[DEVBLOG#247] Fungoids, our spin on the Zombie tropes

Hello everyone and welcome to a feature breakdown of our upcoming Vanilla Races Expanded mod.

Just in time for Halloween, Vanilla Races Expanded - Fungoids introduces a brand new archite-powered xenotype with very cool, unique mechanics.

Fungoids are loosely inspired by the Clickers from The Last Of Us, but instead of being mindless zombies that swarm you in hordes, they are intelligent, bright, powerful and low in numbers.

We never wanted to add a horde faction - RimWorld doesn't do well when it comes to generating dozens of pawns. Instead, try to think of Fungoids as X-Men mutants. They are rare, they are powerful, they are hard to kill and incredibly dangerous in melee combat. Their power level should be similar to Sanguophages, as they are also archite-powered due to two new archite genes.

Fungoids may seem strong when you first meet them, but there is something you should know: over time, they get dumber and dumber. They are unable to get skill experience in any skills, and their skills drop twice as fast - and unlike normal pawns, their skills can drop all the way to 0, not just to 10.

This means that old fungoids are incredibly bad at everything they do. However, they get powerful damage reduction and wound regeneration that increase with age. This means that old fungoids are good for one purpose only - combat.

Fungoids are rare - they do not spawn in the world in any factions. They are a relic of early space exploration, and we found a cool way to make them appear in your area! A new ship chunk may crash from space, emitting huge clouds of rotstink. Attacking this ship may make fungoids emerge - and you better ensure you kill them before they reach you, as thanks to the Gene Infector gene they can infect you with the fungoid sickness.

Fungoids come with an assortment of cool new genes. Telepathy allows them to communicate with other telepathic pawns, while repulsive makes everyone vomit whenever they interact with them. Mind coalescence means fungoids share their mood to some extent - Average mood of all fungoids on the map is calculated and 20% of it is applied to all fungoids. Be careful though - mind coalescent pawns go into mental breaks at the same time. You certainly don't want a colony of fungoids to enter berserk mental state...

Lets take a look at infographics!