Reinforcements

[Redmoth27]

I was thinking that you could send a worker to the mother colony were your queen comes from to request more soldiers. 4-12 at least. They will respawn, tell me what you think.

 

[MikeSlugDisco]

This doesn't fit in with the story we have (the supercolony is way, waaaay over the other side of the island, like tens of miles away) but talking of reinforcements - certain kinds of ants will be "castable" in a way. So you'll build carpenter ant chambers, and when you decide you want to use them, "cast" them and they'll all appear at once, roll out to where you want them, and explode on the enemy!

 

[Redmoth27]

Amazing, I hope the explosions are well done.

 

[MikeSlugDisco]

You can see what they looked like in our old engine in the video for our very first Kickstarter back in 2015:

https://youtu.be/kVXK48eVdUk?t=103

I don't know what Matt has in mind but it'll be something similar but better, given UE4's very pretty shaders and particles!

 

[Planemaster]

So I'm assuming carpenter ants don't explode in real life? Right? ...

 

[MikeSlugDisco]

....they actually do. I know it sounds crazy, but it's a thing that happens. We didn't make it up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_saundersi

Workers can explode suicidally and aggressively as an ultimate act of defense

... and people wonder why we chose ants as the subject for our game.

 

[Planemaster]

....they actually do. I know it sounds crazy, but it's a thing that happens. We didn't make it up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_saundersi

Workers can explode suicidally and aggressively as an ultimate act of defense

... and people wonder why we chose ants as the subject for our game.

Well, you learn something new everyday.

 

[Serafine]

There is ONE species of Carpenter ants that can explode. All the others can't, however they can produce really huge supermajor workers which are extremely efficient at killing other invertebrates.