Make skitter into a decently damaging raider/scout?

I think it would be cool if skitter had decent DPS. It could be a pretty fun raider that way. It's HP could still be low enough to make it useless in a straigth up confrontation against most opposition. For those of you who have played Zero-K, think Dart. Extremely fast and fragile, but excellent at killing and raiding undefended mexes.

It could also perhaps be a good counter to unsupported sniper bots.

What do you think?

Oh god. I already make skitter armies. MOAR DAKKA

It needs no more DPS. They're already excellent at killing single fabbers on early expansion duty.

1/10.

Scouts are not combat units. Any damage they deal during their front line duties is purely a coincidence.

In PA in the current unfinished state of balance? Yes, and I find that boring and one-dimensional. There is no reason why it should be like that.

Quite a few good RTS games don't even have proper scouts. Some others have scouts that might be fragile but have very high DPS per cost. That is for a good reason, too, because dedicated scouts are boring and have little use after the earlygame (especially land scouts). Wasn't part of the intention with T1 units to keep them relevant in the later stages? A unit like the current skitter grossly violates that intention.

The skitter I was describing could be used in hit squads thoughout the game to keep your enemy honest. It would be more than just an occasional con killer.

since the new formation has been added I find skitters super useful, because they slow down so your levelers, shellers and gile can keep up. I find them super useful now and I don't think they need a buff.

I think you just duplicated the T1 bomber.

I all for it.

If anything, the current one is "duplicating" the air scout. Which as a unit is also meh, cause you could perfectly well use fighters to scout if it didn't exist -.-

Such units just don't make much sense from a game design standpoint.

+1 a combat scout definitely has a place in the game

In light of this, I really don't think they need weapons at all.

However, in light that everyone uses air scouts and nobody uses land scouts, I would like air scouts to not have weapons, and land scouts to have weapons capable of clearing off undefended mexes, maybe half a dox's dps? I am not sure if that is about where it is now already anyway.

Either way, makes sense to balance mobility with something, in this case a utility weapon. Other options include cost and speed. Generally, there are uses for skitters anyway though, like walking around with gil-e when you lack radar/want vision.

Any other scout is useless because air's is just too fast and too good. Land and sea scouts need something to make them worthwhile in some situations.

Please ignore my comment in this topic as I totally mixed up the skitter and firefly.

The problem I see is that anything you give the skitter to improve its scouting, say LOS or radar, will be used simply in service of army groups not scouting.

Step 1: get rid of the air scout

Not terrible, building one pair of eyes for every small blob of tanks.

Viable strategy.

Besides, otherwise there is no use of the land scout, you just use an air one.

And no, we shouldn't get rid of it. We shouldn't reduce the unit roster when we are trying to fill it. We shouldn't dilute ourselves to thinking there wouldn't realistically be a flying scout plane in a futuristic robot universe.

It's too good at what it does, every other air unit can by itself be used as a competent scout. You don't need a dedicated one that is so good and so cheap it invalidates all other scouts.

A T2 air scout with some sort of special intelligence ability like radar would be a good replacement. Scouting is more difficult but more important at that stage.

This is about gameplay, no one should give a **** about the "realistically" argument.

inb4 everyone uses fighters to scout.

Sorry, but step one won't work.

Fighters cost more and are slower. They can't harass either.

After you build vanguards and air, no point building skitters. They become obsolete really quickly.