Can't Conjurer and all other builders make illusory radar dots simply by building one present of something. Athena is the best at it because it can build mobile units.
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That gives me an idea for an opening: Build 5 darts in the early game, set them to patrol to annoy enemy scouts. It can be an effective build for a followup of, say, ravagers, or more scorchers.
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Build actual units => it dies to artillery. Useless. Whole point of fake targets is they can not die (or are free).
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Idle talk idea n+1. I dislike the starlight because it just calmly and precisely melts superunits, making it difficult to attack with anything that moves. You would need to not be seen making your approach, at least. Maybe lots of tiny things would do it, but I can't recall that ever having worked. Very depressing to fight against. All the small units die to regular attrition, all the big units die to starlight. Imagine a new take on starlight: it remains a satellite you send up, but instead of a beam of death, it is a huge spotlight that sees all while also slightly catching it on fire. Not so much as to be distracting. Just a bit of fire, enough to uncloak everything, and to do a fair bit of damage to shields, eventually burn up small units. The "star flashlight" would then not be a game-ender by itself, but it would confer a powerful battlefield advantage to the team that wields it. A very distinct choice to make between starlight and meteor controller. (And DRP.)
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That would make it never worth building... the whole point of a SW is to end the game ASAP by: A. Sapping enemy morale B. ultra killing the enemy economy, army and base ASAP This is why DRP is never built, it fails to do both due to horrible range This is also why zenith is the most common/best SW, it light and rocks scare people into resigning, and it kills most thing(s) instantly. A SL like this would be a passive decloaked with global riot potential, which enemy assaults would prob shrug off for a while. Would end up with only zenith being built, might see more detriment tho...
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Tweak the cost to be sufficiently under zenith, use it to break the stalemate and finish the offensive with your units before zenith. A new and different way to end the game for those with a robust offensive force.
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One further take on that would be for startlight to be more of a "repurposed power plant" than a terraforming tool. Starlight itself (the building) is cheap-ish (10k or so), and it does nothing at all. You then build "satellites" in it (2500 each, for example), which go up and sit there. The satellites project the same "set-on-fire" death ray as proposed previously, with damage scaling with number of satellites deployed. For example, with 1 satellite the damage would be at something that an aspis can reliably tank, with 2 satellites you'd need 2 aspis, and so on. Basically all units in the spot take bits of damage over time. This could be "really fun" for impaler spam and other abusers of artillery, even if the actual damage is very low. Thus, for a fairly low investment (15k), you could keep a small area of the front clear of artillery spam. For slightly more (20k -ish) you could conceivably start sniping unshielded singus, factories etc. For current starlight cost you could burn right through shieldballs and screening units around detriments with ease (though not the detriments themselves). Killing the controlling building, naturally, would rain all the satellites back to the ground. To keep this from getting rushed, it is reasonable to require e.g. 200 energy grid per satellite deployed.
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I'd probably choose to keep it simple, one building one beam. Price, area of effect, damage and range all depending on balance concerns. You could maybe set it to 10k metal and let a team build multiple if they like. I don't visualize it being very effective at stopping arty spam directly, or shield spam, just boosting the effectiveness of your units in the field. An unblinking eye, wreathed in flame, I guess. I mean eventually yeah you could burn up impalers, but I'd prefer it to generally be poor strategy to sit and stare at one thing. I would prefer an interactive, cooperative, teamwork situation between spotlight and armed units. Find the cloaked traps, prepare a safe route for your paladin, pressure the enemy shields at a critical moment, scout their base, provide vision for your arty, deceive the enemy as to your actual next move, avoid revealing your own cloaked advance, etc. Maybe it has a D-attack with somewhat more burn and loss of vision, best suited for going after shields in coordination with some other attack.
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So while you invest in this super spotlight, the enemy gets a detriment or more paladins and stomps your offensive force -_- A expensive SW that does not end the game is useless, if you need an entire army to fight afterwards, then the enemy who did not invest in a spotlight will have the bigger army so new stalemate or enemy army zerg rushes spotlight... Maybe if the thing cost 5-6k? But hard countering cloak, wind and mex is very unfun.
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quote:
So while you invest in this super spotlight, the enemy gets a detriment or more paladins and stomps your offensive force ..... A expensive SW that does not end the game is useless, if you need an entire army to fight afterwards |
I don't think I was able to convey my idea to you. But I suppose based on the overall crickets response, I'll move along.
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"End the game" is a very unspecific concept. Burning out the enemy windfarms and energy grid may be equally as effective as directly damaging striders. Burning out a 10k ball of recluse may not look impressive, but may be more impactful than sniping a paladin. Also having perfect vision into any spot on the map will allow you to spot the detri way before it is done (as "starlight 2.0" is 10k and not 24k). Once the detri is spotted, you can either odin-bomb it to bits, or keep damaging the builders trying to finish it (thus allowing you to spend more time before it is ready), or push front line directly. Either way, starlight nearly never appears in legit games due to excessive cost, so would it really harm to try a different mode? If it does not work, we can always revert to current version.
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what about you make a thread about this completely unrelateed topic?
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OK, I sort of want to avoid being pushy/spammy, thought this was better to chain on to. But sure, I'll go make a new thread for it.
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A 12500 cost weapon with global range and perfect accuracy is not an artillery defeater, but the ultimate artillery itself, and a mex denier. Just systematically scan all enemy mex spots, not even having to scout because their positions are known, and now the enemy has no income.
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I appreciate the response, new thread made though.
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