Ant colony story's

[Redmoth27]

I know I've made this suggestion many times but I feel like it's a good idea and I want everyone to see it. Ant colony's should have story's like how they are, there recent struggles, the queens paranoia, raid and raided logs, new ant technologies being discovered, spy reports at other nests, etc. Theys can be stored on ant devices I call Webbers, there are spider webs coiled with to things pointing out of the top that the ants antennas poke into to store data. They basically act like the terminals from the Fallout series. When your ants collect them they are in your ant wiki.

 

[Serafine]

I'd rather do that with smell information when entering a place. "Terminals" don't fit to ants.

New "technology" (which in this setting is genetic information as the entire technology is based on genetic engineering) could be extracted either from enemy workers (kill a certain amount and carry them back to the nest), the enemy queen (kill and process her), enemy eggs/larve/pupae (steal them) or even the dead bodies of other ants (like in a level you find a huge Myrmecia carcass and must defend in from smaller ant species until your workers have taken the genetic information from the dead ant's body) or even other species like a dead spider.

Since the game's ants have already mastered horizontal gene transfer there's no reason why they wouldn't improve their venom with genetic information from a dead giant tarantula spider or scorpion or something like it.
Even a species of pesticide-resistent arthropods like grasshoppers or roaches could become a target to acquire the resistance ability from their genetic information.

 

[Redmoth27]

Well first the information on those Webbers are comprised of Pheromones.

Second I thought we could take a few Liberties later in production to keep thing interesting like a ant tech tree. You could make ships to travel to near islands, you could make a ant tank with 6 black ants on the bottom and a trap jaw ant on the top that kills everything. Hell the enemy colony's could make those things to. You could make a squad of ants that is given lots of salt and they do more damage.

These are just ideas for the games "invention" tech tree. I do like your idea of genetic tech, sounds interesting. Could make a good mechanic. ;D

 

[Serafine]

The problem is as soon as you implement "terminals" of any kind you very soon get a sort of "it's your everyday scifi game, just with ant visuals" feeling.

I'd rather prefer to display these "information packages" as colored dust floating through tunnels and chambers, carcasses lying around (remnants of a battle), etc. - that way ants could even look into the past, in a way that resembles the hologram scene from Prometheus.


For tech trees I HATE incremental upgrades (like armor 1, armor 2, ..., armor 10). They are stupid and most of the time useless because the enemy you face rise in strength as well, so everything stays the same and it's just wasted effort for developers and wasted time grinding for the players.

If there are upgrades they should be something MEANINGFUL. Like immunity to a certain poison, or an entirely new ability (for example a new behavior that allows ants to build bridges across smaller surface cracks with their own bodies) or upgrades that add a new trait new to an already existing unit or ability (for example the ability to freeze enemies for a short period with a sting as an upgrade to the basic "pure damage" sting or the ability for certain ant species to dig into the ground and wait there undetected for enemies to pass by).


Also powercreep needs to be avoided. Before you breed a larger or more specialized/fancy ants you should ALWAYS ask yourself "how many basic workers/soldiers can I get instead and will they be better suited to do the job" (unless of course you're in a very special special situation that definitely requires a specialist).
The Starship Troopers Tabletop does a remarkable job at this - the basic unit (the Warrior Bug) is an outstandingly good unit and unless you play a super-specialized army composition you always want them to be the backbone of your army with the specialists complementing and supporting them in various ways.
I don't want to see the game going a way were your starter ants (like the Lasius black garden ants) become utterly useless in the later levels.

 

[Redmoth27]

Good idea to have "story scent" in the air. That's just what I'm calling it. I was thinking that they can store the story scent in a room, and have a piece of spider silk hanging on the ceiling that's supposed to keep the story scent in the room. When a touches it with her antennas a hologram appears just like you said. It will display a little animation showing some of what happened throughout the day, you will get a notification in your ant wiki telling you have a new entry that you can read. It will be of course the lore of the colony your reading about. When I said tech tree I didn't mean a Grindy mobile game one, I meant more like the tech tree from civilization. When you complete you sometimes get something to build, a new troop to make, and a wonder to construct. I thought you could do the same thing like making a ship with fire ants on the side and a branch in the middle for where you're regular ants go, or say make under and obove ground fortifications against enemies. These are just ideas who knows what you could do with a tech tree in the game.