Infinite Biters Defending Nests

[Deadly-Bagel]

I know there are a lot of suggestions around biter behaviour and the like but the biggest problem that stands out to everyone is assaulting a group of spawners is painful due to the literal infinite wave of bugs running at you. It's a big contributor to players relying on turret creep and it effectively boils any other strategy down to "kill the nests first". Usually this means running around with a horde on your tail, either biters or Destroyers. It also doesn't make much sense that when provoked a spawner retains its thousands of biters so it can release one at a time to be slaughtered, or that it takes five seconds to hatch and mature a new biter.

I don't think it would be hard to make this more engaging, simply limit the spawners' ability to spawn. If each spawner generated, say, 5 biters when the player approaches or attacks, many more options open up. Long range instakills (hopefully rockets) would prevent them being spawned at all, at least for a few spawners so you have less to deal with. Then you can deal with the wave of biters, and lastly run around mopping up the empty spawners.

This could be extended further, perhaps another option is still to ignore the biters and kill the spawners, but then rather than trying to defend some craters the biters attempt to flee to set up a new nest somewhere else. This way you have a means of quickly and efficiently ridding an area of biters, but those biters will then run off and start a nest somewhere else or expand an existing nest, perhaps with a significant boost to evolution (local or global) or greater aggression for emphasised long-term cost. While fleeing they might forms groups of about 10 to give the player a chance to hunt some or all of them down.

[BenSeidel]

Agree. It's not that turret-creep is "overpowered", but that the spawner mechanic is unbalanced.

[Frightning]

I would love to get a chance see how this actually feels in game, because on paper...I like it...A LOT.

[stm]

Yes please!
These infinite (which is not the real problem) and fast produced (which is) biters are the real reason why you need turret creep before Tanks/Flamethrowers. It simply is not possible to kill the biters and then deal with the nest in an "orderly" fassion.
There currently simply is no point in killing biters except in self defense eventhough you need the artifacts which are spawned by the spawners.
One isue with the way things are at the moment also is, that if a spawner settles near your base you sometimes get a never ending stream of biters directly at your defenses, which is kind of like a turret that "shoots" biters at you. And that - in my opinion - is not only anoying, but stupid (why do I need resources for my shots (even if it is just energy) while the biters obviously dont?).
Stm