Ythotha should get a switch for Othuy

The Ythotha is Seraphim's experimental assault bot. The Othuy is its death weapon (Unidentified Residual Energy Signature).

Problem: Sometimes games go massive and this is where these experimentals become painful to play. Example: 10 Ythothas vs 10 Galactic Colossi is very painful for the Seraphim as dying Ythothas deal heavy damage to allied units. And sometimes you just don't want them to destroy everything around them after they die.

Solution: A switch for the release of the Othuy after death defaulted to release. Just the way you fixed the Salem's ability to walk on land.

I know you can salvage them before they die to stop the release of the Othuy, but it's hard.

Moved to Balance Discussion, please add examples and/or more information as per the guidelines

Somebody made a mod (equilibrium?) that had the lighting critter walk forward after death. Thats cool.

There is no reason ever, to build that many Yotha.

I think adding such a feature will just cause more confusion and will give yotha a significant buff against other T4, and will promote poorer gameplay.

There is no reason ever, to build that many Yotha.
My thoughts exactly, stop playing the land only games it hurts everyone in them.

Not to support any side.

Replay with massive use of ythotha and GC
https://replay.faforever.com/12288171

Ok so if I am watching the correct replay (#12288171) it appears to me that even as a non-SC expert, sending absolutely everything in to the same spot is a piss poor move either way attack move or not. Especially when you can see your own Ythotha death weapon floating around. (Witnessing what appears to be multiple factories sending units to the same spot on repeat)

While i was wrong about this particular replay being set to land only, it sure as hell played out like one. The first Ahwassa i saw did more damage than most-all of the ground army to that point. (33 ASF present at around 45 minute mark all one side)

If this is the kind of situation being complained about I see no reason to make any adjustments.
With this and minimal shielding throughout 3 of 4 players moderate air would have been the way to go. (Or even any air used correctly.)

@Psions said in Ythotha should get a switch for Othuy:

There is no reason ever, to build that many Yotha.

I think adding such a feature will just cause more confusion and will give yotha a significant buff against other T4, and will promote poorer gameplay.

What do you do vs 10 colosses + 5-6 t3 mobile arty then as seraphim ?
5-6 arties will wreck any amount of "counter" snipers stacks (enough damage to kill shields). Even 2-3 gcs are better vs 2-3 ythotas cause they will focus fire single ythota and it will damage nearby units and exps.

1. Ahwassa costs almost 2x ythota

2. ahwassa is 2/3 of t3 arty.

3. 12k mass of asf will kill 48k mass of ahwassa in roughly ~3-4 seconds. Ahwassa is only good if you outragesly win AIR (so they build 2 gc and y build 12k mass of inties and 48k mass of ahwassa). But at that point strat bombs will work even better (or ton of t1 bombers).

4. ahwassa needs like 8-9 passes to kill gc. This is roughly 2+ minutes of gcs wrecking something

5. 2 gcs will do 5k+ dps if they start focusing something (ahwass is only 700 dps (and even less with flight + rotation time)).

6. So ythota will live for 13.7 seconds if focused by gcs, this is roughtly 25 units of walk time, yes there is 'some' possibility it will get to gc's faces. But best case scenario is both groups of units die, not "sera can somehow win".

7. TLDR 12k inties + 3 gcs(81k mass) >> ahwassa(48k mass) + 2 ythotas(43k mass).

Adding a toggle, or other method of controling, the death storm is in its self not a bad idea, in fact its something I am favor of happening. The storm always has been a secndary feature to the Ythotha so a minor buff to it wouldnt be a big change.

However, I must say the reasoning provided in this thread for adding such a feature is... lacking. I do not want to be rude in any way, its just a simple fact there is no situation in a normal game (well, unless someone was hardcore goofing aorund) where you would actually end up fighting off 10 EXPs at once, the mass investment and time investment in such a thing is absurd, and more importatntly, is mass and time that could have been spent on much better alternatives such as game enders, arty, nukes, telesnipes, strat bombers ect. Speaking of nukes, from scratch you could build two nuke silos and load them both for a total mass cost of less than two GCs but with enough firepower to one shot a group of twenty GCs.

Now to talk about the elephant in the room, as I said just before, that is in a normal game. But if your playing a game that has heavy unit restrictions and/or encourages concentraited t4 spam, then yes you could end up in this situation, I would know, I have actually been in that same situation. Its not fun knowing that any atempt to attack the enemy will end up in your semy self destructing. But as much as it sucks, its nearly impossable to properly balance that kind of game anyway, not without causeing damage to the balance of other game modes.

If we were going to allow the othuy to be disabled, it shouldn't be something that players can flick on and off instantly. It should be something like: you start an upgrade, when the upgrade finishes the ythotha dies and there's no othuy. If you cancel the upgrade, it goes back to normal. While the upgrade is going, the ythotha can't move. (Even better if it can't move or shoot during the upgrade.) That way, a player can't just cancel the storm during the middle of a battle because they don't like where it's standing. Maybe add an "are you sure" dialog just because accidentally clicking that key would be really sad.

If we do this, the othuy should be able to kill reclaim. That would make the ythotha more interesting. Right now, since the othuy can't kill reclaim, there can be a lot left over to scoop for the defending player. Which doesn't really fit with the Seraphim mindset of "kill kill kill destroy everything." And it would be much more devastating if you snipe an ythotha while it is next to allied units/buildings.

I think I'd prefer it to be a toggleable ability with an extremely long chargeup time and cooldown, say 1 minute each. That way you have to plan ahead whether you want the storm or not. It should also start with the storm enabled as it currently is. I don't see a reason it should be forced to stand still and upgrade.

More importantly it needs to be visible on the model whether storm is enabled or not, so you can't completely blindside an opponent whether it'll spawn or not. Some kind of electrical aura would be cool, although not sure how much it'll stand out.

@techmind_

When am I ever going to be in a game where you have spent 300k mass on GC?

I think at that point you could have just built a Yolona then 1 shot them all.

Anyway, you bring up several points in your post that are some what disjointed.

As to ahwassa:

Ahwassa is also a very good counter. If enemy is building 10 GC then you would outrageously win air. You could get by on 2 Ahwassa. Although for killing single targets its more efficient just to use normal bombers.

As to the TLDR

Now you've changed from 10GC to 3 GC and 12k in ASF. if that was the case then you could coutner 3 GC with 15k ASF and the other 56k in bombers. For reference you get 250 dmg a pass on t1 bomber which is roughly 2.7 dmg per mass. So for 56K mass you get about 150k frontload damage. Meaning you would kill 1.5GC per pass. So you can kill 3 GC in 2 passes, this would be 620 or so t1 bombers. Or you could use 100 Notha which is roughly 40k mass. Or 30 Sintha which is about 60k mass.

I mean at this point you could also just kill the GC with a t3 mix of sniper bots and shield bots. Or you could use OC Sacu. There's lots of choices for Seraphim.

Spamming all mass on only GC is very dumb, and you won't ever see that in a game, you will see mixed armies, such as GC with mobile shields, flacks, and some sniper bots, or Harbs.

As it currently stands a Yotha can already kill 2 GC with some support of T3 mobile shields. And Yotha is much better than a GC at killing t3 clumps. So this may inadvertantly cause Yotha based t3 armies to dominate at the earl T4 stage.

@Psions well currently building more than 1 ythota is kinda risky cause they will damage each other if focused. Obviously countering gc with air is better, because they cant shot back at it. But countering 1-2 exps and land with 1-2 ythotas is kinda bad cause they damage each other if focused down. So basically you always send single ytotha + maybe some shields to fight and not in "groups".

I liked the solution proposed by icedreamer a million years ago where the lightning storm continues to move forward along the path of the ythotha so that it mostly move away from your units and into the enemy units.

Adds more micro potential to the game and doesn't add any stupid toggle abilities.

@techmind_ If its 2gC v 2 Yotha, the yotha walk into the gc and damage the GC more than the ally Yotha. Its not rocket science.

@ThomasHiatt that would make Yotha overpowered. You can imagine you barely reach enemy base and it blows up, now irrelevant of that fact their whole base explodes because the death effect is now a shield avoiding nuke.

It would be a significant balance change if anything was done here. If your losing a lot of ground units to the e field then your either not planning well or getting caught of guard by some surprise element that wasn't scouted.

Seraphim may lose heads up to aeon, but for late game seraphim t3 shield size and strength gives them a big advantage for arty wars, and seraphim cant ras, so they will have engineer coms to brace with which are way more potent than the aeon's ras ball. Also the size and strength of t3 shield land units gives you options if you cycle them through right.

So bottom line is that hitting a terrorist timing to get some damage done early on when 1-2 experimentals are possible is the seraphim prime time, after that your parrying their offense behind t2 turtle and managing experimental count and defense and t3 to hold the line and get the reclaim.

As long as your hitting a good t3 arty timing and keeping them from being able to work on a paragon effectively (eg forcing them to focus shields) you'll win here. 8v8 experimentals is just dumb for seraphim to even take
just use 5 experimentals and ridiculous t2 creep and defend vs his 8 and laugh at him crying about the mass donation afterwards.

I love terrorist timings

@Spy_Emanciator said in Ythotha should get a switch for Othuy:

If your losing a lot of ground units to the e field then your either not planning well or getting caught of guard by some surprise element that wasn't scouted.

The whole point of the discussion here is that it's difficult to use Ythothas supported by other units or in groups. Yes you might not get hit by the lightning often, but that's because you need to retreat with your entire army if the Ythotha goes down.

@Deribus Usually when using Yotha in a land fight rather than as a suicide unit, I would either have it at the very front and supported by sniper bots or, at the back heavily shielded.

When Yotha is going to die you should push it to front as much as possible as close to enemy units as possible, and then in the space it creates you can fire with your sniper bots without enemy being able to come into range.

Sera have the strongest mobile shields by a mile, so absolutely dominate the range t3 game, so Yotha is a good space maker for sera range units like sniper bots or mobile artillery.

Seraphim have the strongest land units in the game, and the only faction that comes close is cybran because of megalith spam, but the critical mass of megalith required is unrealistic in a normal game.

This is all kind of irrelevant though, since you will never see huge t3 armies in a normal game, because its so much easier to defend than it is to attack, and game enders are so cheap, that the viability of large land armies quickly diminishes.