Right, let's get this thread started. Firstly, so far this idea of a fungal faction is still a concept. So, what we have is an initial infecter, dropped from orbit in a drop-pod kind of stuff. This faction can't dig for gold (or rather, does not have digger tools), so they gain units and gold through infecting. The initial infecter (maybe ACrab?) has this seed shooter that will damage actors, and will turn them into fungal puppets once their health falls below 30 and they got shot with the seed shooter. Initially I plan to have it differentiate between meat AHumans and non-meat AHumans, but tell me if this is possible. The AHumans will become wither meat puppets or war puppets (depending on their meatiness) which is actually just the same actor except the heads have been replaced by stalked fungi a la Cordyceps fungi. So in effect infected AHumans get their head replaced with a new head and the old one gibbed (this will definitely need some lua, which I am not proficient in). As for ACrabs it's gonna be the turret that's replaced.
Each successful infestation will net an amount of gold, maybe 50 per actor?
Additionally, I plan on making the infested be able to transform at the press of a button. For AHumans they become grounded turrets, and as for ACrabs they become infestation mines.

So, I'll make this into a board effort, I'll make the sprites and the .ini stuff, but I also need someone very proficient in lua, and maybe a quality control to boot. Of course, improvements to the idea are welcome, and all who worked on this thing will be credited.

Unless it decides whether an actor is alive or not based on its materials, I doubt it's possible, unless you either add a marker into the actors or a rule for each one's name. But that last option would make it unable to figure out any actors besides vanilla ones.

I suggest foregoing the metal/organic distinction to help the sparkle magician out a bit. That might be really hard to do.

Let's just say the fungi utilizes metal, minerals and live cells alike, though they would be fungi with metal/mineral deposits on top of their bodies as shells/shields/spikes.

And by the way, this is exactly the kind of faction I want to see being made

Slightly sounds like the faction I've had in mind a year ago.
Except minus the not able to dig gold.

With current tools, its quite possible as far as I read.
You will need lots of Lua scripting on the various features though.

Do note that actors will collect gold if they come contact with it and that its hard coded in case you ment that they would not be able to collect gold at all.

Instead of infecting an actor and changing his head, how about the actor gibs into a normal fungus soldier/actor rather than change his head. Sort of like the chest burster xenomorph from alien, except this one is full size when he comes out.

Another thing is that if the whole infecting enemies business seems to be too powerful, maybe make some anti-faction items like a cure to stop infecting or a special gun that works only on infected soldiers and it stuns them somehow.

Time or range limited control? If you don't have an infector (produced by the first spore every few minutes, very weak) around the infected, they start becoming inactive sitting targets?

Sounds good. I posted an idea like this in a thread a while ago (but with a tree as the brain), but all anyone wanted was flying dogs with eye beams or something dumb so no one wanted to help me.

I'm looking forward to ANY faction that changes gameplay.

I have some ideas: I think that exploding infected actors into a puff of spores or a fungus-affiliated actor would be easier- you could rip the code off from Mail's zombies.

And what do you need gold for? You could simply have the various fungus plants periodically spawn more fungus or attack drones, forcing the other player to attack cut them back. Having to kill for money would already be a problem in pvp, as the other guy could simply set up walls of doors or whatever and carpet bomb your guy to crap.

I also had an (admittedly unoriginal) idea for a faction that simply spams lots an lots of exploding/infecting insects/rodents but I didn't think the MOID count would stand for it.

So maybe instead of gold it could simply use bodies as a resource in which to grow new plants or whatever. But now I'm just verbal diarrheaing.

Thanks for the input... Yeah, I think the meat/robot distinction thing would be nigh-impossible to implement, but how about size? I mean, these things can't infect a whole MPAM or Klov Oppressor by itself. And as for the gold, it's to order new infectors, in case your first one dies...

And yeah, let's see if any of the sparkle magicians are able to replace the head, if there's curently no possible way we'll have total fungal actors. The whole 'going immobile when no infectors are around' thing is cool...

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the ACrabs would be able to shoot spores that float, but can infect like the seeds.

OK, list of approved things by the thread so far:
-differentation gone, too hard to implement
-a cure for the fungi, somewhat (how about... FIRE?!)
-infecteds be immobile after a set period of time if infecter/controller is either absent or far away
-kamikaze infecteds

Soooo.... this generates additional ideas on transforming units. For example, the infected AHumans would transform into kamikaze units after you press a special button. ACrabs would turn into stationary seed turrets that operate independently (they won't go immobile when infecter/controller is away), and the original infecter would transform into a controller, which has more control area than the infecter.

How's that folks?

Genius. I want those things! They sound as innovative as the Organic Bunkers!

I remember the organic bunkers, awesome stuff.

So you mean infected units become a form of pre-mature fungi first. And by pressing a button they grow into differentiated units? Sounds fun, if it's really made.

Though this faction really shouldn't use any gold. They should have a brain unit that spawns a new infector when the fire button is pressed. So you won't run out of units unless, well, your brain died. And it forces you to place your brain in places accessible to the outside world, not like in mid-air or in the depth of dirt.
You can add an infector droppod though(much like headcrab pods in Halflife), for other factions to utilize this bio-weapon.

I don't get the infector/controller thing though.

Well, fellow decomposing warrior, we'll make it so that the infector is the only thing we can truly 'buy' from tradestar. The gold in this case is the growth cost for the infector, and the drop-pod for it. The infector is the initial unit; thus it also acts like a mobile brain. Since it's immature, its control range is short, and as such can only control units close enough to it. So, in order to control all of them, the infector must become the controller, who can control all of the infectees but loses its infection weapon. Still acts like a brain.

What if transforming units need to have a bit of gold deduced from your cache? Of course, the amount of gold is not as much as the gain you get when infecting it.

For example: you infected an AHuman. You get 50 gold. Then you wish to transform this unit to a kamikaze unit. You lose 30 gold. Then you wish to transform your infector to a controller. You can't yet since you need at least 1000 gold... which means you gotta infect some more...

Transforming an actor into another on-screen would be a real ♥♥♥♥♥. One could instead use organic balloons to send infected units into space to be returned as something else without using the buy menu.

It's actually not that hard to change an actor on-screen. You can even have its lost limbs stay off using Lua. The one problem is that all wounds will disappear. I imagine in this case that it's probably not such a big deal given that the actor is supposedly regrowing.

or we could have the "infector" emit spores which on contact with an actor would cause him to either slowly lose health, die and become an infected unit(ala cyborg zombie) or it could change teams and just have some custom planty wounds placed on it. it would simply cost money to emit spores. we could also have a kind of generator to create "gold" which would shove its roots into the ground, and slowly generate gold, you could pay for upgrades which would make its roots expand giving you a higher generation speed.

well thats my thoughts anyway.

This is actually a nice idea... instead of 'replacing' the head, it puts a fungi-like custom wound that attaches to the neck, giving it the illusion of a cordyceps fungi growing out of its spine (hence the mind-control). Good idea, and much more applicable than replacing the head outright.

Then, when the time comes for transformation, we replace the whole actor with a new one. Tell me if the idea has flaws, coders...

And also, the spore thing, I did plan on making the ACrab infesteds spew some of these. The poisoning idea is good... although we'll have it so it stops when it reaches 40 (just 10 HP above infection treshhold) so that the infectee has a chance to heal. After all, it wouldn't be fun if you just spored the whole place and wait, wouldn't it?

OK, list of approved things by the thread so far:
-differentation gone, too hard to implement
-a cure for the fungi, somewhat (how about... FIRE?!)
-infecteds be immobile after a set period of time if infecter is either absent or far away
-kamikaze infecteds
-transforming units
-controller controls all the infecteds, but lose infection ability
-instead of replacing head, make it attach a custom wound at the neck

so, almost-necrobump just to get people's opinion on spawning whole new actor vs just place a custom wound on the neck. Sorry if that breaks any rules, because I really need the feedback. Sprite will come after major decisions are made.