Djinn costs a tonne!

On that thought, has anyone tried air dropping a Djinn and some Thugs into a vulnerable spot, and then teleporting in the rest of the shieldball or what-have-you?

Has anyone used Djinn to teleport sea units across the map to intercept a flank, or used djinn to teleport Typhoons behind enemy porc?

Has anyone used Djinn as an emergency escape for low health Warlords/Reefs?

quote: Was it always this expensive?

It used to cost 1800 (currently 800), and had 1.2 speed (currently 2.5).

Yeah.

Djinn is a mystery to me, its purpose is to sneak your units into enemy base but it performs the task of getting into enemy base worse than any other unit

it doesn't move fast, cloak or jam radar, it's not even capable of defending itself so I'm pretty confused as to why it even exists, it will never be worth spending 800m on in it's current state

Pxtl if that is the case then Djinn's purpose is undermined by the very nature of pushing the front!

That means Djinn is useful only in two scenarios!
>Escorting a Shield ball to teleport additional shield-units into the ball straight from the factory to recover from damage and increase shielding and continue pushing without retreat...
>Escorting an Eraser ball to spawn roaches/ticks/skuttles on command or call in additional reinforcements.

These are only viable because a Djinn's beacon stays put, while the Djinn itself can still move, but must stay still to allow teleportation!

Even in those optimal situations, only the Shieldball technique requires no additional micro! (this works when the factory order chain tells units to guard the Djinn so they keep up with the rest of the shieldball until given an actual command)

Although i suppose a Djinn + Eraser walking along could "lay mines" as raoches and ticks teleport themselves through one at a time, but then they would still end up being far too close to each other...

quote: However, the problem is that 800 metal and the micro cost of working the beacon into your rally-point is not really worth doing.

In fact, it's just that much more expensive than a full-blown factory, or Athena. In that regard, a cost buff seems reasonable: you could spend, say, a honest Athena's worth of metal to get an Athena that cannot cloak, jam, build units by itself, repair, reclaim, or rez.

Its an expensive gimmick. In theory it can do all sorts of wizardry, but in practice by the time you can afford to throw 800m into a gimmick, the ability to slowly teleport unit by unit is meaningless in the context of clouds of units, bombers and gunshits that converge on any kind of line penetration

I once or twice used Djinns as a two-way transporter to speed up movement from one side of the front to the other so as to support the side that was in need of units. This works best on wide fronts. Example:


● ... Djinn positions for south team
Djinn beacons are at the other Djinn's location
Both teams own ~ half the map.


Another idea I had was using Djinn on maps with two seas (or alternatively two large islands) to teleport ships (or land units) over impassable terrain. Example:
(note that this is Talus WET)


Anyway, I think the problem might not be Djinn but the maps we play. If maps were larger and metal spots further apart - again I have to mention rysia - then teleportation would be much more powerful simply because teleportation ignores distances.

quote: Can your opponent hear units being transported by a Djinn, even if they do not have vision of the Djinn or the lantern? I seem to remember this happening once but I may be mistaken.

You cannot. Also you can't hear resurrection sounds when it's out of LoS.

I think reducing its cost to 600m and giving it personal cloak (with quite a big decloack radious) would work.

BTW did u know that Djinn is a perfect troll unit? You can scout with lamps, u can force enemy DDM to fire at leamp placed near a pylon connecting it, thus killing the pylon, thus disabling itself. You can use djinn in order not to make 10k nanos near your new fac every step u take on a huge and fat in metal map (like gargantum isis) etc. Unfortunately the Djinn is an unit which has no real purpose, except game phases 3 and later (when fat units and striders are starting to appear). 800 metal (a new fac + almost 1 nano) ,no defence devices, not even passive defences (cloak, shields etc), general micro-intensivity all toghether make it... well... bad in design.

Ive seen a widget which automaticly told every unit to use the djinn lamp if the summed up distance it travels "on foot" before and after telepored is going to be even an inch shorter than normal one, but I cannot find it again. That kind of stuff turned on by default would make Djinn less micor inensive too.

Im sympathetic to it having cloak or armour while not deployed or some secondary weapon or utility or costing as little as 400. But the reason its so UP is that Google was verrrryy skeptical of instantaneous transportation: He envisioned people moving whole armies instantly from one side of comet catcher to the other, and army positioning is a biiig part of the game. The only thing that really allows this is BP, so it's costed similiar to it's BP value.

I don't think that fear is very realistic, though I also see the potential danger of it being sleeper OP because it's so finnicky to use. If we just keep buffing it and buffing it at some point it's going to be ridiculous. It's also meant to primarily be used as a logistical unit to allow the otherwise very immobile amph armies to be used on larger maps, the instant deployment to the back of an enemies base is meant to be a fringe use at best. So while I'm wary of all these things, I'm sympathetic to a buff because I do think it fills a very important potential niche in amph.

Gotta say, the fringe use as a spoofer is genius though. Just put it on repeat you can pinpoint-target your friendly fire from, DDM's, behes, artillery, etc.