New (dangerous) creature idea (THE SPACE SPIDER)

[Shadow_of_Chris]

This is by far one of my favorite games and recently I've been in the Halloween spirit that being said i was thinking about the game and I'm no modder but this idea I have is too good to pass up so id hope it will become a feature that being said let me introduce you to

THE SPACE SPIDER!!!

DESIGN
The design would be a Spider some sort of arachnid with an exposed brain and at spawn in the middle of a 9x9 web (web would be a background material only buildable by spiders but climbable everyone)

GAME MECHANICS
now here's how I imagine him 1-3 spawn on the map in a 9x9 square room on a web on the web you would see him flat and would cover a 3x3 area if he was walking on walls or on the floor like most critters then he would cover would be 2x3 (2 tall 3 wide)

now while he does spawn in the 9x9 room he will get hungry forcing him to look for food this will cause him to claw at the walls to the most noise(vibration) (if noise could somehow be implemented that or he would go in a random direction based on a couple of factors)

that being said yes this means he would go after your livestock and even your dupes but what I would envision is the spider kidnaps a duplicate (or other creature) and depending on the size of the creature will not swallow it whole and instead will bring it back to its lair where you will have 3 cycles to save them when the spider is inactive or sleeping (most spiders are also photophobic meaning this will cause you to really think about light and the fact he will be awake a little before and a little after night or unless you wake him (more on that in a bit)

now because I think he would be allowed to dig I don't think he would be able to get through certain materials but for the materials, he does get through this becomes a problem in the fact that it would slow down your game so what I propose it that he makes structures out of web that he deposits stuff into similar to storage compactors he's a hoarder of sorts

back to if you wake him. if you wake him I imagine this being a mini-boss that would give you a few things each idea I've had I can think of uses for

Silk for luxurious clothes or things that require strong tensile strength
fossils from bones
eggs which could give you two things
1 it would give you a food source as spiders lay tons of eggs

maybe sticky clothes made out of spider skin this would be a type of exo-suit that would allow your dupes to crawl up walls and swing up to seven blocks away and maybe even grab stuff with a web launching material that you would have to pipe in with the transit system

3 your own spiders that you could domesticate and use as silk producers food producers and

DRONES

what I imagine if you hatch an egg in a 9x9 room and you supply it with automation with meat or whatever else it would eat (you might even sacrifice extra dupes to it but I'm not sure what kind of cruel monster you would be for that) this queen spider would not attack you as you would hatch it and its brood would follow your orders but it gets better since the brood would be a 1x1 entity it could go almost anywhere and if you somehow plugged a chip into their brain you could hook them up to automation as well (this is obviously something that would be super late game since this would be a better way to move materials if you were not being too specific

DANGEROUS

now as I'm sure anyone could tell you, having a giant spider as a pet could be dangerous and you know what your not wrong your queen space spider could go feral if you do not feed it enough and I imagine that any spider you have that doesn't have a chip in its brain would be very pleased to feed its queen if she was going... hungry this would again reset her or feed her for a awhile where, she would become content again but your dupes or your creatures like say a late-game gassy moo could be its next meal... if you don't sacrifice one that is for her to tie up and drain or if you feed her just meat I also imagine she would have a loyalty meter that would combat this danger if you took care of the queens needs its drones would be less likely to go after your duplicates and more likely to go after some hatch or gassy moo

This also makes a great idea in the fact it could study you to find the weakest duplicate and actively prey on your colony hiding in the shadows something you may tap into if possible if I could think of a way but this give you a great reason to lock those doors at night huh?

HELPFULL

Now like I said spiders can deliver materials but the only thing they can build is pretty webs so if you opened your build menu and selected to build webbing that you could climb the reason you'd want to do this it would save space as web would be a background building you could climb again only buildable by spiders so its super late game you could hook them up to automation and they could be great drones controlled by the player with no downsides if one dies you could use this as a food source as well

so what do you think should something this awesome be met with danger to balance how would you change this or incorporate this and Klei if you ever need someone for ideas I thought this up in like 5 minutes, so call me  lol

[Sasza22]

I was thinking about a spider enemy. Not a huge one but one that could catch dupes and wrap them in webs. It would use the combat mechanic. An incapacitated dupe woill get wrpped if left for the spider. The web would keep him alive for up to 10 cycles giving you time to set up a rescue mission before he gets eaten.

Webs being climbable by dupes is a cool idea. Maybe they could be minable and used in some way. A spider could be tamed and fed meat. Could attack hatches as well or trap shinebugs in the webs. If not fed would get agressive. When put in a ranch would weave webs from the top to bottom thay could be mined by robominers.

[Shadow_of_Chris]

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

I was thinking about a spider enemy. Not a huge one but one that could catch dupes and wrap them in webs. It would use the combat mechanic. An incapacitated dupe woill get wrpped if left for the spider. The web would keep him alive for up to 10 cycles giving you time to set up a rescue mission before he gets eaten.

Webs being climbable by dupes is a cool idea. Maybe they could be minable and used in some way. A spider could be tamed and fed meat. Could attack hatches as well or trap shinebugs in the webs. If not fed would get agressive. When put in a ranch would weave webs from the top to bottom thay could be mined by robominers.

this is exactly why I said they would be an integral part in austomation, however, spiderwebs being background buildings would be helpful mining them seems a bit overpowered in my opinion since you could theoretically smash and grab at the risk of being eaten but since the spiders that would be drones could build webs as background building there could be other building as well (like for capturing needless to say we have enough domesticated critters IMO and I think your inclined to agree but what do you think off all the mechanics I listed?

[babba]

1983 - As if ONI existed back then...Playing that I would have never expected a game to have more than 4 colors - Would have never thought that someone would put a mighty 1.3 Kilo air cooler on to a modified cpu to run ONI as fast as possible. All beyond imagination. Z80A @ 3,5 MHz # Now i7 7700k @5.4 GHz

Yeah, spiders would be cool

[Sasza22]

12 hours ago, Shadow_of_Chris said:

but what do you think off all the mechanics I listed?

I`m not sure what to think about automated spiders. Automation is pretty simple. On and off. It would be really hard to make a spider do what you want. I`m thinking of them more as critters. They are agressive and do certain stuff. If you contain them in a room you can use whatever they do to your advantage. Unlike the other creaturs you need to be extra careful or you could lose a dupe or some other critters in the process.

As for the queen plus drones scenario it`s kinda neat. The queen would be pretty much a PoI so a place in the asteroid where she would sit with some drones walking around (maybe digging tunnels after a while). The queen could remain dormant until a dupe gets close and wakes her up. After that she`ll continously lay eggs that spawn drones thay will crawl around and cause problems. If you feed the queen she could fall asleep again and the drones would become less agressive for the period.

Later in the game you could maybe use some drugs or something to move the queen to a better spot and feed her with meat or live critters and use the webs she`ll produce.

Maybe you could find a spider queen egg in space so you can have more of them. Not sure if the queen should have a normal lifecycle or just live unless you kill her off.

[Shadow_of_Chris]

10 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

I`m not sure what to think about automated spiders. Automation is pretty simple. On and off. It would be really hard to make a spider do what you want. I`m thinking of them more as critters. They are agressive and do certain stuff. If you contain them in a room you can use whatever they do to your advantage. Unlike the other creaturs you need to be extra careful or you could lose a dupe or some other critters in the process.

As for the queen plus drones scenario it`s kinda neat. The queen would be pretty much a PoI so a place in the asteroid where she would sit with some drones walking around (maybe digging tunnels after a while). The queen could remain dormant until a dupe gets close and wakes her up. After that she`ll continously lay eggs that spawn drones thay will crawl around and cause problems. If you feed the queen she could fall asleep again and the drones would become less agressive for the period.

Later in the game you could maybe use some drugs or something to move the queen to a better spot and feed her with meat or live critters and use the webs she`ll produce.

Maybe you could find a spider queen egg in space so you can have more of them. Not sure if the queen should have a normal lifecycle or just live unless you kill her off.

Well since id want there to be some danger the least I would say is 50 cycles but I wouldn't want to kill her off and a spider hatchling lets say would have to fill the role of being a queen that being said because that might get complicated I would just keep her alive after all I modeled the space spider out of three things
Ants
cockroaches
and of course spiders

the reason is ants dig and there queens almost never die unless they are actively killed not even kidding if an ant becomes a queen its gonna have a very long life

cockroaches because you can control them (look it up its creepy AF)

and spiders cuz of web and all that

so yeah i hope the devs see this would want to know their input as well im curious as to how difficult it would be to code or something like that

[babba]

Wahhhhh cock roaches waaahhh! The creeps in Factorio are really scary as one encounters them the first time. Maybe that's a good thing