Phoenix napalm idea

The thing with Phoenix is that it fills its niche in a wrong way (imo) since it has really a trouble hitting any raiders unless it is used in great numbers, wich with addition of hard controlls is an rarely used unit overall, because people just prefer to make raven spams and as riot they jusy use either swift or even wyvern (or they even ignore the riot aspect of air). I think I have developed a solution to that:

Now how does phoenix deal damage? It drops its napalm bombs onto its enemies. But the thing is that they dont really feel like napalm bombs. They are more like fire bombs snice the napalm despite the visual effects doesnt harm units that enter vicinity unlike how infernos' or kodachis' napalm work. I say give it stay on the ground napalm like mentioned units have.

However how would it help phoenix to be a more vialable unit?
You see the thing with phoenixes is that once you do a line attack (wich is the most optimal way to use phoenix) its fly pattern becomes really predictable and ones' opponent can just dodge its flaming bombs (not napalm). Now if phoenix would have and stay on ground napalm it would just deny the raiders' march and make them change directions for some time or even retreat for a while.

Imo this (if applied) should also be followed with some sort of cost increase or DPS decrease so that these walls of napalm would not make phoenix OP in any way.

Since ZK already has the napalm feature why dont extend it to the phoenix? I would love to hear your opinions on my idea.

Napalm is best against structures because they cannot run away. Raiders can run away rapidly so the current mechanic of setting them on fire works best for them. The visual effect is fine because the Pheonix napalm dissipates rapidly when it is dropped.

Also there is performance to think about. It sounds wasteful to do 20 or so unit-in-sphere checks for every Pheonix which has fired.

What if the pheonix's firebombs (assuming no napalm) simply homed in slightly on targets, similar to how the Recluse rockets can home slightly?

How many bombs does a phoenix drop anyways? They're so tightly clustered that you can't really tell. If it was reduced to 3 well-spaced bomblets it might not be such a performance hog to make them deal the fireball damage.

quote: Phoenix drops 15 bomblets.

So there are 15 reasons why u should make Ravens instead of Phoenixes.

C'mon fix it already, another reason it has huge problem dealing with light units (actually any units), is that stupid immediate auto retread mechanic wchih makes it bomb in banana shape ALL THE TIME. So it does hit the 1st unit its aiming at, but then rest of raiders are left unharmed becasue they werent in banana formation.

So either force all units which Phoenix is aiming to formate bananas, or fix the Phoenix.

What I suggest is (dunno if its even possible) somehow copying units formation. If Phoenix is told to attack lets say 10 packed units, it would attack (start dropping bombs at) the 1st (the closest) unit, and then all other attack commands would be immediate changed to move commands (so the Phoenix follows the pack formation) up to the point when Phoenix runs out of bombs, THEN it does a banana and returns home.

No more flaming bananas plox.

To be fair, the Thunderbird (with a similar, if not identical, bombing run principle) does not turn around like the Phoenix by default (though you can make it curve somewhat). Consistent behaviour between the two might be nice.

Aquanim, that's because Thunderbird doesn't have bomblets. Its weapon always shoots straight downwards and doesn't throw anything. Not sure why you'd call it similar of even identical.

Failer, I don't see your problem. Just queue move commands for all of them?

Huh, that's not the dumbest possible thing. Turning around massively increases survival rates.

And the phoenix as well. Just notice how often thinderbird dies after its run.

Did you know that simply decreasing the time bomblets spend in the air after dropping and before hitting the ground (aka. increasing fall rate) could drastically increase pheonix accuracy?