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Hello everyone and welcome to a quick devblog. The purpose of this post is to show you what I've been working on these last few days - as you well know, I've already started creating the infographics for VFE-Insectoids 2, and I'm really excited to announce that it has just finished testing and the mod is more or less done. Sure, we are missing the storyteller (Empress Evil will make a return, but with a cool new wave survival mechanic), but everything else is done, tested and balanced.

I have just finished creating the infographics pertaining to all the various hive structures you'll be able to build. Overall, there is quite a number of them, and I think they'll create a nice incentive for players to construct their own hives and defend them.

 

As you can see, various insectoid structures are spread into three different research projects. With basic hive tech, you can construct really basic worker hives, surrounded by hive walls, with creepers already producing the valuable creep terrain.

With standard hivetech (which we changed to also be medieval tech because there's no reason to lock it behind electricity), you'll be able to expand the hives with new structures. Large glowpods and glowpod formations will provide you with light, tendril farm will provide you with mediocre food source, jelly farm should give you enough jelly to warrant expanding the hive area, thornpods and foampods can provide your hive with defense and protection, while deepheaters can give you heat if you really need it. Most importantly, with Standard hivetech, you'll be able to construct Sorne hives, and if you happen to also research electricity - you can build all the exotic thumpers to summon the bosses.

With Exotic hivetech, you reach the pinnacle of what the mod has to offer. You can surround your base with royal jelly walls, light up your underground farms with glowpod spires, produce electricity with static pods and construct all the new hives from the newly added genelines. Furthermore, with pherocores, you can now construct 5 new insectoid structures: Jelly morphers, Petroglyphers, Hivenodes, Vilelobbers and Thronworms.

Lets take a look at the infographics!

 

Next up I'll be doing the infographics for all the cool new hives, explaining what different castes do and which hives produce which castes. I think it's safe to say the mod will release quite soon by the way! Exciting stuff.

Comments

William Labes

Man, you and the team are really putting in the work on this.

Marberguson

Will insectors will be slowed by creep?

Marberguson

Also it would be fun, when you get alot of insectoids in your colony, you will get pest control raids with some flamethrower armed raiders.

Lyn the Cookie

GODDAMN when you said the VE team was going to rework insectoids I was NOT expecting this level of content! You can make a fully bug-powered colony now!

Scyobi Empire

apologies if this was said in an earlier dev diary (i’m new to this patreon), but will the insect herder from VE Ideology be able to take the bugs from this mod?

Spoder

Wow... This is way more than I expected. I love how well thought out these are, all of them having a mechanic that serves the greater hive while also being dependant on the hive. Ontop of all the gribblies being added, this is going to be one hell of a mod.

Moros

The mechanics for those walls are pretty interesting. The resin ones are dirt-cheap, but somehow even more flimsy than fragile, and the hivestone is just plain cool.

Computica

This is an expansion not just a mod.

Leaf Boye

This is honyuestly just so much and it's incredible for those of us getting bored with normal pawns now we can just live in a massive 600x400 map full of insectoids fighting like little ant colonies

Leaf Boye

I'm still running the first test version of this mod so it might change at release but I'm able to use tame insectoid to tame them, I went out of my cave and claimed the closest queen and locked her away

Amaelzaekil

Great mod, would love to get back into Rimworld once this is out. Perchance, if this does not offend you, would it be possible to consider "Wall Glowpods"?

John Beate

Ooh if this is chosen please have them have scorcher mechs with em, the Mechanoids were literally built for this

oskarpotocki

Way too late in development to consider new things. If you see infographics, that usually means the mod is finished. There is something all modders dread called 'feature creep'. It's easy to pile more and more content on the mod, especially the closer it is to finished, but at the end of the day it's all an illusion - all the new content you add creates a lot of technical debt when it comes to updating this mod to for example new RimWorld version. That's why we do a content lock at a certain stage and just not add anything else, regardless of how good of an idea something can be.

Starne

Which Gene is the one that tags Insectors as Insects for this purpose? If I had to guess I'd say it was either Insect Pheromones or Insectskin.

JSr

Very nice and unique mod. Can barely wait to play a fully insectoid colony. How far does creep spread? Does it have any effect on the local flora like pollution?

iZetsubo

The creep reminds of my of Starcraft days. Love it.

BrenTenkage's Gaming

actually know what this reminds me of...that AVP Extintion game with the aliens

Mocho

I'm about to make a Chimera Ant playthrough with this mod and Insectors ... not sure if I dreamed this, but did you mention that a dirtmole expanded might come out with mining expanded? Pairing races with big mods is cool

oskarpotocki

It spreads 12.9 tiles. It has no effect on flora, no. Infestation has, on fauna, and it's covered in one of my previous devblogs called Infestation! :)

Amaelzaekil

Understandable, without the 'Content Lock', new ideas would also just extend the time required for development, resulting in the mod never getting finished.

Jason Ruth

Will the ability to Vat Grow insects return? I thought it was a neat feature considering it is mentioned in the Vanilla Lore Expanded document.

oskarpotocki

Oh no, that’s completely removed from Insectoids 2. Eventually, Sarg will add it to Genetics Expanded but we want to come up with some new mechanics for that system.

Jason Ruth

Awesome news! I was fairly sure it was out of the scope of Insectpuds 2, I was just curious if it would return in the future, now I can get excited for the future of VGE!

Joel Fitzgibbon

Will naturally occurring smoothed stone walls be converted to hivestone? Or is it only the untouched natural stone walls which will be converted?

oskarpotocki

I didn't know smoothed walls can occur naturally! No, it will only touch natural stone walls.

Deggial

I couldn't stop grinning as I read this - The Zergs are coming to Rimworld! :D I can't wait to build my own ant farm and have my Insectors guard it! :) I do wonder though: There must be something else going on with those insect jelly walls. They use a somewhat valuable building material (which could otherwise be eaten) and are less sturdy. Granted, they are faster to build - but that can't be it, can it? Why would I ever prefer them over the more mundane 'hive walls'? Is there an unmentioned advantage to them?

oskarpotocki

Less flammable (75% instead of 100%), plus they break up hive walls if you place them in a smart way. Remember that hive walls chain-destroy, but they won't chain-destroy jelly walls. If you run your insect colony correctly, you will be sitting on hundreds if not thousands of insect jelly!

Deggial

Ah, I see! First of all, reading comprehension. It actually says that breaking jelly walls causes chain destruction of adjacent *hive* walls - not adjacent *jelly* walls! Attention to details! The reduced flammability is definitely another plus. Also: hundreds and *thousands* of jelly units! I actually dedicated two of my Insectors just to producing and feeding the not-so-large community with insect jelly. That's why I misjudged its availability... just a little. ;)

Brandon Pollastri

A decent beauty modifier to the royal Jelly Hive walls and a neutral modifier to normal jelly walls. With a negative beauty modifier to Hive rock walls and Hive walls. This could incentivise lining rooms with Jelly walls for mood buffs.

Lems ldc

Wow

Samuel

Estimate on when it will be uploaded to the workshop? Or is it just very soon

oskarpotocki

Well Sarg is on holidays this week so definitely after he’s back. I’ll be releasing Vehicles Upgrades in a moment tho!

Gustavo Righetti

"Creeper" dude just make a full on Starcraft Zerg conversion, im not even joking, i will pay you

Skyler Schenck

Highly anticipating this mod!!! Can't wait for it to be released!

eduardo volpe

This is incredible but I'm curious tho, with the insector being able to build insectoid stuff are they able to maintain it?

dj

just alternate them. effectively nullifies their biggest weakness, large breaching potential

dj

will there be a gene related to spawning insectoid cocoons?

Deggial

Yes ... but is this even necessary? As written above, apparently only real *hive walls* participate in the limited chain reaction. Not *jelly walls* - they are not mentioned at all. So if - and only if - Oskar was very deliberate in his wording, the entire jelly wall should be safe in this respect. Obviously they have less HP in general.

oskarpotocki

Jelly walls triggers chain detonation of other jelly walls, hive walls triggers chain detonation of other hive walls. Alternating them means no more chain detonations.

Deggial

Thanks for the clarification, Oskar! Apparently, dj's suggestion was well founded. Specifying the description accordingly might be helpful then?