Idea: Hive-mind monster

[coder at ibm.net]

From: garnax at texoma.spamela.net (Mats Fors n)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.lp
Subject: Idea: Hive-mind monster
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 20:55:31 GMT

Hi all,

My idea is to create an advanced monster with one mind
and many bodies. A good (and well known) starting point is
that of a large insectoid race with two limbs for locomotion
and two (or four) for object manipulation.

My first thoughts are to divide the race into three different sub-species
as with normal ants, that is 'workers/drones',
'soldiers' and 'queen'. Later sub-sub-species can be added,
for example workers with specific tasks. First a quick rundown of the
species:

Workers/Drones:
    Made to gather and grow food to feed the queen and to 
    expand the nest, these little critters can carry huge
    weights for extended periods but are quite useless at
    fightning. They can take moderate amounts of punsihment
    and die pretty easily.
    
Soldiers:
    The soldiers are a special breed of workers who are
    used as perimeter defence and added security. The 'Race'
    has no internal social problems since they are, as mentioned,
    actually one being. These critters start out at a low 
    number but if someone attacks the colony the rate of
    soldiers among the born rise dramatically. They are pretty
    good at fighting and can take a lot of punishment due to
    their chitinous armour.
    
Queen:
    The queen is the mother of all, the mind behind the hive-mind.
    It cannot move at all due to it's size and has to be fed 
    continiously by the workers, or it will die of starvation.
    It lays a set amount of eggs each reset which hatches two 
    resets later. This is a pretty extended time and not set at
    all but would be preferable as it would require no call_outs.

What is interesting about this is that all the individual
members of the race 'share the same mind', ie is one creature, the queen.
An example of how this would manifest itself is that if a player comes and
chops up a couple of defenceless workers growing some fungus the
controlling AI quickly dispatches some soldiers to that location. The AI
is probably not going to become too advanced but it should be able to
calculate the quickest path betwen two rooms in the 'nest', which would be
logically planned to easy calculation.

If time permits the AI could become immensely more sophisticated, with
pincer manouvers and actual tactics deployed against the unsuspecting
players. The problem is having the race being playable by any level of
players.. Low level players could sneak around  picking off the odd lone
worker and then running, but some way of making it a challange for all
levels ought to be possible, ideas anyone?

Making this into an item quest ought to be pretty straightforward. Just
having all the workers collect all items found in the nest, taking dead
adventurers corpses and dropping in a room behind the queen. An added
incentive would be to have that room save all items there over reboots, so
the quantity of items could grow very large. However, that may prove to be
too good..

A possible quest is for the player to exterminate the entire
nest, which could be accomplished either by killing the queen directly,
but that is supposed to be pretty difficult, or killing all workers so the
queen doesn't get any food and starves to
death. If the queen gets hungry enough it will eat it's protecting
soldiers thereby easing the way for outright slaughter.

It seems to me the idea has great potential and would be fun
to execute. I can do the coding myself (if I can find the time) but it is
always interesting to hear other peoples ideas and comments :)

Please answer by e-mail if possible! Although an extended conversation in
a newsgroup could be interesting too..

/ Garnax, garnax at texoma.spamela.net

Remove the .spamela from the email adress to reply..

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...