So space age opens up a lot of new opportunities and questions on how to use rampant. First off, we have many new planets and some new enemies.

From what I've seen so far Gleba may be as difficult as it needs to be currently. At least that is how most players view it. I do think we need to make sure that difficulty continues, though, since I'm not sure the larger pentapods actually respawn if killed. That could create a sharp reduction in difficulty over time, which I do not think is a great idea. Perhaps something ensuring the difficulty continues would be a good approach with rampant. Gleba does also provide the ability to infinitely generate resources without expanding, which is always a bit concerning, but with the threat of enemies, that's fine. In the long run I think the AI improvements Rampant provides can be used to create smarter attack patterns, though I think keeping those patterns different from biters is a good long-term goal.

Vulcanus is a hard situation to consider, since the entire mechanic is about killing enemies permanently, meaning that expansion is the only real cause of conflict. Combined with the amazing infinite resource potential, this makes Vulcanus surprisingly ideal for a permanent base, letting you abandon Nauvis for anything but uranium mining and producing biter eggs. This creates an issue for Rampant especially, since the optimal play is to just leave the horrid deathworld to it's own devices after you get set up somewhere else. So the solution is to make Vulcanus a bit more scary to deal with, which can be easily done since the Demolishers are terrifying, strong, and very unique. All they need is a way to come back. Perhaps something where existing Demolishers which border empty territories stop moving for a while, guarding an egg which hatches a new Demolisher which takes over that empty territory? This would need to be a slow process, but dealing with periodic Demolishers, even young ones, would not be a simple process and would make the infinite resources fairly balanced. Not sure AI improvements are necessary here, though balancing Demolishers around the more powerful weapons which Rampant provides might be necessary for Arsenal. Don't ever want them to be a minor threat. Some balancing around armor and uranium tipped weapons should help make Nauvis remain worthwhile as a source of depleted uranium. My thinking for Demolishers is that energy weapons should be literally useless against them, which makes them quite unique and makes sense given their insanely hot environment.

Now, Fulgora, honestly I'm not sure it needs to have enemies at all. Other than oil, which is already technically infinite on Nauvis, it has limited resources and the lack of land area makes it a poor choice for an entire base. Leaving it as it is may just be the best idea, making it unique by not having enemies apart from the lightning itself. Outside of the scope of rampant, I think having 'superstorms' on Fulgora might be interesting, some way for lightning to push your limits, perhaps destroying your lightning rods if you lack capacitor space for the incoming energy. But that's something for another mod entirely. I think Rampant can steer clear of Fulgora entirely, but if we do need enemies, having flying enemies that only attack when there is no lightning storm would be the way to go. Not super frequent, but perhaps something like a 'wave' of enemies, if necessary. Like locusts, which swarm every island at once. Perhaps limit their targeting to capacitors or things attacking them, as if they are hunting electricity. Have them always spawn outside player vision, and probably with some major warning of 'locust plague'. Immune to electricity, of course, just for logic. This means walls have no purpose here, which is interesting.

Now finally Aquilo, and I have a pretty cool idea for Aquilo. It doesn't need to be all that dangerous, since the need for constant heating and the very limited resources makes it effectively useless for a complete base. But if does provide a very It could be left like Fulgora, but it might be fun to add something to use turrets for. My idea for that is simple, a breeding cycle for an enemy which is attracted by heat. Every so often, semi-randomly and not all that commonly, there should be a hatching of some sort of flying enemy which rises out of the liquid ammonia seas. Again I think this should be an all at once thing, pushing against every area on the planet. I'm thinking a tanky flying enemy that doesn't attack which moves towards land and disgorges a bunch of land spawn which attacks only heat pipes or things in the way of heat pipes, or things attacking them. This produces a realistic threat that is interesting, it won't utterly reset your progress every time they attack, but will make the base useless if they win. The ability to fly will encourage placing walls slightly back from the edge, so the land spawn will not be dropped on top of the turrets. But this also means the turrets will have less chance to destroy the tanky flying transporter before they drop. So a nice choice of styles. Perhaps make these enemies vulnerable to lasers, since those are heat damage?

Anyway, this is my best theories involving new ideas for the various planets. The code may not support some of this complexity, of course. The demolisher spawning being the one I'm least certain about. But this might provide a balanced template to encourage interesting enemies across all the planets, while keeping those planets quite unique in their flavour and style.

Much appreciated for taking the time to write all of this up. I like the idea of keeping the uniqueness across planets.

In the long run I think the AI improvements Rampant provides can be used to create smarter attack patterns, though I think keeping those patterns different from biters is a good long-term goal.

Any thoughts to what those patterns would be?

Any thoughts for space platforms?

Ideally I want some interplay between the planets. I like the idea of having to maintain bases on each planet to have access to particular resources needed to defend the other planets. I have also thought about an extra planet that would send settler asteroids to the other planets which would which require attacking a planet or having a platform in orbit above the planet.

Natural disasters sounds interesting, but most likely out of scope for this mod as you said.

Part of the challenge of the uniqueness of each planet means that doing something elaborate with one planet doesn't really translate to any of the others which increases the development effort because each planet will have fairly unique mechanics associated with them. Which means that I'm effectively making 3 or 4 mods, one for each planet with some basic commonalities between them.

Well, I need to play more with demolishers, to have a completely concept of how to improve them as attackers. From what I can gather currently they simply attack any buildings in their territory, with very little complexity beyond that. Improving them, in my thinking, would likely be making them more prone to 'raids' rather than predictable behavior. Instead of just simply attacking, perhaps have a random period of 'attacking' followed by a randomized long period of them not being interested in attacking. This would result in far less certainly about when they might attack, with buildings surviving perhaps even for an hour without being explicitly targeted, only to suddenly be hammered, and then the worm moving off again. Make them feel less mechanical, and more like real animals. Another big improvement might be having them switch from attack mod into roam mode when damaged past 50% or something similar might be a good choice, meaning that they won't throw themselves against static defenses until they die, making the player have to chase them. This also let's player build defenses capable of 'chasing off' demolishers, while not perhaps always able to kill them. Less static and more interesting. That's the best AI improvement I think they can gain, since apart from never respawning, I find Demolishers to be a very good enemy addition as they stand.

Gleba...I really don't understand the attack patterns enough to be sure. As for the small attackers, having them zerg rush is probably fine, but the larger stompers and strafers already do some complex things. Strafers retreating from damage, for example, is already a game mechanic, and it works well. Right now they heavily focus on your farming production, much as biters do anything creating pollution in vanilla, so perhaps letting them target a wider array of things is a good basic improvement. Honestly I need to play against them more to find the flaws in their design. There's a reason I was vague, and it was because I'm not very well informed yet. =)

I hadn't even considered a space-born threat. So that's a very interesting idea. Having things rain down from another planet sounds traumatic, that's for sure. And building defense platforms in orbit certainly seems interesting. Though how to tell if it is 'defending' enough would be very challenging. Adding an 'egg-case' asteroid shouldn't be hard, but how would you decide if it an attack had 'been destroyed' or gotten through to the planet?

I think that having any active enemies in space itself is probably not worth the effort, platforms already need a lot of weaponry to keep the asteroid threat contained. They don't need to be attacked directly, except maybe in orbit over that 'new planet' you mentioned. Intercepting large egg drops from time to time would certainly be interesting, though I would make a large and rare event, rather than a constant trickle. More like a disaster that happens every few hours or something, with a large egg mass heading to a specific planet with some warning possible.

I agree that more planets, and having any unique elements to those planets, would increase complexity, but I think a lot of the current biters in the mod do a lot of the 'new' things you need here. We already have flying enemies in the form of wasps, if I recall. Moving those variations to other planets and building them into the enemies there where they feel appropriate might reduce the workload, and while that leaves Nauvis with a more limited range of biters, the other planets will compensate with their own interesting variations. Space enemies, for example, could handle quite a few of the more 'exotic' variations of biters, thus not requiring more development time for their mechanics apart from the space attack spawning part.

Ultimately Nauvis remains the right place to have that probing, thoughtful AI which feels like a hive-mind pushing your limits. Gleba is so lush that honestly just having it feel like an berserker environment makes sense. Given it's lush nature, having enemies just coming from everywhere is quite believable. Incorporating a few of the more 'organic' feeling current biter templates into Gleba enemy templates instead would provide a bit more variation to what you need to defend against, perhaps. Having acid strafers or somesuch as well as a few other types? I can't look at the list of biters in Rampant already, so I'm pushing blind a bit. Obviously Fulgora would be a classic place to put electric enemies.And heck, demolisher variation isn't even out of consideration. Perhaps having a 'hive' version that instead of doing normal lava attacks just spawns swarms of little enemies.

Anything to make it less predictable is generally an improvement. I think of Volcanus and Gleba as the two other 'full' planets, since they have the space and resources to make them suitable for large bases. Whereas Aquilo and Fulgora seem more like outpost planets, and thus do not need nearly as much complexity of enemies. We'll see if my opinion survives my own full playthrough.

I've had an idea for Fulgora, where it has a hostile Bot network, where anything you place gets stolen by the aggressive bots, and possibly used by them? (Bots stealing your turrets and using them would be funny). Could Have hostile robo-ports that look more "old" than the player ones. I think of them like a combination of Demolisher's and Biters. The ruined Civilization having its old robots becoming hostile and following their old directives of protecting what once was is a cool aesthetic IMO. Just an idea for ya.

Idea for demolishers make them have a handful of 'families' demolisher families patrol eachothers zones rarely if they are connected, as if to meet, if a member of that family has been destroyed, they attempt to reclaim the territory by either a demolisher of the same family expanding into it, or making a demolisher egg, if the demolisher zone hasn't been attempted to be reclaimed by any demolisher for x amount of time, a random neighboring demolisher will attempt to claim it for themselves.

Part of the challenge of the uniqueness of each planet means that doing something elaborate with one planet doesn't really translate to any of the others which increases the development effort because each planet will have fairly unique mechanics associated with them. Which means that I'm effectively making 3 or 4 mods, one for each planet with some basic commonalities between them.

To me personally Rampant has always been a mod to make AI enemies more challenging by giving them strategies, tactics and events that make them seem like more of a hivemind than in the basegame.

If we look at the Vanilla with Space Age this type of approach only makes sense on Nauvis & maybe Gleba. For Gleba we (aka you Veden =P) first need to figure out if you're looking for a similar "hivemind" feel at all. Vulcanus has a different core concept compared to Nauvis and Gleba.

To me personally it'd be cool to treat Gleba enemies as different from Biters in some form. If Biters are a single hivemind evolving against the pollution of the player then Pentapods are a species that is attracted to spores and smells released by our factory. If we take this back to the animal kingdom it sounds like a perfect place for the concept of competition among the enemies. If I'm just throwing out random ideas it'd be cool to have pentapods in groups that feel like they compete each other. Where biters create massive attack ways I'd love if Pentapod team Blue and Red fight to steal from your spore production (agricultural towers) while team Yellow follows the smell of your delicious production along your belts all the way to your storage. But Yellow only starts their attack after team Blue/Red are fighting each other (and you) already. I'd love love love if, longer term, Gleba was more aking to different ant colonies fighting over your production in different ways. That idea would also be perfect for various factions with different behaviors, e.g. factions with smaller enemies trying to wiggle past your defenses and those with larger enemies charging them head on. But the goal should always be to attack/steal the delicious food you're cooking up.

Vulcanus... how would demolishers think? If we treat them as intelligent the idea of "families" or something similar would make sense, but to me they more seem like massive, stupid and extremely territorial... worms. So naturally the more of them you kill the more the territory of the others should expand. Smaller demolishers with bigger territories could (now that they have more resources) grow and turn bigger, again pushing for more territory. As the player we'd have to routinely make sure to "kill them when they're small". It'd also FORCE the player to fight against larger demolishers sooner or later which I think would be amazing. This core concept could actually be done rather simple probably while having big impact on how the planet feels to play. No need for fancy new enemies, fancy AI, just something in the sense of empty territory = X% chance to expand into that chunk and, once a territory has a certain size, chance Y to grow into a bigger variant that again has a higher expansion chance.

Bonus points for adding some form of "hatching" (eggs buried deep in the rocks that only emerge as mini-devourers when the territory is unclaimed?), even though that would go against the idea of killing them permanently.

Adding enemies to Fulgora and Aquilo should, imho, be a seperate mod concept entirely. Simply because that wouldn't aim to make vanilla enemies "cleverer" but represent a rather radical change compared to vanilla.

I agree with rEvo's take for the most part. I think, however, that biters and pentapods should be treated as "instinct-only" creatures, and if demolishers are modified, they should be treated as intelligent competition to the player, something that instead of trying to solely protect territory or find food, has a larger goal in mind for its territory, almost as if it is a guardian. This could alternatively work for some sort of "Remnants" faction on Fulgora, but that would be in the scope of a completely different mod. Rampant, in my eyes, has always been a vanilla enhancement mod, not a new additions mod.

My real takeaway is that demolishers need to repopulate via some method, preferably by expanding from an existing occupied territory. That's the key to Volcanus, since the base idea is pretty awesome as-is, just limited.

My real takeaway is that demolishers need to repopulate via some method, preferably by expanding from an existing occupied territory. That's the key to Volcanus, since the base idea is pretty awesome as-is, just limited.

Agreed on this part, simply having demolishers respawn uncleared zones then head for your factory would be improvement enough on its own I think.
They are very beefy tho and likely to do a lot of damage, so perhaps the attacking ones are demolisher spawnlings that are smaller but still beefy and come more frequently.

My real takeaway is that demolishers need to repopulate via some method, preferably by expanding from an existing occupied territory. That's the key to Volcanus, since the base idea is pretty awesome as-is, just limited.

Agreed on this part, simply having demolishers respawn uncleared zones then head for your factory would be improvement enough on its own I think.
They are very beefy tho and likely to do a lot of damage, so perhaps the attacking ones are demolisher spawnlings that are smaller but still beefy and come more frequently.

My theory is that they come in as small demolishers on the edge of already claimed zones, then perhaps add a growth option if enough time passes.

I don't feel that evening out the level of the nightmare on every planet is necessary. When we leave Navius we do not leave it forever and it becomes much harder to protect it while we're on other planets. Making two planets as hard as Navius is not doubling the difficulty level, it's exponentiating to the power of two. It's not really fun to work on Gleba or Vulcanus and then return back to ruins on Navius because the base ran out of ore and bots alone are not just capable of expanding to conquer a new resource patch while we still didn't unlock the spidertron or the artillery because Gleba and Vulcanus became the same level hellhole as Navius. Probably it would be better to reduce the aggressiveness of biters and their expansion rate when the player is not on the planet's surface and/or its orbit

I don't feel that evening out the level of the nightmare on every planet is necessary. When we leave Navius we do not leave it forever and it becomes much harder to protect it while we're on other planets. Making two planets as hard as Navius is not doubling the difficulty level, it's exponentiating to the power of two. It's not really fun to work on Gleba or Vulcanus and then return back to ruins on Navius because the base ran out of ore and bots alone are not just capable of expanding to conquer a new resource patch while we still didn't unlock the spidertron or the artillery because Gleba and Vulcanus became the same level hellhole as Navius. Probably it would be better to reduce the aggressiveness of biters and their expansion rate when the player is not on the planet's surface and/or its orbit

Keep in mind we control a lot of the danger level. I would myself adjust nauvis to be less difficult than my pre-SA levels, because there are other planets to worry about. At the same time, you don't want the 'correct' play to be abandon Nauvis.