Crashfish should of died out long ago.

[Tazburg]

This isnt a complant or anything, just trying to find some logic behind the Crash fish defensive mode. If they blew up everytime something got to close to them, how could their be enough of them to carry on their line ?
Any thougts ?

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Tazburg:

This isnt a complant or anything, just trying to find some logic behind the Crash fish defensive mode. If they blew up everytime something got to close to them, how could their be enough of them to carry on their line ?
Any thougts ?

Its kinda weird, yes, but i believe it explainsled in game, even if vaguely.
The crashfish and the plant they live in are not the same species i believe, they are in symbiotic relationship.
Crashfish protects the plant with its life while the plant protects the eggs and other stuff.

I honestly dont know... I mean in real life bees have a similiar thing - they die if they sting someone. But then again those are just workers who do not produce new bees, so...

[Shufflecat]

Maybe under natural circumstances it's actually kind of rare for them to get triggered. They live in holes and tunnels, so it's possible they act more as a deterrant against the young of larger foragers like gasopods rather than small fish like peepers and the like. This is sort of the way brightly colored poisonous animals in the real world work. It only takes a few sacrificing themselves for a "teachable monent" to keep the rest safe.

We also don't know exactly what their life cycles is like. Maybe the "explosive defense" stage is a post-breeding stage to protect the plant their younger non-explody siblings/children are using to nest. Maybe they reproduce like crabs or coral, sending thousands of tiny eggs out, which only grow if they take root in a sulphur plant. So every time one goes boom, another of the thousands of eggs that plant has collected grows to become the next defender. Under those circumstances, even if it's relatively rare that a given crashfish lives to breed, it still produces enough young to keep the plants stocked and the species strong.

[Zemecon]

It is a bit of a stretch, but the crashfish powder could be a sulfur-based pollen of some sort that the crashfish are spreading to other crash plants for reproduction purposes, and in return the crash plants would have housed the crashfish eggs if the eggs had been left in the plant. It probably gets a bit more sophisticated than that; if the plant is male it provides the pollen and the crashfish delivers the pollen to a female plant, whereby the female plant takes in the pollen and in return stores the crashfish egg. Maybe only female crashfish live inside crash plants? Maybe crashfish have no males?

As for their explosive nature, it may be possible that crashfish store a certain chemical in their bodies that reacts with the sulfur-based pollen in the crashplant. When they feel threatened, they do what puffer fish do and inflate themselves to look bigger to potential threats, though by inflating inside the plant they inhale the pollen and the two chemicals react inside the fish, giving it a short time to get away from the plant before it explodes. Of course the crashfish doesn't know it is supposed to do this because it is only an animal. It doesn't know it is about to explode. It only knows it is being threatened and angry at whatever is threatening it.

This does provide a plausible evolutionary path for crashfish to follow - we know pollenators exist on Earth, we know parental suicide for the sake of protecting offspring exists on Earth, and to an extent we know that some organisms on Earth actually select for advantages that chemical and biochemical reactions in their bodies caused in part by external catalysts can bring to their survival, so it is not too difficult to see all of these things coming together in an alien lifeform like the crashfish.

EDIT: Added ten words and fixed up third paragraph.

[Tazburg]

Thanks for the input, The three of you have made some valid points that makes sence,

[traviniperv]

Should have
There
There

[Jᴧgᴧ]

A bee sting[en.wikipedia.org] usually kills the bee delivering it. Similar enough for me, though we should have crash fish colonies to make up in number for those that die out.

[Tanall]

Originally posted by Jᴧgᴧ:

A bee sting[en.wikipedia.org] usually kills the bee delivering it. Similar enough for me, though we should have crash fish colonies to make up in number for those that die out.

That sounds like an extinction-level event waiting for a peeper to swim by.

[traviniperv]

Originally posted by Tanall:

Originally posted by Jᴧgᴧ:

A bee sting[en.wikipedia.org] usually kills the bee delivering it. Similar enough for me, though we should have crash fish colonies to make up in number for those that die out.

That sounds like an extinction-level event waiting for a peeper to swim by.

Yeah but they dont attack peepers. Havent you noticed that?

In fact the ONLY thing they seem to attack is humans, and since you are the first human to ever visit their planet, they are obviously pretty damn safe.

Think about it.

[ImHelping]

It's videogame biology, basically.

There may be some superficial resmblance to real stuff. But in the end, every shred of ecology in this game would fall flat on it's face the way it is implemented.

That isn't to say the Devs need to bend over backwards and implement an actually realistic ecosystem that won't crash and burn if you eat five peepers (which is 500 less peepers than a single shar will eat given the chance).

But it does mean people need to take any talk about "Well, realistically you deserve to die-" or "Well, it's an ALIEN planet so who are you to criqitue it?" with two fast food packet's worth of salt.

The only issue with kamikaze life forms/robots/rebels/etc in any game is when they are poorly balanced, buggy, or otherwise just an awkward implementation that the only defense of is "Well if you don't like it, LOL"

I'm saying this as a guy who adores Brigador, where things exploding is one of the leading causes of death be it swerving into gas pipe lines, drones, or shielded repurposed anti-ship torpedoes. Brutal kamikaze enemies being fine and erasing 30 minutes to an hour of progress is a matter of actual balance, rather than just screaming "LOL stop being cazul" louder.

Which is why having to start over entirely in game A, is less annoying than past issues with "Crash fish vs seamoth, the revenge" here, for example.

[Evil_Genius_JR]

Originally posted by traviniperv:

Originally posted by Tanall:

That sounds like an extinction-level event waiting for a peeper to swim by.

Yeah but they dont attack peepers. Havent you noticed that?

In fact the ONLY thing they seem to attack is humans, and since you are the first human to ever visit their planet, they are obviously pretty damn safe.

Think about it.

pretty sure a crash fish detonated against a stalker that some how managed to get into one of the larger caves in the save I'm on but I cant really prove it since the crash fish has respawned by now.

[KippenKaasBaas]

Originally posted by Evil_Genius_JR:

Originally posted by traviniperv:

Yeah but they dont attack peepers. Havent you noticed that?

In fact the ONLY thing they seem to attack is humans, and since you are the first human to ever visit their planet, they are obviously pretty damn safe.

Think about it.

pretty sure a crash fish detonated against a stalker that some how managed to get into one of the larger caves in the save I'm on but I cant really prove it since the crash fish has respawned by now.

Hello 2017 my old friend, I've come to talk to you again...

[Arbadacarba]

When they explode they multiply

[Bravo]

The crashfish aren't supposed to explode without contacting anything with its spikes.
The game is wrong on that if we're looking at the PDA files.

[dragonbornzyra]

Darwin fish.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Person who put them in the game was a sick sick man.