factoriouzr wrote:
Regarding biters:
Biters definitely need more variety, better AI, more interesting bases, more options to adjust their difficulty at the start of the game: number of concurrent attacks, how much bigger their forces get, etc. However Biters that bypass all your defenses and appear in the middle of your base, i'm not a fan of. That will just result in messy factories with laser turrets everywhere. Flying biters are a better way to deal with this in my opinion by also adding anti air turrets and options because it allows for variety without being cheap and just bypassing all the defenses the player spend time and resources building since the flyers would still have to path from their base to yours and actually travel that distance.
Not as much variation variation may bring to blobb of everything upproach which would be not so interesting. If you ask me "Infested planet" approach with biter and biter nest evolutions might be more interesting. This way biter nests gain their own difinitive history and quirk of evolution based on biome, pollution type(or just amount) Nearby resources, or objects. Player aggression type and such. Ai also not necessarry to be strong and cunning, in fact it can do simple things.
As for more biters types well: I take analogue of starcraft 2.
Currently we have something of hydraliskls(Spitters) and zerglings(regualar biters)
But now imagine slow short range spitters but tanky, or siege artillery biters requiring some range upgrades and ore longer range turrets, but generally coming into range, while doing few far strikes on your clastered defences, or bomb biters rushing to walls trying to breach them.(hello minefields, also is it possible to make mines set their activation time instead of exploding on contact( or just small delay, after all they are antipersonal mines.), or fliers mobile but relatively weak both armor and attack wise, but having vulture AI if attacked, they mark spot as deffended based on damage, and seek different approach trying to find defenceless vital structures to harrass(still stopped by turrets this way), and if find no such place, try weakest spot, while allowing nest to decide on least deffended spot.
Or more armored biteres trying to decimate bots, both capsule and roboport ones, seeking them intentioanally and trying to get in melee. Or stealthed subversive ones that (not destroy or damage factories, but lower efficiency or productivity(last one probably not) of some buildings like steam engines, but detected by player or radar.) Wit last one I'd advise building to be more or less vital, but not commonly used (Putting turret and radar at each assembler could be annoying for some, while protecting only hemical plants or refineries or steam engines and or sollar panels.) In fact imo having drainer biters target sollar farms could be good downside of sollar panels, requiring you at least protect your sollar farm.
Hunter killer spawns when you piss off indiginous life forms to no end they rarely send assasination biters which fairly resistant to static deffences(maybe not trigger them but trigger alarms if they get on radar, so you need to be armed not to teath but at least have something more than set of iron armor and pistol.) Wild strains?? Big fat bosses, hard not to notice, maybe their spawning is trackable due to change of biter behavior and some reconnisance data you get from radars. (Like hives stir, and expantion stops as if they going into sleep. Yo can see how nests around you weaken and die, leaving only free space, becoming husks, and biters retreat farther from base, but in the end they gather up for doom attack(lots of biters and leader which if killed would stop semi organized behavior of biters) to swipe your base, so you have to prepare.(with new ghosts it is not problem to rebuild bases as long as you have 1 surviving roboport. and enough spare parts(good reason to automate production of assemblers and such))
Or any other boss waves.
And at last if it is possible for separate settings it would be nice too, so players could pick and choose what they like.(in fact AI:War has pretty good approach for customizable experience, allowing to control lots of aspects of game)