MS Scuttle

[cloaked2222]

Needs fixing.

Perhaps copy the scuttle values from the Hiig SY, which seem more reasonable - to all motherships.

[Novaras]

I can understand the reluctance to lose fs scuttle. It's one of a very small selection of strategies with such a high return if performed correctly. Honestly the only other thing I can think of is EMP.

I definitely appreciate things like this for their hype factor, however while I see EMP as a 3 on a scale of 10, scuttle is like a 50. Volatility in gameplay is fun for spectators but frustrating for players. Having so much of the skill and knowledge required to play the game potentially blown away by a scuttle which you sometimes CANNOT escape from even with instant recations is not fun for anybody and undermines the game overall.

I think fs scuttle is a creative strategy and don't want it totally gone, however it's return on investment is far far far beyond 'good'. There are other issues as well; the strategy is not equally available to all the races. HW1 totally lose any ability to produce capitals with the loss of their MS, and the cost of their carriers is monsterous. They also simply cannot produce carriers before around 12 minutes in a typical game. Hiigarans fare a little better, however suffer from high carrier price also. Vaygr is therefore unfairly (imo) favoured here and is in essentially sole possession of a strategy which can instantly win an otherwise interesting and complex game.

So while I think high yield strategy is quite thin on the ground in hwrm, fs scuttle is insanely overtuned in this regard. I would make it's detonation only somewhat larger than a shipyard's.

[Novaras]

The idea of adding a warning for scuttles is also a great idea, I'd be happy for now to see how that plays out in isolation

[S5SS]

I think some kind of warning sound could play if a scuttle is happening but not a ping to show where it is, otherwise it would become trivial to dodge them which would essentially delete the strategy from the game.

[Novaras]

What's wrong with a ping? Half the issue as I see it is cloaked flagships are massive nukes which can oneshot patches/whole swarm wings where the only counterplay is to happen to be looking at it right as this happens.

Even with a ping the window to dodge for corvettes is probably over, hw1 colls are dead (especially with lower hp?), and fighters probably have only 1-2 seconds to react at most.

If we forgo a ping, then I'd drop the radius 10% or something.

Is there any resolution on the inbalance in availability of this strategy to the races? I'm not interested in radius increases at all - power perhaps. Even so, I'd have to be killing destroyers to scuttle my ms as hw1, and only after 16 or so mins assuming I've rushed carriers.

[Novaras]

Another alternative is to add a second to the detonation time or something