Fire beetle balance suggestion
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What farm means is that the current balance team has no intention to make it some snipe unit, not that it never had that role in FAF's history.
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Ah okay, that's fine. It was just hard to perceive that from the word "no."
So, what does the balance team intend to do with it?
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I definitely find them useful as units for deterring a com push, although I worry that usefulness is probably mitigated by priority targeting mods.
If they were just a little faster, they'd be a good counter to T4. Not saying that we SHOULD do that, but... I wouldn't complain...
I think firebeetles have a limited role as eco damage drop units, although this isn't particularly sexy as T1 arty for other factions does it better.
Its not a terrible option though, as they don't leave reclaimable wreckage usually, so if you get a mex, the mex is gone and they don't even get the wreckage of your beetles to help rebuild with.
If Cybran transport capacity wasn't so low they might be seen as slightly less useless.
I think they're no longer in the "completely useless for any particular purpose" category, and are now in the "needs reasonable minor tweaks to really shine" category.
Dropping them to say 160 mass might be enough to change people's perceptions of them. I don't think they need anything like a major rework at this point.
In Leage of Legends, the devs have figured out a neat trick...
When they deploy a new character, the character is always moderately OP. This is to get people to take notice of them.
I think the firebeetle needs that. They need a moment where they're OP enough that people acknowledge that they exist and serve a purpose.
After that you can nerf them back into a reasonable position, and people remember how good they were and see how they can be useful and everyone will be happy.
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Hot take on this topic
What if fire beetle fired a single projectile and then after that it killed itself... So that means there wouldn't be any issues with them coming up close kissing the enemy unit feet before it blows up and it would partly solve the issue of the unit. So it gets into the range fires a single charged explosive projectile that does some amount of dmg in a AOE and after that projectile only husk (reclaim) of that unit stays behind.So it is a different approach to a problem that gives them some utility in a fight and better micro potential.
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@HintHunter said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:
Hot take on this topic
What if fire beetle fired a single projectile and then after that it killed itself... So that means there wouldn't be any issues with them coming up close kissing the enemy unit feet before it blows up and it would partly solve the issue of the unit. So it gets into the range fires a single charged explosive projectile that does some amount of dmg in a AOE and after that projectile only husk (reclaim) of that unit stays behind.So it is a different approach to a problem that gives them some utility in a fight and better micro potential.
So... turn them into land-based mercies?
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@Pearl12
So... turn them into land-based mercies?Well yes, it would be a different take on the unit then what it was before, worth a shot.
Tho i will say it will have to leave reclaim behind once it fires a single projectile. -
I think it would be cool to see them "jump" at their targets. I'm not sure how they would leave a husk behind when they do this. Nor am I going to animate it. But it would be cool.
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That "jump" idea sounds even better now.
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Beetles were fine as they were then the balance team gave up to a few loud voices of irritated blind people that don't understand what a minimap is and what a radar is.
Ever since then its been an eternal question of how to not make the beetle a useless pile of garbage.
Previously a beetle snipe set you back 4k mass in the early-mid game (ALOT) for a potential com kill that relies on enemy blindness to work (A single Flacks fucks them).
That's right boys, you can counter a well prepared beetlesnipe and be retard blind by putting a 200mass unit on assist to your acu.
OOF
People also get frustrated when they die to mercy or nuke rushes. Its just neither of those are restricted to "Cybran" so they get let off.
Also people stating they can be used as "eco damage" drops. Build a Notha, its 'cheaper' and more reliable and can fire multiple times.
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I've never seen a more wrong opinion about beetles.
A beetle snipe didn't set you back 4k mass when you could load up 4 onto a T1 transport and kill a full HP ACU 5 minutes into the game. You're not getting flak this early unless you're paranoid and immediately rushing T2 or keeping your ACU in your base the whole game. Flak doesn't work 100% of the time either. Mercies are a bit different in that people don't counter them properly, the best counter to mercies is scouting and suiciding in a handful of inties to kill the whole lot in 1 pass before they leave the base. Unlike a tanky transport, there's no defending that.
Unlike nothas, beetle drops can be stealthed and you can drop engies with them to steal the mass. I used to steal T2 and T3 mexes that way, of course it's much harder now with halved reclaim speed. It's also more cost-efficient than nothas assuming old beetle damage and much harder to stop once they land. Just like arty drops really.
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@Psions said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:
OOF
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I will still stick with my idea to make beetles jump or fire a single projectile on to target that does AOE dmg, so it would be like a mercy but for land.
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@tatsu A video on linux installation?
Did you get the wrong video or the wrong thread?
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it's called a signature
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Perhaps it could be made viable by giving it a normal attack? Like a flamethrower or some shit. Move the kamikaze to a special ability button like that useless Aeon engi 'sacrifice' ability. Now you can incorporate them into a unit composition in a way where they can consistently contribute, and still have an extra special ability. Maybe make the suicide ability auto trip when they get low on HP, so as they get wounded they charge in the enemy and detonate. Add in the AOE DOT that MazorNoob said. I mean, they are a 'fire' beetle, why not have them set the ground on fire? Then they could even be detonated to cover a retreat.
I was actually tossing around a kamikaze idea to put on t1 labs. I desperately want them to be useful.
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The DoT idea and the name of the unit gave me an idea. I present to you the real firebeetle: https://imgur.com/a/rdL7f9q
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if that's relatively low dps then heck yeah
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Nice concept! Now that's a Fire Beetle!
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I don't know if anyone has suggested this, but I think this makes sense.
The problem with firebeetles as an eco drop attack unit (which i think is their primary intended role) is that T1 arty is just better.
One way to fix them might be to give them "eco attack" modes. You click one mode and they're set to target mexes, you click another and they're set to target power. When dropped, if they're near mexes or power they attack those structures automatically - no player input required - targeting the highest tier structures first.
With T1 arty you can just drop. You don't even have to watch the drop happen, its fire and forget, your T1 arty will start attacking things the moment they land. You can look back at the drop zone a few seconds after the drop happens and see how you're dong, but its not really mandatory. This doesn't happen with firebeetles. You have to micro them and they're expensive and they're often dropped into places where they will be attacked.. You have to split the say 8 beetles you dropped into groups of 3, and separately send them at mexes, or you have to clumsily just send all of them to each mex in sequence. This gives the enemy more time to respond.
You can get around this by queuing up attack orders before you load them into the transport, but I've tried this, and what happens is that the beetles get stuck on one another and you wind up with a traffic jam for several seconds. You're better off just microing it after the drop.
Anyway, I'm seeing lots of good interesting suggestions, but I feel like if you can make drops with firebeetles less clumsey to use, that might just be enough to make them worth using - and I really like the idea of firebeetles having synergy with transports and decievers. If they were useful as drop units - at least on par with say Zthuee drops I'd be using them all the time.
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@BlackYps said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:
The DoT idea and the name of the unit gave me an idea. I present to you the real firebeetle: https://imgur.com/a/rdL7f9q
I like it, should make them more damaging to structures since structures can't move out of the way so it buffs them as drop units as well.
