Skittle biff

I think skittle need biff. Decloak radius is bit too large or it could just jump faster? It cost 550 metalz.
Only player who successfully use them in these days is Slaab and still with large failure rate.
I know that this discussion was already at least 2 - 3 times. However in some games skittle is only option for jumpers to deal with buildings like Lucifer or Cerberus. On hill maps it become very annoying from some porcers.
And i know that i can use area clokaer to make skittle decloak radius smaller.
Skuttle doesn't have alsmost any advanatge when comparing with ultis. It can't even make limited defence if detected or can't escape even with jump and you need at least 2x to counter heavy unit plus need extreeme precise jump. While ultis can just go near and destroy enemy with one shoot. Ok ultis have alsmot 4x more cost but it mostly neede only one shoot even vs +10k units, it have 8x hp and more lower decloak radius. Only skittle plus is that it can jump but it didn't give any biga advantage as ultis attack is ranged.
Also invisible trollcoms and other clokaed units decloak skittle befere it decloak enemy.
Skittle is great toy to mangle in bigger teams but less tactical weapon.

[Spoiler]

Simple buff: Make decloak radius tiny when it's not moving. At least then, it can be used as a trap.

Yes, maybe the horizontal jump velocity should be higher. I found a speed value of 180 elmos per second on the wiki. How about 220-250? I wish someone also made an official widget for extrapolating enemy movement to alleviate the aiming micro.

I haven't tried using one or seen one in use in a long time. Thing is, if your enemy does not screen at all, there are better options. Even just a raider rush will repel an unscreened heavy while still being useful for all the other things raiders do. If its a riot type uncreened heavy, skirmishers can handle that. Skuttle is a highly specific counter that is also slow, needs a lot of micro, and has a high failure rate.

I think fast skuttle without cloak might actually work better. At least you will fail fast if you fail, so it won't eat tons of micro.

I would like to see Scuttle re-balanced to work good with trappers like placeholders and widows. Instead of being a cloaked bomb, make it a single use assault. No cloak, more speed, more HP. I am thinking 55 elmos so it can catch up to Dante and Funnelweb and a whopping 2500 ( 10x increase) in HP so it can tag them without being destroyed if there is no raider screen.

Skuttle is not just for fun. It's one of few option for jumpers to counter heavy units. I dont think that skuttle should be uber buffed but this decloak range is still ridiciously large. Even in time when skuttle wasnt nerfed it wasn't op and there was much failure rates with it.

watching this very thread very closely.

As GoogleFrog said in a previous thread:
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Skuttle is anti-fun in the sense that there is no player interaction. All other cloaked snipes have more interaction.

When Scythe or Scorpion are revealed the attacker and defender fight over the survival of the units, as they can be reused.
Window requires followup to kill the stunned unit.
With cloaked Snitch the defender can search for the cloaker.
Many Phantoms are required to 1-shot a large unit, and the defender can search for the Phantoms.


After a successful Skuttle strike the attacker rarely needs to provide provide followup, and there are no units for the defender to kill as a consolation prize. The defender should put out a screen, but against Jump they probably should have been screening before the strike. In theory, the only change to the game is that some of the defenders units died and they know that the attacker spent 550 metal on a Skuttle.

Currently, Skuttle is fairly difficult to use so it is rarely seen and degree of respect is given to a successful strike. A better Skuttle would be seen more often, which looks bad with its current design. The first step towards buffing Skuttle should be to make it more interactive.

Saktoth had the idea of giving Skuttle fire damage. The intention was that you lose your heavy unit unless it is sent to retreat and repair. This still lacks counterplay, although there is more as the attacker has effectively attracted constructors to the affected structure/unit, and can take advantage of that. The main issue with this idea is that fire is frustrating and constrained. Burning currently deals the same DPS across all sources of ignition and I would like to maintain this rule. Dealing 8000 fire damage at the current rate would take 9 minutes.

My idea for Skuttle:
1.) Cloak is removed and replaced with ability to burrow like the rest of the burrowing mines.
2.) Jump range is reduced, but the jump speed is made faster. Optionally Skuttle could have attack similar to Puppy where it turns itself into projectile that deals damage/explodes (only?) when hitting enemy. This would remove things like Felon insta killing SKuttle trying to jump on them.
3.)[optional]: The jump cooldown could be lowered, as I doubt it would break skuttle if it was able to jump more often, especially if the jump range is reduced.