Plant and Critter Idea Thread!

[DrSugarFreeman]

I'm starting a thread for all of you who have any cool ideas ou want to share in regards to new plants, critters/morphs, and any changes to current ones!

 

To kick things off, I was thinking of plants that deal in temperature extremes. So far Pincha Pepper and Sleet Wheat are the closest we have in those regards on either side of the spectrum.

For adding an even tougher kick to your food, you wanna get some Molten Cor'Peppers, a spitfire little pepper that grows in extremely hot environments and can work as a high quality edible or ingredient. Lets say its grows at around 75C to 100C, and needs to be fertilized with that useless Sulfur we've been building up for a while (which I think should be renewable as a byproduct of Water/Hot Water Geysers and Steam Vents doing their usual thing). I think off the bat it'd give +2 food bonus, and have both a Grill and Range recipe. A Pepper Skewer from the grill would give you a +3 bonus, while a Barbeque, Soul Pepper and Pincha Pepper combination from the range would give you a mouthwatering Spicy Kabob for a +5 bonus, and a Cooked Fish, Sleet Wheat, and Soul Pepper combo would give you a crunchy Fish Taco for a +6 bonus.

 

For those that want to chill out and let your Dupes enjoy a sweet treat, you can add the Milky Dayberry to your growing list of options! This plant is special in that it requires a freezing temperature of -90C to -120C, and can only grow in Hydrogen environments. Hanging from the ceiling, it soaks up say 5kg/cycle of Gaseous Hydrogen, and uses its properties to form a juicy, milk-filled snowberry capable of holding its temperature in almost any environment. Eating it plain would give your Dupes a +2 food bonus, but sadly Grilling it won't get you much. However, smash it using an Egg Cracker, and you get a chilly cup of Dayberry Milk for your dupes to sip before bed, with a great +3 food bonus. For more, you can take that milk, mix it with some Pincha Pepper, Ice and Table Salt in a Gas Range and you get an undeniably ambrosial Dayberry Sundae, with a +6 food bonus!

 

When dealing with some Critters, I always ask myself in what ways they can be further utilizied. The Drecko, for instance, grows in a normally hot and stuffy environment, up to 110C. If Glossy Drecks can survive in down to 5C environments, wheres the morph that can survive in searing temperatures in comparison? Now I don't really have a satisfying answer fleshed out just out, but I believe that a Drecko variant that can survive extreme heat, excrete some sort of hot, dry material, and grow a tough, resilient metal or crystal on its back for harvest would be great. However, aside from my Molten Cor'Pepper, I can't think of any other sustainable plants that could feed the creature, making it extremely high maintenance.

[metallichydra]

old weird idea:

critter:

a critter produces heat, in an attempt to produce its food: steam. would live in either salt biome or near cool steam geysers.

[badgamer123]

a useful shrine bug....and some new type critter like hatch(but not hatch...too many now)something that eat dead end item.

[QuQuasar]

We don't currently have a bird-like critter in ONI. I'm thinking a hummingbird-like creature native to the rust biome, that eats rust and expels cold oxygen as an alternative to the rust deoxidizer.

 

I also feel like the "Forest" biome doesn't have enough foliage in it. I'd like to see giant roots or hanging vines: something to make it feel more crowded and forest-y.

[FantasticMoose]

I'd love some vinelike foilage in the forest biome as well and have playing with the idea of an abyssalite sink.
Maybe it could be combined.

Crusher vines.
Huge "background" plant at 4x7 or something. Rooted from the top.
 

Will stop and "hug" (taste) duplicants that pass for a +1 "comforting hug" morale bonus.
Lives in oxygen, carbon dioxide or chlorine.
Lifecycle 60 when wild 12-ish when domesticated.
Needs abysallite fertilizer and water irrigation.

Harvests for a tiny amount of dirt and a lot of sand.

[DrSugarFreeman]

On 8/26/2019 at 5:35 AM, FantasticMoose said:

I'd love some vinelike foilage in the forest biome as well and have playing with the idea of an abyssalite sink.
Maybe it could be combined.

Crusher vines.
Huge "background" plant at 4x7 or something. Rooted from the top.
 

Will stop and "hug" (taste) duplicants that pass for a +1 "comforting hug" morale bonus.
Lives in oxygen, carbon dioxide or chlorine.
Lifecycle 60 when wild 12-ish when domesticated.
Needs abysallite fertilizer and water irrigation.

Harvests for a tiny amount of dirt and a lot of sand.

Huh, interesting idea. An interactive plant that could either hinder or help your Dupes. In those regards I would think of a flytrap-like plant, that grabs a Dupe and slowly begins to sap their health until they either become incapacitated or die. It could be stopped by attacking it, after killing it you get a seed. The seed can replant itself in almost any material except for refined metals with its strong roots, so keeping it stored and away from Pips is recommended. It would still provide decor (+10 in a 5 tile radius), and could even provide resources given care.

Now heres a neat idea. To get it to produce resources you could feed it live Critters like Hatches and Pips. It would then take several cycles to digest them, after which it enters a flowering phase, and will provide possibly a special fruit or a resource of some kind when harvested. During the digestion period, it would not attack Dupes or other Critters, and for several cycles after it wouldn't attack them either. It would only need to be fed every so often, and can be fed either pests, trash morphs, or your excess Critters. However, it would still require watering when domesticated with say 50kg of water a cycle, seeing as it would get most of its moisture from eating Critters.

On 8/25/2019 at 11:08 PM, metallichydra said:

old weird idea:

critter:

a critter produces heat, in an attempt to produce its food: steam. would live in either salt biome or near cool steam geysers.

I'm thinking of a big tortoise with a small geyser on its back. It would occasionally dive into water pools and suck in a decent amount of water, after which it would expel it out over a period of time as scalding Steam in an attempt to either deter dupes from hunting it or taking its eggs. They'd be mostly aggressive Critters, but would provide large quantities of meat and eggs, and could also be used to power a Steam Engine if setup correctly.

On 8/26/2019 at 3:59 AM, QuQuasar said:

We don't currently have a bird-like critter in ONI. I'm thinking a hummingbird-like creature native to the rust biome, that eats rust and expels cold oxygen as an alternative to the rust deoxidizer.

 

I also feel like the "Forest" biome doesn't have enough foliage in it. I'd like to see giant roots or hanging vines: something to make it feel more crowded and forest-y.

How about a hummingbird-like Critter that feeds off of Sporechid nectar, and will provide liquid or gas of some kind as excretion? Maybe it would either pee out liquid, or occasionally disperse gas into the environment using specialized vents in its wings?

 

I agree about the Forest biome. A ceiling hanging vine of some sort would be a nice touch, as well as grass patches in the dirt, albeit merely cosmetic. The vines could be merely Decorational plants that could only be planted in hanging pots and wall pots and naturally planted by Pips?

[QuQuasar]

1 hour ago, DrSugarFreeman said:

How about a hummingbird-like Critter that feeds off of Sporechid nectar, and will provide liquid or gas of some kind as excretion? Maybe it would either pee out liquid, or occasionally disperse gas into the environment using specialized vents in its wings?

Feeding on Sporechids was actually my second idea for the hummingbird. Honestly, it's probably a better solution: drinking nectar is a natural reflection of real-life hummingbird behaviour and would give us an genuine incentive to play with Sporechids instead of just avoiding them. The only question is, what would it produce? I don't have an answer to that. One idea is that it could expel gas like a squid does with ink, either to jet about or as a distraction. But I don't know what gas. Hot steam, perhaps? A ranch you can run a steam turbine off of would be kind of cool.

But we already have heat-loving creatures in the oil biome and I really wanted to propose a critter for the cold rust biome. So perhaps the rust-deoxidizer alternative should be a different critter entirely.

Mechanically, I'm picturing a critter that eats rust and generates oxygen, but rather than expelling the oxygen like other creatures, it stores it internally. When it dies it explodes, releasing a burst of high-pressure oxygen into the environment akin to what you get when you deconstruct an exosuit dock. It would be a viable way to get oxygen from rust without having to deal with chlorine and heat, but at the cost of extreme intermittancy and a high likelihood of popped eardrums.

[DrSugarFreeman]

On 8/26/2019 at 6:58 PM, QuQuasar said:

Feeding on Sporechids was actually my second idea for the hummingbird. Honestly, it's probably a better solution: drinking nectar is a natural reflection of real-life hummingbird behaviour and would give us an genuine incentive to play with Sporechids instead of just avoiding them. The only question is, what would it produce? I don't have an answer to that. One idea is that it could expel gas like a squid does with ink, either to jet about or as a distraction. But I don't know what gas. Hot steam, perhaps? A ranch you can run a steam turbine off of would be kind of cool.

But we already have heat-loving creatures in the oil biome and I really wanted to propose a critter for the cold rust biome. So perhaps the rust-deoxidizer alternative should be a different critter entirely.

Mechanically, I'm picturing a critter that eats rust and generates oxygen, but rather than expelling the oxygen like other creatures, it stores it internally. When it dies it explodes, releasing a burst of high-pressure oxygen into the environment akin to what you get when you deconstruct an exosuit dock. It would be a viable way to get oxygen from rust without having to deal with chlorine and heat, but at the cost of extreme intermittancy and a high likelihood of popped eardrums.

What if we expanded the birds diet to include Balm Lily? That way it has more than one environment to work with.

 

-I can't quite think of a creature that could eat Rust and excrete oxygen like you want. I almost thought of a type of Mite that would lay eggs like crazy and eat up lots of metal, making it a sort of pest that can occur naturally in almost any biome.-

[Sasza22]

A rust biome creature would be nice to have. I was thinking of some kind of spider but a bird would work as well. It should produce chlorine to keep the biome static, (Saltvines consume it, the critter produces more) maybe just eating salt. Some additional mechanic could be added for rust. If it`s a bird it could drop rusty feathers occasionally. Make it an iron bird that drops feathers when they rust.

[Lurve]

I'd make a couple of small changes to wild breeding mechanics. If a critter is in its comfort zone or if it's fed, it breeds at replacement. If it's neither, it's just under replacement. But if it's both in its comfort range and fed, it breeds enough for 2-3 eggs over its life. This way you could do a kind of slow, lazy ranching just by putting a feeder out for the wild critters and letting nature do the rest.


Critters:

Ice Vole, a thermovore morph of the shove vole. Can't burrow through artificial tiles or anything harder than ice. Eats ice and polluted ice, excretes 95% mass in tile form at a much lower temperature. Use case is to amplify the ice maker's cooling into the midgame, and natural tile construction for cold plants in the late game.

Revamp the morb to be a ranchable critter that eats slime and polluted dirt and expels polluted oxygen at a faster rate than it would offgas naturally, with a small loss of mass in the process. Keep the slimelung but reduce the added germ count to the point that quickly converting it to O2 is enough to keep it in check. Put some in the forest biome, but keep the toilet spawning because that's fun.

Rust Morb, a morb variant found in the rust biome. More fur than you'd expect. Eats salt, expels chlorine.

[SixbySix]

hatch morph that eats abysselite and makes wolframite.  Lots of abyselite = little wolframite, but it at least gives wolframite on maps that don't have it.

[Yoma_Nosme]

How about some plants that need liquid co2 or oxygen? I call dibs on Titan truffles btw.

So, liquid co2 or o2 either pipe fed or even better, like algae terrariums, beeing able to grow from standing in liquid.

Spoiler

Btw, I try to think of a plant with uranus pun...but I'll end this post now

Both could make rime or frozen core maps a more unique  playthrough

[Nebbie]

Rusty drecko, to stabilize the rust biome:

• Eats nosh sprout, dasha saltvine, or mealwood.
• Farts chlorine.
• Aggressively reduces body temperature to at least as cold as -15 C.
• Livable temperature range of -50 C to 25 C.
• Scales of rust grow regardless of atmosphere.
• Bred by feeding any drecko dasha saltvine.
• Spawns commonly in rust biome.

Sterile morb, to stabilize the caustic biome:

• Farts chlorine instead of polluted oxygen.
• Morphed into from a morb being exposed to chlorine and warm for most of a cycle.
• Can morph back if cold most of a cycle.
• Spawns rarely in caustic biome.

Dirt vole, for critter-based composting and easier natural tile creation:

• Eats fertilizer, algae, slime, rot pile, polluted dirt, dirt, or regolith.
• Poops tiles of dirt at 95% consumed mass for non-regolith.
• Poops tiles of regolith at 50% consumed mass for regolith.
• Livable temperature range of -10 C to 50 C.
• Bred by feeding shove voles dirt.
• Breeds shove vole if fed regolith.
• Can only burrow into materials with hardness below 25 (so copper ore, sandstone, and phosphorite are too hard for it).
• Spawns semi-frequently in forest biome.

Existing critter changes:

• Flying ones manually wranglable.
• Slicksters more movement-capable and less tolerant of accidental drowning.
• Puft princes do half conversion, not tenth.
• Puft prince eggs depend on what kind of gas they consumed, so that it's less random and you can actually maintain things like squeaky pufts long-term (also makes dense pufts way easier).
• Pips poop polluted dirt instead of dirt (closer to actual poop, makes compost piles less of an afterthought on forest and would compliment the dirt vole).
• Dreckos aggressively increase body temperature to at least 35 C.
• Glossy dreckos aggressively keep body temperature at 20 C.
• Dreckos can eat dasha saltvine.
• Glossy dreckos can eat balm lilly.
• Drecko egg chance increases when eating balm lilly.

Existing plant changes:

• Thimble reeds consume less polluted water but retain their growth speed and output.
• Balm lillies consume chlorine slowly (compliments sterile morb).
• In general, plants should consume whatever gas they want to live in, and gas consumption shouldn't need to be continuous for growth, having a buffer.

[DrSugarFreeman]

21 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

A rust biome creature would be nice to have. I was thinking of some kind of spider but a bird would work as well. It should produce chlorine to keep the biome static, (Saltvines consume it, the critter produces more) maybe just eating salt. Some additional mechanic could be added for rust. If it`s a bird it could drop rusty feathers occasionally. Make it an iron bird that drops feathers when they rust.

I kind of like that, but I feel it needs a few adjustments. How about an rusty, arachnid-like critter that consumes small quantities of salt off of saltvines and then lets out small puffs of oxygen and chlorine. Then every once in a while it will molt, leaving behind a shell composed of about 10kg of Rust.

21 hours ago, Lurve said:

I'd make a couple of small changes to wild breeding mechanics. If a critter is in its comfort zone or if it's fed, it breeds at replacement. If it's neither, it's just under replacement. But if it's both in its comfort range and fed, it breeds enough for 2-3 eggs over its life. This way you could do a kind of slow, lazy ranching just by putting a feeder out for the wild critters and letting nature do the rest.


Critters:

Ice Vole, a thermovore morph of the shove vole. Can't burrow through artificial tiles or anything harder than ice. Eats ice and polluted ice, excretes 95% mass in tile form at a much lower temperature. Use case is to amplify the ice maker's cooling into the midgame, and natural tile construction for cold plants in the late game.

Revamp the morb to be a ranchable critter that eats slime and polluted dirt and expels polluted oxygen at a faster rate than it would offgas naturally, with a small loss of mass in the process. Keep the slimelung but reduce the added germ count to the point that quickly converting it to O2 is enough to keep it in check. Put some in the forest biome, but keep the toilet spawning because that's fun.

Rust Morb, a morb variant found in the rust biome. More fur than you'd expect. Eats salt, expels chlorine.
 

I like the Ice Vole idea. Would make planting wild Sleet Wheat more viable late game.

I don't think the Morb should be ranchable, as grooming it equates to cleaning it, and cleaning a creature made entirely out of waste is not a good idea for both that critter's health and for the health of the dupe grooming it. The Index entry even recommends against petting it. I'd say a good enough way to balance it out would be to give it a lifespan. Say 25 cycles? As for the feeding part, theres already plenty of ways to use Polluted Dirt, Rot, and Slime that would be heaps more useful than producing more PO. One of the Critter's we just got eats exclusively Polluted Dirt and Rot. Slime can be used for distillers and Sage Hatches, leagues more useful in terms of oxygen production. What if Morbs were a bit more of a pest like they're implied to be, and they instead spawned from filthy conditions, and then spread that filth even further? Like how Pips knock items out of bins, Morbs can latch onto food stores and loose edibles, and bins with clean organics in them and convert them into Rot and Slime? There'd be no clear way to benefit from that seeing as you could just compost the food when its still good to eat, and how that basically turns algae back into Slime which is totally counterproductive, but who said that there needs to be benefit from every single thing in game? I mean, once plastic melts and you get Naptha theres no going back or using it for anything good, so Morbs could be just the same by ruining perfectly good resources. And to make them even more pesky, why not increase the ways they can spawn? Seeing as we pretty much all exploit germy water to supply our toilets and sinks, why not make it so that using germy water in bathroom buildings has a chance to spawn Morbs, therefore forcing us to actually keep our water clean? What if they spawned from large concentrations of PO, say around 5kg? That'd make PO vents a bit trickier to handle. Make it so Morbs can swim in Water and P.Water and stick to walls. Anything to make them an actual threat, because as they are I feel like they are pretty much underwhelming and exploitable.

Morb variants would be cool. Maybe the variants could spawn in different temperatures? A fuzzy, hot Morb could spawn in temperatures past 26C/80F and produce Natural Gas; the standard Morb could spawn from 4C/40F to 26C/80F and produce PO; a cold Morb could spawn below 4C/40F and produce Cool Slush/Cold Polluted Water. Given my recent rebalance of letting them swim in PW, I feel like that'd work out great. Of course none of them would be able to produce past the usual 1000g, and the cold variant additionally couldn't produce past 1000kg of PW while submerged.

[DarkMaster13]

I was giving some thought to critters and plants for another potential starting biome:

• Bird seed-like plant: Replaces mealwood in this start.  Grows in 6 cycles, produces an inedible seed cluster.  Can be put through a microbe musher to make a low quality seed gruel which destroys most of the mass.  Probably fertilized with either dirt, water, or something else found in the starting biome that doesn't require refinement.  Maybe the start features pools of both pure and polluted water and this consumes polluted water?
• Turkey-bunny critter: Egg incubation is 5-7.5 cycles and lifetime is 25-50 cycles.  Eats seed clusters, produces a small portion of the mass (5%?) as hydrogen/polluted oxygen/some other gas that will need to be dealt with.  More importantly, every time it eats it increases the amount of meat it becomes when it dies, double to triple the amount of calories once turned into barbecue as you'd get from making seed gruel.  The critter also gets visibly fatter and moves slower as its meat increases, and it will die early once it reaches a certain point (after it's had time to lay several eggs though).

[kerosene]

This horror here:

A flesh eating plant. As big as an arbor tree and dangerous to approach for both dupes and animals. It will lure in unsuspecting animals, catch them with tentacles and immobilize them so they cannot run away or fight. Then it slowly kills them (maybe by suffocation?). Then it feeds on the meat. It can be forced to let go of its prey by chopping off one its "tentacles" (which will regrow over time). Basically a mix between deep sea angler fish, boa constrictor and a typical flesh eating fantasy plant.

[Denisetwin]

On 8/27/2019 at 11:56 AM, Sasza22 said:

A rust biome creature would be nice to have. I was thinking of some kind of spider

I'd like a rust biome silk worm or spider - it could eat rust and produce silk strands that could be made into luxury clothing that gives higher moral bonus, you could do a combo, where a mite eats the rust and the spider eats the mites and produces silk.  the mite would be a nuisance, unless you were willing to ranch them with the spiders for the luxury clothing.

[DrSugarFreeman]

2 hours ago, kerosene said:

This horror here:

A flesh eating plant. As big as an arbor tree and dangerous to approach for both dupes and animals. It will lure in unsuspecting animals, catch them with tentacles and immobilize them so they cannot run away or fight. Then it slowly kills them (maybe by suffocation?). Then it feeds on the meat. It can be forced to let go of its prey by chopping off one its "tentacles" (which will regrow over time). Basically a mix between deep sea angler fish, boa constrictor and a typical flesh eating fantasy plant.

I actually suggested something similar further up in the thread. Your take on it is interesting, though.

Spoiler

Huh, interesting idea. An interactive plant that could either hinder or help your Dupes. In those regards I would think of a flytrap-like plant, that grabs a Dupe and slowly begins to sap their health until they either become incapacitated or die. It could be stopped by attacking it, after killing it you get a seed. The seed can replant itself in almost any material except for refined metals with its strong roots, so keeping it stored and away from Pips is recommended. It would still provide decor (+10 in a 5 tile radius), and could even provide resources given care.

Now heres a neat idea. To get it to produce resources you could feed it live Critters like Hatches and Pips. It would then take several cycles to digest them, after which it enters a flowering phase, and will provide possibly a special fruit or a resource of some kind when harvested. During the digestion period, it would not attack Dupes or other Critters, and for several cycles after it wouldn't attack them either. It would only need to be fed every so often, and can be fed either pests, trash morphs, or your excess Critters. However, it would still require watering when domesticated with say 50kg of water a cycle, seeing as it would get most of its moisture from eating Critters.

 

[Wylv99]

I saw a mod a while back for "Critter Traits" that I think would be ideal if implemented correctly. It was currently that creatures could be Larger/Smaller, Faster/slower, or Longer/shorter lived. He didn't figure out how to add "This creature consumes and excretes more/less", or how to make parents influence what traits their kids would have(each egg would hatch with random traits). If he could figure out how to make this more of a breeding simulator, more than just 'Oh this one's blue, lets keep it', that would be something nice. Imagine getting your slickster farms full of hungry, high consuming creatures that lived much much longer so you barely need to check on them to keep the oil flowing, and having your pacu farm being a bunch of huge fish with a small lifespan that layed more eggs than normal. Or with hatches you could go either way if you want the calories or if you want the coal.