The Spikey Plants are the hostile yellow plants. They do not become hostile until attacked or bumped-into, but once that happens, they all automatically start spewing missiles and become hostile. Singularly they are weak, but in masses they can be annoying and dangerous.
The Spikey Plants are not a playable faction.
Blocks
The Plants have a collection of simple blocks very much like the normal passive plants. They reproduce by seed production and generally opperate like plants. They have ‘ships’ that move around and can attack other factions, but do not have factories or the other functionalities of regular ‘mechanical’ factions. Their defining feature is the missile and laser weapons that trigger when they become hostile, filling an area with waves of thorn-like missiles.
Ships/Pods
Spikey Plants have some ships, but they are slow and very weak. Spikey Plants also have giant Pods, like stations, that act as anchor points for growing and launching seeds. The largest ones are fairly defenseless, but take a bit to try to borrow through to kill.
Weapons
Spikey Plants have two kinds of weapons in various sizes. They have a Laser Spike that produces a laser when enemies are near. It also does melee damage to enemies that come into contact with it.
The other weapon is a ripple-firing thorn missile that fires from ‘flower launchers’. These are weak by themselves, but will completely cover a Spikey Plant region in waves of missiles so much so that they can slow the game down.
Notes
The Spikey Plants are only really a danger to smaller ships. Large armored ships will wade through them and with impunity. Set your weapons to Point-defense or Auto-fire and slowly make your way through while your weapons destroy them.
The Spikey Plants do generate resources. If you have ships strong enough to clear them out, you can collect those resources, especially from the pod-stations.
Seeds are their form of reproduction. If you have not killed all the plants in an area, they can start to grow back with seed production and wandering plant-ships.
The Laser Spikes cause melee damage and can harm you even if the plant is dead, making debris fields hazardous even if you’ve killed everything.