Screen Shot Saturday - Tiny Minims

[MikeSlugDisco]

The smallest members of Leaf Cutter society - the minims - are positively dwarfed by their mother (the queen). These tiny ants rarely, if ever, leave the nest - instead they work tirelessly to tend to the fungus gardens the Leaf Cutters rely upon to survive.

 

[Mr_Ced]

Kind of cute. Ha ha, I think ants are cute, I am officially an ant nerd.

 

[Gagglesworth]

So... I'm assuming it requires a unique hatchery? And looking at the size of it, and purpose, I would assume there is little to no benefit from sending them out to the surface to do what workers usually do.

If I were to take a wild guess on how they farm, I would say that they occupy a tile of fungus and work on it for a period of time. After a while, they would harvest the fungus and put in in the food storage tile.

Or, more likely, the fungus farms ARE the food storage tiles, and the workers place the insect flesh on the tiles for it to decompose, with the help of the minums. I'd assume that upgrading the fungus tiles will allow more insect flesh to decompose on that tile, making more food.

Is there a chance that fungus will be an entirely new food system in formicarium mode? Leafcutter ants only eat fungus, after all.

 

[Mr_Ced]

Leafcutter ants only harvest a certain type of leaf to feed their fungus. The tiny ants are there to cut up the leaves and feed the fungus.

 

[Gagglesworth]

That makes sense. But what will they do with the dead insects?

 

[Mr_Ced]

They could drag the corpses away to a trash pile, where they would keep other unusable items. Like food scraps, dead ant bodies, and pupae shells.

 

[Gagglesworth]

What about in an in-game sense? Maybe the insect bodies will just despawn, or maybe the devs plan to implement rogue fungus, so there will a certain amount of time until the fungus outbreak that will wreak havoc to the nest, and there will be an option to move insect bodies.

 

[Rayalot72]

I assume this is going to be our worker unit? Can't wait to see how this turns out.

 

[Raptorofwar]

How would Leafcutter ants mesh with Ereptors? Can one make fungus gardens in the Formicarium? More importantly, would it do anything?

 

[MikeSlugDisco]

I assume this is going to be our worker unit? Can't wait to see how this turns out.

Not quite - in fact minims are so tiny that they'll be pretty much ignored by enemies, and not even really controllable by the player. The next caste up - the minors - will take on the role that the workers do in the current two species.

How would Leafcutter ants mesh with Ereptors? Can one make fungus gardens in the Formicarium? More importantly, would it do anything?

Formica ereptor ants only absorb the forms of their enemies, not all of their biology. The ereptors will be able to add the leaf cutter majors to their ranks - but they are just in the shape of leaf cutters; they're actually still Formica ereptor in species. This means the leaf cutter majors will be big, tanky units with a taunt ability, but they'll collect and eat seeds and meat like all the other Formica ereptor-absorbed species.

Playing a game as solely the original species - Atta cephalotes - will of course be different.

 

[Mr_Ced]

One could argrue that since they absorb species and what they do. They could get a hold of a few minims, and could possibly make a garden, with a few outbreaks of course since they do not really know much about it. I do not really care if we get gardens, I just thought about it for a bit and came up with this.

 

[Buffalo981]

So minims are just aesthetic...? Yes, they have an important role in growing the fungus but they are completely uncontrollable and their job in the game is to make the growing of fungus more realistic looking? If that's true, I'm still happy we have them to look at, it'll make the colony seem more alive.

 

[MikeSlugDisco]

So minims are just aesthetic...? Yes, they have an important role in growing the fungus but they are completely uncontrollable and their job in the game is to make the growing of fungus more realistic looking? If that's true, I'm still happy we have them to look at, it'll make the colony seem more alive.

They certainly will make the place feel more alive, but they still have tasks to do - it's them that will be the final stage in the production line to get the harvested leaves turned into fungus. Their numbers are tied to the number of nursery chambers and their inhabitants.

 

[Rayalot72]

So minims are just aesthetic...? Yes, they have an important role in growing the fungus but they are completely uncontrollable and their job in the game is to make the growing of fungus more realistic looking? If that's true, I'm still happy we have them to look at, it'll make the colony seem more alive.

They certainly will make the place feel more alive, but they still have tasks to do - it's them that will be the final stage in the production line to get the harvested leaves turned into fungus. Their numbers are tied to the number of nursery chambers and their inhabitants.

Interesting. Can they be killed? I also assume we can't put them in pheromones.