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[Angle]

Yeah, I was thinking the insects should just be normal evolved intelligent giant bugs, not magic imbued intelligent giant bugs.

[theprofileth]

Yeah, I was thinking the insects should just be normal evolved intelligent giant bugs, not magic imbued intelligent giant bugs.

And render them boring compared to the other races?

[slay_mithos]

They can have different mechanisms ("birth" mechanisms here) and still offer a whole range of option via reactions and workhops.

I mean, we have human that can't really stay bellow ground, when most of the game's features are there, and it still is a very fun experience, with trading, access to most races' fun things via workshops, and a "new" workshop style with the guilds.

I believe that an insect race (not insect spirits or demons) could have quite a few things for themselves, like an ability to choose between creating multiple worthless workers, or a very specialized military unit from some biomass pool style building.

It could lead to engeneering your members (a bit like the automaton style) to give up something up (ability to learn masonry?) to get a piercing hand for attack.

[Szarrukin]

So are we sure we DON'T want a Tyranid race 

My first thought after hearing about insect race was "yay, Tyranids!"...

[bennerman]

Ooh. Kobolds can't mine through stone without stealing a pick, right? How about the insects can tunnel through dirt but need an endgame upgrade to dig through stone?

Edit 1: Oh, and I like the iron/steel skeletons from warlock fortress, so how about evolving specific units with stronger carapaces, sharper claws, stronger venom, etc?

As well, borrowing from the zerg, what about being able to infest certain specific species? Doing all of them would be pretty time consuming, so how about just horses, elephants, dogs, and a few others? They can be armoured with carapace, be milked for nectar (grazers, specifically), war trained, etc.

[dwarf_reform]

I'd like to see a nicely done generic (giant) black ant civ, doing the same anty stuff that ants did on SimAnt (breeding, digging, hoarding food, much like dwarves).. It'd be even better if, on each embark, there were always 7 enemy red ants (that can dig, and want to store food and raise eggs just like you..)

Good dirt-digging giant ants would make a good invasion, too.. A queen and three workers show up and dig a shallow den and start egging it up That's an invasion you'd want to rush out and destroy as early as possible.. It'd be best if they could only dig through dirt and sand, though, to prevent fort-invading.. And now I think I'd let an ant invasion live for a while and build up strength, maybe even over-run all the dirt on the map :>

I think I like ants too much..

[bennerman]

I'd like to see a nicely done generic (giant) black ant civ, doing the same anty stuff that ants did on SimAnt (breeding, digging, hoarding food, much like dwarves).. It'd be even better if, on each embark, there were always 7 enemy red ants (that can dig, and want to store food and raise eggs just like you..)

Good dirt-digging giant ants would make a good invasion, too.. A queen and three workers show up and dig a shallow den and start egging it up That's an invasion you'd want to rush out and destroy as early as possible.. It'd be best if they could only dig through dirt and sand, though, to prevent fort-invading.. And now I think I'd let an ant invasion live for a while and build up strength, maybe even over-run all the dirt on the map :>

I think I like ants too much..

I am not sure that's possible. But what might be interesting, is letting ants build hills/warrens/what-have-you on world-gen, and then embarking on one of those sites with soldier insects and taking it over, like you can do with embark-anywhere with necromancer towers

[Meph]

Just a note: Since I am both fan of Warhammer and huge fan of Starcraft,.some tyranid and zerg references can be expected. But RL ants are pretty cool too, as are ShadowrunvInsect Spirits.

[theprofileth]

(Full Disclosure)
I mean I am very much biased given that I am a Tyranid player in warhammer 40k and I think they are just about the damned coolest race in the bunch but I like the idea of having a race of intelligent (some more so than others) beings that can dynamically adapt to any given scenario.

My argument for a Tyranid style race is that it fixes a few major problems for an "insectoid" like race, the first being reasonable ability to increase in their capacity to do things from fighting to working. A normal race of ants couldn't be expected to produce a variety of different ant castes other than drone and soldier and would basically end up sort of similar to a boring change from dwarves that are assigned to dig to dwarves that have arms that can only dig or have bigger heads and can only fight. A Tyranid like race furthermore can provide more interesting gameplay changes such as the idea of biomass and being able to breed requisite units simply by having the required biomass and possibly upgrades, where biomass can be made from just about anything organic. I think having something like synapse, which is where you effectively have some sort of biological leadership position given to certain units that allow other units within a fairly large radius of them to operate normally however once outside of this range they revert to a more primal attitude and either try to hide or fight whatever is closest to them (though they don't attack their own kind) even a few of the more simpleminded being actually start to die once outside of synapse range.
Another reason to consider Tyranids as a potential candidate is because even within Tyranid lore their individual infections are not directly connected to a hive and more locally managed by hive tyrants (very large generals) and swarm lords (slightly less large commanders)
Tyranids would provide a diversity to playstyle, a reasonable amount of fun new mechanics that alter their playstyle and would be too hard to draw inspiration from given the plethora of lore available.

[Meph]

The very same points could be used to highlight Zergs instead.

Like I said, it will be my own breed, dictated by the overall DF structures, with a wild mix of rl insects, shadowrun insect spirits, zerg and tyranids. If you want full Warhammer mode: There are both a Warhammer classic and a Warhammer 40k total conversion flying around.

[theprofileth]

The very same points could be used to highlight Zergs instead.

Like I said, it will be my own breed, dictated by the overall DF structures, with a wild mix of rl insects, shadowrun insect spirits, zerg and tyranids. If you want full Warhammer mode: There are both a Warhammer classic and a Warhammer 40k total conversion flying around.

Regarding the Zerg you are very much correct as Zerg and Tyranids share a lot of stuff due to Blizzard's interest in 40k tyranids
but Meth who wants to play anything other than masterwork 
(no offense to any of the other talented modders)

[Szarrukin]

No wonder - Zerg are de facto Tyranids and Protoss are wannabe Eldars. Name are different only because Games Workshop didn't wanted to sell copyrights to Blizzard.

but Meth who wants to play anything other than masterwork 
(no offense to any of the other talented modders)

This. I know that Putnam will hate me, but there are mundane mods and there is Masterwork.

[Meph]

Honest question: Why wouldnt you? Is it the launcher/utilities, or something else? Because the Necromunda TC is pretty well done, its a very good mod.

[slay_mithos]

I fully support the idea of mixing things.

If you don't make it your own, it won't have that masterwork feel in the end, and fans of a specific series would rage on any details aanyway.
Zerg/Tyranids are a nice base, but they don't quite fit with DF or even the other masterwork races.

And it's not like the already playable races fit the usual tropes about them perfectly either (gnome railguns in medieval fantasy, orcs not being the big badass, dwarves with magic and genome science, humans able to commerce with demon's secrets with gold...), and that's what makes masterwork that much better (at least in my eyes).


The only thing I think as important for an insect swarm race is to be able to "make" your members very suited for 1 task, and awfull for the rest.
Most insect races that are depicted as civilizations have those warrior castes that are highly specialized, as well as specific worker branches to handle specific tasks. Along with more standard "drones" that are just hauler and builders, for when you need mass of simple work done.

EDIT: why don't we want to play other mods?
First is that most don't have that much, and lack some key features from masterwork (standardized materials is a must for me since I tried it years ago).
Second is that not all mods distribute full package, meaning that we need to install everything ourselves (gamers are lazy)
Third is that we simply don't have enough time, we are already full time on masterwork  .

[theprofileth]

Honest question: Why wouldnt you? Is it the launcher/utilities, or something else? Because the Necromunda TC is pretty well done, its a very good mod.

The launcher is nice, but to me,as I almost exclusively play adventure mode cause I am a panzy when it comes to DF Fortress mode, I really just appreciate the cohesive feel that the mod has and that playing as an adventurer is still extremely fun even with the plethora of new things to kill me there are an abundance of new treasures (*cough* tablets *cough*) to seek out
I once searched the world I was currently playing in for all of the stone tablets that granted power and found that about 10 unique ones resided in the same necromancer tower which was nicknamed "Delightfulcomplexity" hence my love for masterwork and its "Delightfulcomplexity"