Make skitter into a decently damaging raider/scout?

If you're looking for a fast unit capable of taking out undefended infrastructure, I'd say the Boom fits that role nicely. Unfortunately, they seem a bit underpowered right now due to bad AI and embarrassingly low health.
I'd also like to see them 'self destruct' when killed or at least have a detonation command, doesn't make sense to me that a half dozen of them can't touch an inferno.

But they're still fast and can cover ground. That's all you need to scout. Removing the air scout just means people will just end up using a fighter. Besides, taking a few fighters in your anti air screen and sending them towards a base to poke around is what everyone does later in the game anyway.

The same question was posed in the general discussion. My comments are in there, but they echo the idea of: it provides good vision and can be held stationary with little to no problem compared to air scouts.

Not really the same question or topic. I know skitter can be used for vision later on too. The problem I have with it is that it is an extremely boring and underwhelming unit that way. It can be usable in small numbers throughout the game, but it could be so much more than that.

Basically I'm proposing to rerole it from a scout to a raider(that obviously would still have utility as a scout), because pure scout units don't necessarily have a place in a good RTS. Vehicles are lacking a fast raider unit anyway, all of their stuff is either slow battle tanks or arty. So it's really a matter of whether Uber will add a dedicated raider vehicle, in which case the Skitter becomes even less used, or rerole the Skitter right away. I'd go with the second option.

^This is technically true. In most RTS's the scout units gain the ability to sabotage the enemy base. That kind of micro wouldn't have much place in PA unfortunately.

Maybe the skitter is finally a reason to have a cloak, so rather than wide LOS scout it acts as more of a spy unit.

Not sure I like the idea of cloaks in a game where the view is this pulled back though.

It's still more balanced than what the scout currently is.

Who are you arguing? What is your point?

The scout is actually a surprisingly good source of cheap DPS.

The land scout kinda qualify in a no air scenario, but loses to dox in most cases. It's vision range is great however.

You could make the land scout into a dox alternative.

Why? Bots thing is they're fast raiders, duplicating that seems you're just going to end up with the same situation you have now, but the words Dox and Skitter instead of Firefly and Skitter.

Its a rule of thumb for the type, but it isn't universal.

And besides, the skitter should be better then the dox by any margin with it's viewing range advantage.

and the firefly is best used en mass as T1 gunships, and work very well for their cost, so they don't need a change.

I'm not talking generalities, I'm talking specifics,

Specifically, the T2 assault bot isn't more manoeuvrable a raider then a tank.

So?

Why is this discussion happening again? It's already been solved, guys. No, not the armor bit, the vision bit. The air scout gets a weapon that sabotages intelligence. Bonus points for revealing to all enemies (because FFAs just aren't crazy enough!). Such a utility is useful all game long. It's great for marking targets, it's great for breaking sneaky, it's great for planning an invasion. It's pretty much great for everything. Great at everything is T1 material.

Just to make your lives miserable, the issues with boring ground scouts has also been solved. Have fun figuring out something better. ("Better" referring to a topic that isn't numerically superior, but rather "better" in terms of making an unmistakably useful unit that belongs everywhere)

I'm saying that any air will always be better for information scouting compared to ground or naval. Removing the air scout will not change that fact as all air units can go anywhere, fast. Heck the new transports and movement speed on air fabbers make them good enough to scout with if you really wanted to. It makes other scouting units redundant if they don't have any other advantages. They need a niche of their own else they might as well not be in the game.

The idea that having no air on asteroids and moons biomes for example would give the land scout some use and shake up fighting over the game enders.

And that is one of the reasons not to have a good T1 air scout, because all T1 air is a good scout to begin with. No need to make them better intentionally.

Is that true in multiplayer?

The ratio of scouts to fighters is 9:4. You can produce 9 fireflies per 4 hummingbirds.

Thats not a winning advantage for the scouts.

Bearing in mind that the fighter is the least tanky AA.

The magic of a scout ball is its ability to do damage even in unfriendly airspace. But unless the other player is weaker than you economically, is it still viable?

If I had free reign skitters would be faster, not have more dps.

I think you guys need to check the skitters new dps because right now it can kill an engineer now pretty quickly.

Not sure if you want more damage.

just throwing a thought into this

vs vanguards ... skitter with visionbuff + mobile artillery or mobilemissilelauncher ... good one?