Let insects capture colonists

[MeowRailroad]

"Hey, have you seen John lately?"
"The last time I saw him he was walking into the mine - hey, wait a minute."

[FisherEx]

Earlier I thought about insects go hunting outside to bring more food to the hive. Cause it is sometimes beneficial to coexist with them. I had a relatively small colony in the mountain with really vast mineshafts in all directions, bugs have spawned in one of these shafts with no direct menace to my colony. So I made a wall and a traps in the shaft and waited. Bugs started to multiply uncontrollably and so droping framerate significantly, but no direct damage to my colony. Their hives just spawned jelly out of nowhere, so the bugs dont starve. The only things they did is expanding living space until roof collapse over and over on their heads, crushing tens of them. This was pathetic until they found a way outside. Raiders tried to find their way into colony through the hive - nice fight, bad luck (it was funny to watch). Sometimes my allies came by to commit suicide by the bugs (another thing that needs fixing). A lot of corpses and loot were lying around and bugs didn't touch them until they dessicated completely. Jelly just spawns and bugs are attached to their hives and just multiplying without any reason.

Right now we have three types of bugs - scarabs, spelopedes and megaspiders. First one are clearly workers, it is their job to expand living space and maintain the hives. Spelopedes should be some kind of hunters to bring back food, so jelly will not appear out of nowhere. Megaspiders could be soldiers who will defend their hive and attack humans, animals and apparently mechanoids. The interesting thing in this concept is that bugs should leave their hive to bring food, exhausting ecosystem and posing threat to your colonists. The more bugs, the hungrier they are - more threat. Also, it would be great if large packs of bugs will leave the map to hunt/expand(saves framerate and also can be used inversely when bugs come from map edge to raid/build hive somewhere).

[picollo]

I like your conception FIsherEx, however I have one problem with bugss gathering food outside. They should mostly eat meat to be dangerous for colony. However if we follow this idea on some maps (desert ones or ice ones) they won't find any food, and will probably starve really quickly, unless they lead full asslaut to our colony.

[night777]

This is nice, it prevents hives from spawning and insta killing colonists. Colonists are too valuable, its really crap when something unstoppable pops up and kills your 20 skill constructor right as you were preparing to make your upgraded quarters. Same for any pawn, you typically can't afford more than one high-skill in each important area (construct, art, craft..) and to have them instakilled basically sucks.

[FisherEx]

I like your conception FIsherEx, however I have one problem with bugss gathering food outside. They should mostly eat meat to be dangerous for colony. However if we follow this idea on some maps (desert ones or ice ones) they won't find any food, and will probably starve really quickly, unless they lead full asslaut to our colony.

Not only meat, they could damage crops, gather wild berries and agava, maybe even dessicated bones. It would be nice if bugs acted as artificial insect society and not as nonsenical thing which spawns on empty place instantly to ruin your day.

Also, imagine a scarab which spawned on your map edge without warning, just like any other animal and built a hive. Hive started to expand and when you notice, it will be bigger. Hives in the open are interisting, but insects lack the ability to build walls to hide from plain sight and megaspiders are not so fast to catch up with your pawns.

[Blastoderm]

Hives could be used for farming insect jellies and other matireials, like chitin or stuff but for me it's mostly frustrating that infestations now serve as a cheap discouragement for mountain bases. Like, a reason to force players to build open bases, like Tynan wanted. IMO that's fundamentally wrong, but as we already have infestation mechanics it could be remade into something less arbitrary and more deep, which will add player an agenda.

[Blastoderm]

With new fuel resource insects could also be a source of biofuel. maybe add some bug that will produce it so "farming" hives would be beneficial, yet very dangerous.