New Mod: The Hive

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

The Hive:

Extradimensional beings who invaded this world aeons ago, but were beaten back deep into the earth, until summoned forth by a pretender as the backbone of his army.

Swarming, scuttling, uneasily alien, half cockroach, half ant, skilled in the astral magics, inimical to all indigenous life, strangely maddeningly horribly insanely different. Alien.

They are not especially well armored. They are not especially skilled at warfare. They are not spectacularly strong. Most of their forms cannot use items. Most of their forms cannot use magic. Most of their forms cannot even think. Yet they flow like the tide. They swamp their foes and crush them beneath their chitinous numbers. They eat and hum and keen and scuttle and bite and bite and bite.

I'll post the units one at a time for discussion.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

Worker:

Basic unit. Drone. Stupid. Bites. Scuttles. Fast. Small. Strong. Driven. Never gives up. Half cockroach, half ant, and not really an insect at all. Completely alien.

They swarm. They crawl over their foes and bite and bite and bite. They are the size of large dogs, but their hard chitin exoskeleton and inability to feel pain make them remorseless and inexorable.

A flood of these horrible critters can scare even the hardiest of warriors.

The are resistant to poison, heat, and cold.

#newmonster 2650
#name "Worker"
#descr "small unintelligent remorseless biters"
#ap 16
#mapmove 2
#hp 6
#prot 6
#size 1
#str 11
#enc 2
#att 7
#def 7
#prec 1
#mr 10
#mor 20
#gcost 1
#rcost 1
#weapon "Bite"
#coldres 25
#fireres 25
#poisonres 25
#itemslots 1
#end

[Gandalf Parker]

It sounds interesting.
Usually insect races in a game get bonuses in the area of support and supplies. Im not sure if that would be best created by cutting their food intake or giving nature magic to their leaders. You might be able to steal the food bonuses from some pretenders and give it to their leaders. Or maybe a food boosting site as part of their national sites.

I could see a morale bonus from hive mind also.

I wonder if winged ones could be given a bonus for building castles to simulate the mating pairs.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

I have kept this race earthbound. An early version gave E1 to most of the commanders, since they are such earth movers, dwellers, etc. I decided astral was more apt, as the hive minds use astral means to direct huge numbers of the lesser critters (awesome leadership).

I have kicked around the supply factor for quite a while. I finally went the leader has a supply bonus, instead of the other way. The smaller units (workers, hunters, manipulators) cost less to feed anyways....

I gave them all high morale. I may give them higher morale yet, or perhaps give the commanders a standard.

[Amos]

You could make them mindless, that way they will be totally dependant on commanders and never rout.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

I like that idea, Amos. Very much.

[Shovah32]

Could you make atleast a small number of guys with minds? Recruiting human indy militia just to avoid getting your commanders minds fried would spoil the whole insect swarm feel.

[Agrajag]

So... Another alien race with Astral?
I mean, I like the insect conecpt very much, I just don't like the idea of yet another alien race with Astral, especially since insect communication isn't mind-link based but rather pheromone-based.
If you are looking for ideas, check out Warlords: Battlecry III's insectoid race.

[Amos]

I would think nature and/or death are appropriate with some earth IMHO.

[paradoxharbinger]

i'm looking forward to trying this one out. i think that the complete dependance on commanders would be a good weakness to offset the flood of smaller, fearless bugs that you could have.