By and large I LOVE the concept you are exploring with the locust. Many of the units feel very impactful and fun. The city migration is a fantastic idea all around. The loyalty buff feels fine even in standard speed. Mixed with the changes you made yesterday I felt confident both in my economy and army all the way till 45ish. And the charts agreed with me. I only mention the loyalty in my last post because it seems to me that the only way to compensate for taking a minimum of 4 turns to build a unit while all other factions are building many per turn is to have many cities building units or have insanely tanky units like the SM. Considering the faction, I don’t think tanky is the way to go so I went with insane city amounts (10-12) and was met with decent success.

I really appreciate your outspoken feedback.
My takes from what you're saying is that the city migration mechanic isn't impactful enough. I feared as much when I adjusted the numbers. So I increased them by quite a lot.
The loyalty issue is more or less intended, from the beginning the entire idea of this faction was that it would starve if it didn't continue consuming more biomass. The limitation of the city size is actually not something I intended initially but was forced to adapt to in order to have the city register the eating of a tiles biomass. Most economical decisions are a consequence of this technical limitation.
I'm personally playing and balancing for a fast game speed. Usually game speed isn't of much concern, but the duration of the loyalty buff can't be scaled with the game speed.
Locust is one of the factions that stretches the possibilities Gladius offers us modders in unintended ways and runs into many corners in the process.

Squilliam, after like 8 games with this faction, the answer is forget about loyalty and build a bunch of cities. Like 10. By turn 60 you’ll have close to if not over 100 research. You won’t really have the biomass income to build high tier units out of all of them but your economy will feel far less punishing.

I can agree with squilliam here on his last sentence. It sounds like he’s playing on standard pace as am I. At this pace, everything thing feels like an uphill battle. The economy intentionally falling off right when all other factions start ramping up (60ish), the higher tier units taking 1/10 of the whole game to build and not being strong enough to compensate, the loyalty, how long it takes to even benefit from the main city movement mechanic (also 60ish) compared to the actual benefits moving offers, all units needing to eat but granting biomass and also removing your cities ability to consume biomass from that tile thus negating the loyalty increase.

I've added a new trait to cities increasing production until the first building is finished and increased the damage of ripper swarms. The very start of the game might have been to hard, but I can totally see how it was boring considering the duration until the first building was finished.

How exactly is this faction supposed to perform well? I've tried on 3 separate matches with them and for one it takes 8 turns to get a single building finished leaving me relying on 4 ripper swarms for the first 12 to 15 turns. it was turn 50 before the first city had finished building 6 buildings. the economy can never seem to get off the ground and research unless focused on heavily can't get past the mid 20's till resettling. The tile consuming might be cool with the units if all the benefits weren't locked behind later tier research. The entire faction feels like I'm just asking to have a terrible game by playing the faction. There's gotta be something I'm missing here because this faction seems to have none of the benefits and all of the drawbacks.

From my observations the economy is more likely to need a nerf than any type of buff. In the middle stages of the game no faction can compete with the locust economy and that is without heavy focus on units that provide additional biomass. It is entirely intentional that at some point locust runs out of steam and gets left behind.

Just tested with new change to heros.... HUGE quality of life improvement!!! Economy still feels punishing though. Maybe a late game research to increase the output of regrown buildings?

Thank you! that's amazing response time

Sorry for the crash, it should be fixed.

hey I've been getting a crash when i move the Tervigon unit next to an enemy unit or city

Feast or famine is the theme of Hive Fleet Locust. For the most part running out of biomass to consume is meant to be the end. But I gave the Tervigons Brood Progenitor aura the additional funtion of preventing the downsides of starvation and removed the tile requirements on a few abilities. This should make a stalemate or defense less dangerous.

It seems to be a bit along the lines like the orks where when your winning your WINNING and the exact opposite extreme for losing. Being on the defense at any point seems mostly futile due to the requirement of unconsumed hexes to do ALL abilities. Maybe giving bedrock some kind of buff or debuff effect to offset the inability to do crucial abilities during a retreat of last stand?

The limited buildings are intentional. But as long as your cities continue migrating you should be able to keep 5-6 cities with positiv loyalty. Your city economy won't compete with other factions in the latest stages of the game, but your units can be a very big part of your economy and provide massive amounts of biomass.

Just finished a few games. I loved being able to run the board with nothing but gaunts!!! Was the soft cap on cities based on the limited loyalty buildings intentional?

hhahaha look its ripper swarms

For the swarm