Hello Grounded dev team! I am writing this pitch to help you come up with future ideas. I am 15 and played Grounded a lot because I believe that it is a great game, and I want to help you make Grounded 2 a masterpiece.

The Core Concept
My idea is one that will help you with going from tier 3 to 4 and 5, and that idea is ants. Ants are definitely not a new feature to Grounded—you got red (tier 1), black (tier 2), and fire (tier 3) ants. My idea would be to add tier 4 and 5 ants. I know it doesn't sound that cool, but you can make them cool with their differences, and I wanted to pitch my ideas for which ants should be tier 4 and 5.

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Tier 4 Suggestion: Green Tree Ants (Weaver Ants)

(My pictures i drew of a green tree ants and a bush ant colony they were to big files sorry) that 507 kB requirements 😅

I am almost certain if you use my idea you should use green tree ants. They are a member of the weaver ant family that are known for their ability to produce a silk that holds stuff together. Because of their colonies' nesting spot, its acid defense mechanism, and its engineering skills, I believe this would make the perfect tier 4 ant for 4 reasons:

Reason 1: A Unique, Multi-Nest Aerial Anthill
It would be a very cool anthill. I know this would take more work, but I believe it will pay off. Green tree ants create cocoon-shaped nests by stitching leaves together in trees and bushes. They often have multiple nests for different areas, and I believe this would make the perfect area to raid and go through.
Here is a picture to demonstrate how the base layout would function across branches:

My picture was a ruff sketch of how this could be implemented, branches with the cacoons on them the the queen's chamber at the center

Base Map Key & Layout:
• Circle (O): Cocoon NestTriangle
• (Δ): Ant Bush (Features a couple of entrances and interconnected pathways)
• Food Room: Located at the lower branch level, close to a "Food Storage" upgrade spot.
• Egg Room: Positioned safely in the mid-canopy.
• Queen Chamber: The ultimate end-point, located deep within the highest canopy clusters.
• Environmental Setting: Built along a tree branch next to a fence or a similar backyard structure.
Reason 2: A Smoother Progression Curve
Progression is a key part of Grounded, and I feel this will make the jump from Tier 3 to 4 and 5 smoother. Since ants are everywhere in Grounded, why not make some smaller, stronger colonies to act as those missing stepping stones?
Reason 3: Simplicity and Combat Moves
For development simplicity, you can recolor the normal ant model to give them a light yellow-orange body with a light green abdomen. Their combat moves can include a normal ant bite and an acid shot, which would be kind of similar to the Bombardier Beetle's attack.


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Reason 4: buggy, Armor, and Weapons
• Pet Companion ("Buggy"): The pet version would likely use the same model as the other pet ants. For its special companion abilities, it could utilize its silk or acid—possibly offering two distinct abilities. Suggestions include a silk net shot to slow enemies down, an acid shot for ranged damage, or a utility buff related to ziplines since Weaver Ants are masters of aerial travel.
• Armor Set: A Tier 4 armor set focused entirely on agility or ranged combat. Visually, this should be designed as a "Green Tree Samurai Set" where the leaf armor plates are intricately tied together using the ant's natural silk.
• Weapons: I feel this should feature one or two faster weapon types crafted from Green Tree Ant parts. Good options would be a sleek one-handed sword or high-speed combat gauntlets.

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Tier 5 Concept
For the final Tier 5 endgame milestone, I am currently mapping out a baseline faction for the Trap-Jaw Ant (or potentially Bull Ants). Their lightning-fast mandate snap attacks and high aggression would make them the ultimate ground threat to bridge the final progression gap!
Thank you so much for reading my pitch and for making this amazing game series.

I like the tree ant idea in large part due to the nest location being up high but also because it seems like it would fit in well gameplay wise.

Introduce them early:

• In the beginning areas of Grounded 2, there’s not much to do above picnic table height. You can build up on top of the hotdog stand, but there’s nothing there. You can build up to the top of the trees or lamp posts, but there is nothing there. I would love to throw a couple minor tree ant nests in the beginning area so it’s not so… empty. There are several trees that could be used.

• I think the minor nests in the beginning areas I proposed should be hard to tackle. They’re more meant to present a future challenge, then be a current challenge for starting players; a reason to come back to the area later on. They are also completely avoidable with nothing you need in them to progress to the next area. Green tree ants don’t like the ground so they’re not going to seek interact with the player unless the player goes up into their territory.

• The recipes that unlock from scanning the materials you get from nests/enemies need to include items that players don’t actually obtain until later in the game as being able to skip to tier 4 weapons and gear before even going to the greenhouse area would ruin the feeling of progression. If the player doesn’t actually battle any tree ants until later in the game that still works out just fine.

• I do think the minor nests need to have something worthwhile in them and not simply be areas to grind for materials the player may not be able to use yet. Perhaps a unique weapon (maybe a salt weapon), or if the developers ever add armor dying then there could be blueprints to make the dye workbench. Something worthwhile if players go for the nests early on, but something not necessary so players can wait till they have better gear, smoothies, and mutations.

• Based off what I was reading one of the more logical places for there to be tree ants is actually the lime tree as they tend to gravitate towards citrus trees. I think a nest spawning there would have to get triggered the way that the Hornets get released in Grounded 1; it would not exist in the lime tree until you unlocked it later in the game. Part of the reason for that is the lime tree does not exist until we grow it. Having the freshly grown tree come with an ant nest seems weird. (Weird doesn’t actually mean all that much given that we have mind controlled insects, shrinking machines and candy that turns into magic staffs.) The other part is that the greenhouse roof is a frequent travel area for me and likely other players. The upper part of the trees in the beginning map areas are completely avoidable; you don’t have to take on this higher tier enemy in those trees unless you want to. Avoiding the tree ants if they had a nest on top of the greenhouse would not be as easy. They’re supposed to be highly aggressive. I just feel it may be better for a nest in the lime tree to be a late game spawn if the developers choose to put one in it.

• Tree ants can also infest shrubs so the hedges in the game also have some potential for nests or some stray enemies. So far the hedges are primarily spider and larva. There is no main ant species in them.

The tree ant lab:

• The main tree ant nest/lab would need to be in one of the later parts of the map as the difficulty level and/or enemy count should match or exceed other main ant hills/labs that we’ve encountered. The next update seems focused mostly on a water area, but perhaps the next section of map after that could have at least a couple trees pretty close together so you could truly have a sprawling base.

Resource use:

• The ant you proposed also has some unique aspects to it which  could add more variety to the game.  As you stated they make silk that means we have another resource for making higher tier items. It’s not the full grown ant that produces the silk, but rather their larva. Rather than collecting tree ant eggs to make bombs, we might need to use them to either go on the spinning wheel or into some sort of incubator that we can collect their silk from and the turn that silk into rope on the spinning wheel. if we could store the tree ant eggs in an incubator that fed into something that looked like a 3D printer using the larva as the print head slowly printing a silk thread blob… that would be pretty neat while also being a tad disturbing.

• As for the ant silk uses, I would appreciate a more efficient dew collector, a speed buff to zip lines when we use ant silk rope over spider silk rope, and bouncier bug rubber (thus bouncier bounce webs) rather than just more armor and weapons.

• They also have acid. While having something acid like is not unique to them in this game perhaps the tree ant acid could be used as a throwable weapon that inflicts a status effect on enemies. or if grounded ever adds solutions to coat your weapons in for a temporary effect, that has potential as well. It’s also worth noting that they can subscum to their own acid… Which does remind me of the infected weevils from grounded one. I’m just saying if they’re gonna have it since we’re an infection in this game, I think we found an upgraded self exploding bug.

• Apparently, some people eat tree ants and they have a citrus flavor. There’s some cooking potentials there.

Behavior:

• The fact that tree ants apparently “farm” the creatures that can make honeydew strikes me as fortuitous as we already have honeydew producing insects in game. Depending on where the developers went with this design wise, the farm would either be one of the oddestly cute things ever… or creepiest… perhaps even surpassing the ant head totem cave.

• I don’t know how much of a pain it would be to code for, but these ants are known for making bridges and ladders out of themselves… if you were in multiplayer and could actually do something of that nature with your fellow players if you all had tree ant buggies, that could be really cool.

• These ants are willing to be scavengers so I think we might be able to morph a couple traits from the ****roache’s behavior where tree ants will steal loot from ant kills around them. But unlike the ****roaches where you can’t get it back after they’ve done this, I think you should have a chance to reclaim at least one thing back as the tree ants should be carrying it the way the other ants do in their mouth.

• One of their natural enemies is jumping spiders and several posts have been requesting that jumping spiders the end to the game. It’s a good additional enemy to add into the areas that have tree ants.

• Green tree ants don’t like going on the ground so if your character aggressive tree ants, but you make it back to the ground, they’re not gonna follow you far. If you stay in the tree though and the developers managed to code in their ability to make bridges and ladders out of themselves, it’s gonna get interesting.

I messed up i didnt know that black ants in grounded 2 are teir 3 but I still think a new ant colonie would be good also my colonie home idea was a bush because I feel like if you fell out of a full tree it would be to punishing maybe like a smaller tree would work perfectly also they could be sour based like fire ants is spicy I love ants and I hope you add another thank you to the people that even looked at my idea