Do Archer water cutters extinguish fires?

No. Maybe.

You know what would be awesome? Napalm submarines. Also, using Kudos to unlock commander honking. Did you know Stiletto can disarm submarines?

Add this feature, rename Archer to Fireman, and the game can be considered perfect.

Adding an ability to expend some water to extinguish nearby units would be super simple code-wise (using the cannons instead of a separate ability means the UI requires you to attack allied units, which is bad).

It would make sense to have such an ability since water already extinguishes burning units, but even if the devs allow it I don't think it is likely to be done anytime soon because this doesn't really seem to accomplish anything gameplay-wise (only fluff-wise and cool-wise).

You could say that it adds an interesting choice (spend water tank to save health) but I think that in most cases this would be a no-brainer to use (as soon as the fire source gets neutralized).

I guess it would be mostly synergistic with other facs (who can't go into the water), similar to how eg. Gunship Transports are meant for other facs, but it is the enemy who decides to use Fire so the ability would be reactive (unlike Transports). I don't think it would see much use since both Fire and Water are relatively rare on their own and Extinguish needs both.

Jumpyfac is also heavily reliant on the Pyro, which in turn does quite a lot of damage through Fire. If the Extinguish ability was any good it would likely shift the balance quite a bit in the Amph vs Jumpy matchup (though how it currently looks like I have no idea).

That being said, if the devs don't mind I can (eventually) code it.

Archers putting out fires does kinda make sense. It's a little niche, but I think the idea is more limited by "is it worth having an edge case that makes physical sense, despite it being such an edge case?"

The "soaked units" idea is getting ahead of yourself, though, and would add one more thing that, while physically intuitive, is out of left field in games. There are a lot of things in Zero-K that are physically intuitive but unusual in RTS games (units missing shots, more buildpower = faster construction, units cannot shoot through other units). It works fine for someone who doesn't compartmentalize their thinking, but most people do, so the reaction is often "what the hell, that's not how video games work" rather than "oh cool, that's how it would work in real life".

The extinguish thing might also, at worst, work against you, if you or your team was using fire units alongside the Archers, and it might prove rather annoying and not worth the cuteness.

[quote]Anyway, if it was an activatable ability this would not be an issue. [\quote]Not true. Endowing a unit with an ability will almost always make the AI for that unit worse and one goal is not to have stupid units. Simply put you are acting optimally if you cannot perform any actions.

Would anyone disagree that Wind Generators have some of the best unit AI in ZK? They spend almost all of their time performing the correct actions for the situation. Perhaps they miss a Flea kill by not destroying themselves at quite the right time but that is an edge case.

Activatable abilities also take up UI space and head space. Players have to learn what it is and remember to use it. The ability has to be good enough for gameplay to justify this cost.

So now assume it is a passive ability. That is that damage from Archer removes fire. This opens up a lot of situations for stupid unit AI.

• If you attack a bunch of units and some of them are on fire the Archer should shoot the not-on-fire ones. This is hard to do well automatically due to AoE and the pushback effect.
• Doe Archers automatically attack your own on fire units? The impulse could mess up that unit and the Archer may be unprepared for a real enemy that enters range. What if the enemy is a Halberd which is there just to prevent automatic extinguishing?
• If Archers have to be manually told to attack your own units then we are back to the problem of activatable abilities.

quote: water

as long as the exothermal redox reactions requires air and is chemically not strong enough to break H²O, replace the air with water. as second option, sink it!

quote: Add this feature, rename Archer to Fireman, and the game can be considered perfect.

If sfire is gettign his unit, I want mine too!
Preferably something with high alpha and which has 0.01% chances of actually hitting the target it's aiming.

I thought about Bertha, which also fits the description and has a tendency to be built by neebs.

Hower-craft Platform.
Polish W is read like English V.