Talking about the Fatty

A Former User

In my 1v1 land experimental tests, running away Fatty kills every experimental other than Colossus.

Tomma

I personally have little experience with lategame stuff but for me fatboy is super viable in like every lategame situation (on ladder maps at least). I think its much easier to donate mass with t3 armie rather than fatty because it have super good range and you have easier times supporting it with engies because it can build them (its like 5 seconds for t2 and 13 for t3 engie iirs) and also flak and shields (which is kinda irrelevant i guess). Like if you have like 50k worth of mass in units on field i feel like adding fatty is just better than units. It forces opponent to respond somehow, forces engagement or airsnipe attempt, artie base or whatever, opponent cant just produce more units and call it a day because they will just die, kinda same with exps. But thats just my shitty 1600 ladder experience, maybe in teamgames its just not like that.

phong

@melanol I managed to kill fatties with chickens while taking virtually no damage a few times by just giving them shallow zig-zagging move orders. the fatty projectiles are so slow that it doesn't take much to dodge them at range.

Sladow-Noob

@melanol said in Talking about the Fatty:

In my 1v1 land experimental tests, running away Fatty kills every experimental other than Colossus.

It takes the fatty like 345743 years to kill it + like Phong mentioned, you can dodge the fatty when you're a bit further away.

@tomma said in Talking about the Fatty:

I personally have little experience with lategame stuff but for me fatboy is super viable in like every lategame situation (on ladder maps at least). I think its much easier to donate mass with t3 armie rather than fatty because it have super good range and you have easier times supporting it with engies because it can build them (its like 5 seconds for t2 and 13 for t3 engie iirs) and also flak and shields (which is kinda irrelevant i guess). Like if you have like 50k worth of mass in units on field i feel like adding fatty is just better than units. It forces opponent to respond somehow, forces engagement or airsnipe attempt, artie base or whatever, opponent cant just produce more units and call it a day because they will just die, kinda same with exps. But thats just my shitty 1600 ladder experience, maybe in teamgames its just not like that.

The two main things are though:

If 50k in units are already on the field, then a small artybase doesn't hurt at all. Arty = 2k mass, Fatty = 28k mass (+ all the necessary shit you need also cost a lot) -> You can easily afford a couple of arties
If you invested into a fatty and your opponent didn't overflow nor is braindead, then he'll just snipe the fatty with air once you go in. For 28k mass you can always have enough to just snipe it (Except if you have bubble shield-bois but I never saw them in any game supporting a fatty)
Like in theory it's right, he counters infinite spam and forces a fight. But in practice arties or air always have been enough to easily counter it.

Tagada

Fatty is not really meant as an offensive unit. It's a defensive and area-control one. It does very well vs T3 armies, snipers, decently well vs GC/Chicken/ML, and is a beast vs a Crab. You are talking about how easy it is to kill a fatty from the UEF's perspective but put yourself on the other side. You have a unit that has more range than anything you have. It can kite you forever and there is no chance in hell you are catching it unless the enemy massively missmicro'es (And no you can't just take your army and chase the Fatty for 1 km. Remember that your Experimentals really don't like to be in between Percivals and if you are chasing a fatty you are walking into the Percies instead of kiting them)
Your only decent solutions are air snipes and making static T2 arty further back possibly giving away some reclaim you've been fighting for or just investing ~10-16k mass to stop an experimental that can just go somewhere else while your arties stay there not doing anything. Of course in a scenario with a single lane, it will always be optimal to make T2 arties because the enemy can't really do anything but fight with you over that territory.

Sladow-Noob

That makes sense, yes. If I'm allowed to ask stupidly:
Why do I never see them being used in games? Since we both play the same lobbies most of the time, I assume you know what I mean. Is it because the large number of teams so the special case with "only one line" is indeed the case or is it smth different?
Aka. are they more the case in 2v2 when the game actually is long enough?

Tagada

Idk, I see them being built quite regularly, I even had a game recently where I couldn't do anything vs fatties ( I was cybran and had Megas + bricks + MMA) until I spammed corsairs which worked well since my opponent had literally 0 AA. So they are good in the right situation but generally harder to use and more situational than eg. GC/Chicken

Tomma

@sladow-noob said in Talking about the Fatty:

The two main things are though:

If 50k in units are already on the field, then a small artybase doesn't hurt at all. Arty = 2k mass, Fatty = 28k mass (+ all the necessary shit you need also cost a lot) -> You can easily afford a couple of arties

If you invested into a fatty and your opponent didn't overflow nor is braindead, then he'll just snipe the fatty with air once you go in. For 28k mass you can always have enough to just snipe it (Except if you have bubble shield-bois but I never saw them in any game supporting a fatty)
Like in theory it's right, he counters infinite spam and forces a fight. But in practice arties or air always have been enough to easily counter it.

Yeah kinda true if you can defend important stuff with 1 or 2 artie base but then you have like maybe 15k of mass in them just to prevent fatty from killing your stuff for free. And not like fatty is dead anyway.
Air also can snipe it considering how valuable of a target it is. But you are forced to suicide a lot of bombers into it or even fight with air in enemy territory so i would say its not that easy. My point is that it forces your opponent to counter it which on my level is kinda big deal (talking about 1v1 where games are usually do not reach t4 stage so everyone blunders a lot).

veteranashe

28k mass, stays close to your base

Reclaim value 22.5 k

Reclaim value of 10k of strats, 8k

Reclaim value 30.5 k irc that should be close to your base.

How many times to you get the reclaim of a ml or chicken etc

Sladow-Noob

?
As I stated you obvsly don't snipe the fatty if it's next to your opponent's base. That's hella stupid due to the reclaim-thingi as you mentioned. But since the fatty is not threatening you, you have no need to kill it anway and can prepare more stuff against it so e.g. you can absolutely crush air if you go t3 gunships. If it attacks, you kill it without losing a lot of stuff. If it doesn't attack, then you can just ignore it. Sure, you can't push into your opponent's base, but then you just eco up.

Chisato

What makes the fatty a bad unit is the fact that it can’t be used as a game ender unlike other T4s, It’s only purpose is to stall late game against opponent’s offensive T4, but what purpose does that serve if ure always going to be on the defensive, the enemy can just not attack you and make t3 arty, t4 game enders instead and you won’t be able to do anything against it but make ur own t4 ender, as if you were to face an uef player 3-4 chicken/gcs would easily to break through ur t3 arty base and 1 fatty and some percies really wouldnt be enough dps to stop them, but if u were to attack as uef, only 10-15 t2 arties (15k-20k mass) would easily be able to counter the fatty and the percies would be too slow to do anything, and would get countered by snipers under the shields to begin with, and yes as mentioned previously 20-25 corsairs or 5 strats which is like 1/4 (made up number) of a fatty can easily just kamikaze suicide on them.
Even if u have no air control and they have some aas, they wouldnt be able to stop the bombers from dropping their bombs before dying, and you would be forced to turn your fatty away which would waste a lot of precious time.

veteranashe

@sladow-noob said in Talking about the Fatty:

?
As I stated you obvsly don't snipe the fatty if it's next to your opponent's base. That's hella stupid due to the reclaim-thingi as you mentioned. But since the fatty is not threatening you, you have no need to kill it anway and can prepare more stuff against it so e.g. you can absolutely crush air if you go t3 gunships. If it attacks, you kill it without losing a lot of stuff. If it doesn't attack, then you can just ignore it. Sure, you can't push into your opponent's base, but then you just eco up.

Just trying to point out that the fatty typically dies closer to your base in comparison to other t4's that die closer to their base, so the reclaim is easier to get back.

Zeldafanboy

The Fatboy is actually very good at its role because it synergizes well with UEF T3 land. It’s the only truly mobile siege engine in the game (except for walking Salems but that’s another thing entirely). The optimal counter to it is T2 bombers, which get deleted by ASF as well as T3 MAA. The next best thing is a T2 arty fire base, which is about the only thing a T2 arty firebase is worthwhile for. Depending on the map, the Fatboy being mobile can cause that investment to be wasted because it can move and static arty can’t. Building three is pretty close to a win condition if the opponent can’t nuke them.

One thing that can work is TML sniping but that’s obviously not completely reliable even with the fattys large size

Sladow-Noob

I talked about the scenarios with air and arty bases before.

I'll observe a couple of high ranked games, building fatties if I get UEF as well. To the mods: Don't close this threat yet pls, I'll most likely come back to it once I've tried around with the different combinations / situations.

Tagada

Fatty adjustments were discussed some time ago but nothing concrete nor is it a pressing balance issue. The idea which seemed the best was giving it personal shield thus buffing it against T2 arties. Some tweaks will probably be included in the November balance patch

STlNG

Would radar jamming improve its odds against t2 arty?

arma473

Probably not in a significant way. The arty shots at fake radar signals are still pretty likely to hit the shield bubble. And as soon as you fly a single scout plane over it, the jamming is basically defeated forever (it would have to duck into stealth or slip out of radar range to get jamming back). Also, once the arty is locked on the fatty, I think it can stay locked on even if the jamming comes back.

It might be interesting to have a jamming field for a fatboy but either it would be too small to matter or it would be so big that it would be completely obvious that it's a fatty & that the fatty is the signal dead-center. So adding jamming to that unit would be more about flavor than strategy.

Blade_Walker

I think reducing the size of the bubble shield would help vs T2 arty and reducing the long recharge time would also help vs air.

Would not like to see a personal shield instead as this would change the character of the unit too much.

Anachronism_

Perhaps the fatty's bubble shield could just be exempted from overspill damage?

maudlin27

Would be a shame to see its shield made into a personal shield due to the impact on its appearance (as well as making T2 arti even weaker than they are at the moment - i.e. countering a fatboy is one of the main uses of T2 arti and outside of that they're usually a really poor choice). While it's not functionality that tends to be used, it also nerfs the mobile factory aspect since units built by the fatboy are no longer able to be sheltered by the shield.

What about changes to make it a bit more of a generalist/all round unit? In terms of a few random ideas for buffing it slightly that wouldn't remove its iconic look (I'm not suggesting all of these at once but figured one or more of them might appeal):

triple the anti-air and torpedo attacks on the fatboy (they'd still be very weak, but would have a slightly more noticeable impact against small attacks)
Increase the shield health by 5k and decrease the main unit health by 5k coupled with a reduction in shield recharge time from 120s to 90s
Make the fatboy able to build units while moving (I'm assuming this isn't feasible since I think it's been suggested a few times in the past and is related to the engine) to allow for a greater focus on the mobile factory part of it, or alternatively increasing the build power to be equivalent to 3 t3 factories instead of 2 t3 factories.

If UEF isn't considered to have sufficient options for assaulting an enemy base at the experimental stage of the game then another option is to buff percies very slightly.