Self-Replicating Fungaloids?

[Wally-kun]

I don’t know if this is intended or not, but I’m using one of the latest experimentals (and by this I mean it’s a week or two old) and I’m having issues again with fungaloids. They seemed to be multiplying extremely fast when left unsupervised in the reality bubble, so I paid some attention and noted that fungaloids have a chance to just straight up fart out copies of themselves where spore clouds should be. They do create spore clouds as well, but about 2/3 times the spore clouds simply become fungaloids. There’s no note about it in the text log, it’s just…now there are 3 fungaloids. Have fun.

Is this intentional? I like how they make fungal bed when they POOF! and such, but cloning themselves seems akin to that “endless fungaloid spawn” issue that happened a long time ago. Except in this case it’s slightly less fungaloid spawn and a ton more fungal bed.

[Coolthulhu]

This is probably the hardiest bug. We should have a leaderboards of bugs by the number of attempted fixes.

Confirming that it happens.

[Wally-kun]

To be quite honest, I think the Fungaloids need to be overhauled, or just straight up replaced. It does two jobs right now, so in the interest of getting rid of this apparently extremely prevalent bug I think they should be split. The “fungaloid” (ideally a new entity) is the mushroom thing that waddles around and does its POOF! thing which spreads creep around. Logically the fungal infestation would want their creep spread first, to serve as a base for everything else to grow off of. Maybe it connects it more readily to the group mind this way.

The other creature would be something which specifically spawns spore clouds. These plop down, take root in the creep, and either become another fungaloid (which actively avoids wandering on the creep to further push out its boundaries), the spore cloud spawner, or a fungal tendril.

You want to stay away from the Fungaloids, because they’re constantly spawning microscopic spore clouds that can and will infest you and fungus-ify you. The spore cloud spawner condenses the cloud it makes rather than just farting out it of its base, so while you don’t TECHNICALLY need to worry about being around them, killing it would have the same POOF! effect as the fungaloid and you’d have the same issue to worry about. Generally, killing a fungus creature without protective gear is a bad idea, just like it is now.

I think it’s a decent model for a functional fungus ecosystem, and also would stand a good chance of gutting that stupid bug once and for all. The current model for the fungaloid is apparently just more trouble than it’s worth.

[Frostwood]

I had an idea a while back that fungaloids would stop producing spores when they are on fugal terrain-after all no need to fungalize already fungal terrain.

The other idea would be to convert the spore monster into an item, that auto-transforms the terrain(using the iuse_auto_transform as a base) around it after a period of time, and it wouldn’t create the item, if the spore-item was already on the same terrain.

[Wally-kun]

I mulled it over a bit and I think I’ve got a solution:

The design of the Fungus is based around assimilating entities and altering them in such a way that every single creature it possesses all does the same job. This is in contrast to the Triffids, who have specialized units to do jobs specific to their strengths. To create a new unit to do a specific job in the Fungus would go against their design philosophy of single-minded unification and expansion.

The Fungaloids waddle around and go POOF! and fart out a big cloud of spores from their base. This creates fungal bed like it does now. But instead of making spore clouds, it’s the fungal bed that creates spore clouds on an infrequent but regular basis. The spore clouds have the same design as floating around and taking root; if it lands on something that isn’t fungal bed, it either just dies or lands and make a fungal bed tile. If it lands on fungal bed, it makes a fungaloid sporeling. Sporeling grows up into a fungaloid, which then waddles around and creates more creep, which will generate more fungaloids slowly. And ideally the fungaloids avoid walking on the creep because their job is to spread it and that requires them to avoid what exists already.

At some point it’d be a good idea to find a way to spawn fungal tendrils, and then some more sharp fungal tendrils to deal with more armored players and NPC’s as time goes on, but for now reducing the Fungaloid functions and moving the spore-generating task over to the creep itself would stand a good chance of getting rid of this stupid bug. It’d certainly make it more simple, at least.

[i2amroy]

I actually love the idea of the spore bed itself being the main spreading force lore-wise (though I’d probably still have certain monsters or situations actively create spores). Implementation wise I see one major problem with it, that we don’t have any good way for furniture/terrain to spread over time. I’d be totally for converting over to something like this once we have a good system for doing so.

As for the simple “fungaloids constantly spread and multiply to enormous numbers” problem, honestly I’d like to have the majority of the basic fungaloids go dormant in big clusters once an area is totally fungalized, essentially becoming fairly stable bits of the landscape unless majorly disturbed. At that point some more rare and “tender” type creatures could come forth, and we could bring out a host of larger and more advanced fungal monsters to wander around.

The current end goal is that totally fungal areas should feel less like “a thousand million fungaloids moving and reproducing” and more like this:

“A faint fungal haze covers everything and limits vision, but otherwise the land is mostly still and silent, the fungaloids having ceased their tasks to spread and grow to join in the glorious rapture of the All, gathering in large clumps unless disturbed. Their observances only disturbed only by the larger fungal creatures, wandering the mists, or by the rare group of fungaloids moving jointly towards far away places to further the Mycus’s grand design. That is at least until a deer, the ooze in its body somehow having managed to fend off the fungus despite the repeated exposure to the fungal mists, crashes into the middle of one of the dormant fungaloids collections. Within moments the deer is rigid, as the fungal tendrils that lashed from the now angered group pierce its body again and again, and only moments later the silence begins to reclaim the world as the majority of the fungaloids settle down again.”

[Valpo]

luckily for the mycus you didn t envision a moose.

Sounds great. I d realy love to bring a flamethrower to a place like that . A reason to use heavy weapons is always welcome.

[jaked122]

The Fungaloids waddle around and go POOF! and fart out a big cloud of spores from their base. This creates fungal bed like it does now. But instead of making spore clouds, it’s the fungal bed that creates spore clouds on an infrequent but regular basis.

The fungal beds, I’ve noticed, seem to already produce fungaloid spawn. I’ve let they ruin a large part of my worlds to determine their effects, and this seems to be one of them

Also, the fact that the fungaloids convert discontinuous stretches of terrain seems to be purposeful in defeating my normal strategy of waiting for a sunny day and bringing a lighter or magnifying glass.

[Wally-kun]

The problem might lie in the spawning of the fungal spores. Then the evolution mechanics (fucking weird and obscure as they are) just sorta take off.

[jaked122]

Actually, I ended up making a mod and just getting rid of the fungaloids altogether, and they do not spawn from fungal beds. Fortunately.

[Kryxx]

The other way is don’t have the fungaloids spawn spores randomly unless killed. (The spores fly from their death thrall). Along with the aforementioned fungal bed also spreading.

That way it won’t spread quite as fast, and when zombies and fungaloids fight and the zombie wins, it ‘may’ not since it could get effected by the spores and spread more beds. But it wouldn’t be 1-2 fungaloids spreading dozens of spores every few minutes… and taking over a town in a day or 2.