Morphable scout glider

I have been thinking a bit about the jump in scouting viability that comes with the construction of a Plane Factory. The ease of scouting is at least part of the power of Planes as a second factory. In a 1v1, if it's switch time and you want to scout your opponents switch it often good to just switch to planes. In a team game the difference between knowing everything and nearly nothing is a plopped Plane Factory.

Owl could be nerfed, but it is hard to nerf Swift in a way that makes it a worse scout. My wacky solution is to give radar tower a morph to a light scout plane. Here is a rough idea of the type of attributes it could have.

• Cost around 200. Note that the 55 metal cost of a radar tower is discounted from the morph.
• Speed around 200 elmos/s. This is fairly slow for a plane.
• Sight range around 800 to 1000. Radar tower has 800 sight range. Owl has 1400.
• Possibly no radar or sonar. Sight may well be enough.
• Definitely no jamming.
• Very little health.

The glider may even motivate a little light AA, which would prepare players to defend against a plane switch. What do people thing, is this the right kind of idea? Is scouting fine as is?

I support nerfing the absolute need for airswitch.
And I always thought owl was really good.
It should probably survive atleast a picket since this is a (pricey)plane and its going to get itself shot while swirling around at the edge of enemy range.

Just set it to patrol. I'm sure some sort of unit AI could be made for better aircraft idling.

I don't want to make it a gunship because gunships are generally slower and don't fly as high. I also don't have a gunship model.

Sorry - I didn't mean an actual gunship. Just something similar to trident that hovers there (in my mind I was thinking something simple akin to the gnat model).

All air units are technically either planes or gunships.

Having a flying scout of some form in each fac might be more consistent?

Glaives with jetpacks..

what I did on mf was add a 200m air scout factory, that builds 80ish cost small air scouts.

the radar morph seems an annoyance. If you want to send out a swarm do you need to make a swarm of radars and morph them?

How about give each factory artillery unit a flare ability. Which will fire flare at the select location and reveal that area for limited time? Also it will have limited range

quote: I also don't have a gunship model.

This failed to prevent Claymore, so...

Sounds a bit like that scout balloon shit we discussed. Anything that increases variety in facswitch options is an idea worth exploring. If you solve the owl/swift scouting necessity, all that's left is somehow fixing the 5 raven rush lust. The global econ went a way towards making it easier to live with - but didn't stop it from being overly popular.