buff the worm gun
instead of each segment of the worm having its own life timer, make only the front of the worm have a life timer. With this, the worm would lose one segment every few rounds so that the overall lifetime of each worm is proportional to its length.
Edit: I think you would have to add a length cap to prevent the player from making infinitely long worms
What happens when something hits the middle of the worm? Why wouldn’t giving the other segments a timer that is relative to the head achieve the same effect? How is it possible to feed the worm with the worm gun to make it grow when its tail is disappearing first?
I get the intent of this suggestion, but I don’t see how to put it into practice. There would be no way to limit the snake that makes sense to the player. Even with a length cap you could keep the worm alive forever - how is the player supposed to understand they’ve reached maximum length? It would require more special animations - that would probably take me a few months to complete. Is it really worth all that effort?
Perhaps this would be better as a different kind of weapon.
hmm. actually, never mind adding a length cap. When I had the idea of adding a length cap I was thinking that the head of the worm would be that part that slowly degrades. But if the back of the worm is the part that degrades (instead of the head) , and each back segment disappears after 3 moves , then the player can only add up to 3 segments of the worm before the back segment pulls away from the payer's gun, making the lifespan of the worm 9 The player could still possibly add more segments to the worm, but only if it turns 180 degrees.
However, this does not solve your problem of having to make a new animation for the tail disappearing, and the head disappearing animation would only be seen on worms with 1 segment remaining.
Perhaps you could make the worm gun appear more often or sooner in the game.
I think the main issue with tail 1st decay is the weird effect on range. Without the head decaying you get this weird marching ants effect as you decide not to add to a worm because you don't want it to be infinitely long. Then it also creates a weird worm farming mini-game as you keep worms alive - which although fun, is a waste of fuel.
I would prefer a different type of block to the worm gun for something like this. Either something that unpacks itself, so tail 1st decay has less weirdness, or perhaps make a bullet based on bugs that has a weird effect on rocks (astro-fac could redeem itself).
