Friendly hives?

[Bumc]

Started in a cave map with 2 dormant hives and they seem to be very good neighbors for now. They never really bother anyone, they don't mind me stealing borrowing some jelly at night and even intercepted one raid all on their own.

Will they turn hostile at some point or can you milk them until Randy decides he had enough of this ♥♥♥♥?

[APoCaLyPSE666NoW]

They should turn hostile when you are close of them when they are awake.

You can kill them with pistol at game begining.
Shot and run to never be attacked in close by insects.

[Bumc]

But why would I kill them?
Them turning hostile if I threaten their territory isn't a big deal, I don't have any reason to come close. Not at day time at least.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

The natural hives will leave you largely alone. In my current run I've got a small hive that's been there for five years.

I've done quite a lot for them actually even though I never harvest their jelly: I walled off their tunnel so they don't wander off and starve during the 3 quadrum long cold season (One unfortunately did two years in. It's also to keep predators from targeting them), used dev mode to bring the megascarabs out of hibernation so they don't starve to death (reviving dead ones with dev mode will make the formerly deceased aggressive, so they'll charge at my base), and reloaded whenever actual infestations spawned around the wall (because dealing with them will mean the death of everyone).

No real reason to do all that, but I love keeping the neutral critters about far away from my base.

[Bumc]

Oh, I guess mine will perish eventually then, unless the colony goes down in flames before that.

[Monkey Magic]

They are technically hostile, since they should have red name text even if they spawn naturally, but in general you should be fine. Even if you go into their cave system to raid jelly at night, since they are apparently heavy sleepers you should get away with it. Even if you farm out all the mushrooms in their cave during the day, you are probably going to be fine so long as you don't get too close.

And if you do get too close and they notice you (red ! will appear), run away - don't engage. They will only pursue a short distance if they are not attacked, then get bored and return home,

Smaller hives are better, I dunno if larger hives are more aggressive, but since they have safety in numbers I would assume so.

[Bumc]

Yeah, apparently they are nice neighbors to have.

Update on those hives

Hive A is safe in corner of the map behind my mushroom farm.

Hive B stopped 2 raids and is slowly losing members.
I'm afraid the next raid will be their last even as raiders start by attacking the hive and engaging them in melee.
Don't think I have means to help them out, they are quite far from my base.

Hive B also acts as a giant freezer for dead raiders, so I might need to haul some stuff away from it in the night for this loot to stop inflating my wealth.

[hardy_conrad]

I've had hives help out quite a bit with raids, although if I want to loot the bodies I have to be careful. Here's a question. Do they count towards colony wealth at all? If not (and logically they shouldn't) that's actually pretty cool, you've got free defenders who don't add to the strength of raids. I notice raiders will sometimes ignore my base despite it being close and go walking to the hive when it's on the other side of the map too.

[Bumc]

They do actually, most of the things on the map count.
They don't seem to be expensive though.

Jelly they produce has somewhat high value, but as long as you can sweep it off and eat or sell to traders, you're fine.

[hardy_conrad]

I get food poisoning more than I like from jelly but it is a surprisingly worthwhile trade good for sure. Too bad the hives contribute to map wealth but I can always wimp out and play wealth independant, heh.

[Bumc]

I think you can cook food out of it and then it isn't poisonous anymore, but I've been selling it as well so dunno.

[Ribera]

Why anyone didn't mention about mental break - pigging food ?
My pawns just love commiting suicide by stealing jellly at day.

[Wasted]

i wouldn't worry about wealth that much in general unless you plan on using weak weapons and armor

[Monkey Magic]

@Ribera - If one keeps their larder stocked, Food Binge should not be an issue. It might be worth leaving stacks of pemmican, or better yet packaged survival meals in storage near the gates to your settlement, so these food-loving pawns will stop searching elsewhere an eat from there

The only mental break one should worry over on hive maps is the Sad Wander which can lead a pawn anywhere on the map, and they will not even defend themselves, let alone run away.

Another issue to look out for is idiot pawns - usually hunters, or tamers - who think they can handle anything, and will instigate an attack on the hive of their own accord I have seen this happen twice, and had to Draft them to leave.

Not sure why they do this, but my guess is the animal they were hunting/taming wandered close and set off the insects, and somehow this triggers the pawn to attack?

[Burki from Turki]

Ok, so I actually went on and tried to find a way to milk insects of their insect jellies.

I employed a tactic that took advantage of the insect hive's tenders and insectoid hypothermic slowdown (hibernation state).

It was going well until the hive just died. Unconscious insects can not take care of the hive it seems. What's more weird is that my colonists actually opened the freezer room keeping the insect in hibernation, releasing warm temperature into the freezer, lifting the spelopede out of hibernation, when the hive died, spelopede was awake and somehow was not able to keep it good.

The tactic was simple. Kill all insects except one spelopede. Why Spelopede? Because only megaspiders and spelopedes can take care and maintain of the hive to keep the hive alive, which is the source of infinite inject jelly. Spelopede eats less than a megaspider and is easier to takedown if it were to wake up in any case the contraption fails to keep the insect in hibernation. Furthermore I tried to keep the spelopede in an animal bed but I wasn't able to rescue them, however I was able to carry them in draft mode and place them in the bed. But you can not operate on insectoids.

Wiki says the insectoid must be tended and if it's not tended for 17~ minutes it will rapidly detoriate away. In this case, I believe it wants *CONSCIOUS* insectoids. Which means you can't operate a hive with it's members in critical condition. And if we were to keep them conscious, they have this stupid mining mechanic that makes them near imposibble to cage for long periods when awake.

Their jelly can be stolen, but I was unable to produce an automated contraption to collect it, don't forget the jelly spawns forbid, even when in home zones, which would call for micromanegement if you were to make a such contraption.

So one thing I didn't try however is taming the insect which would be hard, but will they even take care of the hive when tamed, how are we supposed to keep its damage at minimal so the tamer does not die? Bloodloss? What if it falls unconscious from bloodloss? The hive will die again.

Honestly, too much bother for just 160 silver per average of 7.5~ minutes.

They'll get wiped in a year or two anyway. :/

[hardy_conrad]

Maybe expanding insect stuff would be something to consider with a later dlc. Properly speaking their primary role is ecological recycling, that is getting rid of corpses. I feel there are possibilities with that, although in terms of lore they aren't really conventional bugs.