[DEVBLOG#272] Infestation and Events (Patreon)

Hey everyone and welcome to another development blog related to Vanilla Factions Expanded - Insectoids 2. The progress on the mod is great, in fact, we will be able to begin the testing process very soon!

I got married btw, and now I'm back at work. It was a great party. Nothing major, merely 40 guests, but it was absolutely phenomenal.

Back to Insectoids now, let me explain to you what the Infestation is.

This mod introduces a new world overlay similar to the pollution overlay introduced in Biotech DLC. Bear in mind it does not require Biotech DLC! Infestation is not mutually exclusive with pollution: this means that an area can be both infested and polluted.

What is it

Infestation represents an area frequented by the evergrowing insectoid swarm. Travelling through infested area can result in insectoid ambushes, while settling on it will generate a map with numerous insectoid structures and hives.

Infestation area surrounds all insectoid hive bases on the world map. Destroying these hive bases should get rid of their respective infested areas.

How it’s displayed

Infestation uses an overlay texture similar to Biotech Pollution on the world map.

Map generation

Infested area should have additional genSteps to the map generation.

• A few hives spawns around the map at random. This should include standard hives, but also geneline specific hives.

• Insectoid structures appear frequently around the map. The map should be very populated with them, so it looks like it has been affected by infestation heavily.

• Clusters of creep should be added and should replace terrain in random places.

Effects

There are various effects of the infested tiles other than the spawning of insectoid-related structures outlined in Map Generation section above. The effects are separated into Travelling Through and On Map.

Travelling Through - these effects exist when the caravan is travelling through infested land.

• Roaming Insectoids event can now appear.

On Map - these effects take effect when the generated map (for example colony map) is in Infested area.

• Infestations happen regularly, depending on the actual distance to the nearest hive base.

  • This timer should be every 5 days for each world tile between player colony and the insectoids base. This means that a base settled 6 tiles away from the insectoid hive will have infestations every 25 days.

• Large infestations are x2 more likely to happen.

• Infestations can appear anywhere and don’t need to be in a cave/dark area.

• Megaspiders, Spelopedes and Megascarabs can spawn as wild animals.

NEW EVENTS

INFESTED CHUNK CRASH

• Label: infested chunk crash

• Threat: ThreatBig

• Letter text: A number of small chunks of an ancient ship has crashed nearby. \n\nThey seem to be infested with an organic mass. Bizarre insect chittering can be heard within the hull. \n\nDestroy them as soon as possible.

• Minimum Refire days: 15

• Minimum difficulty: 1

• Points Scaleable: True

• Minimum threat points: 800

• Earliest day: 20

• Base chance: 1.6

When this event triggers, Infested Ship Chunks are crashing on the local map. Each 250 combat points translates to one infested ship chunk crashing. They should crash roughly all in the same area.

INFESTED PART CRASH

• Label: infested part crash

• Threat: ThreatBig

• Letter text: A large piece of an ancient ship has crashed nearby.\n\nIt seems to be infested with an organic mass. Bizarre insect chittering can be heard within the hull.\n\nDestroy it as soon as possible.

• Minimum Refire days: 30

• Minimum difficulty: 1

• Points Scaleable: True

• Minimum threat points: 1000

• Earliest day: 30

• Base chance: 1.2

When this event triggers, Infested Ship Part is crashing on the local map. The ship part is worth 800 combat points. Any remaining combat points should translate into a number of Infested Ship Chunks (at a rate of 250 per infested ship chunk) that should then also fall somewhere around the infested ship part. They should crash roughly all in the same area.

INFESTED MODULE CRASH

• Label: infested module crash

• Threat: ThreatBig

• Letter text: A mysterious segment of a long destroyed spaceship has crashed nearby.\n\nIt seems to be completely covered in biomass and lumps of insectoid jelly. It is fairly certain that this old wreckage may contain ancient dangers.\n\nDestroy it as soon as possible.

• Minimum Refire days: 60

• Minimum difficulty: 1

• Points Scaleable: True

• Minimum threat points: 1600

• Earliest day: 30

• Base chance: 0.8

When this event triggers, Infested Ship Module is crashing on the local map. The ship part is worth 1600 combat points. Any remaining combat points should translate into a number of Infested Ship Chunks (at a rate of 250 per infested ship chunk) that should then also fall somewhere around the infested ship part. They should crash roughly all in the same area.

INFESTED METEORS

Infested meteor is a brand new raid strategy that’s a part of VFE-Insectoids 2. It works in a very similar manner to how it worked in Insectoids 1.

This raid strategy is unique to Insectoids and no other faction can arrive via infested meteors.

• Letter label: Raid (meteors)

• Letter desc: A shower of meteorites is striking the local area. It seems they are infested with hives belonging to <name of the hive>! They will attack immediately.

In this raid strategy, infested meteors come crashing down at a random part of the map (can be home area).

Each meteor carries about 1000 combat points of insectoids. This means that if a raid was to spawn 4000 combat points of insectoids, it’d drop 4 meteors close to each other.

In a way, these meteors are essentially insectoid drop pods, except the explode when they hit the ground. They don’t spawn any rocks when they hit, but they do spawn random rock chunks.

ROAMING INSECTOIDS

This event should play out very similar to Ambush, except it only occurs on Infestation map areas.

• Label: roaming insectoids

• Threat: ThreatBig

• Letter text: {0} has been ambushed by insectoids from {1}!

• Minimum Refire days: 0.3

• Minimum difficulty: 1

• Points Scaleable: True

• Base chance: 20

This event can ONLY occur when travelling through Infestation on the world map.

It should spawn an insectoid raid group of some kind. 

LARGE INFESTATION

This is an event very similar to a standard infestation, except it uses our Hive faction (and that means it can have an additional Insectoid geneline on top of Sorne one).

It is also significantly larger than a standard infestation.

• LetterDef: ThreatBig

• baseChance: 1.0

• minRefireDays: 60

• Category: ThreatBig

• minThreatPoints: 800

• LetterText: A large swarm of giant insects is tunneling towards you! They will break through in a few seconds and plant hives, as well as other insectoid-built formations.\n\nThe hives will spawn more insects and more hives.\n\nIf you don't want the insects to infest the whole area, destroy the hives. But beware - the bugs will defend their home.

This event can only happen on the edge of the map. It doesn’t need to be in a cave.

This event begins the same as normal infestation. Tunnelling motes play on the ground, and after a while, insectoids emerge and structures appear.

Structures that are guaranteed to appear:

• Hive

• Glowpods

Structures that may appear in random numbers scaled with the size of the infestation:

• Large glowpod (Weight: 3)

• Glowpod formation (Weight: 2)

• Foampod (Weight: 1)

• Tendrilfarm (Weight: 1)

• Jelly farm (Weight: 1)

• Creeper (Weight: 1)

• Insectoid Cocoons (Weight: 6)

NEW QUESTS

EMERGING HIVE

A new quest is a part of this mod. In it, a small hive, not much larger than a standard infestation, emerges somewhere on the world map. A friendly faction offers the player to destroy this emerging hive for a reward. Failure to do so will result in the hive eventually becoming an Insectoid faction base, which means it becomes a much more sizeable insectoid structure, defended by a large number of insects. It also then spreads the infestation world overlay.

Emerging hive quests ensure that we constantly have new insectoid bases appearing. Unlike Mechanoids ship landings, however, Insectoid faction bases DO NOT increase the amount of insectoids that appear.

As you can see, quite a lot of new events, that should keep the game exciting. I have re-evaluated some of the old events, such as the Burrow Siege, and decided against it. At the end of the day, hives work in the same way - they spawn new insectoids from time to time.

I will be back soon with more devblogs covering Insectoids 2!