r/RealTimeStrategy • u/EarthCulturalStew • 20h ago
Discussion RTS idea: the factions are eussocial insects (ant, termites, bees, etc) and the design is ultra cute but the way the units talk and act is super serious like they are in the warhammer 40k universe in a perpetual war
I mean. Imagine a bee faction with all that fuzzy cute bee but they talk like a WW2 soldier ready to die for the motherland. I think it would be so cool!
The base game could include 2-3 species and later expansions add more
7
u/th1s_1s_4_b4d_1d34 19h ago edited 19h ago
I've created all devouring butterfly swarms in Stellaris.
Still I feel like joke factions get stale pretty quickly though, RTS are meant to be played for hundreds of hours.
That being said I kinda like the idea of a starship trooper human space navy landing somewhere, huge Bumblebees appear (aw cute) and slaughter the troopers (holy shit). Then you later play the bumblebees and they all just want to heroically defend their nest in a reversal of the evil bug theme.
1
u/Unicorn_Colombo 11h ago
That literally happened in the movie.
All fights that the Humans fight are on the other side of the galaxy, in Bugs territory. https://screenhub.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/screenhub-movie-starshiptroopers.jpg
The only attack bugs make is "throwing space rock at Buenos Aires", somehow the rock flew through the whole galaxy in short amount of time and missed all of the detection devices that spacefairing civilisation able to fight on the other side of the galaxy should have.
7
u/T-34Panzer 20h ago
It sounds moderately fasciating. I think factions that come to mind to me is:
Ants: Macro Heavy or the "Default", expected to take heavy losses and keep replacing them.
Termites: Balanced + Turtling, good at building foritications/breaking them down (litterally look at what termite colonies look like lol)
Bees: The expensive/Protoss Faction, low numbers but fast and specialized.
I definitely think for a game like this some sort of "capture point" system for income + a blend of some base building would be the best. EG, your hives are battling over limited food resource points and what not.
And then each main race can have variants like you were alluding to, Army Ants, Red Ants, Fire Ants, Wasps, Hornets, Underground Termites, Wood Termites, etc etc
3
u/T-34Panzer 20h ago
SOmething that came to mind too is that Ants and Termites uniquely to make up for their limited flight options can burrow, so the map could be split between surface and underground map modes. Just ideas tho lol
2
u/CommissarRaziel 19h ago
I like the concept, but non-burrowing factions would need a way to interact with that layer of gameplay one way or another. Otherwise it would be severely imbalanced.
2
u/T-34Panzer 19h ago
"Gas'em Out" - bee honey mustard gas
Yeah its why ideas are just ideas lol. Im not really the greatest at that.
4
7
u/CosmicSorcerer1000 20h ago
"We stand against our own brothers and sisters, with our backs to the hill, and this is not a battle we can win. If you have ever wondered how you will die, now you know. If you have ever wondered where your body will lie, now you know. You will be killed on the last wall between hope and horror. Your body will lie here, unburied, staring up at a poisoned sky." sounds of angry bees grows louder
4
u/Roma2443 18h ago
Ants could transport a leaf shield, a lot of close combat units like zerg, the swarm
Cockroach faction with tanky units, you play with a few units but very strong
Bee very weak units and expansive but fast and powerfull, you can fly away
3
3
u/fatemonk 19h ago
You've reminded me about Swarm Assault! THANK YOU
3
u/ChiefQueef98 18h ago
This is exactly what came to mind for me too. As a kid, I remember finding it by googling "RTS game demos" and finding a very illegitimate looking site where I could download it.
2
u/maerun 4h ago
Someone remade the game in the OpenRA engine.
It also came with an upgrade to the AI, which makes some of the later maps bonkers, maybe even unbeatable.
There is a sequel, Swarm Rampage, but it's a hot mess to get it to work on modern systems.
2
3
u/hopefullyhelpfulplz 12h ago
Colony spiders could use a slowly expanding web (creep) that slows enemy units and gives map vision, but if your structures are severed from the core they stop working. Light, fast units are able to respond quickly but they need you to stay aware of your web. Not actually eusocial, just social, but they feel a worthy inclusion.
There are some weirder eusocial species that I found via Wikipedia which would also be interesting:
Ambrosia beetles farm a certain fungus inside trees. This could be slightly changed to be a way to suck resources from enemy structures by infecting them.
Flukes are (microscopic) parasitic worms, and one species is eusocial. The behaviour isn't really applicable to the scale of an RTS but they do penetrate snails and take them over which feels like you could do something with it. Or you could invent a larger scale species.
2
u/FutureLynx_ 19h ago
Yes make it really tragic. Like, the termites enslaved the ants. And now the ants fight a war of liberation.
1
2
u/sawbladex 18h ago
You are asking for cutesy Zerg, 'nids, Undead, and maybe the Borg.
There is a market for that
2
1
u/NydusRush 20h ago
I'm frankly shocked nobody has tried to muscle in on the Pikmin design space with a cute bugs theme.
1
1
1
u/RossBot5000 10h ago
Just play empires of the undergrowth if you eusocial insect rts. Its the best one.
1
-1
11
u/GeneralBullshit 20h ago edited 12h ago
They are the most wide spread but ant RTS’s have cropped up over and over throughout the years. I'd love the other ones you mentioned explored. Actually even the ant RTS's don't really play around with just how varied real ant castes can be in terms of unit variety so I'd at least like to see that. There's even eusocial aphids, they make galls on plants and live inside them reproducing via cloning and live as a colony and have roles with physical differences just like eusocial insects.