The fungus often reminds me of the weed in War of the Worlds. It’s an interesting mechanic, with some balance, and a real “flavour” to the world. It could also be an “end game” to the player, where the world is taken over (by ants/triffids/blob as well), and watching it grow would make even a stocked NPC camp quiver at times.
So could some slight tweaks add to this? Such as making it progress more root like, than a plain circular spread?
Also, making it, lore and mechanics, prefer wet over dry? It is already susceptible to fire. So in lore, would it’s prefered habitat (or planet), be damp, and it not have a resistance against dry areas or fire.
Thus, making it grow faster in rain/damp conditions, and slower in dry conditions would give the player times to focus on the fungus, and times to raid around it (mid summer? just raid the town. rainy spring? gotta try and avoid it, it spreads too fast).
Perhaps even limiting the fungus spread to root systems and spore buds and walking mobs, and less to the blanket. The blanket would still cause landscape changes, but the spread would be focused on nodes and creatures.
Sorry I’ve not got much ability to actually code that… other than pseudio code brainstorming.
[Edit] PS, I just had a thought on if restricting growth to a node/network system would speed up processing too, as the game would not be checking every tile for growth, just around each “node” (spore source) of the fungus spread.
