the skiter

I find it of no use. what could this possibly be used for when scouts are so much faster and cheaper, and are not affected by terrain.

Tough to say, really.
I remember there being a discussion on whether or not moons and metal planets should allow for air units due to no atmosphere, if that happens the skitter could be a very useful asset, but as it is now, I agree it is pretty useless.

They are useful in tank wars. But agree this current build there is no so much use for them. I'm sure when balancing is complete their use will be improved considerably.

Very useful for Gil-E and shellers. Scouts get shot down easy. When the ridiculous balance between vehicle and bot engineers is fixed then they will be very useful early game when going vehicle factory first.

A mobile radar unit would be nice.

I also think a mobile radar and radar JAMMER should definitely be added to the game.

Sometimes its nice having a land scout that is slow enough to control and manage then a flying scout that can get destroyed by fighters at any moment.

Why does it need a bigger role?

The skitter is actually very important to have in your land groups. Practically all the tanks can hit further than they can see. So unless you have radar over the enemies base already you're missing out on valuable distance you can engage them from. This is especially true with the artillery units.

Since there are no formations in game scouts like to zoom ahead blissfully to their doom. Rather build a few scouts with your group, and assign them to assist units near the middle and end of your group. Then select all your tanks as a group and move just the tanks. Now your tanks can utilize their maximum range. Don't undervalue the usefulness of the Skitter.

Ever skittered somebody to death? Right there is an amazing reason to keep them.

Right @cumsume ? Hahaha

i wonder is a tank that fires at a tank that the firing one only sees as a blip as accurate as when it sees it visualy? Is there a reason to prefer scouts over mobile radar ( the obvious visual confirmation of a spotted targed aside) to have in a army?

In SupCom:FA this was the basic thing that happened to Aeon in T1, Auroras have the longed T1 tank range such that it exceeded their vision range so in listing scouts was very important to make the most out of the Aurora's range.

Personally I think we should keep the skitter, but whether or not it(or something else) needs changes to make it viable is still up in the air, maybe Air scouts could be made less maneuverable, such that they have a hard time providing constant I tel on a specific location, allowing the skitter which doesn't need to keep moving, a specific area it excels at.

Something else that has been mentioned by bobucles I think is to give the skitter the reclaim ability, it's speed is offset by its fragility and it would have a purpose both during and between battles, make their inclusion into land armies very worthwhile.

Mike

Adding reclaim to something that is primarily meant to be a scout sounds a bit too arbitrary to me honestly

What's arbitrary about it? It's pretty logical as I explained.

Mike

Its general purpose is to keep track of were enemy units are and to provide the extra visual range for tanks ... reclaim is not something that should be used while in battle but rather after a battle is over even though there may quite some wreckfields to fight over ... to me its rather illsuited to a scout ... better use fabbers or combatfabbers

Give it radar range and a bit more speed.

Logical yes, but you are basing the idea that Land scouts don't already provide enough benefit onto the battlefield. Air scouts provide quick mobile scouting. Land scouts provide stationary scouting.

Adding a nanolathe to a scout and giving it a reclaim ability sounds like "why not just add the nanolathe to more units to reclaim battlefield debris." Scouts are meant to scout in my book. Why do they also have to have more traits when they already have really good traits. Formations will keep scouts in the back of armies anyway, they don't need an extra reason to be on the battlefield.

In all honesty, maybe reclaim should be dedicated to the combat fabber as a secondary option after its repaired the units around itself.

There is no practical benefit in adding reclaim to skitters when we have combat fabbers. It's just adding features for the sake of trying to keep a unit rather than actually maintain its role on the battlefield.

You are also basing all that on the idea that I think reclaim is the best thing that could be done for Scouts, I said it was something that was mentioned.

It works when the Skitter is viewed from a certain "Role Perspective", if the only way you can possibly see the Skitter is as a Scout just like it's flying counter part I would have to ask why do we need 2 scouts then?

Mike

I think it would be cooler if the ground scout had some sort of feature that went with it's actual role. Maybe something like stealth/cloak unless something is very close to it. That could be cool, different, and justify it's existence in concert with the firefly.

I like to use skitters as a massive land army. Its really terrifying to see your entire radar light up in a massive wall of fast moving death - until it gets to your vision radius and you realize what you are actually dealing with.
#notjoking

In all seriousness, 300 skitters can eat expansions (and your CPU) for breakfast.