New Mod: The Hive
 

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.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

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

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

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.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

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.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

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

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

I like that idea, Amos. Very much.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

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.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

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.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

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

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

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.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

how about some little stealthy bugs and a stealthy commander, but they need to eat lots: "the swarm moves at night and burrows deep into the ground before dawn to avoid detection, the only sign of their presence is the destroyed vegetation they leave behind them".

not sure how it works, since i have never used a stealthy army before, but could something like this possibly be used to starve an enemy army?

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

"Another alien race with astral...."

The lower commanders have no astral per se, they are able to command and that's about it. The queens and the rogue males have developed their command abilities significantly as they have to control other commanders, and often from a distance. Because of this, they have developed other astral powers as well.

The rogue males also develop additional magic skills, as they have brains, are independant, live longer than the other post-larval forms, and already have rudimentary magical abilities in astral. Young rogue male is astral 1 random 1. Old rogue male is astral 1 random 2.

Commanders generate supply as 10X size. So a Small Brain post-larval form would generate 20 as it has a certain amount of mass for regurgitant of honey material. Workers constantly bring it anything organic (bodies, hay, grain, tree limbs) as they travel, and it constantly generates regurgitant that the workers eat. The workers are also eating meat etc. as they travel (the bodies of the slain foe, cows, dogs, anything). A Large Brain generates 30 supply, and a Queen generates 40 as she squelches, oozes, and clicks her regal way from province to province....

One thing to remember is that they aren't really insects--they are closer to insect than anything else in this universe though.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

That would actually make Nature inappropriate, yes? They're not "natural" beings. Are there any other nations that are Astral/Earth focused? That may be innersting.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

Earth mages with Teleport? (Very fast tunneling...)

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

This mod sounds way cool. Good luck with it, and I'll be checking back now and then. I assume there will be some shapeshifters? Too bad it's hard to mod autospawning. Also, I like centipede-like dudes with trample.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

I'm just going to upload the file. Rename it from .txt to .dm and put it in your mods directory, then activate the mod in DomIII. It sounds like people are getting some wrong ideas about it. I've been playing with it for over a week, and tried a lot of different ideas, units, specializations, etc. It's releasable, if not perfect. I will welcome comments from people who try it out.

It is definitely weird to play.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

Tactics to use For: intersperse one advanced unit for every 10-15 Workers. I like the Impregnator, because they are great morale breakers. Put some Manipulators in there for sheer damage power. Soldiers are good and inexpensive for what you get--but they can't swarm. The swarm tactic really works. Plan on 2:1 odds at least, 4:1 if you want to make sure you win. Storming castles is extra hard--expect high losses.

Tactics to use Against: arrows--lots and lots of arrows! Target the larger critters to get rid of the Impregnators. Put a mass of spearmen out front and have them wait. Give your archers a chance to do their work. Knights clean up for the most part--they are heavily armored and have multiple attacks. Midget Masher items. Anything that tramples makes a mess of these guys--chariots, elephants, iron pigs.

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

What kind of graphics are you using?

-Frank

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

Another try at uploading the file....

Re: New Mod: The Hive
 

No graphics yet. I'm not a graphics genius. I will probably do some rudimentary stuff with bug shots from the net reduced to 16X16 for the small drones up to 48X48 for the leviathan.

If someone else wants to do the graphics, please feel free!!