Queen Ants, But No Queen Bees?

[nameless_survivor]

So I found a giant beehive, and decided to get my Winney the Pooh on, and go plunder all the honey. I was successful, walked in, shot everything that moved, and walked out with a boatload of honeycomb and a few royal jelly. I was careful to check all my targets for the queen bee I assumed was in there, in the hopes of butchering for extra jelly or eggs or something. I did not find one. I purged the whole hive, then burned it to the ground and watched the log for deaths. Nothing. I then checked the wiki and found that while there is definitely a queen ant, the game does not contain a queen bee. Is this something that has just been overlooked, or not introduced yet? There werent any larva sitting around either, like there are in ant hills.

[Orange01]

I think PK adds them, but I think in the default game there is supposed to be a NPC insect mutant in the hive if you have static NPC’s on.

[nameless_survivor]

No I forgot to turn them on at worldgen. I’ve been planning to reset the world and migrate my character and tank into it.

[Orange01]

Yeah a lot of people complain about NPC but I love playing with them, especially once you have a good gun they can be killed easily if they try to rob you.

[_k1]

Its a half human half bee mutant called Apis.

I used to have several Apis stomach waterskins.

[hydroplatypus]

I like Apis, especially as I always picture her as the same person, who somehow figured out how to revive over and over again. So I just picture her as getting increasingly angry at my survivors who kill her over and over again. Makes for a fun imaginary rivalry, as I have yet to run into any other interesting NPCs. All the other ones I run into tend to either do nothing interesting, or ask for an inhaler but get suicide themselves against the zombies before I can deliver it.

[Eastwardrope91]

There are interesting ones in the refugee center and it’s quests. And they offer hours of gameplay for it(even cheating to complete all of one of the line took like 30 minutes).

[nameless_survivor]

I think the Giant Bee’s AI needs some tweaking. I just launched a massive assault on a hive; assassinated Apis with a Barret .50 round to the head, and am now in the process of burning their hive to the ground, and they haven’t even tried to swarm me. Like one or two will come by and attack, but thats it. When you piss off a bee hive, they should ALL come to try and murder you at once

[Rose]

When you piss off a bee hive, they should ALL come to try and murder you at once

They should ALL come and fly around your deathmobile trying to figure out what to do next.

[nameless_survivor]

I figured they would try and bash their way through. And perhaps succeed, forcing someone to either retreat or try and fight them off as they swarm through holes in the hull. I was honestly expecting this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBG5QN9IGFk

[Kadian]

From what I remember, Bees, Hornets, Ants pretty much most other normal animals can’t bash vehicles. Unsure about big ones like mooses, bears and similar sized animals though.
Don’t forget that those giant bees are ‘only’ as big as a dog, with stingers as big as kitchen knife. Try damaging a car - or a deathmobile with military plating - with a kitchen knife. Good luck with that.

[Rose]

Right, they can’t. I even remember seeing this once:

[Fris0uman]

Let’s implemant Alarm pheromone so that when one bee attacks you the pheromone is deposed on you and all the others bees that smell it attack you immediatly and use the smell to track you.

[nameless_survivor]

those giant bees are ‘only’ as big as a dog, with stingers as big as kitchen knife. Try damaging a car - or a deathmobile with military plating - with a kitchen knife. Good luck with that.

Not a kitchen knife, more like bashing through the side of a car with a railroad spike. Might not penetrate military plating, but I can definitely see it busting through the door of a regular car, chitin is pretty strong. Plus, they are mutated bees, who knows what the stinger is made out of now; it could be made out of chitin reinforced with carbon fiber, or tipped with tungsten carbide.

[Kadian]

It’s described as the size of roughly a kitchen knife. So, they sting through the sheet metal of the Car door, now what? Then the Bee dies because that’s what they sadly do when they sting something, and then you have a stinger in your car and a dead bee in front of the door. That doesn’t mean they can enter the car. Even if a dozen or a hundred bees ‘sting’ your car, they won’t be able to reach you unless they are lucky. They would just make some holes in your normal car or break their stingers on the plating you installed.
Because they are able to make a hole with something that is a lot smaller than the rest of their body doesn’t mean they can enter said vehicle. Sure, your vehicle might be unusable after their attack and look like a metal hedgehog, but they usually won’t be able to get you. In fact, the best chance might be the windshield, in my opinion, but as soon as you have a reinforced windshield, this option if gone too.

[nameless_survivor]

Since they can already attack multiple times without having their stingers ripped out like regular bees, I’d say they’ve evolved that weakness away. As for the hole size, I was kind of thinking they would just keep hitting the edges of the initial hole to enlarge it. Or punch holes around a section of hull like a can opener.

[Eastwardrope91]

Eventually they could bust through but they would more than likely achieve this by bashing their entire body into the vehicle/building and in number bash it down.

As for the scents I think their needs to either be a very limited time limit(5 minutes most) or have a scent removing system added like a bathtub or shower or the scent blocking CBM.

[Kadian]

[quote=“nameless_survivor, post:16, topic:17046, full:true”]
Since they can already attack multiple times without having their stingers ripped out like regular bees, I’d say they’ve evolved that weakness away. [/quote]

You may be wrong there.
The Stingers of Bees are hooked. When they sting someone, their stinger becomes embedded into the skin and hair, and when they try to pull it out they rip their abdomen open, bleeding to death shortly thereafter.
This is, of course, talking about a normal-sized bee. A dog-sized bee should be able to sting weaker materials (Cloth, Leather, Meat…) and pull it out without problems. However, Metal of any kind - even simple sheet metal from cheap cars - should give a bee enough resistance when pulling the stinger out that they, again, would hurt themself in the process. It’s about comparison here, a dogsized bee will have a stronger exoskeleton and better connections between abdomen and stinger, making it harder to actually rip them apart, but it’s still doable if they puncture something hard enough.

As for the hole size, I was kind of thinking they would just keep hitting the edges of the initial hole to enlarge it. Or punch holes around a section of hull like a can opener.

Hitting the edges might be an issue, as shown above. Punching holes around a section like a can opener would theoretically work, however, that would mean the Bees have to be semi-intelligent to do it, and even then, at least 1 bee would probably have to ram the weakened part, hurting itself in the process. Since the Bees ingame don’t seem to be more intelligent than before, your idea would need to happen by pure accident, which would either need a lot of time or a lot of luck.

As for the scents I think their needs to either be a very limited time limit(5 minutes most) or have a scent removing system added like a bathtub or shower or the scent blocking CBM.

There are already mechanics in place to hide someones smell. The Olfactory Mask CBM reduces the ‘odor’ of the person in question to near zero ; There are also scented candles and similar items which can be used to minimize the spread of your own smell.
I have no clue if this one is true, since i never looked at this possibility in question, but dirty clothes could also change the amount of smell.
The ability to clean yourself (bathe/shower/wash) most likely…won’t be added, at least not in the near future. I seem to remember that people talked about this several times, usually in combination with defecation, and the whole thing got booted every single time. I wager they might rethink the Idea of they rework the smell-system, if thats ever going to happen.

[Dialo.Malison]

This from Wikipedia:

Although it is widely believed that a worker honey bee can sting only once, this is a partial misconception: although the stinger is in fact barbed so that it lodges in the victim’s skin, tearing loose from the bee’s abdomen and leading to its death in minutes, this only happens if the skin of the victim is sufficiently thick, such as a mammal’s. Honey bees are the only hymenoptera with a strongly barbed sting, though yellow jackets and some other wasps have small barbs.
Bees with barbed stingers can often sting other insects without harming themselves. Queen honeybees and bees of many other species, including bumblebees and many solitary bees, have smoother stingers with smaller barbs, and can sting mammals repeatedly.

I think that with the increased size of the bee and its stinger, human skin isn’t strong enough to rip out the stinger so they can sting you multiple times. Though I agree that the sheet metal on a car would be strong enough.

[Tamior]

It’s not about the strength per se, it’s more about the material being “stretchy” enough to trap the stinger in it after the stinger is inserted.