Preparations For Potential Multiplayer

TheRexYo

Queen
Hello, everyone! This post is simply a suggestion about balancing in order to prepare for multiplayer. As you may know from my post on Save-Editing the non-playable ants into playability, it is possible to use them as part of your colony. I'm hoping that, someday, they'll be released for use, maybe the same way bullet ants are planned to be (as a post-story purchase). But for that to work with multiplayer, a few changes will need to be made, as Ereptors with every ant available would be blatantly overpowered if there wasn't some kind of intervention on the behalf of the non-ereptor colonies. Here are the changes that will (hopefully) fix this problem:

1. In freeplay / multiplayer, non-ereptor ant colonies should have greatly increased population.
2. In freeplay / multiplayer, an ereptor colony should only be able to use a certain number of ant species at one time. Perhaps a setting could be added to override this change, but that might not be necessary.
 

Mr_Ced

Colony
I feel it would be better if the Ereptor colonies had to obtain royal jelly before unlocking units. This would slow down the players' advancements and allow for more strategies than just being faster. There would also be certain points on the map to get the resource, like a Petri dish for lab themed levels.

Non-Ereptor colonies should be ruled out. The Ereptors have infinitely more army compositions than natural ants. This would make it easy to balance too.
 

TheRexYo

Queen
I feel it would be better if the Ereptor colonies had to obtain royal jelly before unlocking units. This would slow down the players' advancements and allow for more strategies than just being faster. There would also be certain points on the map to get the resource, like a Petri dish for lab themed levels.

Non-Ereptor colonies should be ruled out. The Ereptors have infinitely more army compositions than natural ants. This would make it easy to balance too.
I agree with the former, but not the latter. Eliminating non-Ereptor colonies as an option for Multiplayer would also eliminate their unique playstyles, which is particularly relevant to the Leafcutters.
 
Me in a typical multiplayer scenario:
me: OK, sooooooooooo the options for servers...
me: found one!
game: (takes forever to load and when it does it says I failed to authenticate token)
me: (rages)
What does authentication token mean anyway? Oh by the way this only happens to me in SCP: Secret Labortory, it probably would never happen in EotU multiplayer, I hope.:rolleyes::confused:.
 

TheRexYo

Queen
A note on this thread, before it gets too in-depth - multiplayer is in no way a currently confirmed feature.
Enemy AI is though, and that brings balancing back into the limelight, I think. That's why I also mentioned that the changes should apply to Freeplay as well. Thanks for the notice, Mike! :)
 

TheRexYo

Queen
Maybe the Ereptor colony's could find royel jelly scattered across the map and they have to hunt that down to unlock new units.
I think that, according to the lore, the ants have to kill other ants to get their DNA. So perhaps they have to fight other colonies to get Royal Jelly?
EDIT: Also, one more thing about that idea. Enemy ant colonies would have to upgrade themselves as well, then. That would put a whole lot of work on the developers backs. Additionally, I don't know whether you guys have ever wanted this, but I've been really excited to pit my first two Formicariums against each other. If they removed the Starting Colony Setups in favor of the Royal Jelly cost, it would prevent people from doing things like that.
 

Mr_Ced

Colony
I think that, according to the lore, the ants have to kill other ants to get their DNA. So perhaps they have to fight other colonies to get Royal Jelly?
Actually, if you listen to the scientists' conversations they will mention "Royal Jelly" a couple of times, especially in Formicarium Challenge 3.
From what I gather, this "Royal Jelly" ensures that the ants get certain selected genes. In the wild, Ereptor colonies infuse any type of gene that they gather, so the scientists only introduced the ants that already exist in their genes. (Hence why they only introduce Fusca and Rufa for testing)
 

Scyobi_Empire

Colony
Extremely Helpful Person
Ecosystem Beta Tester
Or have Ereptor/Ereptor or Other/Other

Ereptor/Other could work if the other was a mature colony (20 workers 2 soldiers).
 

Buffalo981

Queen
Extremely Helpful Person
Or have Ereptor/Ereptor or Other/Other

Ereptor/Other could work if the other was a mature colony (20 workers 2 soldiers).
I think it would be a good thing to separate ereptors and non ereptors. Rather than put limits, just have two multiplayer game modes if any. A "royal showdown" game mode with two ereptor colonies. Either player would get a certain amount of jelly at the beginning to chose their units/upgrades, or either player could have unlimited jelly. In the second game mode, the player would be able to chose what non-ereptor species they could play as.

One skirmish scenario that would be fun in free play once AI enemy colonies are added: the player starts with only a queen ability and workers (with his choice of upgrades). There is a fusca, rufa, and cephalotes colony at each nest location on the map. The player can choose which enemy colony to kill first (he can give his workers the aggressive brood upgrade), and once he kills an enemy queen, he would unlock the units from that colony to build, as well as their jelly upgrades. It would be a cool conquer and upgrade mode, hopefully this can be made possible.
 

TheRexYo

Queen
I think it would be a good thing to separate ereptors and non ereptors. Rather than put limits, just have two multiplayer game modes if any. A "royal showdown" game mode with two ereptor colonies. Either player would get a certain amount of jelly at the beginning to chose their units/upgrades, or either player could have unlimited jelly. In the second game mode, the player would be able to chose what non-ereptor species they could play as.

One skirmish scenario that would be fun in free play once AI enemy colonies are added: the player starts with only a queen ability and workers (with his choice of upgrades). There is a fusca, rufa, and cephalotes colony at each nest location on the map. The player can choose which enemy colony to kill first (he can give his workers the aggressive brood upgrade), and once he kills an enemy queen, he would unlock the units from that colony to build, as well as their jelly upgrades. It would be a cool conquer and upgrade mode, hopefully this can be made possible.
But what about Freeplay? There needs to be balance there too, right?
 

Mr_Ced

Colony
But what about Freeplay? There needs to be balance there too, right?
The only species that do not have an extra ability right now are the Formica fusca. I think the extra abilities alone will even the odds.
Also, it's your fault your winning easily if you grinded Royal Jelly for improvements!
 

Buffalo981

Queen
Extremely Helpful Person
But what about Freeplay? There needs to be balance there too, right?

There doesn't need to be balance in free play, since the player can choose what his opponents are. If he wants to go up against an ereptor colony with black ants, he can do that, knowing the risks, or not. No one is forcing him to fight an unbalanced battle. If he wanted to fight a balanced skirmish with black ants, he could choose easier opponents like wood ants or leaf cutters.

Balance does matter in multiplayer, though, because if all species including ereptors were thrown into one game mode, everyone would play with ereptors to win. Using my logic from above, a player can play as black ants, wood ants, or leaf cutter ants in this game mode, knowing the risks, but would be at a severe disadvantage. The thing is, some players may want to play as black ants and always have a disadvantage against his or her opponent. That's why multiplayer would need two modes, one for ereptors, and one for non ereptors. In my opinion if you throw a black ant colony, a wood ant colony, and a leaf cutter colony all into the Dunes map, each one has a pretty fair shot at winning. It'll come down to the player's skill.
 
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