Priming Fire Beetles

[Chosen]

Cybran Firebeetles / mobile boms is still too buggy. moves very foolishly, thinking way too long .... explodes sometimes too far away to make any damage

I have many replays beetles totally ruin my game or get me f#%?%" angry Grrrr...


there is one example 1v1 playing against Godfather

i can search more replays later.

[Wakke]

Suggestion is to have a toggle button on fire beetles to prime them. When primed, dying will trigger their full explosion.

This should make fire beetles a bit more user friendly, while still being very micro heavy.

[Wakke]

On a related note, I noticed Fire Beetles damage each other, while the patch notes of 3615 seem to say that should not be the case:

- Firebeetle enhancements : You can ctrl-k the firebeetle to produce instant damage. They are not sensitive to each other explosions. Increased AOE to 3.5, firing tolerance to 4 and maxradius to 4.5.

Is this a bug?

[Nombringer]

Cybran Firebeetles / mobile boms is still too buggy. moves very foolishly, thinking way too long .... explodes sometimes too far away to make any damage

I have many replays beetles totally ruin my game or get me f#%?%" angry Grrrr...


there is one example 1v1 playing against Godfather

i can search more replays later.

I can second this, it really needs to be adressed, I can provide replays if you need more

[Ze_PilOt]

Someone needs to give me the code to fix it if you want it fixed in this patch.

[Wakke]

I did a lot of sandboxing on fire beetles and my conclusion was they are extremely hard to use in group, even when they get 100% of your micro attention. My findings are the following:

- The new ctrl+k feature that triggers them is awesome and should definately be kept.

- The fact that the explosion of a beetle kills other beetles, who then die WITHOUT an explosion, makes using multiple beetles in group effectively EXTREMELY hard. For example, a T3 factory can theoretically be killed by 5 beetles, but even if there are no enemy units, it is a very micro-intense task to kill the factory with just 5 beetles, as you have to make sure the explosion of a beetle does not touch other beetles.

- It was already hard to use them in these sandbox testings, imagine how impractical it is to use them in an actual battle versus a human player!

My suggestion for the beetles is one of the following:

1) The easy approach:
Make firebeetles that explode not harm other fire beetles. This is the simple solution, and it appears to be a bug that it is not working already. (to be confirmed?)

2) The more interesting approach:
Ofcourse we can not simply make it so that beetles' explosions trigger other beetles into exploding, as that would result in a massive chain explosion before they reach the enemy. However if we provide a toggle button for the beetles to make them explode on death (same in design as for example the stealth button), it is feasible, and even desirable, to allow chain explosions. We call this priming the little f*ckers. By default they are unprimed, so they will not explode when killed. You leave them unprimed until the right moment (ie, when they are near their juicy targets, and away from your other units). And then you prime them. This ensures that all your beetles will die with an explosion.
So in conclusion:
- Beetles have a button to toggle between unprimed (default) and primed.
- When unprimed, beetles do not explode when killed.
- When primed, beetles explode when killed.
- Beetles exploding harm other beetles (as is currently the case), resulting multiple primed beeltes to create a big chain explosion.

Let us untap the potential of this very underused unit!
I respectfully and humbly ask for option 2 to be considered. I unfortunately have no coding experience, so if anyone interested can make option 2) into a mod so we can test, that would be awesome.

[Ze_PilOt]

Someone needs to give me the code to fix it if you want it fixed in this patch.

I can't emphasis more on that : I won't have time to code anything myself, I'm too busy on GW.

[ColonelSheppard]

it's releated to the new invented amor "bomb" is does not seem to work properly

[Wakke]

it's releated to the new invented amor "bomb" is does not seem to work properly

I am now trying to get to know how modding works, as I have never done it before. I think I already found the cause for the armor issue, but I need more time to experiment with stuff.

[pip]

I got it all working, but it involves balance tweaking as well. Currently, this unit is balanced with the idea that it's a miracle that a single Firebeetle can get to its target, and only one can reach it at a time because if there are several, they will die with the first one. So it has to deal tremendous damage (4500!) to be interesting. If it becomes easier to attack with multiple firebeetles, it should not deal as much damage as it does now.
I am using Brute51's code from the Community balance patch. I tested it with my Nomad, FAF hook folder, it should work in FAF too.

1) To prevent what happens in Chosen's replay, the AOE has to be wider than the range of the weapon, and the range of the weapon needs to be kept decent.
New values :
damage radius = 4.5 (from 3.5)
MaxRadius = 4.4 (from 4.5)
Damage = 3000 (from 4500)
Firing tolerance = 180 (from 4) ; it means the unit doesn't have to face its target to explode.
Note that if the damage is reduced a lot, the AOE is also increased a lot. So the unit is not really nerfed, it's actually buffed.

2) Firebeetles are now immune to each other explosion, meaning they are much more threatening in numbers.
In the armordefinition.lua, I changed Firebeetle damage 0.1 to 0.0 = no damage at all.

3) I added a button (using overcharge icon) that makes instant death explosion, the same way CTRL+k does.

Overall, the unit is easier to use, and also a better deal against armies and bases thanks to wider AOE (it's not just an assassination weapon). It is also more viable for assassination since you have at least twice more chances for them to harm the target and multiple beetles can be used at the same time.