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[joostheger]

Would it be possible to create a 'megabeast' type of creature, that is a giant worm? But then all the segments are seperate creatures.
When it visits your fortress, it spawns about 5 segments.
Those segments have a continious touch-interaction with the segment before then, and a numbered SYNC_CLASS let hem all behave in line, creating a string of segments.
The head-segments gives crazy high speed to the secundary segements, so that they are no longer than 1 tick seperated, when the head moves.
The main-segment is the head, and that one behaves like a normal megabeast
Then the head finds a corpse, it 'eats' it, spawning a new segment, that attaches itself to te last segment, so it grows.
The body-segments give healing powers to the segments before them, meaning that you can weaken it by destroying its body.

It would be terrifying seeing the thing slither though your hallways.
Oh yes and it leaves a trail of acidic slime.

[Wolfkey]

Not possible, the acid trail part can be done, but it will do nothing against creatures that are wearing shoes.

[xzaxza]

You could make a giant worm that spawns smaller worms, for example.

[joostheger]

Yeah, but why would segments as seperated creatures not work? Are interactions not reliable enough?

[brushapocalypse]

Interactions are unreliable. To my understanding, you can set an interaction to only work on things that are within reach, but you can't force the creatures to stay within reach of each other. Maybe DFHack could do it? But I don't have any personal experience with DFHack so I can't really say for sure.

Another concern is getting all parts of the creature to spawn, instead of just getting either one head/segment on its own, or a random assortment thereof. I suppose you could have the head show up on its own, and give it an interaction to summon the rest of the segments, but that runs into the issue of unreliable interactions. From my own experience with getting creatures to summon other creatures,  there aren't any usage hints that tell the creature to do it ASAP without any other creatures around; the closest you can get is assigning it as a GREETING and waiting for it to "greet" a friend, or perhaps DEFEND and only summoning them once it spots something it wants to fight. I'm a bit more confident that DFHack could possibly solve this, but again, no personal experience, and it doesn't fix the problem of segments not actually following each other closely.

[joostheger]

The within reach wouldn't be a problem, because segments are only a few tiles apart. And also we can add teh tag SENSE_CREATURE_CLASS:themself, giving them always eachothers location.
The interactions: you named two concerns that I share.

1. The interactions are used to connect the segments. And to be honest, those are unreliable. Maybe an option is that the creatuere's head spawn items or objects that have the same graphics / image as the segments. So when the head moves, the image of a segment stays behind for a few ticks, giving the segments time to reconnect.
2. The interaction to spawn the segments. What I was thinking, is to make te worm an ambusher. Meaning that when the worm gets visible, it is in combat, giving it a usage reason for the spawn-interactions. Also, that hostility can help keeping the segmetns attached.
So, what you said.

Also, another idea, If I make the worm SENSE_CREATURE_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON, than it has always enemies in sight, keeping it always in combat, and giving it always reasons for usage_hint ATTACK

I can give the attach-interaction like all the possible usages hints, so that in any case, the creature will try to do it.

I would prever to not use DFhack, because that makes the mod harder to 'sell'. So, i'll keep on thinking on it.

[pisskop]

I once had a modded mega who was a giant 'ball' with several jointed limbs that mirrored humanoid bodies.  They were attached with a special 'limb' that melted at room temperature.  The critter would then necromance those parts explicitly.

The idea was that it would show up, drop huge humanoids, and then create zombies of them.  In the arena it worked as intended.  In worldgen what happened was that the mega would actually become one of the animated pieces instead of the central ball.

[joostheger]

Thats a clever way to generate additional creatures. However, you'll still need an interaction to get the necromancy working.

[joostheger]

Interactions without usage-hint will always directly be performed if a creature is in combat. Would it be possible to create a creature that is immediatly in combat when it spawns?

[Eric Blank]

only if it is CRAZED/OPPOSED_TO_LIFE and is summoned/animated by another creature that it then targets. Or if, for instance, it is summoned as a pet by a creature that is in combat and joins combat in aid of its summoner.

[joostheger]

Yeah in that case it would be better to make the creature steath, so that the player wont notice him at all. Until he is revealed and hopefully immediatly is in combat.

And also, a megabeast probably is in combat rather quickly, due to the cave-live present