Wesmania wrote:At first glance I'm not fond of the beetle-as-a-landmine idea, I'd like to know more about it. In particular:
* It seems useless against ACU pushes, since ACUs have omni.
* It's even more useless for drops, since damage was decreased to 1k (proportionally to mass decrease, but with with huge e cost increase and worse transport capacity).
* For the same reason (and reduced health) they can't be used for any non-covert action like current beetles (barely) can.
* A single beetle costs 50 energy to maintain cloak, which is ~120 mass assuming t2 pgens. It looks like a waste of energy compared to just more corsairs.
* I get the impression minefields could be efficiently cleared by suiciding a lot of low value units like scouts and LABs.
* Useless anywhere on the battlefield that isn't a chokepoint.
* Hard-obsoleted by T3 air scouts, since they're only useful at easily scoutable chokepoints.
The closest counterpart to a beetle landmine is a T1 PD, so I'll compare the two:
* T1 PD can be built by T1 engineers. Beetles have to be built in T2 land factories and transported to their destination.
* T1 PD costs 250 mass. Beetle costs 200 mass and much more energy, plus fixed energy upkeep (~120 mass equivalent).
* T1 PD can protect against small raids without dying. Beetles can't.
* T1 PD die to artillery easily. Beetles can kill a few, but large groups are unhindered.
* T1 PD can stop about 2 T2 advancing units. Beetles with their 1k damage can wound, but not kill T2 units, I expect 2 beetles to take out 5 T2 tanks on average.
* Beetles are cloaked, T1 PDs aren't. Does not matter in 90% of cases when deep in your own territory, it might matter in front of firebases and such.
* T1 PDs stop unupgraded ACUs and can slow down advancing ACUs if under shields in a firebase. Beetles die easily to unupgraded ACUs and surrounding units.
* T1 PDs can't be airdropped. Beetles aren't worth airdropping.
* Beetles are obsoleted by omni and T3 air scouts. T1 PDs aren't.
* T1 PDs have more range.
In short, I see exactly 2 scenarios where beetles are superior to T1 PDs: waiting in front of firebases or in frontal chokepoints for an enemy run-by to come through, or waiting in the same chokepoints for high-value targets like T3 units or experimentals. In the latter scenario corsairs are just as cost-effective and have chance not to die, maybe beetles kill shields more effectively. I suppose beetle mines are genuinely good in the earlier, but I think scenarios like this are pretty rare.
it could be both a defensive deployeable landmine and still a offensive antiarmy microoption that supports your tanks causing both damage and a emp effect .. a acu may have omni but if out of possition it still may get heavily damaged depending on the situation maybe even stunned ..
FtXCommando wrote:Gonna fly to Ireland and bang a pan outside of jagged’s home if he starts entertaining the idea of forcing players to play with/against nomads or introducing blackops units into default balance.
yes cause traditionalism has brought oh so much progress ...