Goliath could use a buff

The usefulness of goliath is more or less irrelevant in 1v1. Games rarely get to the stage where goliaths can be fielded in any signficant numbers. Still, it's a cool unit, so it's a pity that it usually isn't worth the cost. I generally only make it when I can morph it from a reaper and thus enjoy the benefits of free buildpower and reduced rally time (can morph it near the battlefield).

Goliath mainly suffers from two problems:
1) Role overlaps too much with reaper
2) Gets outclassed by other units of it's price range in terms of what it brings to the table

What's the point of building a goliath when you can just keep making reapers? Sure, higher weight allows it to survive even better than reapers, but it's also slower and worse vs most (almost all) units in a straight up fight. A goliath isn't usually scarier to face than the same cost in reapers.

Here's the list of other units in goliath's (2200 metal) cost range:
Grizzly - 2000 metal
Sumo - 2000 metal
Ultimatum - 2000 metal
Crabe - 1600 metal

All of those units share a trait - they all excel at something. Something that other units of these respective factories don't offer. Be it the long range skirm/assault grizzly, be it the ultimate antiheavy ultimatum, be it the crabe that can single handedly take down whole armies with it's AOE or be it the generalist sumo, which excels at crushing blobs of anything while being able to duke it out with heavies in a close quarter fight.

I'm going to pick the sumo and compare it to the goliath a bit more in-depth.

Sumo is by design quite a general-purpose unit. It has an AOE crush ability, which allows it to be devastating to cloaky and shieldballs. It also has accurate weapons, which allow it to eat through small targets like gunships, raiders, etc. Because it uses disruptor beams, it is also an amazing single target disabler, being able to duke it out with other heavies in close quarter combat.

Goliath immediately strikes as being much less generalist. Inaccurate main cannon makes it waste a lot of DPS against faster/smaller targets. High alpha makes it waste even more against those targets. It has less HP than sumo and costs more. It has somewhat more range than the sumo, but nothing special. So, the logical assumption is, that due to being much less generalist, it would outclass the sumo significantly in some other area. Sadly, that isn't really true. Sumo beats goliath in a straight up fight(with up to around 35% HP remaining depending on how they engage), which is one of the few things goliath is supposed to be good at.

The reason why sumo so easily beats goliath in a close quarter fight is obvious. Goliath's slowbeam is of no match to the disabling power of sumo's disruptors. Sumo stays at around 0-7% slow the whole fight, outregenerating goliath's slow weapon(!), while goliath gets slowed down to 50%. The slowbeam in it's current state is only useful as an accuracy enhancer for the main cannon vs lighter and medium targets. It simply lacks the DPS to slow heavies fast enough to make a difference in a fight. Comparison: moderator's (unit costs 220) slowbeam has a DPS of 350, goliath's slowbeam has a DPS of 200.

Unless it's Red Comet, I'd take sumo over goliath any time. Again, unless it's Red Comet, I'd take grizzly over goliath almost every time. I'd even without hesitation take crabe over goliath in quite a lot of situations, even though it costs 600 less. Note that as an additional handicap, goliath is also the most terrain-restricted of it's cost range.

Proposed solution: increase goliath's slowbeam's damage. This would emphasize it's main difference with the reaper. It would emphasize the unit's (supposed) strengths and not make it more generalist. If the numbers are tweaked
right, it would make the unit finally worth it's hefty pricetag.

TL;DR Goliath could use a buff, preferrably to it's slowbeam

iirc, Anarchid was looking at making a non-hideous version of the Buoy's weapon - the slow-plasma-ball, and giving that to the Goli's main gun. But then he'd need a new toy for the cupola.

Alright, sumo doesn't perhaps excel at anything. But I focused more on it's generalist nature and why such a generalist unit should not beat much more of a specialist anti-single target unit like the goliath.

Goliath needs moar big cannon!

quote: So the only way to make the Goliath slowbeam effective anti-heavy is to increase the rate of fire

It's also possible to significantly buff the amount of slow-damage the cupola weapon inflicts. How about 1 shot putting a Reaper at 25%?

Anarchid
That would be 1700 damage, a Sumo would still regenerate that down to 500 per shot (assuming full health).

The more HP a unit has, the more slow damage it regenerates, while the more damage you put on your slow beam the higher your 1 or 2-shot threshold goes for smaller units like Ravagers (To the extent you could slow a whole pack one by one as they approach).

I suppose you could increase the RoF to like 13s, allowing every unit to regen away the whole 50% slow damage between goliath shots, then give it some absurd amount of slow damage so that it 1-shots most units to 50%. But 13s is almost 4x longer than the reload on the main gun.

Increasing the rate of fire or changing the degen mechanic is the only way to go. As such I've commited a change reducing the Goliaths slow RoF to 1 but keeping slow DPS intact. It now slows reapers very fast and can keep 2 slowed fairly easily.

Pxtl: I don't think there is anything to do about it, the other factories make it more acceptable by usually being split into riot/antiheavy (Outlaw/Racketeer). But Panther can also be used in an anti-heavy capacity (Not sure if that's desirable but I think it's a bit unavoidable).

maybe just big HP buff for goli. Maybe more slow beam damage 2. also sumo needs buff 2.

...why do you have to keep the slow dps as constant in this? I don't get it...

Tried the changed goliath in /godmode to see what kind of difference this made. Difference is significant. It's actually a good antiheavy now. Can fight sumo or the same cost in scorp and win (yay). Doesn't lose as horribly to reapers either any more.

I think the difference between Slow and EMP is that EMP goes past 100% while slow is hard-capped at 100%. This means that regenerating with slow provides immediate benefits while you don't see benefits to regenerating EMP until it gets below 100%.

Altering Slow to include some "slow-time" analogue to "stun-time" would help.