Basically I won't be doing campaigns for a long long time, if at all, and I've got the ants coded so I might aswell use them for something.
The basic idea I had was:
Queen Ant - MCV
Anthill - Conyard
Ant Nest - Barracks
Collector Ant (needs a better name) - Slave Miner
Worker Ant - Slave
Soldier Ant - Standard greeny brown ant, bite weapon
Fire Ant - Red ant, flame weapon
Acid Ant* - Brighter green ant, acid weapon
? Ant - They need something to beat concrete walls. This could either be another unit or could be added to the bite weapon (they could physically knock the wall down), but that's like having the Rifle Infantry able to knock down walls.
*There are ants that actually spit acid, so it kinda makes sense, and they need some variety.
The immediate problem this presents it that a Giant Ants player has access to flame weapons quickly in the game. I've played one or two games as them and quite frankly they're rush-tastic, the forces you can build with your starting money can win the game against a lower level AI.
A balance for this could be making the ants seriously weak, I can't find ini entries for the RA ants so I don't know what was actually used. Though that was for campaign ants which is a bit different to balancing a playable faction.
It's still not fair to have flamers right near the start so I was considering the possibility of having some kind of upgrade to the Anthill, called Ant Mound or something, that would function as a tech centre for them.
I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts on how it could be made to work.
Edited by Daz, 09 January 2007 - 11:24 AM.