I, too, support child labour!

in case anyone is confused like i was at first, it takes 1 jelly gives 50 points to the bar, at -20 points a day that means you get 2.5 days per jelly or 5 days per 2, one jelly producer makes 6 a day, meaning 1 producer can sustain 3 colonists, so if you make 1/3 of your colonists capable of producing you will be at net 0, without any buildings, babies can also be metamorphed, meaning while they are just newborn they can help the colony with jelly!

I had a colonist right after start of the game suddenly go down with chestburster at 90% did I rescue him and he was already pregnant unbeknownst to me

I agree with Khagler. Also, shouldn't they be spacer tech level, not tribal given the description?

I ran into the same problem that Khagler did in this case.

For the infested ship starting scenario, how about letting them start with basic hivetech? They're so low tech that by the time they research it they might not have enough insect jelly left to use it.

I solved the issue of pawns eating all the jelly by just taking it out of their food allowances. They like it too much and constantly eat it when the items are forbidden but if it's against policy they won't eat it.

How to stockpile Insect Jelly for buildings from Insectoids 2? My insector pawns keep eating all the jelly to fulfill their jelly dependency even when it's forbidden.

No, that doesn't happen to us, you have a bug / mod conflict

Some maddening thing happened where when I tried to put someone in a metapod, they just randomly died moments before they could climb out of the pod. It claims the colossal gene killed her, but why? I thought they couldn't die unless the pod was destroyed? Is this a glitch? Is it just impossible to put them in a pod if they have that gene because it like starves them or something? I thought it froze their needs but apparently something weird is happening.

@Touka it counts as cannibalism to insectoids and is also insect meat, so it depends on the ideology.

eating an insect gives eating human meat debuff and eating alien meat so its a -40 mood debuff. Is this supposed to be intended?

Does anyone know if there is a way to expand the list of desired default hair styles for each race in the Ideology section?

The default ones for the mod are fine, but I use other ones that match my aesthetic more and it's becoming tedious to constantly fight off the "Looks Change Desired" from my vampires.

Had a problem with chestburst pregnancy, a chidl came out as a Firebeetle, a custom race i made.

the problem is both of the parents were Searat male and Searat female, and due too the binary inheritance genes, he should of been a clone of one of them genetically.
whats weird is the guy he burst from wasnt a beetle either, he was a baseliner.
Does the chestburst not consider the parents genes? or is there some mod compat issue.

ohhhhh i gotcha thanks sarg. Sorry to ask dumb questions.

No, tamed insects don't build VFE Insectoids 2 structures. it needs to be the megascrabas from the basic hives from that mod

yeah of course, nothing to apologize for. Its a PSA for other users.
Again, love the mod, have had great fun with my bugs. But- I have primarily just used them like OP colonists, and used the chestburster to rapidly scale colony growth with really really well raised pawns that are super strong.
I dont really understand how to employ insects to make the bug bases. Is the idea that I somehow tame some insects, and get them to start building and maintaining Hive structures?
Or am i supposed to be calling and killing bosses with pheramones, and that "increases" the hive size, which lets me start controlling insects like mechanator robots?
Cheers

Sorry, we don't do CE at all

Hey fam. So thoughts on CE. Yeah it works pretty well, chitin does start the bugs off really strong but there is a major drawback to know that is bugged (not Sarg's fault this is a CE issue).
Using hardened chitin or serotonin buzz will permanently decrease carry mass. Even if you change the genes through evolution, for some reason, the debuff still sticks. The only way that you can remove this is to get rid of the geneline evolution gene completely, and then put it back on the pawn (or not, whatever).
For example, a pawn starts with 40 carry mass. With Seratonin buzz and Hardened Chitit, this pawn now has a maximum carry of 26. Obivously this is pretty bad, you can mitigate this with equipment, obviously, but something to be aware of.

Thanks for this mod Sarg, i have really enjoyed my bug colonies, theyre great fun.

@DylStur I use ResearchPowl. Originally by OwlChemist, who is a legend, but theyre off living life, a few people have brought it back. My version for some reason randomizes the icons, but in terms of layout and accessibility, its 10000% better.

Hello! I have a question about insect pheromones. It says they won't provoke insects, but does taming count as provoking? Or maybe if you tame an insect and slaughter one for meat, will slaughtering cause it to get pissed off and eat your brains or whatever? Thanks for the help!

@ -Uchu- Yeah the wording on them is kinda odd. Parthenogenesis you'd think would allow you to just straight up lay insectoid eggs/cocoons or something or just make self pregnant without having to have a host nearby to house a 100% fatal pregnancy. On the other hand, the spawning sac doesn't prevent death from a chest birth pregnancy either so why it is mentioned that is does prevent it is kinda odd ESPECIALLY considering they are mutually exclusive upgrades.....It seems like it would make more sense for those two to synergize but they don't.

There is probably some reason indeed

For some reason everytime my insectoid colonist babies reach the growing up age, they vanish from the map. They still show up in the social bar of the mother, but it says "off map" when I try to locate them. So they basically vanish but not die. Only using the Vanilla Expanded modlist. Anyone else here have this issue?

Are there any patch mods that disentangle the research options? VE mods make up over 75% o my mod list and a lot of the research options overlap. For example the Eltex gear makes the final tier of hive tech unavailable. Writing tech is completely unavalable because its covered up by other techs. It might be an issue unique to Steam Deck if this issue hasn't been brought up before

How nicely does playing an insector colony with Serkitism structure and Insect supremacy play out? I want to do a full bug themed colony but I'm worried that having to fight the boss bugs to obtain pherocores will result in mass mood penalties from having to kill the bugs

They FUCC

normal pregnancies in what manor? like they can give birth without implanting? that hasnt happened for me at all

Spawning sac just makes them be able to have normal pregnancies

@Indigo Cactus parthenogenesis is basically removing the need to mate with someone, essentially giving u a free impregnation on the click of the button ready to implant into someone and ensuring they have the exact same genes (autonomously in the sense no mate is required, they can become pregnant independently in other wording) HOWEVER i have no idea how the spawning sac works lmaoo, i have tried to use it multiple times but they never get pregnant or nothing ever happenes, i tried to have someone implant into them and they died so im lost on that one aswell, idk if this helps but i saw no ones replied yet so might aswell.

How are you supposed to "rapidly propagate their species autonomously"? Parthenogenesis still requires chestburster implantation, and Royal Sacks doesn't actually seem to make you immune to death by chestbursting, which is what I thought it did. Those two evolutions are incompatible, too, so you can't just self-impregnate and birth that fetus.

Because that's one-half of an idea for a mod that I had.

Hey, I was thinking. Would it be possible in XML to patch the Chestburst Pregnancy gene to also allow an implanted boss bug egg from VFE:I2 to be passed off to another human being, subject to an increased cooldown?

Do insectors count as insects for the purpose of movement speed on creep?

@delzaron report it as a bug. The VE Races Expanded: Insector is there, just look for it.

There is a major bug with that mod. If I add an insector to my colony, I can observe the paws working at the research bench or the stone cutting one are displaced by one case. More, the night, the paws go near their bed, and wait until exhaustion and death. They do nothing except waiting. You can order them to do a specific task manually, or mobilize them, but just after that, they'll go back nearby their bed, and wait again. I ran some tests, and it seems the problem is caused by one of several of the skins genes. The insectors paws I edited to remove these genes, or my Isopoda insector (an insector woman using the isopoda gene from Insectoids 2) doesn't trigger that bug. I also ran some test with insectors possesing only one skin genes, or several. It seems having the cultivated, megaspider, or megascarab, no problem. The bug only occurs with a full insector genotype. In addition, relauching the game, load a save, and spawn the insector pawn don't trigger the problem systematically.

Are they permanently aggressive? If not, how long do i have to wait for them to calm down?

Yes, it's working as intended

Wild insects keep randomly agroing on my insectoid colonists, like Soupcake. It seems to have happened when an otter attacked the hive, perhaps something with the pheremones only work if they have not been in combat?

Well, is she pregnant?

how to get someone pregnant with chestbuster? Like i dont see the button that injects the parasite

The bug reports form doesn't have an option for insectors.
I missed the form when i left my last comment sorry about that.

That's the way we made it, yeah

Fun Fact: If you get a new colonist that already has a chestburster pregnancy, the pregnancy will not show up in the health tab until the bug is a juvenile, making the colonists death a guarantee. The colonist will still display the symptoms of a chestburster pregnancy though.

How do I get rid of a chestburster Pregnancy

Looked at the changelogs and it's not learning speed like I thought.

Wait a second, does Swarm Synapse buff General Labor speed(basically useless unless you need lots of stone cut) or Global Work speed(literally everything in the game)?

Wild insects keep randomly agroing on my insectoid colinists, one at a time.
They seem to try breaking into my fridge with insect jelly and then they will kill any of my pawns on sight after that.

You cant inject the parasite anymore for some reason

Seems to just be colonist pawns too, doesn't happen on caravans that enter

Noticing every second or so for a single frame the "Pollution Dependency" Hdef is being applied to my pawns. While it IS hidden and seemingly not doing anything, is there a reason for this? Just want to make sure it's not bugging out (heh) and costing me TPS