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Author Topic: Invasive and Verminous Civilizations  (Read 883 times)

Golbolco

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Invasive and Verminous Civilizations
« on: July 21, 2017, 01:07:54 pm »

Originally I was thinking of an idea for a mod where one could play as a verminous civilization that uses hives in another civilization's site to feed off of their crafts and whatnot. However, I don't think this is possible as a mod.

That got me thinking about vermin and how they could cause problems, both big and small, for a fortress. Recently another user posted about clothes moths and how they could cause problems in stockpiles, and I think that's a great start. Another vermin that would be interesting to have are termites, which would have a similar effect on wooden furniture and maybe even trees. I think there's already plans for that if I'm not mistaken, though. These vermin would degrade item quality slowly over time before the item disappears altogether.

What I'm really interested in is the idea that vermin could start hives within your fortress and cause issues. For example, wasps (or yellow jackets or hornets) that steal supplies like wood or paper to build a nest and then terrorize your dwarves thereafter. Fire ants would also provide an interesting terrestrial equivalent.

Or how about rats/mice that are able to turn walls into mouse holes that connect all over the fortress, stealing food and spreading disease? Parasitic vermin are also an option that could produce a lot of fun.

Circling back around to my original mod idea, I think it would be interesting to give fairies, pixies or some equivalent their own civilizations. While they may have some independent giant hive sites on the map and send out caravans, they might also form hives on your site and steal goods for their own purposes. It would be a twist on the idea of having squatters show up by your fortress and form their own homes, because the fairies might actually be able to form homes inside of your fortress and cause issues. The hives could work similarly to normal bee hives, or they might be more like the mouse hole idea I proposed where they sort of teleport vermin to where they need to go. The fairies could go to war with your civilization, and use dwarf-sized weaponry as siege weapons or simply swarm and sting/bite dwarves.

This could give rise to a new Exterminator job who tries to eradicate vermin more effectively than a cat or other verminator pet would. The Exterminator could also capture vermin and put them in terrariums/aquariums for decoration.

Toady recently mentioned dimensions in  the Future of the Fortress; because fairies are often associated with mirror worlds or hidden worlds their home sites could be located on some other plane of existence. Or the game could process their hives and other vermin hives as pocket dimensions to represent the difference in scale. Maybe a dwarf or an adventurer could somehow shrink down and enter an invasive hive. Combining this with the idea of parasitic vermin, your dwarf's very body could be entered by an exterminator to take care of a nasty tapeworm.

 Perhaps the fairies are a larval form for the larger and more dangerous fair folk, who might not be so kind when their broods have been smashed open by the dwarves and send invasions, whether through other worlds or your own. When a fairy grows to full size it would be kobold- or gremlin-like in terms of behavior, causing mischief in your fortress, but on a much larger and more lethal scale.
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Invasive and Verminous Civilizations
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2017, 03:16:08 am »

For fairness and avoiding shrinking, it would probably be the case that fairies & bogeymen to extent within their respective pocket dimensions where they actually live have their *true forms* which are normal creatures, but when they pass over into the dwarven world they appear as they do now. But that's a speculative non-intensive way it could be done, since there is issues in rendering scale differences across objects and small creatures in the dwarven world like butterfly men don't respectively have perspective differences in adventure mode.

Im not sure on the other vermin suggestions, but more vermin interactions would be nice (the trapper already fufills the role of a exterminator by catching creatures, while cats are VERY proficient at murdering vermin) such as the termites as you say dealing damage over time to wooden objects.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2017, 03:18:00 am by FantasticDorf »
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Kj2000

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Re: Invasive and Verminous Civilizations
« Reply #2 on: July 26, 2017, 01:03:31 am »

Silverfish.
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Golbolco

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Re: Invasive and Verminous Civilizations
« Reply #3 on: July 26, 2017, 01:30:32 pm »

Silverfish.
Hey, that could be cool if they take up shop in your libraries and eat books. There could be location-specific vermin that leech off of whatever is commonplace there, or crop-specific vermin (I'm sure that's been suggested already.)
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Dragonunion

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Re: Invasive and Verminous Civilizations
« Reply #4 on: July 27, 2017, 03:11:20 am »

cool idea!

There could be some other vermins from caverns and invaders could use them to destroy your fort.

But I think their will be one problem: easier fps death. The vermins would exist as many creatures that use pathfinding and work.
So it probably would give you a bit lag.
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