Miscellaneous Suggestions

[neoselket]

This is a big list of changes I'd like to add to the game. They're in no particular order, just the order I thought of them in.

Changes that would be good:
Enemy healthbars should render over everything else, it's hard to see how much health an enemy has when it's completely surrounded by your ants
Add the ability to construct walls
Add the ability to move part of a group of nursery tiles to a different chamber(ie you have 7 connected nursery tiles, you can split it and have 3 go to one pheromone marker and 4 go to another)
Extremis should have more options for leveling up, ideally eventually unlocking all ants. Currently you max out way too fast
Add an option to remove foliage and stuff that blocks your camera/make the area around the cursor that gets revealed customizable so you can make it bigger
Tug of war(1&2) is really slow and boring, both sides should get food and spawn soldiers faster. Additionally, food should be given constantly in small increments, rather than in waves all at once
Once you beat all the levels of the game, you should unlock the ability to play any of them as any type of ant
Speed tiles are not worth it at all, their only real use is helping you upgrade other tiles, they should cost like 1 food or something
Upgrading ants is basically a waste as you only get like 30% better stats but it costs 2 or 3 times as much as just spawning another ant. Maybe make upgrading cheaper, or make upgraded(or upgrode, if you will) ants stronger. Maybe the first upgrade would cost half of a full tile and the second upgrade would cost the full amount, or make it so you can always upgrade tiles but the more tiles are around it the cheaper the upgrade is
Add an option to speed up the game speed, there are a lot of times where you have to just sit and wait(especially in levels like tug of war and beetles rise up)
There's a bug(ha) where food will appear on the floor despite it not being there, usually at the edges of walls
The menu for spawning ants and the menu for building other tiles should be merged, there's plenty of room. It could extend vertically for menus with more options
Add an option to choose the path ants take to get to their location
Ants should stop constantly going back and forth between the queen and the pheromone marker
Add an option to make ants prioritize a specific enemy, either by selecting an individual enemy or setting a category for the ants to prioritize, such as enemy with least health, most health, most damage, biggest, etc.
Pheromone markers should decay faster with lots of ants
There should be an option to prevent pervasive fire ants from hatching unless it's free
You don't get the option to see your score in levels if you click play more
Add an option to switch between the new pheromone markers and the classic ones(variations of arrows, the shapes were really cool, they all look like recolers of the 1 arrow)
Bugs moving on the minimap are laggy, it would be nice if they were smooth like in the demo(if possible)
Surrounded needs a difficulty between casual and moderate(it's my favorite level because I've been playing it for hours and hours even before I got the full game and all I had was the demo. I would love to be able to get to the point where you've basically won in difficulties other than easy)
Hold out needs difficulty options to begin with
Generally, I'd prefer most updates to update the story of the game until it's finished, then do bonus levels. There's currently 23 bonus levels not counting freeplay, the seasonal levels, and battle arena, and only 8 story levels, not counting formicarium challenges.
Additionally, I think there should be 3 levels per tier in the story, rather than 2, 2 does not feel like enough
Fire ants do not have a challenge mode yet(I assume it's planned, just thought I'd mention it)
Having to only let one or two ants dig at a corpse for several seconds only to get like 5-15 food is really annoying, either enemies should just drop normal food or there should be a higher limit on the number of ants that can dig at a carcass, 1-3 is really low. You shouldn't have to spend 30 seconds to get 20 food
Leafcutter majors should drop food
Levels like the culling should have a timer that shows when the next attack will be
For the "survival" freeplay option, the timer should be in minutes+seconds or days, numbers like 11,500 don't mean much
Camera mode controls are very complicated and difficult to get used to
I would love a "Surrounded 2" level with access to more ants, that was my favorite level and I played it for hours and hours even back when I just had the demo
You should be able to choose between different types of ants on certain levels(maybe after beating them normally once or something)
It takes like 30 fire ants to bridge a one inch gap, does the bridge really need to be 3 ants wide and cover the parts of the rock that aren't even in the water?
You should be able to move tiles for free(or maybe for like 4 food)
I would like funny cheat codes that do things like turn all the ants into rabbits or other weird stuff. They could be unlocked for completing achievements
It would be cool if there were levels with multiple levels(like vertically) where instead of just one ramp allowing you to move between them, the whole edge would be a slope so you could go up and down wherever you want
There should be an instant end button that immediately ends the level, shows you your score, and for story levels, gives your formicarium rewards
Add an option to turn off prompts like "the food stores are full, your ants cannot collect anymore food."
Add an option to change freeplay settings while ingame so you can adjust them as you notice things you want to change, I keep having to restart because I realized I set the difficulty way too high or low
There is absolutely no reason to go beyond the first tier down in rising tide, as the food there is too far away and guarded by too many enemies to be worth getting to, especially the sardine, which you can't even harvest all of before it disappears and is also located past several easier to access food piles
The hotkey for food storage tiles and the hotkey for leaf storage tiles should be merged
The underground nest entrance does not line up with the tile grid, making tiles overlap weirdly
It also doesn't match up with the one on the surface, which is just an aesthetic problem but it bugs(ha) the heck out of me
There should be a way to dig unbreakable tiles, maybe with a certain number of level 3 workers
You should be able to dig in enemies' nests if you have workers in it and the queen is dead
Add a toggleable ui option to show the assigned pheromone chamber arrow symbol above ants heads to let you know which ones are in which chamber
Add an option to click and drag to make a box to select specific ants to move, like in other RTS's
Add an option to make all ants currently at the assigned marker to stay there, but not have any new ants go there
Please add an option to save progress in levels, some of them are reeeeally long, and having to lose over an hour of progress because you had to get off the computer is not fun
Maybe add an option to unlock both variants of each ant type(mortar+rapid fire etc.), perhaps on new game plus
I don't like how food is finite on leafcutter levels, maybe make it so plants slowly respawn over time
Add an option to mix and match challenge modes and use them on bonus levels(for example, mole crickets on front line, phorid flies on queen of the hill, tiger beetle larvae on cold blood, etc.). So for example, you could play a freeplay/bonus level with mole crickets, tiger beetle larvae, and phorid flies all at once

Feedback is welcome!

 

[thanhmk28]

This is so hard to reply because you don't put number in your suggestion. Most of them have been answered before.
1. Some deliberate design choices that have been confirmed not to change:
- You control unit groups, not individuals. Ants will choose the shortest path from the queen to the marker. A percentage of them will return midway to form a trail. This is the major gimmick of this game, to separate it from other RTS.
- You won't be able to build wall.
- You must delete tiles to separate control groups.
- Ants response slower when there are more of them in the same pheromone group.
- Ants won't ever become food.
2. Extra missions are made to keep players entertained while they are working on story mode (new mechanics, music, arts, units). The extra missions take like 2 weeks at most to make from old stuff. Those with new mechanics are made with the final chapter in mind.
3. Lanchester's Law: Quantity better in open area, quality better in tight corridor. Generally, it is better to make more ants for more labor.
However, story-focal units have busted abilities at level 3, which let them muscle through level 1 ants of the same cost (wood ants, leafcutter ants, fire ants). The story is still the major focus of the game.
4. They don't want to implement scroller for some reason. A small menu with 2 tabs is what we get.
5. Camera mode control is in hotkey setting. You can change it however you see fit.
6. Moving tiles will most likely not happen. It would make deletion refund a redundance.
7. Excavating undiggable tiles is the same. It will cause out-of-bound issues, as well as remove the point of limiting players in the preset underground area.
8. New achievements in Rising Tide and QOTH will make players go down to the lower layers.
9. Each story mission is balanced after certain playable units so you won't be able to change species, unless they make it that way. New game plus will let you bring formicarium upgrade in, but it's just that.
10. 11500 is the number of seconds, or about 3 hours.
11. The Culling most likely won't have a timer. Attacking waves invade at night, but at different time depending on specific enemy group.
12. Midgame save is not promising, at most there will only be a checkpoint. They are still having trouble with save in freeplay, which has been affecting the release of new freeplay maps.
13. Leaves not regenerating in mission is a balance choice. You have 35000 food in both 3.X missions, more than both colonies can gather to win. Try freeplay if you want leaf regeneration.
14. Challenge mode is specifically designed for the respective missions. There is a plan to add them to freeplay.
15. This probably won't be changed bexause the devs want to game to have less micromanagement. Units randomly attack the closest enemies in range and will choose approriate targets if their abilities demand. Tank units (blue symbol) have a "threat" system to make them more likeable targets.

 

[thanhmk28]

I see that you want the game to be like other RTS, with heavy micromanagement and open space to expand. I think this is just how the game forms its identity.
It's not like micro is impossible in this game when Insane Completionist players have beaten the game with self-imposed challenges like worker-only, no-tile-connected and deathless.