[1.2] Infectious Creatures

[PleccyMM]

Infectious Creatures

If you have any ideas on how to balance the mod please leave a comment and let me know

Download

1.2/1.1/1.0/B19/A18 Downloads

You can download it from Dropbox here!

Or on Steam

Don't like the changes to bugs but do like the snakes? Try the lite version: 1.2/1.1/1.0

You can download it from Dropbox here!

Or on Steam

Introduction

Tl;dr This mod adds venom to snakes and giant insects as well as adding in 2 more snakes. This venom must be cured using antivenoms not using normal medicine.

Did you know that cobras give some form of venom to colonists when they bite them? No? That's not surprising as until I started making this mod I had no idea either.

In the base game I felt that venom was under represented - cobras do give small amounts of toxic build-up, but like I said I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't know this. Infectious creatures changes all of this making snakes, insects and rats all function slightly differently...

Changes and additions

Here are the changes and additions that this mod implements:

Firstly cobras now inflict snake venom when biting people or animals. This is at first harmless up until too much venom enters the body through multiple bites, which will cause venom poisoning to be given to the target pawn. Venom poisoning will to begin with cause some breathing and consciousness problems but soon will escalate to huge breathing and consciousness problems and the pawn will collapse. After around 4 days the pawn will die.

Medicine can't be used to cure the afflicted, instead either a snake venom antivenom or snake venom healing vapours must be taken to remove the poison. These are crafted through the use of snake venom viles, which can be extracted from tamed snakes or removed from venom glands - obtained by butchering snake corpses. Then tribals can mix it with agave fruit to make the healing vapours whilst more advanced colonies can mix neutroamine with it in a drug lab to make the antivenom. To use either of these you can tell colonists to take it manually or go into the operations tab of animals or humans and tell it to be administered.

Secondly there are now two more snakes:

• Adders
  
• Black Desert Cobras

Adders spawn in temperate biomes whilst black desert cobras spawn in warmer dry regions. Both new species can have venom extracted from them and inflict snake venom when they bite pawns.

Thirdly rats. Rats can now give the plague to those they bite. Like everything else they have a higher likely hood of inflicting the plague if they have bitten someone multiple times.

Number four we have swamp fever! Swamp fever works mostly like the flu however will only appear in swamps. Flu has been completely removed from swamps to help with balancing and taking penoxycyline will stop it from occuring.

Fifth cobras now spawn more regularly. Their rate of spawning has been upped and they can also spawn in packs up to 3 to make encounters with these wriggly little fellas slightly more common.

And finally at number six we have giant killer insects. Megascarabs, spelopedes and megaspiders all now have associated venoms:

• Megascarabs inflict megascarab venom which causes a small penalty towards moving and manipulation
  
• Spelopedes inflict spelopede venom which causes similar effects to that of megascarab venom however slightly more severe and can cause spelopede sickness if too much venom enters the body. Spelopede sickness is similar to that of an infection, but just a bit easier to fight.
  
• Megaspiders inflict megaspider venom, if large amounts of venom have enter the body the target pawn will gain paralysis which will cause the pawn to instantly collapse. It can be cured by using a megaspider antivenom before they die from the venom.

The antivenom required to cure paralysis can be acquired through researching how to synthesize snake venom into megaspider venom and then crafting this with neutroamine and psychoid leaves. Colonies that have done even more research might learn of a way to butcher megaspider corpses to get venom glands. There is currently no easy way for tribals to acquire this cure and as such they must trade for it.



Compatibility Issues

• Venom doesn't work with this mod
  
• Most mods that don't affect the cobra's mouth should work fine
  
• This can be added to existing save files but shouldn't be removed unless you're certain that all snakes, health conditions and items added by this mod as well as cobras and rats are not present on the map.
  

Enjoy the mod!



Patches

July 4^th 2018: Fixed several spelling errors and renamed 'antibody' to 'antivenom'

August 24^th 2018: Fixed spelling error in the mods name and fixed spelling of vile to vial.

September 7^th 2018: Updated to B19.

August 4^th 2020: Remembered that I had a Ludeon Forums mod page and updated to 1.2 & 1.1, sorry for the delay



Licensing

Do whatever you want really, as long as it's not illegal or just straight reuploading the mod - that is

[Krolon]

sucking out venom is a myth, it wouldn't help anyone

[PleccyMM]

sucking out venom is a myth, it wouldn't help anyone

Thanks for letting me know, I'll look at replacing this feature with a more realistic one for the 1.0 release of the mod. Thank you - PleccyMM

[Call me Arty]

 I like what you're doing here! Makes the nope ropes more of a threat.

One concern, though. The bugs. I think you should follow scorpion law on those. Megaspiders are already one of the most vicious critters in the game, so making them even more vicious is a tad unnecessary. Scorpions who have pincers big enough to defend themselves from their predators and crush their prey don't really need venom potent enough to kill a human. It's why boa constrictors don't have venom, you dig? When something's deadly enough from pure strength, they don't need tricks. At the same time, I don't think megascarabs should be able to paralyze pawns either. I could see them getting some pretty rough toxins, but nothing crazy. You've made some custom critter based off of the snakes, so I don't think - say - a Megascorpion would be too much of a stretch. Although I am a lore nerd for Fallout and Rimworld exclusively. Since the Megabugs were made to combat mechanoids, it wouldn't make too much sense for them to exist, 'cuz robots don't care about poison. Maybe they existed to put-down trespassers or prey without putting a dent in the big guys, like how you wouldn't send-out an entire tank for one person.

[PleccyMM]

Megaspiders are already one of the most vicious critters in the game, so making them even more vicious is a tad unnecessary.

Hi Arty, regarding megaspiders I understand what you're saying, they're big so they would have no need to evolve venom as they can already hunt prey easily enough and you feel as if this might offset the balance of the game. The venom they inflict however doesn't actually cause any problems to pawns until paralysis kicks, which can take a while. This means that the venom from megaspiders only causes problems after the fight and will rarely impact on the initial fight. With the testing I've done I feel as if the megaspider's venom is fairly balanced and doesn't tend to change the out come of a fight between colonists and insects, it's the spelopedes and their slow down that tends to cause the most damage; of course if people say that the paralysis is overpowered then I'd definitely look at nerfing it in some way, and possibly look at adding megascorpions if a problem persisted, but at the time being I think it should be fine. Thank you for the feedback though, this really got me thinking about how I handle venom in insects, and if you have anymore ideas I'd love to hear them - PleccyMM

[Call me Arty]

If I come-up with something new, I'll letcha know.

[Naji]

Would you also update the download link, because when selected from the mod list it shows for version 0.18.etc.