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[Spriggans]

This is a interest check for an idea I had, which could lead to potential Fun.
I'd like to know if you'd like to play it in a succession style.

If some aspects are good, but others iffy, please tell me about it.
If the idea sucks all along, please tell it as well.

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Would anyone be interested playing on a "Ant-fortress" ?

The game would be slightly-modded in a way that stimulates ant colonies

Ideas :
-> The dwarven civilization is extinct. So, we will have to rely on the starting dwarves we have to establish breeding programs.

-> We would choose an embark with every civilization neighbour. Necro-tower is a possibility.

-> There would be 3 castes of dwarves :
   - The soldiers. Genderless dwarves. They only live 1 year, and are adult at birth.
   
   - The drones. Males. They are only there to breed with the queen. They can live 2 to 3 years.
   
   - And finally, the Queen. Female. She can live 2 to 3 years. She can lay - let's say - 30 to 50 eggs 4 times a year. Only one allowed at any time.


Goals :
-> Survive.

-> Use 43.xx 44.xx c button to send most of our unlimited Ants all around the world to kill it, and expand our nest (and save our FPS).

-> Find a way to bury all our dwarves, as so many will die of old age.


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Now, this is a bit of a challenge fort.
First, no migrants. We rely on ourselves.


Then, how the hell do we do ? Well, little Urist, this is how you make dwarves :

- First, we have some dwarves (soldiers).
- These dwarves do some work and craft a modded item (made from adamantine or expensive stuff that we choose).
- This item is consumed by the Chosen Soldier, to turn it into a Queen (modding needed).
- Similarly, drones are created by a soldier consuming an item (though the modded item would be easier to craft than the Queen's item).
- Queen and drone marry.
- Queen lays eggs.
- Eggs give soldiers.
- The loop can continue.


I still have to figure out how to mod some stuff, but from what I know, it is doable.
So, what do you dwarves think ?

What would the Queening item be / be made out off ?
Should dwarves be modded to have 4 arms ?
Others ?

Suggestions are welcome.

[KittyTac]

You can't send squads in 43.xx.

[Spriggans]

You can't send squads in 43.xx.

Right. 44 it is then. Misspelled.

[KittyTac]

Then I'm all in. You can even mod ant-men to be playable, actually.

[MottledPetrel]

I would be all for an ant fortress, but I think some of the things that you have proposed should be handled differently. Most importantly, if queens are going to be super rare and/or be created when a super special food is consumed they should be able to live longer. I'd say around 20 years, for more proportionality to the lower castes and for the sake of if it's too low the fort will die out before we can secure another queen. I would also suggest that instead of just a 'soldier' caste for generic workers we should have that separated into workers, soldiers, and majors. Workers would be run of the mill dwarves (or smaller), soldiers would be bigger and have more fighting prowess but learn working skills (anything other than fighting skills) slower than workers, and majors would be hulking brutes dedicated to nothing but violence. Each caste would be increasingly rare. Which also leads me to believe that these different types of dwarves (including queens and drones) should be handled with the caste system instead of with food items. The food items could be added on top of the caste system so you can create a queen if you desperately need one. If using the caste system it would probably make more sense to have the queen lay two to three eggs per batch but super frequently so that you don't end up with a single batch with 40 queens. 1 year might be a bit low for workers, maybe we should make their life span 2-3 or something so we can minimize the margin for complete fort failure while waiting for a new queen. Either way, to counteract this low life span we should give them a incredible boost to learning speed, so that they can at least achieve legendary if they work every day of their life in one skill. These are just my most important thoughts on the subject, I'm probably going to be coming back later with some more nitty gritty mechanic stuff, but what say you on the things I've just mentioned?

[speciesunkn0wn]

This seems interesting. I will watch it.

[snow dwarf]

It'd make more sense to have actual ants rather than dwarfs.

[Spriggans]

I thought about the caste sytem (workers / soldiers / super soldiers). It is easy to implement. I will probably do it


But I believe 1 year lifespan is enough for workers. Maybe soldiers can live a litle longer... But not workers.
Because if you think about it, [MAXAGE:1] means you can leave "2 years". The year of your birth, and the full next year. (so if born in granite, year 15, you die on 28 Obsidian, year 16. This is ~24months of life).
Part of the Fun of the fortress is to have many deaths to deal with.
I'm all for a faster learning curve though.

I think ratios should be 60-30-10. Because we'll want soldiers to attack the world. Maybe it is too much workers. IDK.


I don't know if I can change the eggs laying frequency. I would love to. But I believe eggs take ~2,5 months to hatch.
Hence the 4 times a year births.
If you know a way, I will defenitely do that !

What else ? Yay. Queen won't live 20 years... Way too cheaty / easy.
It is a succession game, I want players to have to figure a way to produce queens.
I think it'll be easy enough to produce 1 queening item every 3 years.
And I like the idea to have several queens that players can dorf.

It'd make more sense to have actual ants rather than dwarfs.

Sure.

[KittyTac]

OOOH, a succession game! I'll play! Also, should we have an anthill-like layout? Lots of twisty little corridors leading to small, irregularly-shaped rooms. Very deep, too.

[IndigoFenix]

Sounds interesting, but I too suggest replacing dwarves with ant men.

[MottledPetrel]

I think I'm on the 'replace dwarves with ant men' train, but you can easily change the ant men to have the special things you want them to have. You can tamper with the life span and add a few castes, but I think you should leave the queen caste in and just make it super rare. I'd also like to request a turn for when it does start. I was only suggesting that the workers have 24 months or so of life because the chances of getting a queen on embark are very low, and if you don't have the materials handy to make the queen item you're immediately done for. Depending on what it takes to make the queen item I'm not really sure how balanced a three year lifespan would be, but if we need a name and a theme for it I suggest royal jelly, because that's what bees use to create a queen.

[Sanctume]

Interested. And interesting ant-foo.

Queen just lay eggs, and they can produce "Male" off-springs, as well as Females.

Males do nothing but wait for their chance to mate, then die.  They are big and have wings.
Sound like useless haulers to me. 

Workers are all females.  They can lay eggs and it will hatch into more females because only mating will have a chance to produce males. 

The strong workers become soldiers that defend the colony; or crack open seeds where weaker workers can't do.  So it sounds like STRENGTH stats can determine if a worker will become a solider.

If I were to use Dwarf Therapist to see stats, I would say any worker with Strength 80+ is soldier. 
So the remaining 0-79 Strength will be laborers.

All males are haulers only.  Maybe 20 to 40% of population?

==
Suppose a starting colony is made of 20 Ants.
1 Queen
4 Males (20%)
and 15 workers, of which 3 (20%) can probably be 80+ strength to be soldiers. 

In order to help maintain 20% Male ratio, the Queen must produce plenty of males while the other female workers can supply the other females. 

It would probably help if Queen births 80% Male and 20% Female. 

So let's say season 1,
queen lays 5 eggs = 4 males, 1 worker. 

Making the Pop: 25 (season 1): 1 Queen, 5+4 Male (36%), 15 Workers.
If we want to maintain around 20% males, the Pop should jump to 36 which is 9 more than that 25 pop.

If 9 of the 15 workers lay egg, and produce 9 females, we can reach 36 pop.
At Pop: 36 (season 1): 1 Queen, 5+4 Male (25%), 15+9 Workers.

==
That sounds overpowered if the eggs are hatch into working adults. 

What if the queen lays 5 eggs per season; with the chance of 60% male, and 40% female. 

And to control population from workers, the extra nest boxes will be player controlled instead.

And maybe tweak egg to birth as child and, and 1 year to adulthood?

==

It be interesting to have DF fort mode and have ant-civ neighbors.

[speciesunkn0wn]

In response to Sanctume's 'give them time as a child', that makes sense. Because ant's have grubs as the first stage of their lives. So maybe three months as a baby, then instant adult to mimic that? No proper child thing unless you can get the little craps to stay in one room as the 'nesting room' like ants have for their grubs.

[Sanctume]

In response to Sanctume's 'give them time as a child', that makes sense. Because ant's have grubs as the first stage of their lives. So maybe three months as a baby, then instant adult to mimic that? No proper child thing unless you can get the little craps to stay in one room as the 'nesting room' like ants have for their grubs.

Maybe from egg to hatch as adult, but time to hatch is longer than normal egg laying and close to how long to mimic child to adult instead.

6 months sound good, as this will also delay consecutive egg laying due to limited nest boxes and high female population.

[MottledPetrel]

It is my understanding that baby and child maturation can only be measured in years, I don't know if egg maturation can be changed.