VFE Insectoids Patch

VFE Insectoids Patch

Requires Harmony and Vanilla Factions Expanded - Insectoids 2. Small quality-of-life tweaks for your colony hives. Player insects only — colonists and enemy insects are unchanged.

Load order

• Put this mod after Drafted Auto-Combat
• Optional: Insect Caravan Pack & Graze — not required (this patch already handles caravan listing and pack animals); if you use it for grazing / pack overlays, put this mod after it

Drafted insects

• All colony insects stay draftable at home, on caravans, and at caravan destinations
• Spawns already trained for Guard and Attack
• Always show their name label (and the draft underline)
• Won’t error when right-clicking corpses (Achtung/work menu)
• Works with Drafted Auto-Combat: Hunt and AI Control drive hive insects (chase, bash doors, etc.)

Animals tab & areas

• Shows hive insects in the Animals tab (training/slaughter still won’t work on them)
• Colony insects default to Unrestricted area (instead of the Hive area)

Medical

• Insects with scheduled operations walk to (and stay in) animal medical beds until surgery finishes (hive duty no longer pulls them out)
• Recommended: Tend Again Patch — herbal tend thresholds and quality gating so insects (and other patients) aren’t endlessly re-tended

Options (mod settings)

• Hive respawn speed — 1× normal up to 24× faster (about 1 hour per insect at max); updates existing hives when you close settings

Hauling Fixes

• Stops hive insects from freezing on contested haul cells (they back off briefly and retry elsewhere)
• Stuck haul jobs get cancelled so insects can move on

Caravan

• Hive insects appear in the caravan People and animals list (VFE’s hive lord was hiding them)
• All insect races can act as pack animals (not only the few species Insect Caravan Pack & Graze flags)
• Compatible with CaravanOptions (Continued)
• Caste/draft kept at caravan destinations (VFE was stripping the hive hediff off-map)
• If hive insects leave on a caravan, the home hive keeps respawning replacements up to capacity while they are away
• Insects that return from a caravan drop leftover pack inventory at their feet (hive duty otherwise prevents colonists from unloading them, so packs would stay on)

Salvage

• After hostile insect hives are destroyed, insect/jelly walls and other insect buildings can be claimed and deconstructed (VFE marks them non-claimable)
• Forming a caravan after salvaging may warn “None of the assigned colonists are able to reach X Insect jelly / Royal jelly”. That usually just means the haul pathing can’t pull that much in one go — reduce the amount selected until Form caravan allows travel.

Notes

• Safe to add to an existing colony
• Orphaned insects after a player hive is destroyed rejoin a rebuilt hive when there is room (and the hive supports their kind); otherwise they are fully tamed so colonists stop training them
• Insects returning from a caravan rejoin their hive even if replacements already filled capacity (otherwise they stay undraftable colony “pack animals”)

Updates

• Caravan — listing, pack animals, off-map draft, return unload, hive respawn while away; works with CaravanOptions
• Salvage — claim/deconstruct cleared insect bases
• Surgery bed fix — patients stuck "Resting" on the ground (not ready for surgery) now get up and seek a bed instead of locking ground rest
• Drafted Auto-Combat / AI Control for hive insects (load after Drafted Auto-Combat)