I’ve got an anthill intersecting a lab I want to explore, and there’s a seemingly limitless number of soldier ants blocking my way. Killed around 300 so far, with no signs of stopping. And that’s excluding those killed by the armoured zombie in a different tunnel. Where are they all coming from. does the queen continually spawn them at a huge rate? Are there just that many in the nest?
first time entering an ant-hill, so not really sure what to expect.
Ants are infinite so long as the queen lives it’s just like Triffids and Mycus things. The ant queen spawns larva which evolve into ants I believe(haven’t tested it yet mostly from wiki) and increases the amount able to spawn. (Triffid heart endless makes Triffids and feeds their spawn pool. As does the Mycus spire and giant flower (each makes unique enemies)). So kill the queen kill all the ants; it takes awhile though for them to fade.
I figured they would spawn infinitely, but was surprised at the rate. I’ve killed 300ish soldier ants in like 2 corridors over a single day, with more still coming. Was a lot higher than expected.
Most of the hill is wiped out, so maybe it’s something like there’s a target population, but everything spawns from the queen, so wiping out the rest of the hill first concentrated all of the respawns into a handful of hallways?
It can get insanely fast. I can’t speak for ants but Mycus enemies exponentially reproduce and convert zombies at a 5:1 rate (one fungaliod for like 5 zombies)this number increases stupidly high for the flowers (they pretty much get every zombie before they can harm them.) As do triffids they even spawn special anti fungal triffids if the mycus are near by. They spawn instantly if the heart lives. So it might be like triffids.
Fungaloids don’t spawn anywhere near as quickly, don’t tend to concentrate in single corridors, and are easily killable using fire. As for Triffids, haven’t encountered them yet, but how many spawn instantly, and how many total do you end up with after a while?
Leaving triffids alone they can spread out and be quite the problem in a couple of days. On the surface though their spawn rate is somewhat slow however it gets more dangerous when you go below. One walls will form and disappear randomly; two their are creeper hubs which spawn infinite amount of creeper vines in the area VERY quickly(all creepers die if a hub dies). And at the heart it’s a constant stream.
Fungaloids though have an exponential growth as one will make two more which make more continuing.
Ants actually fun fact can’t spawn fast enough to properly fight fungal infestations (Mycus mutation tree makes mince meat out of everything netting you allies and killing enemies).
Ants after some testing have a linear growth which kinda surprised me but they have a stupidly high growth rate (spawn rate stays the same, but number increases). The other two that act like this (triffids and Mycus) have a growth that changes. Triffids have triggers for growth spikes these are: Mycus incursion, Player attacks into the hive(colony?), and high death tolls(if alot die this cause a growth surge from what I can tell). Mycus grow exponentially permanently as they gain more units that produce spores which can produce more units ad infinitum. Mycus also gain steam from infecting other beings: players, NPCs, insects, and zombies.
In theory fungal infestations spread faster than anything, but in practice the reality bubble means that they usually don’t ever have enough loaded at once to truly tap into that potential. If your base isn’t within range then you can kill them much faster than they spawn, even in a fairly advanced infestation.
Depends on you intend to do with the infestations. If you are a survivor you can just use it to cleanse a city for you(fungal enemies don’t revive) so if their are a good number of hazmat zombies the city will cleanse itself after awhile. But if you’re mycus mutated you use it for everything and it surrounds you always.