Hello. First, thank you for this mod! It's amazing how I can play with no pollution, and still have biters attacking, and have an option to stop the biters from said surface since no biters.
The features I wish to request: conquering map, underground attack, invulnerable materials, and more of those options to be a "start of the game" type just like how adding or removing the enemy types is. Why? For the same reason why people are not actively using the map editor to adjust anything. However, this is on the idea this "new" feature is an option we choose and is not on by default to not interfere with existing save files, and this will be valid for all the other suggestions.
Some of the biters to be able to swim, or maybe even walk on lava and such to further make them more dangerous and bypass invurnable barriers.
On that idea, any possibility to "spread" the enemies based on surfaces? Even if this is an addon mod to ensure it does not break the current mod.
Options to turn off the blast sound/light/attacks from exploding, nuclear, units, as well as worms and such without us needing to disable tons of other elements.
Rework regarding enemy elemental defenses. As an example, each enemy to have max 1 100% or 150% resistance, everything else is something like 100 or more flat damage reductions combined with less than 100% resistances. Why? Because the biters still are organic, so they should not have 2 or more resistances, and it will make it more worth to infinite research for damages since now only the laser are immune to laser and only the electric is immune to electricity as an example but, due to the large flat resistances, it's not possible to do any damage until late game.
Enemy attacks to be stronger but less often, as in the ranged ones. Why? Because fire, acid, poison, and more. And anything that does not have "extra effects" to be faster. Why? Let me use fire and inferno ones for this one. Mind you, I will oversimplify it. Fire are the biters, as in the biter will need to come all the way to the target, but then, they will be able to attack very fast, and as a result instead of having 2 or more biters, only 1 will "mimic" the danger of multiple and reduce performance impact. The inferno spitter? When that one attacks, there is an AoE, but it does not activate every tick, but every other or more seconds, massively reducing PC impacts. And a fire spitter is essentially one that will attack very fast but no AoE, and an inferno biter is one that, each time it attacks, it will not create an "effect" but its attack is still an AoE affecting multiple targets at once, meaning that even if it does not attack faster, one of them can "mimic" multiple of them attacking at the same time.
Since above is more complicated, I would suggest the swarm to be used as an example. When multiple enemies are gathering, they are going underground (this is just an excuse why they disappear from the map and has nothing to do with the underground attacks), and, as the mod calculates how many enemies will need to exist, and how long it takes them to arrive, a large biter will be created. This enemy is constantly losing HP on the idea that just before it comes too close, it will die. And, regardless if the "timer" or we killed it, all the biters and such will "pop out", as in that large biter was just a large group of them, however since it was just 1 unit, the need for animation and more is reduced, and due to the "trigger is death", it means we can't simply use a nuclear bomb, since all of the enemies will still swarm.
And to finish up with this UPS/animation safe. The swarm and such, as in drones. Can most of them, like 9 out of 10, be just "meatballs"? Because if they don't do anything, they don't cause the "animation and processing for drones to attack" yet, due to being "meatballs" of the enemy means they can have "is_military_target = true" and of course, this means they will still do the same madness of tons of targets. Or simply add an option to make the drones not do anything so they cause the intended damage without the PC also suffering <- again, this are "extra" options we enable, so the whole "we'll just use filters to not attack them" makes no sense since that one already exist, as in, we need to destory the drones befores they hatch, so it's really about me asking a feature to reduce the impact it has on the PC without it losing it's role.
Regarding the sieges and such, as in not the normal expansion, to create armored worms. Due to the armor it's immune to many of the resistances so it's not possible to simply kill it (very important in a moment to why), due to flat resistance even physical attacks and explosions are questionable. And to have very large range, faster attack, the rock they spit to be essentially the 1 projectile but will cause AoE. And of course large HP and regeneration. As in, if the biter creates a nest, that nest will spawn more enemy units while the worms don't. Due to the large range and stats, it can't be automatically killed even with mid-game artillery. However, due to all this, there can be more and more, all around the base. And since the worm doesn't attack the trains (unless they attack I guess?), this means that, via using trains, turrets, and other elements, we won't be "blocked" despite being surrounded. However due to all this, it's now not possible to expand the base. If anything, exactly due to what I said about the trains, it's better to just create different outposts, which will soon be surrounded again, preventing us from building more since the worms will start attacking and we are not end-post game for the artillery and/or railgun to be able to eliminate them, creating artificially a scenario where the enemies are not beatable without causing direct danger due to "the reason". Since the worms don't move, and don't create more units. But it's very important that the drone logic is used. As in, since we can't control everything, when the mod creates a new nest due to sieges, the armored worm will still be in a phase of growing, as in, vulnerable. Idea is exactly how the drones work. If enough time passes = worm. If we kill it before = no worm. Both = the enemies will be able to build tons of worms without them being too close to us. As in, there is a "minimum" range due to us, the player, quickly interfering, but due to the risk of being surrounded we can't constantly defend 1 zone. Plus, due to the level system, the smaller ones to not have that large range and stats. Meaning we can still get rid of them. And once we have artillery, we will need to go in an area without the enemies, but, via placing an artillery in the middle, the artillery will constantly clear the still growing worms. Meaning that we can't expand. After all, to have more range we would need to upgrade the artillery's range. But like that, the artillery will also be in range for the mature ones that take little to no damage. And that means wasted ammo. And since those ones will stay, we can't construct too large bases and need smaller outposts.
And an alternative that might be easier, maybe, is to create contaminated soil. As in, we can't build on it. And to be able to construct on it we need to use landfill. And to prevent the contamination we need concrete. And like this it is getting worse and worse since this means we also can't place train tracks so we need to make sure the train tracks are not in an area where the biters regularly die, I mean attack. And the contaminated tiles to have 0 pollution absorption. This means that the larger the area is the more pollution will be sent around since the tiles don't absorb it. Causing larger attacks, and once again justifying the "excuse" for why multiple outposts. By the way, I do not understand why water getting turned into a tile the enemies can now walk on is an issue when someone uses this mod intentionally.
Ability to separate the enemies into different forces just because it would be funny if we can have our own rampant force that, due to the conquere map, will start it's own thing. Plus wars once vs the others, for fun.
Compatibility if not to have the ability that the more away from center we are the higher level the enemies are. As in even if evolution is on, the real criteria is distance. essentailly just like how the worms work.
Ability to increase the AoE and/or speed of enemies.
