Randomize biter spawn location

[sparr]

Biters always spawn at the northwest corner of the spawner. This feels too predictable and exploitable. It would be nice if they would spawn randomly around the edge of the spawner.

[aka13]

Biters always spawn at the northwest corner of the spawner. This feels too predictable and exploitable. It would be nice if they would spawn randomly around the edge of the spawner.

How is that exploitable? You stand absolutely no chance against any bigger colony, and if you d, you kill a couple of hundred of biters by the time you are done with the nest set.

[Koub]

It would be exploitable if :
1) all biters spawned at the same time
2) one could conveniently be at the right place, at the right time to see them spawn

Then, it would be possible to exploit the situation, as one could target and start damaging - or even destroying - the south western most nests of a base before the closest biters could be in reach.

But that really never happens : biters spawn way before players are close, and they have plenty time to wander randomly before somebody is there to attack the base.

[sparr]

The exploit is that you can stand northwest of a spawner while shooting it, and be guaranteed to be shooting the biter that spawns and comes at you every time. Or southeast and be sure the biter will have to run around the spawner, giving you more of a head start. And you always know which spawners will spawn biters that can't reach you, or have to go around obstacles to reach you.

[FuryoftheStars]

Hmm, while I don’t necessarily disagree here, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort? I may be wrong, but I feel like the exploits you are referring to only apply against small (1-3) nests, which typically you’re only going to find early game closer to your spawn area (at default settings) and I feel as though those should be easy to take care of. Later on, none of that matters as your tech and means of dealing with them advance, as well as their nest sizes.

For those that want more of a challenge in this regard, they can always use the map gen settings to increase nest sizes.

[ssilk]

I think sparr points here to a valid misbehavior which can be easily fixed. Why shouldn’t it not?