Talking about the Fatty

Unironic question since I got that question during trainingsessions from time to time. To keep it short, the basic question was:
Does the fatty actually do shit?

Many of the games I play simply don't reach the state where you build fatties. T3 Titan spam with a couple of percies mixed in do the job. But while thinking about the fatty, in order to build one you have to watch out for so many things, e.g.

• You need air, otherwise it just gets sniped
• You need Parashields so it actually survives longer
• You need a landforce to stop incoming land-pushs (since the fatty is not the fastest. Surprise.)
• It gets countered once the opponent reached a certain amount of t2 arties (compared with the cost of a fatty and due to the arty-range, it's more cost effective than you might think)

For 28k mass you can have something that's basically considered in being used during the end-game. But I honestly can't remember a single game where the Fatty was usefull.
Pushing with it is awful and quite slow. Sure, it counters sniperbots etc. which are the mainthreat for UEF. But if you only see it as a counter, it's way too expensive.
The more you go outside your base, the higher the risk becomes of it getting sniped by a couple of random corsairs.
Sieging a base doesn't work either due to t2 arty or simply again: Airsnipes.

I fail to see when it actually gets used. Maybe it has impact on other games than mapgens, maybe in ladder (for whatever reason) etc., but imo if you compare the fatty with a GC, Chicken or even a ML, I'd choose all 3 of them over the fatty even though they're all cheaper (not by a lot obvsly).
Or is it like a SoulRipper? Where you have to build 3+ to actually being able to do shit? Dunno, I simply think Fatties are either too expensive or just way too weak, or I have a wrong impression due to the games I play.
Enlighten me!

Fatboy is 28k mass? That's excessively expensive considering 4 strats (10k mass) or 10 Nothas (5k mass) will easily lay waste to it. Or even without that, Fatty can't stop other experimentals and if you mis micro once it dies immediatly to anything and thats like 30k mass in the dumpster.

I've seen so many fatboys just die to 15 Nothas on a suicide mission and its always felt the UEF only land exp is kinda garbage compared to the GC, Chicken or Mega. Would recommend to reduce cost or increase stats.

Give the AA and the riot guns a buff lol might be fun

I would prefer a fatty over any land t4 besides mega, and there are still situations where I want a fatty over a mega, that one is like 50/50.

@FtXCommando What are the conditions though? Are you investing into everything (e.g. the short list I made) in order to keep it save or do you have a replay by coincidence showing the impact?
Literally only know one game Fatties were used and that was that 1hr shitgame where Freedom wasn't able to push through with his 7 fatties for 20min straight

Fatty has the best scaling potential of any land t4, it is almost always good to make another one and put it into your push. The air argument is kinda inconsequential to me because all t4 die to air brutally. I’ve seen chickens die to jesters in like 1 minute.

Is fatty more vulnerable to air? Yeah. But it also has no real mobile land counter. The only thing that activates my almonds with regards to fatty is that t2 arty and tml basically never miss because the shield is fat and parashield hardly serves a purpose with fatty having its own bubble due to overspill. If it got any buff I’d just make the shield a personal one instead, adjusting the mass or hp is crazy to me.

Also if you need survivability for your fatties that late in the game, then make shield boys.

I’d also say the biggest problem for fatties is, funny enough, novax.

Yes but it costs way less compared to others to kill it. And the huge bubbleshield you mentioned is also the problem I was bothered with, but dunno if it changes that much since the fatty itself is enarmous anyway.

GC:
3,63 hp/mass
Chicken:
2,53 hp/mass
Monkey:
2,25 hp/mass
Mega:
2,93 hp/mass
Fatty:
0,45 hp/mass and
0,71 'shieldpoint'/mass

Yes, shield recharges and shit but in practice the Fatty doesn't die over time but in one sudden event, e.g. landpush or snipe.
I had bois also in mind, but that's additional, very expensive, cost. UEF bois however are afaIk the strongest combat bois (If not, feel free to correct me. Not sure there since Cybran-emp and Sera-OC are juicy as well) but I don't think they're a good alternative against other exps if you compare the cost etc.

With bois you just make the cost of defending a fatty basically the same as building two GCs.

Speaking about ingame, I've never seen a fatboy getting countered by land units (except mismicro), but that's exactly the thing. Because it is so easy / cheap to counter with air, there is no need to counter it with land forces. If we both invest the same, you into the fatty + support, I invest into air-shit and a couple of arties. I'd say that 98% of the cases (at least my experience IF the airplayers are equal) the fattie dies with an equal trade (assuming I wasn't stupid and sent 100k mass into your base where your fatty was)

Honestly the Fatty is like an Aurora for me. Good at kiting, even though not the greatest dmg (since usually strong units and not many weak ones are on the field) and needs a lot of support to not get killed. It's more annoying than a threat

? shield boy costs as much e as a gc but 20% of the mass and gives a fatty 52k more hp.

ohh you're talking about the bubble-bois. Ye that makes sense I guess, even though I've honestly never seen anyone using them except shielding an arty :imfine:

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

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.

@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.

@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.

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.

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?

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

@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).

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

?
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.