This is to preserve a suggestion I made on Discord.
Sponges would be a new Creeper building that would serve as a booby trap for incautious advances.
Sponges act like sections of terrain-they can be built on, and cleared away safely by terraforming equipment.
Sponges passively soak up Creeper from their surroundings until they hit a high, but finite capacity. When Sponges are destroyed, they release all their stored Creeper, unleashing a tsunami on whoever destroyed it. Sponges that are set off also set off neighboring Sponges, so larger 'colonies' of Sponges produce larger tsunamis. Sponges can be easily destroyed by anything that damages Creeper, like mortar shells, cannon shots or AC, so circumspection is required.
Sponges slowly reproduce, spending all their stored Creeper when they hit the capacity limit to create one neighboring Sponge block. This continues until a maximum number X of connected Sponges is reached, which limits the maximum size of Sponge 'colonies'. Reproduction direction chances should be tuned to create low hills that only minimally impede Creeper movement, but are still concentrated enough to unleash massive waves of Creeper.
Sponges can be preplaced by map creaters, or deployed in Creeper lakes just outside of triple A range by modified Spores(Sponge-Spores?). For extra 'oh shit' factor, one can make max-size 'colonies' grow a Sponge-Spore tower on top and use it to spread Sponges around elsewhere.
This has some future. And reinforces the idea of waves! Love it.
How about something like "hovering sponge", which stays in mid-air stationary and collects creeper from waves? Or even, a friendly unit like this?
Give it some predefined growth area and it is just like digitalis, except that it grows from creeper instead of emitters. Make it soak up creeper from the back and grow at the front, and you have a new enemy that attacks independently from the creeper.
Interesting suggestion indeed.
Quote from: J on November 06, 2017, 05:03:10 PM
Give it some predefined growth area and it is just like digitalis, except that it grows from creeper instead of emitters.
I would prefer not having predefined growth areas, as it makes the Sponge too predictable and easily manipulated/bypassed. Hence the per 'colony' population limit instead.
Quote from: J on November 06, 2017, 05:03:10 PM
Make it soak up creeper from the back and grow at the front, and you have a new enemy that attacks independently from the creeper.
This sounds interesting, however. Another building type, perhaps? Call it Bittersweet?
This sounds like a fascinating idea. Having this sponge being a separate entity that spawns from Creeper to attack the player kinda reminds me of PF's Emergent. It would be interesting to see an enemy like this in a Creeper World setting.