Swarm Engineers/Swarm Units

I hope I'm not going out of line by saying the Jeffy was useless. It was a pathetic unit, with an empty role, trumped by the most basic combat units and anything from the air factory. The land scout could absolutely use some love to make it a true expeditionary unit. What says "expedition" more clearly than heading out in search of forage and treasure?

Oh, don't sweat the small stuff. That's a simple matter of making the numbers match the unit. Keep the high speed, boost the endurance to a respectable level, and make sure the reclaim damage is enough to (eventually) kill things. Short reach limits its ability to stack up to overly lethal levels.

No, you don't. A reclaimer already deals damage by putting money out of enemy hands, directly into your bank. Any combat damage they deal is a strict bonus. How many maps do you think are going to have ZERO reclaimable goods?

An engineer may be ill suited to the task of field reclaim. They could be too slow for a main army, or too valuable to travel on their own. A scout themed unit keeps pace with the army, scours any juicy bits they find along the way, and adds a little extra kick to battle. If things get too intense, they can simply run away.

So you send more in. It is not a primary combat unit, but who cares? Eventually you'll find enough to do the job. Any losses they suffer can be reclaimed by the survivors.

Hmm. That can get pretty lethal, pretty damn quick. That's why you don't put these things on real combat units! :lol:

I actually would frequently open with a few Jeffies. They are the best unit in the game for doing three types of jobs with just one purchase- 1) finding the enemy spawn, 2) killing undefended mexes, and 3) camping uncapped mex spots. The Jeffy's function is to be the cheapest vision with a gun money can buy. It loses to everything, but used correctly they were very powerful units nonetheless. Particularly for their exceptional vision when used as spotters for the relatively blind artillery and main combat units.

That said, I think you may have a point that making the unit a bit sturdier, and giving it reclaim instead of a laser undeserving of the name could really work. Allowing it to reclaim while driving would be necessary to use it as an effective weapon, and that ability makes it much more convenient for mass field reclaim than constructors- especially considering how valuable constructors/engineers are, and must remain in PA. Having a totally expendable field reclaimer makes a lot of sense.

I'm just saying the unit needs a bit more HP and combat effectiveness than the Jeffy had. Although perhaps bobucles is right that the Jeffy may be a smarter choice for field reclaimer than even a Peewee type combat unit. It also ensures they stay useful, even for players who want to use them as expendable reclaimers instead of going all-out no-base swarm mode. Which is probably a requirement for each component of the swarm style- each component has to have a role in more conventional play styles, and when used extensively together they create the machine swarm.

When balanced properly, like in Uberhack, Absolute Annihilation, and Twilight, Jeffies were pretty darn useful.

Park a 37 metal jeffy on every mex they're likely to expand to, and they have to send at least a 50-100 metal combat until just to shoo it off so their con doesn't get henpecked to death. Slowing enemy expansion for cheap = good. Actually killing anything is gravy.

I was thinking a Von Neumann style combat unit would be pretty interesting. Each unit could have an internal buffer for reclaimed mass, and when full it automatically pauses and lathes a copy of itself. So you can't use the reclaimed mass for anything other than making more.. but you can make them on the field, and a battle won means that much larger an army.


Or a Replicator style ala Stargate.

As an AI opponent, replicators would be pretty cool. Tiny basic units that can only reclaim wreckage.. but every 10 metal they replicate, and every 10 units they combine into a larger unit with a bigger weapon... and then when attacked, at 50% health they explode into 5 smaller units.

I see a couple ways to go with this. First, instead of "chickens" a sort of Von Neumann replicator enemy might be good for co-op, that doesn't have a commander, but just kind of mindlessly replicates everywhere. This is a good method to have a single player/co-op challenge that is asymmetrical, and make a cheating AI less blatant than to feign symmetric gameplay, but give the AI a hidden (or not so hidden) advantage.


Alternatively, this might be a gameplay style players might utilize by specific composition and play style choices. It seems to me that the best way to make this style unique is to have local resources as Pawz says, and have units able to spend supplies to create more of themselves. And able to get supplies by sucking up mass, and perhaps waiting a while or spending energy to convert it into supplies, which can then be used locally to build more self-replicating bots. A swarm would be the ultimate in efficient logistics-free independent production, no buildings required. Dead enemies soon become more bots for you.

Fast moving scouts with wreckage reclaim options sound great. Instead of destroying lone mexes, you just suck them up. Or better yet, captures them for you.

And it'll keep the scout role relevant, and gives your scouts something to do when you are aware of what your enemy is up to, and equips the land scout with something the air scout doesn't have, because usually an air scout is a lot better.

This is definately the kind of combination of roles I'd like to see in the game

I vote for Replicator type enemy!
I don't think it would be that hard to implement? if 5 different units, and a simple AI (b/c replicators are simple machines with advanced technology) I don't see why not - It would DEFINITELY be an awesome add to The Galactic War.

Why does it sound like I've played this game before? Oh. That. Yeah.

That's a quite different type of gameplay from controlling the metal equivalent of a locust swarm. Conventional military with bases and such will play very differently.