A true Insect race mod

Started by KingdomCody, September 08, 2018, 02:39:53 AM

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KingdomCody

This is an idea I've had for awhile but I'm hopeless with programming, I've heard that this forum is rather helpful in this regard, although I don't know if having zero capabilities would put a bit of a damper on things. So if you want to help, go ahead. If you want to take this and make something yourself, go right on ahead. Anyways here's the idea:

let's get a master list down.
-Colonist = Direct player controlled pawn.
-Pet = Indirect player controlled pawn.
-Placement = furniture/workshop/wall/etc
-item = ...item.
-? = subject to change (as of the moment)
(any further ideas for the list are welcome)

anyways. This race will consist of one colonist and many pets. The name of the species is still being brainstormed

Queen 'Colonist': The queen is the 'colonist' of the entire race, doesn't care about being underground or eating raw food or what food it is (insect meat and humanoid meat don't bother her) and neither is being nude (her carapace will be all she needs for defense) nor weapons. The queen can lay eggs in an assortment of nests and they can hatch into various pets for the rest of her needs. Also the Queen is the only one that can tame feral insects (the ones with the hives) if the queen dies at any point the insects under her control will go mad and kill each other or go into a daze, what few are unaffected will try to elevate a random egg into the next queen and bring order to the chaos using royal jelly (note: Not just one egg will be picked for elevation, if there are two queens ruling the same colony they will get a massive mood penalty and will always get the berserk breakdown with the target of each other until only one remains)

Nest 'Placement': The nest itself is a 1x1 workshop(?), there are different types of nests (Worker, Warrior, Spitter, Scarab, worm) and they are the core of the module nesting ground. You read that right, module. Only one nest can be part of any module at a given time.

Egg Sac 'Placement': The Egg Sac is a required module of the nest, minimum of one and max of eight, each giving a stacking efficiency bonus of 12.5. Can only be attached to one nest at a time, and act as storage and incubator for eggs. The Egg Sac varies as much as the nest does and can only hold eggs of the correct type (a Spitter sac can't be attached to a worker nest nor hold it's eggs), Egg Sacs are also the only stockpile that can hold fertile eggs. Note: If an egg needs to be moved, Workers can move the eggs for you.

Nest Wall 'Placement': The Nest Wall is a wall that can be placed next to any placement and provides a defensive buff to adjacent (any of the eight directions) Placements and the same efficiency bonus as the Egg Sac.

Nest Tunnel 'Placement': Like a Nest wall, but passable only by smaller insects like Scabs and workers, and provides only half of the defensive bonus as nest walls.

Acid Pit 'Placement': A 3x3 'stockpile' that converts plant-matter and meat stored on it and turns them into insect jelly, The higher the efficiency the faster the conversion (Think Pemmican). The Acid Pit can also break down corpses directly into the insect jelly (not as much) and into genetic material for mutations or stronger nest placement materials.

Nursery 'Placement': a 1x1 structure much like the vanilla hive only instead of spewing out insects or jelly or glowpods, it spits out larva for incubation (The Queen needs to put eggs in the nursery first) at the other nests. Note: only the queen can put eggs into the nursery, but either the queen or scarabs can put food into the nursery to ensure it produces and keeps the larva alive.

Royal Acid Pit 'Placement': a 2x2 acid pit, but it doesn't make insect jelly, instead it takes Luciferium and insect jelly to create a royal embryo to hatch a new queen in the case that the first one is dead or needs to be replaced. Note: Using royal jelly converts the nursery into a royal Egg Sac.

Royal Egg sac 'placement': a conversion of the nursery for a queen that lies dormant awaiting external influences to awaken, a dormant queen will take charge over the entire hive should the current one die, keeping the insects in check, but until hatched all other orders will be ignored.

Glow Pod 'Placement': Same as vanilla, but bigger(?) 2x2 and 3x3 variants can be made to act as Sunlamps with larger radius's.

Worker 'Pet': A small insect only capable of dumb labor (not Rimworld's interpretation of dumb labor) Construction, plant work, mining, hauling(75), melee, Stone Cutting. One special feature of the worker is the ability to feed others of this insect species, much like ants in real life they have a second stomach just for storage, they can regurgitate to feed other insects (disgusted yet?) eliminating the need for all of them to constantly have food. This task is called 'feeding', Workers prioritize feeding scarabs last

Warrior 'pet': A large insect who's sole purpose is to fight for the hive, only capable of melee and hauling but they do the most damage (besides the queen) and has the most health (again, besides the queen) of the entire species. However they're slow, but also can carry double the amount of a normal human (150 as opposed to 75), if a threat is detected they rush to the action, regardless of what they were doing.

Scarab 'pet': A tiny insect that's meant to keep the hive cleaned and keep the larva fed, they can also feed but prioritize larva, scarabs then the rest of the hive in that order. Scarabs are capable(?) of Plant cutting, cleaning, hauling(37.5)

Spitters(?) 'pet': A ranged variant of the warrior, a lot smaller (not small enough to fit into tunnels(?)) but aren't nearly as tanky or able to haul as much(50(?)) but just as deadly as acid can eat away at flesh like nothing, armored foes negate more acid than any other attack (as long as it's not cloth, which gets destroyed by the acid)

Worm 'placement/pet': Worms are a bit strange, they're immobile but are able to spit stronger acid than spitters and can hit as hard warriors in close quarters, but aren't capable of anything. When they aren't drafted they are eating from workers/scarabs or are asleep to reduce the food they use , automatically falling asleep again once their food gets low enough unless they're taking damage at melee. There can only be one worm per egg sac (converts the placement into the worm) as they kill each other for the territory. They have a bit less range(?) than the vanilla turrets but have more armor pierce than the spitters (spike projectiles coated in acid)

The main gameplay aspect is that everything is replaceable and meant to be easier to replace than to recover. Your queen is too damaged to fight? hatch a new one and pray that the fight goes the way you want, worm too damaged to do anything? Kill it with your queen and turn it's meat into jelly. Insects aren't as durable as genetically altered bionic super soldiers but they're meant to stick around, either stomp out every royal egg or risk them coming back as if nothing happened. Tenacious despite a raid's best effort to snuff you out. If they don't send enough firepower they might not get through your front door, or even get to your last royal egg sac (best to sacrifice a queen to protect those as they're guaranteed recovery with enough time) Any suggestions are welcome, I've wanted to see an insect race like this but nobody's ever really thought to embrace the true aspects of insects like this, maybe it's too hard to program or nobody thought it could be possible.

Some thoughts on some features:
Hive tab: Cycle through the health and work priorities of the different insect types (outside of the queen, and assigned as a group together (all workers are set to plant cutting 1, construction 4, etc)

I can't think of anything else off of the top of my head, have a suggestion or want to help make this happen? let me know!

Anastasia

looks cool, hope it's possible.
"Your ethics and philosophies mean nothing to me, all i ask is that you give me a solution that works."

KingdomCody

Same here, I've seen a few 'insect' races but none of them embrace the quantity over quality of real insects.

Daïkï97427

I looked for a mod like that.. When it was B18 xD