Hi everyone, bought the game and loving what is there of it so far!
Having played through the campaign so far, I had a little feedback and came up with an idea to both make the nest more interesting, design more important and workers more necessary.
At the moment, my experience has been that workers are often fairly unnecessary for success, and this has been reinforced by a quick read of the steam forums in which other users have also had the same experience. Since soldiers can carry food back to the base, the only requirement for workers is to build tiles and deliver eggs. Now, on levels where there is a time limit they are useful as a cheap way to get things moving and to be able to build up a huge horde that can strip food quickly (e.g. the beach level) but for running your actual colony, the starting 7 are generally more than enough - to the extent that on fully 'underground' levels it is generally easier and probably more efficient to not make any extra. Whilst workers 'can' be used as a cheap meatshield etc, that doesn't seem to make sense for their role - they should be workers, not just cheaper soldiers!
My next thought was about the colony itself. The only reason it is pretty busy around the colony is because of the way that ants will either not all go to a pheromone marker or will wonder back towards the queen periodically, which I did appreciate (as I like that you don't have total control of your ants, and that they kind of do their own thing too) but just meant lots of ants were sitting around the queen. Outer bits of your nest (e.g. hatcheries) were only active to drop off eggs and then for newly hatched ants to leave, and food storage only for depositing. Not much really happens around the place. I also found I don't really need to put much though into how I design my base, even though the basic building blocks are there (walking speed changes, upgrades).
My suggestion:
Food processing and distribution. At the moment, the ants dump some food in the colony and it becomes instantly usable anywhere in the colony. A big food dump next to the colony entrance can feed all the ants in hatcheries miles away. And the colony doesn't rely on an army of workers to get stuff to where it needs to be, leaving a soldier-focused colony with little internal activity. My suggestion would work as follows:
Raw resources (raw food) would be deposited in the colony as it currently works. From there the ants would need to break it down into something they want to eat - this could be implemented as a sort of food paste, or (my ant knowledge is not as extensive as others I know will read this so excuse me!) into sugars/starches, or grow fungus on your rotting food, or whatever else ants may do/would not be unreasonable to have in the game. Possibly some foods could be easier to process e.g. sugar from aphids, or fruit, would be faster to process than nuts or meat - though this isn't essential.
This processing would require workers to take it to a new room, and to perform a sort of processing task to continuously convert raw food there into food paste (or whatever it was). Possibly food could very slowly process in storage (to allow choices as to when to start building a 'fermentation chamber' and as the way to work it at the start of a mission/game).
This food paste would then be used by the ants in constructing tiles and hatching ants. Workers would have to carry food to the tile to do the constructing, and would get food as well as an egg when laying an egg to hatch. This could also include a 'task' element for the worker as they feed/tend the egg to allow it to then develop.
All of this would serve to:
a. Make workers more relevant. You would need an army of cheap workers to support your colony operating, making them a more important part of the game as they would be the only ones that could process food, and it would take them longer to do stuff due to the extra steps. Removes the current fact that all food is 'produced' by soldiers just as effectively as workers.
b. Add stuff happening to your colony. There would be constant movement between rooms as food is taken to be processed, and paste is taken to the queen or to hatcheries for developing eggs. Layout would be more important as there would be more movement around the base - speed tiles would be vital to make a more efficient base so less workers can do much more and support a larger colony.
There is more implementation of this idea that could be talked about but I've already written a wall of text so I'll leave it here for now, I welcome feedback/thoughts on the suggestion!
Having played through the campaign so far, I had a little feedback and came up with an idea to both make the nest more interesting, design more important and workers more necessary.
At the moment, my experience has been that workers are often fairly unnecessary for success, and this has been reinforced by a quick read of the steam forums in which other users have also had the same experience. Since soldiers can carry food back to the base, the only requirement for workers is to build tiles and deliver eggs. Now, on levels where there is a time limit they are useful as a cheap way to get things moving and to be able to build up a huge horde that can strip food quickly (e.g. the beach level) but for running your actual colony, the starting 7 are generally more than enough - to the extent that on fully 'underground' levels it is generally easier and probably more efficient to not make any extra. Whilst workers 'can' be used as a cheap meatshield etc, that doesn't seem to make sense for their role - they should be workers, not just cheaper soldiers!
My next thought was about the colony itself. The only reason it is pretty busy around the colony is because of the way that ants will either not all go to a pheromone marker or will wonder back towards the queen periodically, which I did appreciate (as I like that you don't have total control of your ants, and that they kind of do their own thing too) but just meant lots of ants were sitting around the queen. Outer bits of your nest (e.g. hatcheries) were only active to drop off eggs and then for newly hatched ants to leave, and food storage only for depositing. Not much really happens around the place. I also found I don't really need to put much though into how I design my base, even though the basic building blocks are there (walking speed changes, upgrades).
My suggestion:
Food processing and distribution. At the moment, the ants dump some food in the colony and it becomes instantly usable anywhere in the colony. A big food dump next to the colony entrance can feed all the ants in hatcheries miles away. And the colony doesn't rely on an army of workers to get stuff to where it needs to be, leaving a soldier-focused colony with little internal activity. My suggestion would work as follows:
Raw resources (raw food) would be deposited in the colony as it currently works. From there the ants would need to break it down into something they want to eat - this could be implemented as a sort of food paste, or (my ant knowledge is not as extensive as others I know will read this so excuse me!) into sugars/starches, or grow fungus on your rotting food, or whatever else ants may do/would not be unreasonable to have in the game. Possibly some foods could be easier to process e.g. sugar from aphids, or fruit, would be faster to process than nuts or meat - though this isn't essential.
This processing would require workers to take it to a new room, and to perform a sort of processing task to continuously convert raw food there into food paste (or whatever it was). Possibly food could very slowly process in storage (to allow choices as to when to start building a 'fermentation chamber' and as the way to work it at the start of a mission/game).
This food paste would then be used by the ants in constructing tiles and hatching ants. Workers would have to carry food to the tile to do the constructing, and would get food as well as an egg when laying an egg to hatch. This could also include a 'task' element for the worker as they feed/tend the egg to allow it to then develop.
All of this would serve to:
a. Make workers more relevant. You would need an army of cheap workers to support your colony operating, making them a more important part of the game as they would be the only ones that could process food, and it would take them longer to do stuff due to the extra steps. Removes the current fact that all food is 'produced' by soldiers just as effectively as workers.
b. Add stuff happening to your colony. There would be constant movement between rooms as food is taken to be processed, and paste is taken to the queen or to hatcheries for developing eggs. Layout would be more important as there would be more movement around the base - speed tiles would be vital to make a more efficient base so less workers can do much more and support a larger colony.
There is more implementation of this idea that could be talked about but I've already written a wall of text so I'll leave it here for now, I welcome feedback/thoughts on the suggestion!