and eating humanlikes or their own species.
  • Being a hive society, they are not concerned about personal space, and so will never receive cramped space penalties nor spacious room bonuses.
  • Mantodean factions are in general hostile to other factions, but they can be befriended.
HOW TO INSTALL
Extract the .rar file and put the contents in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\RimWorld\Mods
or in your \RimWorld\Mods folder if you use the non steam version.

It requires humanoid alien races 2.0 (https://rim-world.com/humanoid-alien-races-tool/), and has to be below it in the load order.

DOWNLOAD LINKS
I recommend using the steam workshop.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1294507772

The non-workshop download link can be found at the end of the workshop's page.

COMPATIBILITY
On the steam page.

Saebbi made a compatibility patch with combat extended, thanks to him they are compatible, you can find it here: https://github.com/Saebbi/Mantodean-CE-Patch The load order should be Mantodean first (on top of the others), then combat extended, then the combat extended CE patch.

UPDATE HISTORY
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/1294507772/1700542332322148517/

Harry_Dicks

Wow! This looks really exciting! I am especially interested in the "queen and hive administrator" mechanics. Could you give us any more details on these?

Quote from: Sig on February 06, 2018, 05:29:20 PM
The hive divides its members by the role they play in their society, and everyone is expendable.

Also, what about the "roles" that pawns play? I have been thinking about how I wish there was a mod that would add a tab at the bottom, but on this new window it would allow you to assign colonists to whatever roles are designated from the mod. The ideas I had were for military rank, or a colony council, and certain positions would enable certain abilities. Anyway, how would you show what mantodean is for what job? Will this be in their name, or reflected in their stats, or something else entirely?

Sig

The roles are set through their backstories, all backstories so far are focused on specific roles and jobs, hive builder, resources gatherer, warrior, etc. The bonuses they receive for their specific abilities are in general higher than those that vanilla game uses to handle, making them better at it than for example human pawns with similar backstories. But in the end it's up to you what do you use them for.

I thought about disabling most jobs and leaving only the ones each backstory is specialized in, but I decided against it because it would restrict gameplay too much.

The two queen backstories are restricted to females, and are quite uncommon, while the administrator backstory is not.

The Queen backstory is basically a social role, giving a bonus of +12 social +8 artistic, and a chance of being super inmune, while disabling dumb labor jobs.
The exiled queen backstory is kinda the opposite, with a malus of -10 social and bonuses of +11 melee and +3 crafting, but without restrictions.
The Administrator backstory has bonuses for intellectual, crafting and social, with a high chance of being "Too smart".

Harry_Dicks

#3
Will the queen require anything special to lay eggs? Maybe for us Alien fans, you could include a "hardcore" option, so that each new egg you hatch, requires one live prisoner ;D

I think this could be really awesome with how many directions you can take this whole "cannibal/hive" style or whatever you want to call it. Especially if you could somehow get boosts for eating live, or immediately deceased corpses.

Anyway, I wanted to put these ideas out there, and you are of course under no obligation to even listen to any of it ;)

Here's what I think could be very interesting, and I have yet to see any other "race" mods built like this (and I will simply refer to the Mantodean insectoid race as "bugs" or "pawns" interchangeably from here on out, to make typing easier): Make the new pawns from your new race truly "replaceable" and it will give a whole new way to play RimWorld and style of thinking within it. To do this, I think you would have to actually ditch apparel and weapons for your race. You could maybe have a few "throw away" upgrades that you could equip (or grow them onto a pawn!) onto your pawns that are unlocked through research or whatever, but losing a pawn with any upgrades should not make the player feel like they have lost a significant investment. Especially if the idea behind them is that they are replaceable, fast growing bug people. Plus, I think the bugs look really awesome right now as is. Without apparel you are able to show off their interesting, unique bodies! And plus think about how you could easily differentiate between different classes with different textures? Plus, since these are insects, you don't necessarily have to have 5 different body sizes of clothing. Think about the time you would spend making clothes for 15 different models, you could just make a whole new worker with three textures, or a new soldier with only three textures! ;) I'm sure you would probably want some variety in there though among each class.

Let the player decide what type of pawn they will be making based on some kind of interaction with the queen and the type and/or how she lays her eggs. For example, you could have your queen focus on producing soldier pawn eggs, nurse pawn eggs, nutrition worker pawns, etc. You could have the type of eggs be determined before the queen lays them, or maybe the queen will lay generic eggs, but you could dictate the chances of what type of egg it will become based upon an incubation system and your nursing bugs' skills. Play around with different incubation and growth stage times, see what would work best for the sort of pawn replacement rates you would like to achieve. Another reason to have a fast growing time would be if you make these insects die easier, all the more reason to try and make new ones. I also think about how bugs have exoskeletons, and if it were to take significant damage, that this could mean it's not worth saving.

I'm also thinking you could have a some sort of "carapace upgrades" and maybe "pincer upgrades" or whatever actual appendages you decide to have. I was thinking that you could send some a soldier bug into an "incubation" chamber, that will make his armor stronger after "growing" on them for X amount of time. Same thing for offensive upgrades. This could also unlock their ranged attacks. Maybe they spit acid, or have a poison spine they launch using the poison from their glands. Maybe this incubation chamber could be reimagined as a cocoon or whatever is fitting. I was thinking of any physical upgrades for any of the bugs could come from spending time in one of these rooms/devices.

Another interesting idea: some bugs keep other bugs/fungus around to produce a special food/protein that they need to survive. I was thinking maybe if you could capture some live humans, if your bugs could sort of "enslave/cocoon" the humans, and use them as a sort of live processor, because some substance we produce (through some weird biological/rimworld shenanigans that the bug people can perform) and this can be a more efficient method of creating nutrition, or creating combat stimulants, or creating some special nectar that your bugs need to not be ultra violent towards each other, who knows!

Anyway, I'm sure none of that came out as clear as I was imagining it, nor did I ever manage to stop myself from going off on tangents. I also understand all of this is unsolicited advice. However, I'm just having fun fantasizing about some of the different directions you might take your mod. Hell, I don't even know if any of those are good ideas, but it can be fun to spitball :)

Sig

Thank you for the ideas, I really appreciate them, after all it's the ideas what make things move forward, I have never programmed or modded before, but I wanted a race like this and since no one had done it yet I started this.

Related to the cheap throw away upgrades, that is a very good idea, instead of bionic expensive parts, being able to grow specialized biological implants in an embryo or something (workstation) through crafting, implants that would substitute body parts and give special bonuses further than just increased performance. Using human meat to produce them or as stimulants as you propose would be an interesting idea. I think it is also possible to make some bodyparts show aditionally (or not show when missing) with the alien races framework, so it should perhaps allow the game to draw and actually see these bionic implants in their bodies.

To be honest you are right about the clothes, one of the reasons I disallowed them to wear clothes was that I wanted to see their bodies rather than a megaspider head over a parka (they would always spawn with parkas due to their low cold tolerance lol). Instead of trying to make clothes that fit them, perhaps that time would be better spent making new more detailed bodies and heads, and tying them to backstories since the alien race framework seems to allow that, so each bacsktory would have a unique body, more bulky warriors, smaller gatherers, and so on, like it happens to some degree in nature.

The eggs idea and growing them as cheap pawns would require more than just modifying .xml files, so right now it's beyond my abilities, but it's a nice idea to keep in mind for the future.

Harry_Dicks

Quote from: Sig on February 09, 2018, 06:16:16 PM
Thank you for the ideas, I really appreciate them, after all it's the ideas what make things move forward, I have never programmed or modded before, but I wanted a race like this and since no one had done it yet I started this.

Hey bud, no problem! I have spare time on my hands, so sometimes I like to just ponder about what mods I would like to have, hah. I'll be watching the development of the mod, and will periodically throw more unsolicited advice your way. You really shouldn't have encouraged me! ::) And don't worry, I know most of my ideas are terrible. But hell I'd rather throw out 10 attempts and have 9 of them be shitty ideas and one superb idea that sticks, rather than trying to polish something that's a waste of time.

Quote from: Sig on February 09, 2018, 06:16:16 PM
Related to the cheap throw away upgrades, that is a very good idea, instead of bionic expensive parts, being able to grow specialized biological implants in an embryo or something (workstation) through crafting, implants that would substitute body parts and give special bonuses further than just increased performance. Using human meat to produce them or as stimulants as you propose would be an interesting idea. I think it is also possible to make some bodyparts show aditionally (or not show when missing) with the alien races framework, so it should perhaps allow the game to draw and actually see these bionic implants in their bodies.

I was also thinking maybe you could have a new animal that the mantodeans have domesticated. This new animal produces a special sap or nectar (milkable) that your pawns have to collect, and then process at a work station. This then processed new material could act as the basis for any "carapace or body upgrades."

Quote from: Sig on February 09, 2018, 06:16:16 PM
To be honest you are right about the clothes, one of the reasons I disallowed them to wear clothes was that I wanted to see their bodies rather than a megaspider head over a parka (they would always spawn with parkas due to their low cold tolerance lol). Instead of trying to make clothes that fit them, perhaps that time would be better spent making new more detailed bodies and heads, and tying them to backstories since the alien race framework seems to allow that, so each bacsktory would have a unique body, more bulky warriors, smaller gatherers, and so on, like it happens to some degree in nature.

Yes man, yes! I don't know what your art background is, but I will be very honest with you. My very first impression on seeing your bugmen's bodies was a definite, "wow!" If that's what we can expect, I think you would be doing your mod a disservice by denying it your incredible talent ;) This is also a really great way to make your race mod actually unique and stand out! Having custom bodies/textures/background stories that are all cohesive would be absolutely perfect.

If I was firing up your mod for the first time, and I got the to pawn selection window, and every time I pressed the dice for a new mantodean it had a special body that went with the story and class? That right there will let the player know right away that what they are playing with had some real effort put into it!

Canute

#6
Hi,
- could you made add a link to the Alien framework (on forum non-steam prefered) so nonexpierence user find it faster.

- "How to install" isn't 100% accurate since it is for the steam version.

- Would be nice if you could relabel the backstory so they include "Mantodean". This is special with the use of Prepare Carefully very handy.

- The grow stuff thing would be an unique ability for them. And then you can made them all crafting disabled.
I think you can use the universal fermenter, you fill up the stuff into the barrel, wait the time and then the barrel get destroyed and leave the thing.

- Similar it could be for other stuff like wall and furniture.
Don't forget to add researches to unlock better version of the basic stuff.

Canute

#7
Some error with Pick up and haul.
You sure you defined the pawn race correct, i remember something similar with minions from Rim of Magic.

https://gist.github.com/f24de8cd9181755e6d85ba966679b781

Edit: ok forget it, latest version of that mod fixed the error.

Sig

Thank you all for your comments and ideas, I want to implement more stuff, but it will be a slow process over time.

Quote"- Would be nice if you could relabel the backstory so they include "Mantodean". This is special with the use of Prepare Carefully very handy."

Yes I noticed that in prepare carefully you can manually pick other non mantodean backstories for them, but I'm not sure if that can be avoidad or how yet, I would have to download prepare carefully and look at its files.

Harry_Dicks

As far as I can tell, there are no internal restrictions within Prepare Carefully for what pawns can have what backstories. So I don't think you will be able to change that, as it's kinda the idea behind PC, to do whatever crazy combos you want, no? Maybe I want to have my androids have an elder things backstory but they are also in an incestuous relationship and all of the child androids and their offspring. I'm glad PC will allow me to live out my genocidal robot racial supremacist roleplays :P

Harry_Dicks

I ended up making a full post about my thoughts for a playable xenomorph (Alien, Aliens) race. Thought that you might like to take a look at it, maybe adapt some of the ideas. It is a little bit of a wall, I'll say. Only because I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks. A lot of the ideas I had for that, I tried to adapt for your mantodeans as well. Anyway, of course I don't "own" any of these ideas, but thought that you might care to take a look, and see if anything would fit what you want for your mod :)

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=39028.0

Sig

Quote from: Harry_Dicks on February 11, 2018, 08:38:00 PM
I ended up making a full post about my thoughts for a playable xenomorph (Alien, Aliens) race. Thought that you might like to take a look at it, maybe adapt some of the ideas. It is a little bit of a wall, I'll say. Only because I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks. A lot of the ideas I had for that, I tried to adapt for your mantodeans as well. Anyway, of course I don't "own" any of these ideas, but thought that you might care to take a look, and see if anything would fit what you want for your mod :)

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=39028.0

Thank you, I'll take a look

DestroyX

I absolutely love your mod so far man, the one small thing i'm really missing tho is actual insect themed flooring (probably also made from jelly), for maximum hivebuilding!


Call me Arty

 Can't wait to see what you add!

Not a detailed comment, mainly leaving it so I can get updates.
Why are you focusing on having a personal life rather than updating a mod that you're not paid to work on?

If there's a mistake in my post, please message me so I can fix it!