Figured I'd discuss this here.
"it would make sense, with them being the workforce of the antlion, they would need to be far stronger"
Not really? Their acid spit is what carves out the tunnels. If anything, it'd make sense that the soldiers going hunting are sturdier. To me, it feels more like gameplay decision so they can actually do their spitting routine before the player shoots them from a distance.
my only problem with this is that we dont have a basement
use the recovery room instead