Make Spawners scale with Evolution Factor

[DaBiggy]

Hi,

I think spawners need some kind of adjustment or scaling through the game. Right now, spawners always have the same amount of HP and while its a challenge to kill them in the very early game, in later stages of the game they become way weaker than the tier 3 Biters (the blue ones). Especially with some combat robots, these spawners are always the first thing to die which makes the enemy base killing quite easy.

There is already an evolution factor for biter and spitters inside the game and I'd suggest to link this factor with the HP of the spawners to make them more difficult to kill in later stages of the game.

[TuckJohn]

I agree- Late game the spawners can be taken out in a few shotgun blasts, even though they are the "buildings" of the biter "colony".(This is how I view it at least, in my weird role-playing-like mind )

[Peter34]

I agree. There should probably be tier 2 spawners with a bit more armour and possibly more HP, and able to output Biters or Spitters more quicly, and then tier 3 spawners with more armour again (and perhaps more HP) and faster production. Tier 4 spawners could be more durable again and be type-agnostic, that is they're both able to output Behemoth Biters and Behemoth Spitters, with 50% chance of either one at each production event. Thus there's be 2 different tier 2 spawners (a bit larger than tier 1 ones as well), 2 different tier 3 spawners (larger again), but only 1 special and funky-looking tier 4 spawner (a huge one).

That's not say that tier 1 spawners shouldn't be able to output higher-tier Biters or Spitters. Because if they can't, then the game will need additional changes. For instance, bases would need to grow as Evo Factor goes up, and so we'd have the odd situation where new base growth happens at the edge of the base, and so we'd have an outer ring of a mixture of tier 2 and strong tier 3 spawners, an inner ring of the tier 2 spawners, and a soft easy-killed center of tier 1 spawners. I can't imagine any point of view from which that's a desirable thing to have occur.

Alpha 0.13 is supposed to be the big huge combat update, though, so I consider it very likely that a lot will happen with the aliens and their bases in that update.

[vanatteveldt]

What about making spawners upgrade, e.g. a tier one spawner turns into a tier 2 spawner and so on.

You could even make it that they only ever upgrade, so new spawners are tier 1 and existing spawners upgrade to tier 2-3-4. The core of a base (nest?) would then be tier 4 spawners, radiating outward to tier 1 spawners at the edges.

[ssilk]

What is wanted to be achieved with this? What kind of gameplay wants to be targeted?

[dakenho]

I think they are attempting to address the scaling of difficulty, currently the difficulty is kind of static and primarily based on density of aliens, it really becomes mute in the late game even on the highest density (if you can crawl laser turrets you can melt enemies).

[ssilk]

Then it is balancing. Moved from Suggestions to Balancing.

PS: I can think of about a dozen more things to achieve the same. For example: The spawning rate could increase. Or the cleverness of the biters...

[Zackreaver]

Making the spawners tougher doesn't really change much, they are still going to die the same way, making them have more health just makes it take longer. If you can get close enough to kill it with a shotgun, you deserve to kill it. Since the biters and spiters shooting you are the real threat.

Rather than making them tough, making the spawn rate and attack wave rate go up would be more preferred, often times your just sitting in your base with nothing happening. The attacks are so infrequent, and when they do actually happen nothing gets by the simplest of defenses.

A better way of making the spawners tougher would be for them to have walls around them, often times the biters are just in such a massive number that they take shots from guns intended for the spawner itself. Additionally this makes weapons that shoot over enemies like the rocket launcher more useful when the spawners have outer protections.

[StoneLegion]

Then it is balancing. Moved from Suggestions to Balancing.

PS: I can think of about a dozen more things to achieve the same. For example: The spawning rate could increase. Or the cleverness of the biters...

I love the whole biter stuff to be a bit more dynamic and a live besides oh there is some smoke over top of our base lets go and attack it. i wish there was more to it then that.

[vanatteveldt]

What is wanted to be achieved with this? What kind of gameplay wants to be targeted?

My answer is a bit late, but what this would do for me is increase immersion. I agree that the real challenge is fighting off the worms and behemoths guarding the nests, but even so the nests (spawners) simply feel too squishy. It just feels weird that a 350 health spawner can spawn 5000 health biters.

I think spawners should have about the same health (at least same magnitude) as what they spawn. I also still think that spawners should upgrade with evolution, i.e. a biter spawner I only outputs small biters, but can upgrade to a biter spawner II with more health that spawns medium biters, etc. That would also make the core of a nest tougher and look more awesome, assuming behemoth spawners look as awesome as they should . Ideally, they would also increase in size, at least visually, with small spawners having e.g. a small core and some low/small parts around it to fill the box, up to behemoth spawners who look like they are overflowing the box.

To those saying: "it'll just take longer", that is true, but in the end game it still won't take long. If it takes you 5 minutes to kill a behemoth, you're not going to go in to kill behemoth spawners . Currently, it is feasible to shield up heavily, distract the enemy, go in, and kill a lot of spawners. This kind of guerilla action is fun but it should take a bit more effort and/or require specific weapons such as a high explosive or poison bomb, which can only be placed in a very narrow radius (i.e. you need to physically move into the nest) but will destroy buildings similar to how poison can now be used against worms.

[Koub]

Yeah basically : biters are creatures, spawners are buildings (or alike), it is non logical a building is a lot weaker than a creature

[Hexicube]

Instead of health increases for higher tier spawners, maybe it should get higher resistances and a slight boost to regen so that weaker guns flat-out don't damage it enough to get past regen?

[AlexTheNotsogreat]

Perhaps the larger spawners will be the only ones to spawn the larger aliens. Ever since behemoths were added, it bugged me that spawners could produce enemies many times harder to kill (350hp spawner gives of 2000hp spitter/ 5000hp biter). So yes, maybe making a 4000-8000hp behemoth spawner is an idea.

[Harkonnen604]

If spawners are made so healthy, spawning rate should be proportional to spawner health.

[bobingabout]

I'm all for evolving spawners, and things getting harder to kill at later evolution factors, but currently, there is no limiting factor on what spawners, or even worms for that matter can exist at what stages of the game. the only thing is controls is what biters/spitters spawn from the nests.

[malecord]

Dunno. Currently the "weakness" of the spawner is the only thing that keeps tank and relevant in mid game. And in the late the shotgun without destroyers.

When they redo the military stuff I will welcome stronger spawners. Doing it now it would kill the base game and force you to play with mods.

Also: having stronger spawners could open a niche for the rocket launcher. You could have a special effect for rockets so that they one shot or bi shot buildings but only scratches big and behemots (rockets penetrates the spawner skin and makes it explode from inside)