Screenshot Saturday - Titan Climbing

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
I wonder how titan climbing and attacking is going to work for wood ant mortars. Will they avoid climbing? Will they only climb if there are no wood ant melee around?
 

Raptorr575

Worker
I wonder how titan climbing and attacking is going to work for wood ant mortars. Will they avoid climbing? Will they only climb if there are no wood ant melee around?
I think they'll avoid climbing, I don't see how an ant attacking from distance can have an advantage by climbing on an enemy.
 

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
I don't see how an ant attacking from distance can have an advantage by climbing on an enemy.
If I remember correctly, the titan will receive more damage from attacks when some ants are mounting it. (Said during dev-stream.) Meaning having some wood ant ranged on it can cause other wood ant ranged to deal more damage?
 

Buffalo981

Queen
Extremely Helpful Person
If I remember correctly, the titan will receive more damage from attacks when some ants are mounting it. (Said during dev-stream.) Meaning having some wood ant ranged on it can cause other wood ant ranged to deal more damage?
And hopefully having certain ants climb up on the titan will give different effects. So that workers on the titan won't be as good as having soldiers on the titan. Maybe if shooting wood ants are on the titan, it will be more vulnerable to venom damage, while if there are melee ants on the titan, it will be more vulnerable to physical damage? This would also probably require a third toggle in each pheromone group to prevent/allow titan climbing.
 

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
If I look closely at the end of the video, I can see the ants cannot yet dismount the titan creature. (Ants wait at the bottom of the legs)
 

pakitane16

Colony
I wonder how these titans interact with ants' abilities while the ants are onboard. Will trapjaw ants just jump off the titans if they reach their withrawal HP? Will the titans be confused if leafcutter ants activate their taunt?
 

TheRexYo

Queen
I wonder how these titans interact with ants' abilities while the ants are onboard. Will trapjaw ants just jump off the titans if they reach their withrawal HP? Will the titans be confused if leafcutter ants activate their taunt?
Because of how the AI works, I don't think the ants will activate their abilities while climbing. So the only abilities that would affect it would be passive ones like "Sharp" and "Resilient".

Of course, this is just a theory. I don't have the game's source code, so I can't really say for sure.
 

TheRexYo

Queen
And hopefully having certain ants climb up on the titan will give different effects. So that workers on the titan won't be as good as having soldiers on the titan. Maybe if shooting wood ants are on the titan, it will be more vulnerable to venom damage, while if there are melee ants on the titan, it will be more vulnerable to physical damage? This would also probably require a third toggle in each pheromone group to prevent/allow titan climbing.
Actually, the climbing function gives expendable workers a niche combat role. Perhaps you can stack more ants of the worker types, but their effects are much weaker? (Means you'd need to spend the same amount of food to get the same effect for workers as you do soldiers.)
 

JohnSlugDisco

Administrator
Staff member
Developer of EotU
So adding to the discussion here. We came up with an outline for the mechanic after long discussions about it. Lets check the notes from that meeting:

OK so there were a few decisions made:
  • There will be a new toggle added (next to the prevent gather and prevent combat toggles for groups) which will allow or prevent ants in that group to climb other creatures
  • A ratio of combat in combat ants can climb the creature (up to some maximum) so for example if the ratio was 50% (yet to be decided) then if 10 ants were attacking a climbable creature 5 would be allowed to climb it. As ants on the ground are killed and the ratio of combat ants changes some ants fall off so the creature always has something to attack
  • % of climbable slots full on the creature provides a damage increase debuff, however there is a time investment when climbing so you will have to decide if it is worth it (i think in general the longer the creature will take to kill the more worth it climbing is going to be)
  • Climbing points will also act as a harvesting system as well, so ants will climb creatures to harvest them.
We also plan to retrofit this onto several bigger old creatures (I think anything the size of or bigger than a tiger beetle is planned to get it, though there will only be a small amount of ants able to climb those.

Regarding the discussion around ability use whilst climbing. I don't think it makes sense for any ability to be used whilst climbing. I have added an ability type that is specifically to be used when climbing and one of the fire ant upgrades is this (increased damage when riding a creature) otherwise I think it will just do a basic attack. As you can control which groups can climb my feeling with wood ants is you wont want them to climb so you would put them in a group with climbing switched off. That said a bigger enemy may benefit from the debuff so maybe a few climbing will boost the damage enough to make it worth it. Lots of balance to be done in this area and discussions like this are really useful for thinking about situations we have yet to consider!
 

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
% of climbable slots full on the creature provides a damage increase debuff, however there is a time investment when climbing so you will have to decide if it is worth it (i think in general the longer the creature will take to kill the more worth it climbing is going to be)
I wonder, have you thought about different ants causing different debuffs? For example: wood ant ranged that are mounted would cause the titan to get some debuff similar to "weakening" (lowered venom resistance).
 
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