Biters should prefer forests
Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2016 1:11 pm
Biter interactions can become a bit mundane/tedious after a while. It would be nice if the player had some additional strategies (with pros and cons) for dealing with biters, other than simply shooting stuff at them all the time.
One specific mechanism I think would be nice is to limit new biter spawners to forest areas; require at least 5 trees in certain distance of proposed spawner location before the spawner can be created (both during chunk generation and also when biters send out expansion groups). An immediate benefit is that biters would no longer spawn nests over train tracks or in player bases.
It would give player a new strategy - deforest area to prevent biters spawning there. But at a cost... less trees means more pollution means more biter attacks. So the player has to choose wisely.
If player deforests too much, biters are forced to concentrate their infestations on remaining forests, and these concentrations make those forests harder to deforest. So player who just runs round burning forests has a nasty surprise in store for them later on. And if pollution reaches such a forest... ouch.
There could still be a chance that biters will spawn outside of forests - nature will try every option. But that would happen rarely. It could be based on evolution factor or function of time or pollution, etc. This would mean that while a deforested area is spawner free for most of the game, every so often there is a chance of biters colonising it and catching the player off guard. But it would still be infrequent - a short term panic for the player.
One specific mechanism I think would be nice is to limit new biter spawners to forest areas; require at least 5 trees in certain distance of proposed spawner location before the spawner can be created (both during chunk generation and also when biters send out expansion groups). An immediate benefit is that biters would no longer spawn nests over train tracks or in player bases.
It would give player a new strategy - deforest area to prevent biters spawning there. But at a cost... less trees means more pollution means more biter attacks. So the player has to choose wisely.
If player deforests too much, biters are forced to concentrate their infestations on remaining forests, and these concentrations make those forests harder to deforest. So player who just runs round burning forests has a nasty surprise in store for them later on. And if pollution reaches such a forest... ouch.
There could still be a chance that biters will spawn outside of forests - nature will try every option. But that would happen rarely. It could be based on evolution factor or function of time or pollution, etc. This would mean that while a deforested area is spawner free for most of the game, every so often there is a chance of biters colonising it and catching the player off guard. But it would still be infrequent - a short term panic for the player.
