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 at 1%.
• Player must be at least level X to handle fungus. (Pretty high, 9 or even 10? See Experience)

Bonuses

• A colony with fungus chamber and active fungus get food bonus. Between 1% and 100%.
  • The bonus slowly increase as the fungus grows. How fast? 1 percentage point per day?
• Gardening the fungus?
  • 1. Some of the workers fetching food handle feeding and handling the fungus. No special setting for that.
  • 2. Some of the ants become specialized in fungus growing.

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 on "Zombie ants")
  • The colony become independent
  • Maybe some fungus will appear around the colony? (Ants hanging in the trees)
• When the colony gets really small (counting actual worker ants), the fungus dies
• There is always a small risk that the fungus chamber collapse (no matter if there is some fungus in it or not)
  • 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 value, the user may extract fungus as an action on the colony.
  • The fungus percentage drops to a low value: Maybe 10%?
  • 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 levelwe may order the ants to extract some fungus.
  • The fungus percentage drops by something, maybe 50 percentage points?
  • A piece of fungus appear outside the colony.

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 use by any players
• A player may carry up to user level number of fungus pieces.

Display

In the colony dialog. In the ant count etc box. I 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?