[Suggestion] Abilities: Spikes and Poisonous

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
These are two abilities based on, but distinct from, the thorns ability added to the devil's bush cricket and available for leafcutter majors in the formicarium.

Thorns: A portion of the damage received by the creature with thorns is returned to the attacker for physical melee damage.

But this sort of mechanic can be implemented in different ways, which would require different strategy to counter.

Spikes: Melee attackers receive a flat amount of physical damage per attack against a spiked opponent.

Poisonous: Melee attackers receive a venom debuff when they attack a poisonous opponent, damaging them over time with venom damage.

For spiked opponents, the amount of damage dealt is inconsequential, but the amount of hits you do it in does matter. This would be a good threat against low-damage tanks, since they'll be hurting themselves more against spiked enemies than against thorned enemies, and would also reward the use of a few ants with more powerful attacks as opposed to many ants with weak attacks. This might work well with fire ant majors or other future ants if they have abilities that let them do large amounts of damage in single hits.

For poisonous opponents, this might depend on how these abilities are implemented behind the scenes. If DoT effects stack, as it seems they may do, this may just act as thorns with a different damage type and slower-acting effects. If the DoT is made not to stack, however, it would reward the ability to kill poisonous enemies quickly, without needing to have an extended fight with constant venom damage wearing on ants.

Any of these abilities could also be implemented as an active ability instead of a passive ability, where an enemy becomes thorned, spiked, or poisonous for a duration to deal with attackers.

Any of these abilities could have limited targets, where only a certain number of enemies can be affected within a time frame, making it better to use many ants over few.
 
Last edited:

Scyobi_Empire

Colony
Extremely Helpful Person
Ecosystem Beta Tester
"Thorns" is already usable for the player, Fusca Soldiers have that perk but written slightly differently.
The "Poisonous/Venomous" perk sounds to be to be used by the ranged wood ants. However I can see something similar being used for the fire ants, as they have a venom called Solenopsin.
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Since "reflect" is already called thorns, I suppose it would make more sense to call "thorns" "spikes."
 
Top