Asmodes_Reynolds
Larva
After playing the game through several times and spending at least 10 hours in the free play mode, I have come to a few suggestions being an ant nerd and a computer programmer.
Your food system is bad when ants were faced with the problem of storing food long-term, they evolved replete ants, and your system would be better if it incorporated them. no ant species would leave raw animal carcasses in their nest, because it would be certain death. Moving to replete’s would add tactical elements to your gameplay. Replete ants tiles could be killed in nest invasions. Losing a partial amount of food if not all the food contained within. Providing interesting level design possibilities If performance is an issue they could remain as a tile since replete ants are completely immobile even in nature. A talented level designer could definitely take advantage of this.
My 2nd suggestion would be to move to an upkeep system based on the number of ants, and Brood in your nest. In my opinion, this would give the game a lot more depth, forcing the player to plan ahead. Scrap the replacement cost and transition into an upkeep cost, {5 food per soldier, 3 per worker, 1 per brood* } that Drains out of your food stores every 24 hours based on the day-night cycle. if your colony, does not have enough food, then your ants slowly lose health and the Queen refuses to create new eggs. This system would be superior because it would add some depth to the gameplay that seems to be lacking. If you implemented this change. You could design a survival level based on feast and famine cycles, where the player is presented with a feast day where food is plentiful, but the attacks are vicious and the point is to collect as much food and get it into your stores before the famine starts, followed by a prolonged period without access to food or extreme risk when attempting to access food. Attacks are from rival colonies or the water line comes up and blocks your access to food. (Numbers are just examples, obviously, balance adjustments will have to be made….)
my 3rd suggestion would be to add some transparency and balance changes, to the upgrade system. While I like the system in principle there seem to be some glaring oversights, upgrading the movement tiles only seems to allow you to upgrade the tiles around it, which don’t get me wrong is useful. However, it would be great if it had some strategic purposes as well. For example, they could speed up ants that walk on it while slowing down other creatures. In addition to that, there seems to be no way of telling exactly what is upgraded when upgrading a tile how much food storage is gained when you upgrade? Is it displayed anywhere in the game? If not, it should be.
My last issue is Queen movement, I know the development team has rejected this out of hand, stating level design issues, but I think it is something that needs to be addressed, to add some complexity to the gameplay, I admit that with the current state of the game, adding Queen movement would make level design more difficult. However, if the game is going to have any sort of depth long-term, this issue needs to be looked at for future updates. I definitely get really annoyed with the fact that my Queen is in the middle of my nest, and I can’t move her or remove the multipurpose food-storage/worker tiles around her.
Your food system is bad when ants were faced with the problem of storing food long-term, they evolved replete ants, and your system would be better if it incorporated them. no ant species would leave raw animal carcasses in their nest, because it would be certain death. Moving to replete’s would add tactical elements to your gameplay. Replete ants tiles could be killed in nest invasions. Losing a partial amount of food if not all the food contained within. Providing interesting level design possibilities If performance is an issue they could remain as a tile since replete ants are completely immobile even in nature. A talented level designer could definitely take advantage of this.
My 2nd suggestion would be to move to an upkeep system based on the number of ants, and Brood in your nest. In my opinion, this would give the game a lot more depth, forcing the player to plan ahead. Scrap the replacement cost and transition into an upkeep cost, {5 food per soldier, 3 per worker, 1 per brood* } that Drains out of your food stores every 24 hours based on the day-night cycle. if your colony, does not have enough food, then your ants slowly lose health and the Queen refuses to create new eggs. This system would be superior because it would add some depth to the gameplay that seems to be lacking. If you implemented this change. You could design a survival level based on feast and famine cycles, where the player is presented with a feast day where food is plentiful, but the attacks are vicious and the point is to collect as much food and get it into your stores before the famine starts, followed by a prolonged period without access to food or extreme risk when attempting to access food. Attacks are from rival colonies or the water line comes up and blocks your access to food. (Numbers are just examples, obviously, balance adjustments will have to be made….)
my 3rd suggestion would be to add some transparency and balance changes, to the upgrade system. While I like the system in principle there seem to be some glaring oversights, upgrading the movement tiles only seems to allow you to upgrade the tiles around it, which don’t get me wrong is useful. However, it would be great if it had some strategic purposes as well. For example, they could speed up ants that walk on it while slowing down other creatures. In addition to that, there seems to be no way of telling exactly what is upgraded when upgrading a tile how much food storage is gained when you upgrade? Is it displayed anywhere in the game? If not, it should be.
My last issue is Queen movement, I know the development team has rejected this out of hand, stating level design issues, but I think it is something that needs to be addressed, to add some complexity to the gameplay, I admit that with the current state of the game, adding Queen movement would make level design more difficult. However, if the game is going to have any sort of depth long-term, this issue needs to be looked at for future updates. I definitely get really annoyed with the fact that my Queen is in the middle of my nest, and I can’t move her or remove the multipurpose food-storage/worker tiles around her.
