I don't like the high ant count requirements.

[Fwiffo]

I run my base with a lot of logic gates, and one of the thing it allows me to do is run my base with relatively low ant count while freeing larve to do specialist tasks. For instance, my ant count after getting to toxic island and batteries is somewhere along the lines of 180, and I still have ants idling because I'm mostly gatekept by not having enough mold blubber (which in turn is limited by having to redraw cutting lines for it). So every time I have to get a high ant count, I have to use special measures.

Behold, one of these measures, the Loop of Usefulness, where we make 200 hundred ants run around in a fancy circle until we get to the required count, after which they will be disposed of:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3436799129

I have used this for getting to 300 (though it had small ants, workers, and drones) and 350, I am using this to get to 400 with pod workers, I will be using this to get to 450, and I will use it to get to 500 ants later.

The only purpose of this is to get the required ant count, over the course of which they do absolutely nothing of use. I don't like these quests because it's just telling you to get ants simply for the sake of getting ants.

[Rai]

I just started and the high ant count requirement was the first issue I ran into. There wasn't any immediate need to make 50 ants because at this point in the tutorial the last production line was 'make iron plate'. I didn't have the tools to fine tune production nor did I have any production line that warranted having that many ants because the more advanced things was locked behind the 50 ant count. Scaling up should come organically to meet the demands of the next progression requirements, being forced to scale up first before even unlocking what you're supposed to be scaling up for is so backwards.

Unfortunate to see this problem persists throughout the game.

[Bob, the doge]

I hear ya, I had to stop feeding ants to the cocoon to get to the 300 mark. It's like "here's a game where you can make very efficient systems, now we'll ask you to be wasteful with resources to go past a tech wall".

Edit: I also suffer with the "100 sped up ants" tech node. I build my base in a way that speeding ants up brings very little benefit, so I never bother. Then all of a sudden I have to plop a beacon in every plot of the grid for 2 minutes, then get rid of them.

[Rapidsmilebomb]

A signific-ant issue for sure