Firefly Damage

(I understand balance is being worked on

Fireflies currently have 3 DPS.

It takes a Firefly over a half minute to destroy a single ant. Or over five and a half minutes to destroy a single metal extractor.

I think this little DPS is rather pointless – it might as well not be there.

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If it were upped to 10 DPS (or something), then the Firefly would be a little bit of a threat. It would be able to destroy an Ant in 10 second and a Metal Extractor would take almost 2 minutes. Even if it were upped to 7 DPS, a Firefly would take almost two and a half minutes to take out a metal extractor.

This makes the Firefly still very weak and not a valid offensive unit, but it's more of a threat. Something that has to be dealt with.

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Now the concern to this balance change would be, does this make the Bumblebee useless?

First off, bombers like the Bumblebee and Hornet have splash damage. They're more useful at taking out groups of units and buildings – particularly the Hornet.

That being said, the Bumblebee does 50 damage per shot. Normally one shot per pass when firing on a single target. With one shot per pass, it'd take a single Bumblebee 20 passes to destroy a single metal extractor. So I'm pretty sure a single Bumblebee would still do more damage to say, a lone metal extractor, than the 10 DPS Firefly.

And again, don't forget that bombers are more suited for clumps of targets with their AOE.

Continuing with the "is the Bumblebee now useless" – the other concern would be cost to build.

Is it now more efficient to build a mess of Fireflies since they cost less? Well, no. Fireflies cost 135 metal and Bumblebees cost 270 metal. Also, Fireflies have 20 hp while Bumblebees have 80 hp.

Hummingbirds can take out both units in one shot, it takes air defense towers two shots to take out a Bumblebee and one to take out a Firefly.

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Any thoughts?

+1 this is a good idea. Air raids IMO are useless early game because AA are easier to build and are more effective. An increase in FF dps would make things very interesting.

They can however raid engineers kinda quickly.

And if you have them on their own dedicated air factory like me, they can be quite the little blighters.

That is a good point.

Although, as ares331 pointed out, AA turrets are pretty quick and easy to make. And one anti-air bot following fabricators can ward off a lot of Fireflies, even with increased dps.

So. Fabricators.

Most people use fabrication bots, particularly at the start.

They have 150 health.

3 DPS: 50 seconds to kill
7 DPS: 22 seconds to kill
10 DPS: 15 seconds to kill

A single missile defense tower can be built by a single fabrication bot or vehicle in 30 seconds.

That's still pretty balanced. If 2 or 3 fabricators get attacked by a single Firefly, they can put up a Missile Defense Tower in time.

The other concern is... how long does it take to build Fireflies...

A single firefly can be built in 15 seconds by an un-assisted air factory.

So in 2 minutes you could have 8 fireflies which could chew through fabricators pretty quickly.

hm...

Right now, you could throw up an air factory and assist with your commander.... I could then make 17 fireflies in 60seconds.... at 10 DPS that's 170 DPS, and moving at 110 speed, scout out that base, and take out a lot of ****.....

fabbers would be one shooted by the group until you killed 7 or 8 of them

You could destroy Mex and T1 Power in 6 seconds.... and by the time they kill them off, you now know where the base is at, most likely have 20+ more built to harass and slowed them down by killing off 2 fabbers, and two mex or so, you could pop off fabbers before they make AA, would just have to move away from the commander and if he starts an AA then you pop off other things away from it...

If it was to get an increase, I would say 5 tops...and that would make them very good.

fireflys are ment to be scouting units and not attacking units its more likely they will have no attack at all in the future

Don't buff the Firefly's DPS. It's already better than the Skitter in every meaningful way. Seriously, it's cheaper, has more hitpoints, is faster, can shoot ground and air targets and can fly. Buff its DPS to above 5 and you remove the one thing the Skitter did better, even if that thing was completely worthless.

Skitters are currently even more useless than T1 mobile AA, which are already below the "never build" line.

Fireflies are scouts. Their small dps is enough to harass engineers and should be no greater. The niche you're looking for will be filled by gunships.

I certainly hope not. Fireflies are fast as hell. The role he is thinking of is a strike craft; a fast mover, not a gunship.

Gunships (think Apache or Mi-28) are low-flying, slow, and heavily armed. However they rely on vastly superior range, alpha strike firepower, and mobility compared to ground units for survivability, instead of serious armor or strategically meaningful speed. Gunships (i.e. modern ground attack helicopters) can outmaneuver ground-based combat units and anti-air, but not fighter jets which might even be supersonic.

A ground strike plane is a completely different animal. Fast movers rely on sheer speed and altitude, and deliver one payload, generally to obliterate a target or target area. No loiter potential, no tactical maneuvering, just a flyover.

A Firefly is a scout, and probably should have its weapon removed. However, the role brianpurkiss envisions should also exist, but it is not a gunship. An affordable raider plane that quickly destroys a single ground target, or might have a small amount of splash as well, and with a lengthy cooldown between runs.

A gunship moves and engages much more like a regular ground combat unit which happens to fly, including the ability to stop and fire, or even retreat to kite a slower enemy.

Are fireflies meant to be a threat tho? I thought they were meant for scouting... You send them out, find a base, it dies, send an army! I for one hope they get nerfed after seeing that vid with 10 guys playing on a moon in the sun..

+1 To getting his weapon removed!

All right! Someone gets it.

...or maybe not.

Every single thing in the game that has vision and moves can qualify as a scout. A great majority of them are also dedicated combat units, a claim that is antithesis to the scout role. You're not going to fix the scout by giving it a bigger gun.

That's easy. You take the scout, and you point it directly at the target, and you 9/11 the hell out of it. It doesn't have to be powerful or efficient, just hilarious.

Replace the weapon with a reclamation lathe. I've been saying this for months now. There is no better candidate for the job.

Scouts aren't meant to be an actual assault unit. Currently, they can kill 1 or 2 things that are left unprotected for a few minutes. That sounds like a perfect damage value for a SCOUT whose primary goal is to provide information.

That is a really cool idea bobucles, giving scouts reclam instead of weapons.

I think most of y'all are missing my point.

I'm saying the Firefly dealing 3 DPS is pointless.

It should be removed or buffed.

So I was exploring options for buffing it, and as I have mentioned, it's a very fine line for possibly breaking gameplay by spamming Fireflies being very effective.

So as has been pointed out by Fergie ^

Probably shouldn't buff the DPS.

So. The gun on the Firefly probably should be removed.

Personally, with 3 DPS, I'd rather not have the turret on there.

When I try and set up a patrol around my opponent's base to see when they expand, the stupid plane starts circling around some building and shooting at it. I don't want it to shoot at a building it can't destroy – I want it to fly around in circles around the enemy's base so I can see when my opponent expands.

Good point about it trying to use its 3 DPS and making it less useful as a scout...though I can see some people liking that you can do some weak raiding, if you get 3 or 4 of them taking out lone fabbers isn't out of the question.

Though I do like the suggestion above about turning its gun, into a reclaim unit, that would be really nice and handy

For the ground one, it's a perfect fit. Giving it to the air scout would render the ground variant completely obsolete. The land scout is already slower and less capable than the air constructor, which has the same ability for barely any higher cost.

The air scout is probably the fastest and most agile unit in the game. In theory, it would be able to crash into anything and deal a respectable amount of damage. That makes it incredibly useful for a scourgey type role. One decent hit > a billion crappy hits any day of the week.

The damage it has now is fine, killing off land scouts/bots and acting as recon otherwise. It's cheap enough, if you are really out to kill units with it, then why don't you build multiple just like you would do with any other unit?

I've thought about it as an air raid rush....put up an air factory, have commander assist, cant pump out about 20 of them in a min. that's 60 DPS

Remove the Firefly's weapon and increase its vision range. The land scout can take a weapon, or a reclaim lathe, or perhaps even both, or use the reclaim lathe as a weapon.

Then, introduce a new air unit as a ground strike craft which drops a couple powerful bombs on a target, with a very lengthy cooldown after each attack. The bombs should probably kill a constructor, perhaps even a mex, in one or two attack cycles. A pair of these planes could snipe a mex, for example, and then back off.

The key issue with such a fast, high-firepower strike craft is its utility for comm-sniping. However this is easily dealt with by having anti-air options that can deal with this ground strike craft efficiently. Fragile like a Firefly, which dies in only a couple hits from an inexpensive anti-air solution. One or two anti-air missiles inflicting a kill means you have to be very careful even against only minimal anti-air. The strike craft don't want to attack a missile turret en route because it wastes their shot, and they don't want to fly past either because they will suffer casualties. Defense in depth, rather than a hard defensive line.

If your commander is going for a stroll in the boonies at a point in the game where a big cloud of enemy aircraft could descend, then that is gambling with your commander's life, on the likelihood that the enemy won't find him.

I don't know about your but fireflies are an extreme threat to me, it's FOD is bigger so at the beggining and sometimes even later in the game its bad, if they have intel on what you're building then they can counter it instantly. They decided to go full Air? ok then I'll pump out as many AA as I can. They are going naval? better build some air and laser defense on the shoreline. Their economy has gone to ****? Better go an zerg them.
Do you see where I'm going with this?

If you're going to make something THAT glass cannon-y, just divebomb it directly for the kill. The problem maker counters itself.

If a unit takes half a second to dump its load, you can't answer that by killing it in a quarter of a second. It's just gonna screw up.