Firebeetle DoT

[Wesmania]

After last firebeetle changes that nerfed their damage, the unit has been slightly underutilized. How about we fix it by turning their instant damage into DoT, like that of UEF bombers?

Right now, instant beetle damage has many problems:
- If the damage is too high relative to transport capacity, beetles become OP for ACU sniping. That's because they are allowed to detonate right after being dropped out of the transport, so there's absolutely no defense against them once they're dropped. I assume fixing that in game code is hard, since beetle rebalancing was done instead.
- Beetles can be used instead of artilleries for drops, which helps cybran a lot with their mediocre DPS arty and low transport capacity, but their damage needs to be high enough for such drops to be viable. That conflicts with the above.
- Last rebalance intended beetles to be anti-army units, but their pathfinding is still abysmal and you have to micro them to attack. They also explode at the edge of their detonation range, wasting AoE damage on the unit they target. You could ground-fire them, but nobody has the time for that in a middle of a T2 engagement.

My solution - DoT. For example, make a beetle deal 3k damage over a 15 second time period in their old 1.5 radius.
- Commanders can't be reliably sniped now, as they can leave the damage radius in 5 seconds tops, suffering only 1k damage per beetle. That's even less if they're retreating from beetles.
- Anything stationary can be sniped as long as the detonation-at-edge-of-range issue is fixed.
- Beetles have an actual anti-army use case now, laying down firewalls to delay an advancing army or stop the enemy ACU from pursuing yours.

The DoT values can be played with, of course - make it 2k over 10 seconds with 5 range, give beetles a toggle between concentrated / spread-out fire etc.

[keyser]

hello thank you from bringing attention to this issue, and doing some proposals.

This unit has been proving very challenging to balance.
You have stated quite some example as of why.

Just so you know here are the example of change that have been made since the last year.
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/2646 (video about it : http://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=16868)
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/2777

So the first PR would make the beetle cloackable and used as a land mine.
The second PR would make the beetle as before : eg a sniping tool against structure and com. That would especially help the cybran to counter rambo ACU, which they have trouble dealing with (beetle would have also personal stealth). This would be made by also removing the detonation on death or adding a way to not explode in the transport.

Dropping beetle from the transport has been nerfed quite a lot, so it's way more difficult to pull that off (the target ACU before loading into transport which give the jump out of the transport).

As for your DoT idea, it is a interesting one. I'm still more in favour of making the beetle an high damage unit.

[LabPunk]

Personally, I don't think Cybran needs another snipe weapon.
What I think would be awesome, is a larger (say 30r) pulse which damages shields, similar to the Absolver (or temporarily disrupts them?) but like the current beetle as a aoe suicide weapon.
Effect could be different or less strong on personal shields, and you could keep the Beetle's HP low.
It would also make Cybran's t2 stage more interesting and aggressive.

[Ithilis_Quo]

So many PR only say how much someone thought about it before making a change. I don't need to be a genius to know that not very much....
Beetle atm are pure shit, not worth build. Impossible to use on different purpose as entertainment of spectators. Honestly, I'm playing for like 3 mouth and NEVER see any beetle. ANY. What say how great they are..

So how to make them maybe not great, but not broken and usable is following these steps:

- increase damage to 2000
- setup weapon max radius 4.5, instead of 5,8 (wtf?)-> this will mean beetle will automatically explode on range 4.5 -> deeper in enemy tanks.
- setup target priority Command-> ACU->Exp->T3 structure antimissile-> t3 structure strategic -> t3 mass production -> t3 energy production -> t3 land -> t2 structure -> t2 land -> t1 etc... --> so beetle will automatically looking for best target
- add tracking radius 5 -> it will not explode when something more valuable is nearby
- change TargetCheckInterval to 0.1 -> so it will check area around
- add death weapon, that activates when units die (same as having pgens/fabs), 500dmg, 4,5aoe not affect ally units. + move emp there, 6aoe for emp, 2sec stun -> even when beetles die on way there is something
- it will increase damage to 2500 on 4,5 aoe
- remove wreck after death -> is madness that units who explode leave wreck with metal body and 243mass.


Now welcome you have a valuable unit that is worth 300mass, instead od unusable bug. That is pure waste of money 24/7

[Ithilis_Quo]

And now how to fix Mercies, while they have same problem. Too expensive to anything else expect acu snipe.

- damage 3000 over 4sec, 4,5 aoe -> acu in streit move receive +-1500dmg, big army in move about 1000dmg each units, static object/buildings 3000. Combine with t1 EMP bomber for bigger effectiveness against the army.
- add miasma area effect on the field
- air crash 500damage 4,5 aoe
- fuel use time at least 120s

On the end its 2/3 effective against acu sniping, but worth risk for use against army and buildings.

[MrTBSC]

the unit has been slightly underutilized.

BIGGEST UNDERSTATEMEANT SINCE THE BEGGINING OF THE FRiGGING BIG BANG ...

personaly not a fan of DoT for cybran, that´s rather a UeF thing with napalmbombs or the pulseweapon either aeon or phim use ...

just make it a unit useable against armies instead of (just) a commandersnipetool (cause its fck all worth against buildings especialy t3 ones) .. either do good AoE damage on a similar level to the gunther (or lower) or add a emp effect (if it doesn´t already) to its then rather low damage so it supports your army, no friendly fire if the latter at the very least no friendly fire to other beetles, should not detonate on destruction and reclaim ..
one recent (still months old) YTvideo has shown how they were cloaked/stealthed when immobile which imo is a nice addition .. additionaly i would have them both be cheaper and vulnerable to high RoF weapons so have a rather low healthpool, also have a low field of view but high speed ...
since they are t2 they might be somewhere between a starcraft 2 baneling/PA boombot and TA crawling bomb/PATitans manhattan ...

maybe shields could absorb damage even if the beetle is within the dome? maybe negate the empeffect?

otherwise if it´s not quite possible to change their behavior for them to not detonate too early or on the edge of their detonationrange make them similarly strong to a stratbomb drop were (i think) 2 or 3 are strong enough (or in whatever way stratbombers are currently ballanced) to clear a fully upgrated quadmexxcluster and ballance it in cost apropriatly ..

[keyser]

the unit has been slightly underutilized.

BIGGEST UNDERSTATEMEANT SINCE THE BEGGINING OF THE FRiGGING BIG BANG ...

personaly not a fan of DoT for cybran, that´s rather a UeF thing with napalmbombs or the pulseweapon either aeon or phim use ...

just make it a unit useable against armies instead of (just) a commandersnipetool (cause its fck all worth against buildings especialy t3 ones) .. either do good AoE damage on a similar level to the gunther (or lower) or add a emp effect (if it doesn´t already) to its then rather low damage so it supports your army, no friendly fire if the latter at the very least no friendly fire to other beetles, should not detonate on destruction and reclaim ..
one recent (still months old) YTvideo has shown how they were cloaked/stealthed when immobile which imo is a nice addition .. additionaly i would have them both be cheaper and vulnerable to high RoF weapons so have a rather low healthpool, also have a low field of view but high speed ...
since they are t2 they might be somewhere between a starcraft 2 baneling/PA boombot and TA crawling bomb/PATitans manhattan ...

maybe shields could absorb damage even if the beetle is within the dome? maybe negate the empeffect?

otherwise if it´s not quite possible to change their behavior for them to not detonate too early or on the edge of their detonationrange make them similarly strong to a stratbomb drop were (i think) 2 or 3 are strong enough (or in whatever way stratbombers are currently ballanced) to clear a fully upgrated quadmexxcluster and ballance it in cost apropriatly ..

Before posting a message i guess you can check the current status of the unit : http://direct.faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/?id=XRL0302
most of what you said has been implemented, when Jagged made the beetle designed against army. Also I just posted the video you are talking about like 4 post before yours.

[MrTBSC]

the unit has been slightly underutilized.

BIGGEST UNDERSTATEMEANT SINCE THE BEGGINING OF THE FRiGGING BIG BANG ...

personaly not a fan of DoT for cybran, that´s rather a UeF thing with napalmbombs or the pulseweapon either aeon or phim use ...

just make it a unit useable against armies instead of (just) a commandersnipetool (cause its fck all worth against buildings especialy t3 ones) .. either do good AoE damage on a similar level to the gunther (or lower) or add a emp effect (if it doesn´t already) to its then rather low damage so it supports your army, no friendly fire if the latter at the very least no friendly fire to other beetles, should not detonate on destruction and reclaim ..
one recent (still months old) YTvideo has shown how they were cloaked/stealthed when immobile which imo is a nice addition .. additionaly i would have them both be cheaper and vulnerable to high RoF weapons so have a rather low healthpool, also have a low field of view but high speed ...
since they are t2 they might be somewhere between a starcraft 2 baneling/PA boombot and TA crawling bomb/PATitans manhattan ...

maybe shields could absorb damage even if the beetle is within the dome? maybe negate the empeffect?

otherwise if it´s not quite possible to change their behavior for them to not detonate too early or on the edge of their detonationrange make them similarly strong to a stratbomb drop were (i think) 2 or 3 are strong enough (or in whatever way stratbombers are currently ballanced) to clear a fully upgrated quadmexxcluster and ballance it in cost apropriatly ..

Before posting a message i guess you can check the current status of the unit : http://direct.faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/?id=XRL0302
most of what you said has been implemented, when Jagged made the beetle designed against army. Also I just posted the video you are talking about like 4 post before yours.

the problem with the itteration of the beetle in your video is that it may require too much mirco, which might be the primary reason it may not get used in its current itteration as well ...

looking at the unitlist among with the other factions t2 assaultoptions i think there is the concern of both the current cost of the beetle which is the same as t2 assaultunits
(which i think is too much as well as the buildtime) and its low hp ...
while you could argue that one beetle is strong enough to potentionaly take down 3 to 4 pillars with it the actual useability/micro neccessary may limit the actual avarage damage a beetle does

now i myself can´t test the beetle since it´s required to steamlink my account and i refuse to do that ...

but if you want to keep the beetle this way i think you may have to lower the cost at the least (like torwards 200 to 235?) .. otherwise the beetle needs to be more usefriendly, you may want to ballance how much effort your avarage player requires for the damage supposed to do with this unit ..
if you can´t manage that then it should be ballanced torwards being capable of damaging a players economy (maybe even production) .. like make it similar to a small version of a MADtank/mobile nuke


i think you want to look at other sucicide units in comparison with what they are put against for reference

example PA titans boombot which is a antiarmy suicideunit but also capable of comsniping (for that you need like 20 to 30 of these though)
http://pa-db.com/unit/bot_bomb

generaly used against assaulttanks
http://pa-db.com/unit/tank_light_laser

countered by but can also takedown/heavily damage
http://pa-db.com/unit/assault_bot
http://pa-db.com/unit/tank_armor


now granted PA plays differently due to faster pace
http://pa-db.com/
gonna leave the unitlist for any interest ...

but what you may take from this is that the boombot compared to other units of its tier is a lot cheaper in cost
it´s specifically made against tankarmies it is however countered by units with high rate of fire ...

on the other end of the spectrum:
http://pa-db.com/unit/tank_nuke
2 of these bust a PA commander .. but they are slow AF


hope that gives some perspective ..

otherwise as mentioned befor take a look of the damagenumbers between static t2 artillery (imo antiarmy) and t3 stratbombers (antibuilding) to sorta determine how effective you want beetles to be for their difficulty in microability ..

[UnorthodoxBox]

it´s required to steamlink my account and i refuse to do that ...

Why

[IceDreamer]

I made a patch which gives the unit a properly defined use, purpose, and it's nicely faction-aligned too: Beetles as mines that you deploy. Low micro, fire and forget area denial for Cybran. Sneaky, tricksy gameplay, plenty of counter-play available for the other factions, opens a new area of dynamic strategy in this decade-old game.

The code is done. Far as I can tell, the only real opposition has been stubbornness and a total unwillingness to think outside the box. There's a PR up for it, and also a thread somewhere on these forums.