Screenshot Saturday - Fire Ant Soldiers

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
An army of fire ant workers and soldiers face off against wood ants in this week's Screenshot Saturday! Fire ant soldiers are much bigger than the workers, but still barely the size of a wood ant. Note: fire and wood ants won't be meeting in the campaign (but might in freeplay), this is for size comparison only!

Fire ants exhibit polymorphism insofar as there are definitely different sizes of workers, but there's significant debate amongst entomologists over the idea of distinct castes within fire ant colonies (as is clearly the case with, for example, leafcutters). For gameplay purposes, we're taking the approach of having smaller workers and bigger soldiers in a similar way to black ants and wood ants. As with those species the workers will dig and attend to the brood, whilst the soldiers will specialise in fighting and not perform those nest roles.


WoodAntsVsSolenopsis_Compressed.jpg
 

Raptorr575

Worker
They are beautiful, you can even see the sting (I like this kind of details)

I have a question for those of you who know these ants well :
What kind of ants can pose a threat to fire ants ?
 

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
What kind of ants can pose a threat to fire ants ?
Fire ants have slow hitting, high damage over time against a single target. So I am guessing something with high numbers of expendable ants can easily swarm them? (Army ant media for example.)
 

Raptorr575

Worker
Fire ants have slow hitting, high damage over time against a single target. So I am guessing something with high numbers of expendable ants can easily swarm them? (Army ant media for example.)
In this case the victory will be determined by the number of ants x).
 

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Don't hate just because they moisturise.
It is just human instincts to be attracted to things that are shiney. I think it has to do with the human ability to find water back before civilatzation? Water deflects light, causing sparkling. Being attracted to sparkling generally means being attracted to water.
All I am saying is, I like how they are shiney!
 

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Sounds great! Are there going to be side affects after the enemies have been stung?
Fire ants, as they were show last dev stream, use a sting attack and bite attacks. The sting inflicts poison effect and is the fire ant's main source of damage output. Their bite attack is relatively weak, maybe comparable to the wood ant melee bite attack?
 
An army of fire ant workers and soldiers face off against wood ants in this week's Screenshot Saturday! Fire ant soldiers are much bigger than the workers, but still barely the size of a wood ant. Note: fire and wood ants won't be meeting in the campaign (but might in freeplay), this is for size comparison only!

Fire ants exhibit polymorphism insofar as there are definitely different sizes of workers, but there's significant debate amongst entomologists over the idea of distinct castes within fire ant colonies (as is clearly the case with, for example, leafcutters). For gameplay purposes, we're taking the approach of having smaller workers and bigger soldiers in a similar way to black ants and wood ants. As with those species the workers will dig and attend to the brood, whilst the soldiers will specialise in fighting and not perform those nest roles.


View attachment 1058
But fire ants have huge majors right? Or are those biggest fire ants the majors?
 

MikeSlugDisco

Community Manager
Staff member
Community Manager
But fire ants have huge majors right? Or are those biggest fire ants the majors?

Again, there's debate on this point amongst people who study ants. It doesn't strictly make sense to call them "majors" in the way leafcutters have majors, as leafcutters have very clearly defined body morphologies. In nature, fire ants have a range of different sizes, none of them distinct. For EotU, we will simply call the larger ones "soldiers".
 
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