Fire beetle balance suggestion

Perhaps if a beetle targets a building, it should have a different death weapon--one that does more damage, but has much much much less area of effect. Against units it would have a broad AOE and also have an emp effect, but against buildings it would deal savage damage. And because the AOE would be smaller, I think that makes it less likely the damage would be absorbed by shields.

We could also lower the damage and increase the AOE for the anti-unit weapon. We would want the AOE to be big enough that if a transport dies carrying beetles, it would damage units on the ground. A T2 transport loaded with 10 fire beetles should be a viable weapon against T3 bots, you would just ctrl-k the transport when the beetles are overhead.

Suppose we made this change: decrease their damage to 850, increase their damage radius to 8 (from 6), and add a separate death weapon with 2 damage radius (same as TML) and 2500 damage (enough to one-shot UEF t2 economic structures). For 1830 mass you could fly a transport with 10 fire beetles over some percies and kill them. Or you could drop 10 beetles into an enemy base and kill some T3 pgens.

Or perhaps set their anti-building special attack damage lower like 1700, so it takes 2 beetles to kill any faction's eco structures, or 1800 so they can one-shot cybran eco structures but everyone else takes 2 beetles (since everyone knows we need to nerf cybran).

Also, since they would be more dangerous (with bigger AOE and with a special anti-building weapon) their HP should be lowered slightly, maybe to 270 (same as a mantis, that would also make it easy for players to understand how much firepower it takes to quickly kill 1)

They would be effective against buildings OR against massed units. They wouldn't be great at sniping ACUs (because they would use the anti-unit death weapon) but two transports full of beetles could be ctrl-Ked over an ACU to deal 17k damage. Flak should deal effectively with beetles on transports (it would kill beetles about as quickly as it kills out-of-fuel interceptors, because they would be moving at similar speeds)

It would also let people use a transport carrying 2 beetles as a way to shoot down enemy transports

It would be viable to put beetles on stingers

If they don't already, beetles should have high target priority from other units

This would dramatically increase the number of ways that you could use beetles. I have no idea if this would make them overpowered. Obviously the balance could be fine-tuned from there.

Last time balance team reworked it I suggested to redus its damage to symbolic 100, but add EMP with decent AOE to this unit.

This way you can use Fire Beetles:

1. Stun groups of enemy units or PDs when getting in close range with your army
2. Save units on retreat. For example avoid enemy units to catch Hoplites

Instead of killing something with Fire Beetle you stun it and kill with something else. No sniping ACU or eco structures, only useful against units and PDs.

https://youtu.be/YasCEKgd0o4

How do I link youtube on this forum?

May as well just keep things as it is. It's more fun without Fire Beetles right?

Maybe it could be useless but awesome. Like:

• Make the model fairly large.
• Make it extremely slow.
• Cannot be loaded on a transport.
• Huge damage in a large AOE.
• Impractically expensive. Low HP. Does friendly fire.

So pretty useless... but the ultimate lulz if you manage to use it successfully.

@IceDreamer said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

There is no balanced state for Firebeetles to be designed around the old snipe role. It simple isn't possible, there is no combination of stats which will make them neither OP nor UP.

You are essentially saying there is no balanced state for a one-use weapon... we really can't go there without talking about mercies.

So why do mercies work or not work when firebeetles are just "broken pls delete." ?

@Pearl12 This is a very good point, glad you asked.

The answer is that they very nearly don't. Mercies were a hugely troublesome unit. Hugely. They were UP then OP then UP then OP, back and forth through a lot of changes. I'd argue that, even today, they aren't great. They do seem to be largely balanced, though.

• Aeon don't have a T2 Bomber. The Mercy somewhat makes up for this role in a lackluster way, but it is a nonzero influence. As has been mentioned many times, this is untrue for the Firebeetle: The Cybrans have every role filled already, they are hugely flexible, and anything you want to do with a beetle can be accomplished by another unit. This is crucial. For Mercies, there's no real alternative, so its state of balance is relative to "How good is it relative to the enemy defense?", but for beetles the question is "How good is it relative to Cybran's own alternatives?". So, if one assumes that we want all the other units to be balanced as well, and that they are easier to get the balance right because they aren't so niche, then beetles are either better than the alternatives, and therefore OP by definition, or worse, and UP by definition.

• Mercies are air units. This means that much of the counterplay is also in the air, which means the primary response in an "Oh shit, Mercies" situation is flexible and fast-moving. This makes it harder for them to be devastatingly, frustratingly OP, as long as they have negligible HP. From the defending player's point of view, there's almost always counterplay available. They can respond. There's less feelbad. This doesn't apply to beetles, because land units are so much slower and have to deal with pathfinding. If you get caught unawares there's basically nothing you can do, at all. Additionally, we can't solve this the same way as the Mercy (Give them abominable HP) because they are a land unit too! Mercies work at all because the speed allows them to get into position against a really-caught-by-surprise enemy when you play it right. This cannot work for beetles because you can't sensibly have them move that fast, so they need more HP to survive chance encounters. It's all bloody weird.

• Beetles can be loaded onto transports. Mercies can't. Back when they did a lot of damage, the real use of them was as a big-ass flying bomb. The transport grants them speed and durability. It was hugely feelbad to get caught out by, counterplay was tough. To make it require enough effort to pull off that counterplay seemed reasonable, the beetles had to be nerfed so hard they became useless.

Basically, it just doesn't work. Mercies basically don't work. Personally I'm in favour of removing both if it came to it, but Mercies have just enough differences that it kinda works. I do not believe the same is possible for beetles.

Tell me why damage over time doesn't fix that.

everyone has its own opinion on this 2 units.
Mercies are known in teamgame to be very luck based (maa missed or mercies was a radar signature so wasn't prioritized etc etc etc) and lead to a lot of frustration. I know there is design to have them deal dot to reduce the effectiveness for sniping ACU (while still making them useful against building ?)
For beetle i've always advocated a role against rambo ACU (which is one of the weakness of the cybran, since they don't have a proper rambo and their T2 turret are weak) but in this case it would remove one of the only weakness of the cybran. I guess all would revolved around the balancing of the unit (I guess it would depend on the micro). I had some sort of idea to combine it with personal stealth to make ambushing easier (give good damage, low aoe). Subsequently it could be used as a building sniping tool when tmd are up.
Never been a fan of the design against armies and especially the cloack.

@MazorNoob Because a DoT figure strong enough to still be used to snipe an attentive ACU will be OP and unsatisfying to play against, while being insanely OP vs undefended buildings, and a DoT figure weak enough to NOT be usable as a snipe except in the most absolutely perfect of circumstances, but still good enough to use against buildings, will be UP and un/underused. People will simply use their normal units, as it isn't worth the APM to make and control beetles just for that.

you know it doesn't always have to snipe, if you deal enough damage to an ACU it will force to retreat and lose time on its timing attack.

@IceDreamer I disagree with the second part. You can give beetles enough damage to rival arty drops of other factions while taking less space on transports. They can also go under shields, used to be able to overwhelm T1 PDs, can be detonated ahead of T2 army/ACU pushes to deter them. They're also faster than regular raid units and can immediately kill high value targets like TMDs or T2 mexes.

This is still a better use for beetles than a landmine, I actually can't imagine how a landmine could be useful.
You'd have to figure out ahead of time where exactly a target of interest will go (assuming you don't give beetles a ludicrous AoE), invest economy into a unit that doesn't pay for it until the enemy stumbles upon it, risk it getting detonated by a low value unit and lose it after it blows up. If they're detectable by omni, then they're useless against ACUs and from T3 air onwards, if they're not then they become OP in tight chokepoints and are still useless anywhere else. How are T2 PDs not strictly superior?

If you think you can make it work, go ahead. Just be aware that my calculation is that there's no place where this will actually work out to a balanced state, the unit design and surrounding faction simply doesn't allow it.

Landmines are a well-understood concept, so its easy for players to pick them up, and all your concerns are also present in every game which already has a landmine unit, and it works fine in them. They're mobile, re-placeable, they'd have moderate to large AOE, they'd be able to activate and home in on the highest value local target, they might EMP... It fills a similar role to T1 PD rather than T2, but is faster and cheaper to deploy, able to be repositioned, and is not revealed so easily to scouting missions. Being a mobile unit, it also isn't like PD in that, once scouted, buildings remain on the map even after the scout has gone.

I do not believe any other approach will come to a good place for the unit.

I do believe that a good place can be achieved if pushed hard down the landmine route.

Landmines are a well-understood concept in other games; however, they are not in this game and I suspect there would be a lot of pushback for a new gameplay mechanic. I.E. how are landmines disabled? What keeps players from just disabling them all the time, making them effectively useless? Why learn this one gameplay mechanic for this one faction rather than just deleting the unit?

On another point, what's your objection to just increasing the damage they do? As ThomasHiatt pointed out, 190 mass for 1100 damage isn't very economical, since the equivalent mass of t1 arty does just as much damage and is not a one-shot. For a one-shot item, there should be much more damage done. We could also decrease their health (to, say, 200), making them much more like land-based mercies. Since they require radar, I think it would be pretty cool to see people sniping scouts and radar before a beetle snipe, in the same way they now snipe aa before a mercy snipe. Of course, since the ACU has omni, there would be a moment of suspense right before the kill.

@keyser said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

Mercies are known in teamgame to be very luck based (maa missed or mercies was a radar signature so wasn't prioritized etc etc etc) and lead to a lot of frustration.

I disagree. There is luck in the margins the same way there is luck when your ACU has 300 health and you're trying to dodge tank shots, or when you're walking in circles to avoid a strat snipe. But by then, the strategy has already worked. There is no luck involved in scouting, putting your ACU well behind t1 AA, and winning air. In the same way there is no luck in winning land rather than complaining that you couldn't dodge the last shot of the last tank you couldn't kill, or winning air rather than complaining you couldn't walk in circles well enough because a rock got in your way.

@Pearl12 said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

190 mass for 1100 damage isn't very economical, since the equivalent mass of t1 arty does just as much damage and is not a one-shot

you miss the fact that the beetle has aoe. You woudn't use it vs 1 unit only, but preferably 2-3 units. There it paid itself pretty well.

@Pearl12 said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

I disagree. There is luck in the margins the same way there is luck when your ACU has 300 health and you're trying to dodge tank shots, or when you're walking in circles to avoid a strat snipe. But by then, the strategy has already worked. There is no luck involved in scouting, putting your ACU well behind t1 AA, and winning air. In the same way there is no luck in winning land rather than complaining that you couldn't dodge the last shot of the last tank you couldn't kill, or winning air rather than complaining you couldn't walk in circles well enough because a rock got in your way.

Ok i reformulate it. There is luck in the game, no doubt about it. But the impact is minimal. Here the luck cost you the game directly. On top of this It's different to "the last shot of a tank" because if you can die in situation where you prepared for it. When you died to the last shot, it was your fault putting yourself in this position. Just giving you a screenshot of why mercy can be very frustrating :
the 2 radars signature are mercies and the player was aware of that, backing his commander and putting forward the maa. Still even if they were well in range of maa, the maa decided to prioritize other unit.

I have used mercies extensively, and I would like for it to be worth-it to use fire beetles with a comparable level of balance and finesse. I read a lot of the above theorycrafting on how to achieve that, and while there are some nice ideas, it doesn't need to be so complicated.

Give fire beetles a better mass/damage efficiency, and they will be more balanced.

Mercies: 2400 damage/300 mass = 8 damage/mass
Fire Beetles: 1100 damage/190 mass = ~5.78 damage/mass

I think it would be good to change fire beetles to: 1500 damage/200 mass = 7.5 damage/mass
If you want to reduce Fire Beetles' health and or aoe to balance such a change, that would be fine.

@keyser said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

@Pearl12 said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

190 mass for 1100 damage isn't very economical, since the equivalent mass of t1 arty does just as much damage and is not a one-shot

you miss the fact that the beetle has aoe. You woudn't use it vs 1 unit only, but preferably 2-3 units. There it paid itself pretty well.

That's fair; while AoE is the name of the game for Cybran, I'd rather sacrifice that to have a more snipe-like unit. Since we are here saying that the current state doesn't really work.

@keyser said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

Just giving you a screenshot of why mercy can be very frustrating :
the 2 radars signature are mercies and the player was aware of that, backing his commander and putting forward the maa. Still even if they were well in range of maa, the maa decided to prioritize other unit.

That would indeed be a frustrating situation, but, getting mercy sniped is a symptom of the problem; in this case, that pink had already lost. The mass on the field is much more for LeToucan, given the number of fire beetles present.

Additionally, the ACU is only behind one t1 AA compared to the direction the mercies are coming from. You could just as easily call any bomber OP because it can't be killed before it drops its bomb by an equivalent mass cost of AA, if the AA is not well in front of the bombing target. It doesn't mean the bomber is broken, it means the AA is misplaced.

If the mercies belong to the enemy air player, then it is your team's air player's job to counter them. If the ASF are on pink's side, they should have killed the mercies before they got there. If the ASF are on Toucan's side, then again, pink lost anyway. Because of the air player, yes, which is frustrating, but it doesn't mean mercies are broken.

Balancing them as a pure snipe unit again won't work. They were like that before, and they were OP, then UP, then OP, then UP... It just can't be done. FFS, give up! Try something new!

Pearl, your argument that the guy had already lost is disingenuous and silly. A pair of well-placed OCs are easily capable of rescuing that situation, and for all we know Air was on its way, so Bombers wouldn't have achieved what Mercies did.

Fact of the matter is that ALL of this game's pure snipe weapons have been mired in controversy for years because they don't feel good to play against. At that point balanced or not isn't the question, it's whether people quit the game entirely for not being fun any more!!! Mercies, TMLs, Beetles, Strats, Telemazer... People don't like them very much.

This is why landmines is the only possible route forwards. TMLs have direct counterplay. Strats are T3 and have direct, very effective counterplay. Mercies have direct counterplay. Telemazer has direct counterplay. Yet even with the counterplay in effect, the mobility of the assualt allows it to still be useful. The same is untrue for beetles. The same approach will never work.

Try. Something. New.

@IceDreamer said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

Balancing them as a pure snipe unit again won't work. They were like that before, and they were OP, then UP, then OP, then UP... It just can't be done. FFS, give up! Try something new!

The issue with the fire beetle was the ability to drop on the head of the opponent player.
I tried few month ago to replicate it, you can't drop on his head anymore. You can try to lower the transport low enough that when you ctrl k the transport it snipe the ACU, but this take a lot of time and it succeed like 1 out 10 even if there is no aa.
I've never seen people being abused by beetle walking into the com, and then complaining. I was able to pull that out on OP to punish aggressive ACU push to your expansion. Goal of beetle as i imagine it isn't sniping, this would depend on the number of beetle ofc, but usually at the timing it is used you won't have enough to kill a com, only to weaken it enough to stop a push.
Then you can see it used later to sneak in the back of exp for example.

@IceDreamer I gave you a solution that stops beetles from being an OP ACU snipe unit. Its direct counters are direct fire units and buildings, it has the mobility via high unit speed and transports. You can't claim that your landmines are the only way forward.

@IceDreamer said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

Balancing them as a pure snipe unit again won't work.

I disagree. I think something like this would work fine:
Damage: 1100 -> 1500
Mass: 190 -> 200
Damage Radius: 6 -> 4
Range: 5.8 -> 7

That being said, as an alternative, I do like the landmine idea suggested in the OP, and I think that it could be done well; it would just be a much more major reworking of the fire beetle.

@IceDreamer said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

This is why landmines is the only possible route forwards. TMLs have direct counterplay. Strats are T3 and have direct, very effective counterplay. Mercies have direct counterplay. Telemazer has direct counterplay. Yet even with the counterplay in effect, the mobility of the assualt allows it to still be useful. The same is untrue for beetles. The same approach will never work.

Try. Something. New.

Land mines is a fucking cancer too. There's no counter play to that either as intel works differently compare to other RTS which have this kind of mechanic.

What units have omni to spot a mine? ACU, SCU, T3 scout, Omni, GC, Novax. ACU is only thing that exists at t2 stage and that's not a unit you would ever want to have near Fire Beetle, other units appear in t3 stage. This means there's no counter play to land mines either.

This yet brings us back to Fire Beetle stats so cloaked mine Beetle would be still more efficient than building more tanks/arty but wouldn't destroy your entire army if you happened to walk into it since you can't spot it at t2 phase.

And as far as I remember there were complains about being micro intense to place land mine, manually detonate it and make sure you don't accidently move it around.

Also, what prevents you from transporting bombs and using them classic way?

This land mine concept is as ugly, as any concept which involves Fire Beetle to kill things on its own.

Saboteur concept
To think of it, I remember old nomad team tried to improve EMP code for FAF. Some improvements work for years in Nomads (not integrated into FAF), but they also attempted to make stun affect power/mass production and buildings build power.

May be it could be possible to allow Fire Beetle not only stun units, but also stop enemy unit/resource production for some time if you happened to sneak one at enemy base.