Skuttle Design Ticket

[GoogleFrog]

Skuttle has problems. Link them here.

[GoogleFrog]

Capture Skuttle for reference: https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/issues/4185

[GoogleFrog]

Skuttle as a generally usable unit suffers from being a meme that generates moments. A small number of successful Skuttles appears to be fun for the more dedicated community as a whole, and it is fun to blow stuff up so completely in singleplayer. A more reliable Skuttle would necessarily lose these uses unless it gained additional applications in addition to its current high-risk application.

A more useful Skuttle should have interaction after it happens. Skuttle is currently unique in that, once it hits successfully, the interaction between the players is over. The defender never gets to mitigate or interact with the situation. Imp and Widow solve this by starting a game of Defend The Stunned Unit(s) while Snitch often exists in multiples, often creates damaged units, and tends to imply the existence of an area-cloaker to hunt down. Scythe, Ulti and Widow start games of Find And Kill The Cloaked Unit, with the stakes at least being the efficiency of the attack.

Most effects with counterplay are less cool than a high-damage explosion.

[Anarchid]

IIRC Saktoth proposed a non-suicidal burrowing burning spit version of skuttle. Set units on fire with significant duration and damage instead of killing them outright.

The defender gets to choose to play Doomed Berserker Rage or Triage And Repair. Attacker gets to play Avoid The Berserker or Prevent Repairs. If the unit is also non-suicidal as in that suggestion, defender gets to play Kill The Skuttle.

Three obvious downsides:

• Sniping things that are already near buildpower becomes impractical - blowing up singus with this is going to be very unreliable
• No stacking
• Countered by shields unless allowed to penetrate them or is point-blank.

[GoogleFrog]

I am aware of it. At the time the problem was that all fire currently has the same DPS. This is still a problem. Adding variable DPS requires some sort of rule for mixing different types of fire and a way to visualise the fact the the unit is on a different type of fire. We now have an additional issue: Fire is extinguished by water. Skuttle would essentially require a new type of fire, and that has a hefty complexity penalty.

In addition to your downsides:

• The 'choice' of whether to repair or run from an affected singu is 90% information processing and calculation. The calculation involves knowing the burn rate of the DPS and the repair rate of your nearby BP. It doesn't seem like there is much of a real choice here.
• HP varies so much that it is hard to set a damage that puts a decent number of units into a viable choice between repair or berserker mode. Commanders and Minotaur have to be quickly doomed for Juggle Dante to feel much danger.

[Licho1]

Isn't the "fix" to make it untargetable in air?

[GoogleFrog]

I don't see what that fixes.

[Anarchid]

IIRC there was also an idea for the Limpet to be a literal limpet, a parasite headcrab that would attach to units and slow them down and other units could shoot it off.

What if we combine the concepts into a Frankenskuttle?

The unit is a parasitic headcrab that attaches itself to target and becomes Glint for a fixed period of time, during which it causes continuous melee damage and welding-sparks effects. The max total damage is thus known by both attacker and defender, and they can make easy decisions based on it. However, the attacker has an option to detach the headcrab at any point; the defender in turn can try to ignore or outrepair it. Multiple headcrabs can pester the same victim to stack their damage.

After the charge runs out or the host dies, the headcrab is forced to detach from the victim and become vulnerable again. If the target dies violently enough, the headcrab dies with it.

It could be cool to allow the defender to remove the headcrab with some sacrifice, but the colvol geometries probably make shooting the parasite directly an impractically tedious task to implement. Could allied units be allowed to instead cause damage to the infected unit, with a proportion of that damage applied to parasite?

[Licho1]

I like that idea for limpet replacement. The many crawling bombs are pretty similar and boring otherwise. It requires extra gadget though, or do we have some reusable attach/detach logic around? Also for AI it will need to replace attack with attach or something.

[Anarchid]

I like that idea for limpet replacement. The many crawling bombs are pretty similar and boring otherwise.

Limpet is crowd control, this thing is antiheavy.

It requires extra gadget though, or do we have some reusable attach/detach logic around? Also for AI it will need to replace attack with attach or something.

Yes. It would need a gadget (or a very complex unitscript) and there is an engine call to attach units.

[Oflameo]

I like my Assault Skuttle design because it is a simple fix that gets rid of the interaction problems while allowing the unit to still serve its original purpose. After that, I hear that the whole concept of an anti-heavy bomb is bad due to lack of interaction after it fires. I suggest making it a general bomb like snitch that happens to be able to jump but not able to cloak to adjust that balance.

[Arch-Shaman]

What if you had the attach idea and a suicide bomb idea? Imagine a skuttle that latches onto a unit and counts down to its inevitable demise. This has the benefit of having the moment meme thing and the coolness of attaching it and the fun of a big explosion.

[Oflameo]

Maybe tune skuttle to be faster with a better cloak, much better vision radius, and a weaker bomb so it can function properly as a jumping cloaked scout. The lack of interaction would be an asset instead of a liability.

[sprunk]

That would move it closer to Widow.

[GoogleFrog]

That would move it closer to Widow.

My thought exactly, but maybe by this point Skuttle needs to be closer to something decent, so I wouldn't rule ideas like this on the basis of uniqueness.

[sprunk]

How about:

• make Skuttle create Placeholder style black hole / vacuum instead (doesn't die; change leg-jump to jumpjets so it can escape its own vacuum for reuse)
• remove Placeholder, because they overlap on the antiheavy role and "yet another plain old boring cis white male bot that just shoots a generic projectile" aesthetics are lame compared to a jumping crawling bomb
• shuffle stats as needed

[Oflameo]

I am not a fan of removing things that work properly.

[Oflameo]

You can cut skuttle and let puppy fulfill all of the Jumpbot bombing needs without modification.

[sprunk]

Removing crap is the CA way but people would rage if their "surprise motherfucker" lulz unit was gone without replacement.

[mojjj]

i dont like where this is going...

[GoogleFrog]

Why? From your Skuttle reputation I'll assume because you don't want Skuttle to change. In that case you should like where it is going, because from what I can tell it is going nowhere.

[mojjj]

it is going nowhere.

glad to hear!

[Oflameo]

@mojjj You think Skuttle can't be improved at all and that it is a good unit?

[mojjj]

well at its current state i am having fun. this does not mean it is an unit for everyone.