Fungus

This is just ideas about fungus growing in the colonies. Suggestion based on initial idea by someone i forgot (probably on G+), my own ideas and later comments in Discord by 4N3G4ZPK20, Phap, scooterman31, mijkolsmith

Starting to grow

• Colonies may build a fungus chamber.
  • An action taking 24 h and sacrificing quite a number of ants.
• The player can get hold of some fungus ... somewhere.
  • Event?
  • Random when helping/sabotaging colonies?
  • Random in the wild?
• Player may insert fungus into fungus chambers in colony when in range. The fungus start to grow.
• Player must be at least level 10(?) to handle fungus. (I want it pretty high, see Experience for some other levels)

Having an active fungus chamber

• A colony with fungus chamber has two more values:
  • Fungus size: 1% - 100 % (0% when there is no fungus inserted in the fungus chamber)
  • Fungus pollution: 0% - 100%
• The food produced by workers in the colony gets increased by (Fungus size) * (1 - Fungus pollution). Note in math: 1 = 100%, 0.01 = 1%
  • At maximum you double the food income
  • When pollution is high you get nothing extra
• Fungus size increase as the fungus grows. 1 percentage point per day.
• Fungus pollution grows (1 percentage point) * (Fungus size) per day. (I.e. slower when the fungus is small.
• Gardening the fungus? Some of the workers fetching food handle feeding and handling the fungus. No special setting for that. No special code.

Risks

• When the fungus is at 100% there is a small risk that the fungus start to control the ants and taking control of the colony. (Search the net for "Zombie ants" if you dare)
  • The colony become independent
  • Maybe some fungus will appear around the colony? (Ants hanging in the trees, if you read about the zombie ants)
• When the colony gets really small (counting actual worker ants), the fungus dies.
• There is a small risk that the fungus chamber collapse.
  • If there is some fungus in there, it dies.

Extracting more fungus

• When the colony is in range and fungus percentage is higher than threshold, the user may extract fungus as an action on the colony.
  • The fungus percentage drops to a low value: Maybe 10% or 20%?
  • The player gets a piece of fungus.

Or maybe (but this would allowing handling fungus in colonies you don't visit too):

• When the fungus is higher than threshold may order the ants to extract some fungus. After some time:
  • The fungus percentage drops by something, maybe 50 percentage points?
  • A piece of fungus appear outside the colony.

Threshold could be 80% or so.

Fungus items

• Fungus dropped on the ground last for some time. Maybe a week?
• Fungus in inventory last... forever? Or just a week there too?
• Fungus has no species and may be used by any players.
• A player may carry up to user level number of fungus pieces.
• Fungus may be dropped and picked up.

Display

In the colony dialog, in the "ant count etc box".

It will display an extra row with a fungus symbol if there is a fungus chamber and a percentage. 0% for no fungus or the actual percentage for the colony. 100% will be red.

To build a fungus chamber you click on the "ant count-box" and then an action.

To extract fungus you click on the "ant count-box" and then an action.

Maybe later

• Expanding the fungus chamber... somehow. Increasing the max. (i.e. 100% gives a higher factor on the food)
  • Is another action taking 24h, 48h, 96h etc.
  • A setting in the sliders?