Will tamed megaspiders maintain hives?

[Tak]

If I tame some megaspiders and kill off all the other wild bugs, and set the megaspiders' zone to around the hives, will they maintain them or will the hives still die off? This would be an awesome jelly farm idea if so.

[Pinhead]

No, they can't make or maintain wild hives and cannot reproduce sexually. taming insects is pretty useless because they aren't as good in the outdoors compared to other animals like elephants(bugs move slower outside) and are pretty weak in general compared to thrumbos or elephants. best thing to do is just to sell them or make a bug BBQ with some molotovs for any tunneler supremacy believers

[The Blind One]

The vanilla expanded memes mod has a whole ideology you can form around worshipping bugs if I'm not mistaken ... You may want to look into that if that's your thing.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2636329500&searchtext=expanded+memes

[Astasia]

Bugs will only maintain the hive they are connected to, and you can't tame a bug if its hive still exists. Realistically they wouldn't maintain them anyway since the hive would belong to a different faction and be considered hostile after you tame them.

Megaspiders are pretty great tames though. Roughly comparable stats to a grizzly, less damage and a little slower but with built in armor. Most importantly, getting them in a tamable state is more difficult, but once you do they are a lot easier to tame and train than other comparable animals, and with a much lower filth rate meaning you can let them run around inside your base hauling stuff without making a mess. They are basically better dogs.

[Pinhead]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Bugs will only maintain the hive they are connected to, and you can't tame a bug if its hive still exists. Realistically they wouldn't maintain them anyway since the hive would belong to a different faction and be considered hostile after you tame them.

Megaspiders are pretty great tames though. Roughly comparable stats to a grizzly, less damage and a little slower but with built in armor. Most importantly, getting them in a tamable state is more difficult, but once you do they are a lot easier to tame and train than other comparable animals, and with a much lower filth rate meaning you can let them run around inside your base hauling stuff without making a mess. They are basically better dogs.

Eh, megaspiders are pretty bad imo, rhinos, elephants, and thrumbos all do the job better with horns and don't get slower outside, they also are tankier as in my experience even megaspiders go down with a few good basic sword hits while elephants and thrumbos are tanky af. also filth doesn't matter when you get a few slaves or cleansweepers

[Astasia]

Saying Thrumbos are better than megaspiders is like saying cataphract armor is better than dusters. Thrumbos require a very high skill handler to tame and train, there's a low chance of doing so, they eat a ton, and they are all around typically an endgame option. Obviously they are one of the best animals in the game, this doesn't make easier animals to get less useful.

Rhinos have no utility other than combat, are the third most difficult animal to train/maintain and are highly dangerous to attempt to tame. Elephants have constant diarrhea as soon as they step indoors, both animals are not found on every map. Elephants are a great caravan animal and good for outdoor stuff, but again they are harder to tame/train and they eat like 5 times as much as a megascarab.

These are apples to oranges comparisons. Like I mentioned megascarabs compare more to dogs like huskies and labradors. They are easy to train and are low filth while being a lot more combat capable than the other indoor haulers. Typically you are going to be considering taming megascarabs in mountain bases where you are more likely to encounter them and most of your activity is going to be indoors making animals like bears or elephants much less ideal. Megascarabs are so good at their role that the game doesn't allow you to breed them because that would be pretty OP.