ANT QUEST

[ScottishMongol]

Vote closed, update to follow presently.

Adhoc vote count started by ScottishMongol on Mar 17, 2022 at 5:48 PM, finished with 152 posts and 96 votes.

• ---

  7 people have voted

  [x] Tend Eggs

  • Graf Tzarogy
  • BarbaCoPut
  • Zaealix
  • fraggle
  • Murloc
  • EBR
  • TheyWhoFight

  7 people have voted

  [X] Guard

  • thelordofmango
  • Sir Plusse
  • Ifraka
  • duskrider42
  • Phoenix853456!
  • notbirdofprey
  • Jakethecap

  7 people have voted

  [X] Gather Food
  - [X] Dumpster

  • Kirbstomp
  • Solarstream
  • Amilia
  • TimEd
  • TheMaskedReader
  • Coshiua
  • avonphoenix

  6 people have voted

  [X] Patrol the Nest in search of The Imposter. If attacked, spray Enemy pheremones on the attacker before dying.

  • Chimeraguard
  • Ambit
  • Tabascoheath
  • Energy
  • SirKaid
  • tedr

  5 people have voted

  [X]Tend Queen

  • General_Urist
  • Indivisible
  • Sgtsoldier123
  • Chopak
  • (unspecified)

  5 people have voted

  [x] Defend against Fire-ants

  • Demonic Spoon
  • Shard of Victory
  • Petrichor
  • The Meddler
  • Captainwolf

  4 people have voted

  [X] Farm Aphids

  • Tarumath
  • HeWhoAdds
  • IamtooSleepy
  • Raw90

  3 people have voted

  [X] Harvest Leaves

  • Chiperninerm
  • mynameisyouQQQ
  • The MacKenzies

  3 people have voted

  [X] Guard surface entrance against fire ants

  • Sheepa
  • Shadow-86
  • mcclay

  3 people have voted

  [X] Care for Wounded

  • Sengachi
  • Corti
  • XML4ever

  3 people have voted

  [X] Tend queens

  • Leila Hann
  • Warclam
  • Godwinson

  3 people have voted

  [X] Seek Sus Spiders

  • rush99999
  • Interesting
  • Fallen-Baron

  2 people have voted

  [x] Find the dead bodies of ant workers and track the imposter using the remains, corral them using the tunnel blockers to find and kill the imposter!

  • RandomDwarf
  • The Commander

  2 people have voted

  [X] Take over Fire Ant nest

  • CedeTheBees
  • Arrow

  2 people have voted

  [X] Internal security

  • WhoTheHeckity
  • Karnax626

  2 people have voted

  [X] Farm yeast

  • CrabTravelLLC
  • unmatchingsocks

  2 people have voted

  [X] Raid red ant colony for food

  • 4lt4i
  • Gnarker

  2 people have voted

  [X] Maintain tunnels

  • Zilla
  • In_lurk_shadow

  2 people have voted

  [X] Farm Seeds

  • Andmeuths
  • Ian Drash

  2 people have voted

  [X] Defend the nest, from both red ants and Intruders

  • DoubleThought
  • ConfusedPotato

  2 people have voted

  [X] Farm Fungus

  • NaanContributor
  • NuclearConsensus

  2 people have voted

  [X] Focus on finding inflitators

  • JammingforHam
  • Thule

  1 people have voted

  [X] Guard Queen's chambers
  -[X] Thoroughly inspect any ants allowed in

  • StormySky

  1 people have voted

  [X] Gather Food
  - [X] Tree Colony's Tree

  • Happerry

  1 people have voted

  [X] Pre-sort garbage food.

  • Ciber

  1 people have voted

  [X] Fix under tree base
  -[X] Chew/scrape mandibles on tree roots

  • NemiTheNen

  1 people have voted

  [X] Fortify

  • Woltaire

  1 people have voted

  [X] Defensive Patrols

  • Zakelga

  1 people have voted

  [X] Guard Queens

  • GamertagzFTW

  1 people have voted

  [X] Carefully clean up remaining Red Ants, with primary strategy of focusing on the isolated and vulnerable.

  • Space Jawa

  1 people have voted

  [X] Hunt Red Ants

  • Dragonofelder

  1 people have voted

  [X] Patrol the Nest in search of The Imposter. If attacked, spray Enemy pheromones on the attacker before dying.

  • ToastCrunch

  1 people have voted

  [X] Rest

  • LilyWitch

  1 people have voted

  [X] Check for imposters.

  • Aria the Mage

  1 people have voted

  [X] PERFORM TASKS

  • JinnTavar

  1 people have voted

  [X] Become An Ant Detective

  • 1337Procrast

  1 people have voted

  [X] Hunt down imposter

  • Rukatin

  1 people have voted

  [X] Defend

  • JammingforHam

  1 people have voted

  [X] Write-in: Develop Signaling Routine - By performing a basic dance when meeting and certain pheromone patterns, ants can protect the most important parts. Guards prevent entry so that what we did to the red ants doesn't happen to us, and checkpoints are made to close off areas. Eventually the imposter must kill, and we can narrow down their operational area.

  • TricMagic

  1 people have voted

  [x] Ponder on pheromone cryptography

  • globalwarmth

  1 people have voted

  [X] Dig South

  • Titanic Toxicity

  1 people have voted

  [X] Dig Down

  • Iridium Flare

  1 people have voted

  [X] Ride around on the new nurse beetle's head. Monitor how much food it eats compared to the amount of ants it would take to do their part of the egg tending.

  • schlega

 

[General_Urist]

NOW HOLD ON A MOMENT- if someone's gonna be riding on the Nurse Beetle's head, won't it artificially inflate its food consumption because of the extra weight it's stuck carrying increasing its calorie requirements? That, or reduce its egg-tending speed? I do not know the exact weight ratio between an ant and a beetle, but in any case I think we will need to take the results of Comrade Schlega's study, worthy an endeavor as it is, with a grain of salt.

 

[schlega]

NOW HOLD ON A MOMENT- if someone's gonna be riding on the Nurse Beetle's head, won't it artificially inflate its food consumption because of the extra weight it's stuck carrying increasing its calorie requirements? That, or reduce its egg-tending speed? I do not know the exact weight ratio between an ant and a beetle, but in any case I think we will need to take the results of Comrade Schlega's study, worthy an endeavor as it is, with a grain of salt.

Click to shrink...

Don't try to confuse me with your logic. The nurse beetle threat will be exposed one day. You'll see. You'll all see!

 

[ScottishMongol]

Tend Eggs - 7 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Hundreds of ants are now working in the nurseries, ferrying larvae around. With a nurse beetle in each of the main nurseries, the work goes slightly easier; nurse beetles can be trusted to clean eggs and pupae to keep them clean of dirt and potential fungal infections, ensuring more of them will be healthier and will survive to hatch. The nurses themselves focus on ferrying eggs from the queen's chambers to nurseries, and the larvae when they hatch to satellite nurseries, where they are kept fed in case they are needed in construction. The decentralized nursery system is efficient in its own way, keeping the brood from being collected in one place where they may be wiped out in one fell swoop, and with two queens producing eggs there is a new major failsafe in the event of a queen's death.

Guard - 7 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Hunt for Infiltrators - 18 Antpower

Click to shrink...

The colony is obsessed with security. Hundreds of ants are positioned as guards everywhere, at nest entrances, tunnel junctions, critical locations such as larders and nurseries and the queens' chambers. Guards march through the tunnels in pairs, checking every ant they meet to confirm their identity through pheromonal packages transferred with their antennae. The ants are hunting for something.

With so many ants, eventually something must be found. The ant mimic has been lurking in the lower levels of the colony, in little-used tunnels and half-finished chambers. These are the places where other intruders lurk - springtails and crickets who feed on detritus missed by ant cleaning crews. The ant guard patrols encounter these harmless creatures and pass them by, but when they encounter an ant and move closer...

Something is off. Perhaps the ant mimic's pheromones are not a perfect match, perhaps some strange smell clings to it - the stench of death from its latest kill. The guards move closer to inspect their fellow "ant" and the ruse is broken. The spider is sprayed with a pheromone designating it an enemy as it tries to escape, and it only has to flee further up the tunnels to encounter other ants who attack it. The chase is quick, with the spider cornered and overwhelmed - while it may be good at attacking lone ants, it is no fierce predator.

Gather from Dumpster - 7 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Sort Garbage - 1 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Nearly a hundred ants are working at the dumpster to harvest edible material for the colony. A dozen or so ants specifically work on sorting food stockpiled in the larders. Food that be converted into nectar is chewed up, partially digested, and fed to the repletes in the base beneath the dumpster, while protein-rich food is carried back to the anthill to be fed to the brood.

Tend Queens - 10 Antpower

Click to shrink...

The queens are given extra attention; extra guards are posted and attendants scurry back and forth to provide the queens with food and water fetched from nearby larders.

Defend Against Fire Ants - 11 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Take Over Fire Ant Nest - 4 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Hunt Red Ants - 2 Antpower

Click to shrink...

There are still fire ants at large in their former territories, and there are still over a hundred ants watching the borders, focusing on a policy of containment while they wait for the fire ants to die.

Meanwhile, braver raiding parties push into fire ant territory, seeking to claim useful resources. While some bands of soldiers intentionally peel off to attack stray fire ants, most head straight for the fire ant nest and push into it. It has been largely abandoned, and they only have to kill a few stay-behind guards. The larders, unfortunately, have been mostly emptied by the hungry fire ants and not refreshed, so there is little to gain here, but our ants are able to stake a claim on the nest as a whole and being cleaning out the bodies and debris, identifying larders, nurseries, middens, and the queen's chambers. A useful place for a future base, maybe even a new colony.

Gather Food at Tree Colony - 1 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Farm Aphids - 4 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Farm Fungus - 2 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Harvest Leaves - 3 Antpower

Click to shrink...

The mix of defensive patrols and attacks on the dissolving fire ant colony means that the siege of the tree base has been lifted, so the ants are able to return to their usual tasks. At the tree base, ants comb the empty yard beneath the tree for food, stockpiling food for the larder, leaves for the fungus farm, and honeydew for the repletes.

Farm Yeast - 2 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Farm Seeds - 2 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Fortify - 1 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Maintain Tunnels - 2 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Other ants return to their usual tasks; detritus is moved to the middens to be turned into fodder for the yeast crop, while seeds are collected, the largest planted while others are taken back to the larders. Worker ants touch up the new defenses, piling up earth where they identify weak points in the defenses, or shore up tunnels that have been subject to erosion, or even redirect tunnels that see heavy traffic to be more efficient.

Care for Wounded - 3 Antpower

Click to shrink...

Rest - 1 Antpower

Click to shrink...

The war has produced a large number of wounded ants. Assisted by workers, they are brought back to barracks to rest and have their wounds cleaned.

Dig Down - 1 Antpower

Click to shrink...

The diggers return to their long-neglected task; they return to the deep shaft they had excavated beneath the empty house and scope it out. They discover that it has fallen into some disrepair since the diggings were abandoned, and their efforts are mostly taken up reversing erosion and shifting clay and damp earth from water that collected in the shaft's bottom.

Dig South - 1 Antpower

Click to shrink...

The underway continues to crawl south, but this time something goes wrong. As the ants are digging through feet of soil, the earth begins to shift. The tunnel does not cave in, but rather the ants have broken into another excavation...

 

[Chimeraguard]

The underway continues to crawl south, but this time something goes wrong. As the ants are digging through feet of soil, the earth begins to shift. The tunnel does not cave in, but rather the ants have broken into another excavation...

Click to shrink...

Ah crap, here we go again.

 

[ScottishMongol]

The ants extending the underways south have been laboring slowly but surely to move earth and create an underground highway across many dozens of feet. They do this in search of the vast grassy expanse spoken of by a far-flung scouting party.

Now, however, the effort has reached a major complication. The diggers have intercepted another tunnel, one more than likely built by ants of a foreign colony. This is soon proven, as large black ants probe the new junction where the two tunnels intersect. There is a tense moment as the ants smell each others' pheromones...and then, they quickly become aggressive.

These ants are not friendly.

***

TURN 24
ANTPOWER: 1,601
QUEENS: 2
FOOD STORES: FULL
APHIDS: 155

[] Attack Strange Ants
[] Explore
- [] Write-in direction
[] Excavate chamber
- [] Write-in function
[] Gather Food
- [] Write-in location
[] Tend Eggs
[] Tend Queen
[] Farm Seeds
[] Harvest Leaves
[] Farm Fungus
[] Farm Aphids
[] Farm Yeast
[] Write-in

 

[Kirbstomp]

[X] Attack Strange Ants

Here we go again lol

 

[RandomDwarf]

well shit...

 

[NuclearConsensus]

[X] Repair Fire Ant Base

Definitely have to make this livable, since it could be useful to our colony in all sorts of ways.

 

[StormySky]

Ah, war.

 

[KreenWarrior]

[X] Excavate Food Storage

 

[Woltaire]

[X] Fortify

 

[Zaealix]

...Well now yall's done poked yer mandibles where they don't belong now eh?
Of course, no telling that they wouldn't have found us if we hadn't stumbled into them sooo...
[X] Farm Aphids

 

[Ambit]

[X] Tend Eggs

 

[Zilla]

[X] Create traps in the Southern Tunnels

 

[Andmeuths]

[X] Farm Seeds

 

[Chimeraguard]

Large black Ants, huh? About how large are they?

[X] Attack Strange Ants

Anyway, back to war.

 

[Chiperninerm]

[X] Harvest Leaves
Cut Cut Cut

 

[Titanic Toxicity]

As the one dig south vote I can't help but feel this is kinda my fault. Well anyways there's really only one thing to do!

[X] Attack Black Ants

 

[Sengachi]

[X] Fill in Southern Tunnel

This is one fight we can handle later, when we're not reeling from a war.

 

[Sol Mark-1]

I can find which species these ants are, they could be Carpenter ants.

And it is good we found the imposter ant.

 

[Indivisible]

[X] Attack Strange Ants

 

[Tabascoheath]

[X] Attack Strange Ants

And here I thought our girls might be able to rest.

 

[Rukatin]

[X] Fill in Southern Tunnel

 

[TimaenSteel]

[X] Fortify and Trap all southern tunnels.