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[brolol.404]

I am planning on adding braconid wasps as another parasitoid. Their attack will have a chance to convert the inflicted with a transformation into a braconid wasp with opposed to life.

The following vermin have been added:

arrow worm (fish)
flat worm
fluke worm
hook worm
microbe (hivable soap) created by logariter
pinworm
roundworm
whipworm

Would it be too strong of a gameplay mechanic for a vermin bite to inflict death on a creature? I am considering making hairworms (and potentially some of the other parasitoid vermin) able to kill or transform creatures (as a way to take over the host). Thoughts on this? I could make hairworms creatures instead of vermin.

hairworm

[Enemy post]

A vermin bite causing death will definitely be an issue. Vermin are everywhere. From the player's perspective, their bugs will just randomly die for no reason, and even if they figure out the cause they won't be able to do anything about it. I remember that the Borechanced succession fort had similar issues.

[brolol.404]

A vermin bite causing death will definitely be an issue. Vermin are everywhere. From the player's perspective, their bugs will just randomly die for no reason, and even if they figure out the cause they won't be able to do anything about it. I remember that the Borechanced succession fort had similar issues.

I was thinking of giving the vermin VERMIN_ROTTER so they would only spawn near rotting food and some pets HUNTS_VERMIN so you could keep some around some vermin hunting pets, but you are probably right. I should just make the parasitoids creatures instead of vermin.

[Meph]

I had (almost) instakills bite vermin (facehuggers that put eggs in dwarves, turning them into timebombs spawning monsters in your fort later on), but giving players time to isolate the dwarves, restricting the vermin to depth 3:3, and giving an interaction through a workshop to stop the dwarf from dying.

Whenever you add an unfair new threat, you also need to offer a new solution the player can use.

[delphonso]

Don't vermin teleport around the map? Food may generate them, but I think they can pass through walls and such after that point. As a player, I wouldn't like that - especially with the military supply bug that causes dwarves to throw food into their bedrooms, causing rot.

[brolol.404]

Good points. I'll just make all of the parasitoids actual creatures.

Has anyone had a chance to test out the beta mod files?

[Enemy post]

Sorry, I haven't really got around to playing Dwarf Fortress at all for the past few days.

[brolol.404]

Sorry, I haven't really got around to playing Dwarf Fortress at all for the past few days.

No worries. I understand that. I will hopefully get a chance to do some testing this weekend.

[brolol.404]

Well I got a chance to extensively test this and although adventure mode and the arena are fun, fundamentally the mod does not play well in fortress mode. The rapid growth of insects and brutal combat are really what makes mod fun, but the slow pacing and wild animal cap of DF makes this mod a chore at times.

So, in order to make this mod more enjoyable, I would either have to incorporate dfhack (increase game speed, spawn more wild animals, force sieges, etc.) to add more action and speed up the gameplay. Or I could just take these creatures and add them to vanilla DF as giant insects. I will have to think on it. While I dont think there would be too much work to do in dfhack, I would have to find the motivation to go in there and do it lol

[Enemy post]

What exactly is the issue with the wild animal cap? If extinction is the issue, you could boost animal numbers with the population tokens.

[brolol.404]

What exactly is the issue with the wild animal cap? If extinction is the issue, you could boost animal numbers with the population tokens.

The problem I have encountered is that there are a lot of flying bugs (bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, dragonflies, flys, etc.) and a lot of bugs cluster together, so you may get six honey bees show up at the beginning of the game and are not able to interact with them or see any other bugs for a few years. Once they leave, another five or six of another flying bugs can show up, preventing any other bugs from spawning. The other issue is having such a rare queen caste. Without the ability to breed, you are restricted to migrant waves, so you find yourself sitting around waiting for more ants to show up unable to really fight anything.

I would like the mod to be a fast paced game with hordes of insects rapidly multiplying and dying. They are stress hardened and physically built for combat. Most bugs are predatory, territorial and constantly push their civ boundaries. I would like the gameplay to be brutal and fast paced, with a constant churn of ants (rather than the traditional RP nature of DF).

I could make flying insects very rare and only show up as single units, but even so there are so many of them, when they do show up, they take up a wild animal slot. Or I could give all flying insects predator or opposed to life tags to get them out of the air, but this isn't very realistic with things like bumblebees.

I can also make the queen caste less rare, but then each site would have multiple queens. I could try to get around this by having the ant queen be defined as a position, but non queen positions will still give birth if they are of the queen caste.

I can also try to make entities constantly go to war and lower the attack triggers, but this is not consistent or reliable.

Overall I was just hoping for a more fast paced/brutal game play that had rapid territorial expansion, quick and large birth litters and a constant threat of other bugs, but instead the mod is slow and uneventful for years. I will need to think of some ways to make the mod more eventful/brutal and faced paced (but I was hoping to avoid dfhack lol)

[Enemy post]

If you don't mind not having a queen, you could use an ant species that has gamergates. That should allow for easier breeding, though you'll probably want to change the name.

You could also disable flying on at least your sentient insects. It's unrealistic, but it'll fix the pathfinding issues.

[brolol.404]

If you don't mind not having a queen, you could use an ant species that has gamergates. That should allow for easier breeding, though you'll probably want to change the name.

You could also disable flying on at least your sentient insects. It's unrealistic, but it'll fix the pathfinding issues.

Very interesting. It looks like the "sugar ant" has gamergates. I will switch the main race from blank ants to sugar ants (though black ants will still be playable). It looks like the additional reproductive females are also called queens in sugar ant colonies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banded_sugar_ant

I think I will just disable flying on everything but megabeasts and semimegabeasts for now, remove cluster sizes from creatures and make non hostile creatures really rare.

I can add flier back to the adventure mode versions of the creatures.

Thanks!

[Enemy post]

You're welcome!

I had one suggestion, though. You may want to try leaving clusters after removing flier. Single opponents tend to be weak, especially in Adventure mode.

Without the flying issue, they may leave sooner without player interference.

[delphonso]

That is a crazy synchronicity - gamergates and GamerGate.

Personally, wherever possible, I'd prefer to keep mods off DFHack unless totally necessary.

You may also consider dropping almost all insects to single wanderers - if I'm getting the scale right, that makes some sense, and might offer a more chaotic smattering of opponents/allies in fort mode.