Firebeetle DoT

[MrTBSC]

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 ..

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 ...

[keyser]

btw, beetle drop is not dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GVG3KdVtZU

[MrTBSC]

btw, beetle drop is not dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GVG3KdVtZU

... that´s nice and all but we may wanna get people to use them for more than just commsnipes, right?

[UnorthodoxBox]

btw, beetle drop is not dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GVG3KdVtZU

... that´s nice and all but we may wanna get people to use them for more than just commsnipes, right?

Why not, you already have corsairs for killing t2 pgens and mexes, and AOE t2 gunships for killing t1 armies/t2 armies with no flak.

[Plasma_Wolf]

btw, beetle drop is not dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GVG3KdVtZU

... that´s nice and all but we may wanna get people to use them for more than just commsnipes, right?

T2 Pgens would be a nice target too. But they simply have a limited use. Mercies have a slightly bigger use because you can target experimentals with them. But still, those are not a main line unit either.

@Keyser just out of interest:

When was this game/what's the replayID?
Bullying Johnice, really? The poor guy is 500 rating lower than you. Sure, I bully him too but we're close in rating so he gets to do it to me XD.
Any snipe is possible because of an opponent not paying attention, but in this case the ACU was out in the middle of nowhere. Do you have others where the ACU is in a slightly safer position?

Like this one.

[keyser]

i just needed a game to showcase it, he hosted right at this moment (2 days ago).
Actually he wasn't such in a bad spot with his ACU for a 1v1.

Anyway, you can check the 2nd replay where i use them in teamgame with T1 transport.
1st time i remove 7.5k hp on an acu, and my ally finish it while it has only 1k left.
2nd time, i died but the beetle still explode (due to my death) and remove 9k hp to opponent com, that get finished by some corsair.


I also tried twice to use the fully loaded T2 transport on teamgame, but i've still difficulties to judge when to ctrl k the transport.

[armacham01]

I've been trying to sandbox this. It seems that when you ctrl-k the transport, all the beetles die, and they do their AOE damage.

But to deal the damage, they need to be close enough to the enemy, which is about the unit's height (for ground units) and how high it flies (for, er, flying units). I'm assuming it's the height of the hitbox, not the height of the graphics, but the two are probably pretty close most of the time.

As Keyser points out, the Cybran T2 transport basically flies too high to use against ACUs, but the T1 transport is lower and can be "landed" to drop further (it doesn't actually "land" on the ground when it is carrying units, but when it stops it is lower than when it is traveling). So he was able to get it close enough to an enemy ACU to kill them.

So a CZAR is unkillable because transports can't get high enough. And a fatboy is so short that it's not easy to do it from the transport itself. But you can fly right over the top of a megalith and ctrl-k your transport to do serious damage. Same for GC, ML, and Ythotha.

You get much better value using this against the Seraphim T4 bot than against the Aeon T4 bot just because Aeon costs less per hit point. You can kill an Ythotha (26.5k mass cost) with 5 T2 transports (loaded with 50 fire beetles) -- 16k mass cost. So it is definitely mass efficient to use fire beetle suicide transports to damage an Ythotha, assuming they don't get shot down.

Since transports fly at roughly the same height, you should be able to load up a transport with fire beetles in order to "snipe" an enemy transport (you would just need to plot the right intercept course because you can't exactly chase it down).

I didn't have a lot of luck trying to take out gunships using transports loaded with fire beetles but perhaps it can be done, especially if they are all targeting the same ground unit (and therefore, moving in a tight pattern)

You can kill a soothsayer with a transport loaded with a single beetle. You can kill T3 heavy arty with beetle transports (but those things usually will have much air defense around them, so in practice this probably isn't going to happen).

Cybran T2 transport with 10 beetles costs 3.33k mass and it does 15k damage (actually 14990 + the tiny amount from the t2 transport). If you use 3 of these, you can basically kill a monkeylord (it will have a small amount of HP left, unless it takes some damage from other sources). So for 10k mass, you can basically shut down a monkeylord. You could make 4 of these and put a deceiver on one of them, then you can sneak up and kill the monkeylord maybe before they can scramble air to protect it.

UEF T3 transport with 28 beetles costs 9.8k mass and can do up to 41k damage. (Or 26 beetles + 1 deceiver, does 38k damage). This doesn't work against monkeylords because they are not tall enough, but you can fly it over a mega and ctrl-k. If you do that with 3 of these, you can kill a mega. Or with 2 you can kill 1 ythotha. It's actually not mass-efficient to kill a GC this way, unless you can scoop the reclaim.

[MrTBSC]

btw, beetle drop is not dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GVG3KdVtZU

... that´s nice and all but we may wanna get people to use them for more than just commsnipes, right?

T2 Pgens would be a nice target too. But they simply have a limited use. Mercies have a slightly bigger use because you can target experimentals with them. But still, those are not a main line unit either.

@Keyser just out of interest:

When was this game/what's the replayID?
Bullying Johnice, really? The poor guy is 500 rating lower than you. Sure, I bully him too but we're close in rating so he gets to do it to me XD.
Any snipe is possible because of an opponent not paying attention, but in this case the ACU was out in the middle of nowhere. Do you have others where the ACU is in a slightly safer position?

Like this one.

i remember a video of brnk in a facepalm highlight reel with someone dropping 2 transports of beetles near a shielded comm but also was rather open than defended ..

as for buildingsniping .. well the beetle could have damage equal to a stratbomb (with apropriate cost, health and speed adjustmeant).. how many stratbombs does it take to bust a t3 pgen, a t3 HQ- or subfactory; or a startingcluster of t3 mexxes?

though just to reitterate the ballanceteam needs to decide weither the beetle should be antiarmy or weither it should be antibuilding .. can´t be both ..
that´s however a matter how userfriendly the beetle is in pacticality ...

[MrTBSC]

another thing is that even with the extracost for the missilelauncher a tactical missile is cheaper than a beetle ..

a missile can be countered by shields and smd .. beetles can be killed by anything that isn´t AA (when they are on ground) or antinavaltorpedoes .. a missile while having limited range and a lower AoE than a beetleexplosion is still cappable in destroying a fully upgraded mexx were even with old beetles you still needed at least 2 .. current version would need 4 if one were to go for mexxsniping ..
still even with the current one being meant for antiarmy i find it might be too expensive ..



saw this one late, sry

Why not, you already have corsairs for killing t2 pgens and mexes, and AOE t2 gunships for killing t1 armies/t2 armies with no flak.

cause that´s all only airoptions .. every other faction has mobile shields (uef also have a mobile jammer with the sparky) to protect their units for both offensive and defensive manuevers .. the cybran have the beetle and deciever for such manuevers as such beetles should have a bit more use .. or are people supposed to always go skybran?
bit onesided in tactical or strategic choises don´t you think?

[MrTBSC]

just posting the video of the beetle drop from a brnk facepalmcompilation

https://youtu.be/ny1PESCKwYw?t=60

one thing that definetively needs to be adjusted is that beetles seem not to use there blastradius well, they seem to go off on the edge of their AoE ...