Multiplayer Would Be Sick

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
The opposing player could camp the entrance on the outside if the player does this, and if they have mortars, the effect would be the same.
I have to partially disagree with that. The nest exit has multiple exit points that are somewhat spaced out, resulting in a more spaced out battle should the defender rush out and giving the sieger less of an advantage from splash damage. The one waiting on the other end of the nest passage still has a significant advantage.
 

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
With how the ants are programmed to go back to nest to create a trail when they idle, nest camping will always be a prior choice. I have only 70% ants in regroup moving to the other side of free play map, the others run back or stuck fighting critters. Other RTS games prevent camping with non renewable resource, forcing you to expand and we can attack enemy in any possible direction. In this game, anything moving near nest that's not ants is food, and we can get into enemy nest in only one direction they make us. It gonna need a lot of change to make multiplayer viable.
Maybe (just some random idea that rushed through my mind) ants having a slight food consumption can change this issue? (1 food per ant per minute might be enough, though you probably want to scale it with the tile/respawn cost for each ant.
If there is no food stored the ants slowly lose health until they die from starvation. What do you guys think, can this also allow for health regeneration ouside of combat without changing balance too much? Maybe by increasing food upkeep while regenerating health? (They consume food depending on the ant's spawn cost before starting health regeneration of a portion of their max health. Maybe 20% of the spawn cost per 30% health recovery of their max health. Just some numbers to give an example.)
What do you guys think? Let me know.
 

pakitane16

Colony
What do you guys think, can this also allow for health regeneration ouside of combat without changing balance too much?
Based on the stat file, I think all ants already have really slow self-healing out of combat, 0.1 per sec, which means 6 HP per min.
having a slight food consumption can change this issue? (1 food per ant per minute might be enough, though you probably want to scale it with the tile/respawn cost for each ant).
I don't know, I don't like Cossack because of this system. Early game becomes really difficult if you get unlucky spawn near your nest.
 

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Based on the stat file, I think all ants already have really slow self-healing out of combat, 0.1 per sec, which means 6 HP per min.
Thank you! I did not know about health regeneration on ants other than the queens. I probably have not noticed it because the game pace is rather fast compared to health regeneration and ants tend to die and respawn a lot.
 

HofNerd

Colony
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
I don't know, I don't like Cossack because of this system. Early game becomes really difficult if you get unlucky spawn near your nest.
The idea is to make food upkeep low enough to never be a real problem except when there is practically no food available. In the very early game there is food in the underground to get a player started. Unlucky spawns (e.g. a large cricket camping on the nest exit on minute 1) are something that can ruin a colony if that colony is still very small. It will not matter that much for this matter if there is going to be food upkeep or not, much more important is that the opponent can (relatively) freely roam the map to gather food and get a firm grip on most food sources. Maybe a way to solve this is by only allowing stronger enemy spawns far away from the nests in the earlier stages of the game to prevent players getting nest-locked in the early game?
 
Personally I'm not upset if there's never multiplayer since that would inherently mean competing with my brother and I'd rather us work together to make the ultimate super-colony
 
we don't need competitive multiplayer but the current freeplay map with the possibility to add some AI and play in coop/versus with friends would be a great addition or just something similar to 3.1 but with 4 colony , even if the ai isn't perfect and cheat...
then some coop missions would be amazing: for example something similar to 3.2 but with 2 colony to fight the army ant would be awesome, same for 2.2
a great mechanic for skirmish multiplayer would be to start to a random location with a queen and choose where to build your colony, with fog of war that would make some great games
 
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