[Mod Idea] Expanding the 'Infestation' event

[Kelvarion]

Hi,

I don't know the first thing about modding -> whether this is possible or not, but...

Add research/items/construction to expand on the 'Infestation' event.
Ideas:

1. Groundpounder turret - Like the ones in Half-Life 2, where they are used against antlions (burrowing giant insects).
This would provide an area which the bugs can't cross/hives can't spawn there. Maybe it could even be tiered so that Megaspiders need larger groundpounders to keep away.
Protects a colony from outside hives, while being useless/vulnerable against raiders + a resource and energy hog.
In mountain bases it could be used to create chokepoints and wipe out hives from afar - but you would need to have turrets in place already, which is a gamble and has opportunity cost.
Or make sure some critical rooms can't be infested.

The hard part would be balancing - to somehow make sure you can't just park your colonists under a turret and shoot down all the insect while they are looking at you from outside the range (ranged acid spit attack?).

2.Pheromone drugs/injection
The second idea would be to enable peaceful coexistence or even a kind of symbiosis with a hive on the same map.

Drugs to provide temporary friendly status with the insects - either on per colonist or colony level.
This would allow some colonist to leave the safety of the base for a time without getting chewed up.

Permanent injection to do the same long-term - with possible negative side effects.
Maybe even another type of pheromone for marking an enemy for the hive to hunt down (again, like Half-Life 2)

Insectoid armor/weapons could then be introduced to expand further on the symbiosis idea and maybe adding a taming option (higher chance) after using the injection.

Infestation seems like an underutilized event to me. it's annoying to deal with, dangerous and quite low reward (unless you make a farm).
I know that many people disable it altogether, especially on mountain bases. I imagine that some of the above would be difficult/impossible to implement...
And it was awesome in HL2 when you could take control of the ants - Nova Prospect was one of my favourite maps.

2c