Brainstorm - How to mitigate the effect of cheap scout spam

[albator]

Imo the best solution is to allow AA to fire at land scouts.

• Long-range weapons
• Fast-moving projectiles
• Tracking projectiles
  All the above means AA are the perfect units for destroying scouts before they enter the range of your other units and bait their shots.
• Low collateral/side-effects
  Compared to adding new units or buffing certain units RoF/AoE/range making AA fire at scouts isn't going to effect much apart from lowering scout feasibility, especially late game where players can afford AA escorts.
• Easy to do
  Changes would take less than 5 minutes.
• "Natural" solution
  Basically changing AA is a natural solution in that standard gameplay already involves building AA. Compare this to adding a new unit whose sole purpose is killing scout spam late game, sure it solves the problem but it is so artificial, you're adding new game mechanics purely to counter a problematic mechanic instead of fixing it itself.

You don't want players playing from a checklist of things they have to do to not have their game ruined by bad mechanics, e.g. build an anti to stop game ending nukes, build a shield to stop game ending bertha shot, build a fighter shield to stop game ending air, build a stack of junos so you don't lose army to scouts, and only then start playing the actual game.

The main con I see is that AA is present in 1v1s, so you'll get a bunch of 1v1 players complaining that you've ruined the mod because kbots are now OP due to slow crashers preventing scout raiding or something.

I think this is a bad idea cause it makes scout completely useless as soon as fighter are up.

You don't want players playing from a checklist of things they have to do to not have their game ruined by bad mechanics, e.g. build an anti to stop game ending nukes, build a shield to stop game ending bertha shot, build a fighter shield to stop game ending air, build a stack of junos so you don't lose army to scouts, and only then start playing the actual game.

This is actually the proper counter argument to what you ask for... If you are able to scout you don't need all that. This is the reasoning that 1 bar rank have: building all defense and play around with the unit, but most player are not that stupid to make only defense and wait for death.

making retrieving information less viable makes game more static and more porcy and bring more eco then more unit spam then more lag.

[albator]

Imo the best solution is to allow AA to fire at land scouts.

• Long-range weapons
• Fast-moving projectiles
• Tracking projectiles
  All the above means AA are the perfect units for destroying scouts before they enter the range of your other units and bait their shots.
• Low collateral/side-effects
  Compared to adding new units or buffing certain units RoF/AoE/range making AA fire at scouts isn't going to effect much apart from lowering scout feasibility, especially late game where players can afford AA escorts.
• Easy to do
  Changes would take less than 5 minutes.
• "Natural" solution
  Basically changing AA is a natural solution in that standard gameplay already involves building AA. Compare this to adding a new unit whose sole purpose is killing scout spam late game, sure it solves the problem but it is so artificial, you're adding new game mechanics purely to counter a problematic mechanic instead of fixing it itself.

You don't want players playing from a checklist of things they have to do to not have their game ruined by bad mechanics, e.g. build an anti to stop game ending nukes, build a shield to stop game ending bertha shot, build a fighter shield to stop game ending air, build a stack of junos so you don't lose army to scouts, and only then start playing the actual game.

The main con I see is that AA is present in 1v1s, so you'll get a bunch of 1v1 players complaining that you've ruined the mod because kbots are now OP due to slow crashers preventing scout raiding or something.

I think this is a bad idea cause it makes scout completely useless as soon as fighter are up.

You don't want players playing from a checklist of things they have to do to not have their game ruined by bad mechanics, e.g. build an anti to stop game ending nukes, build a shield to stop game ending bertha shot, build a fighter shield to stop game ending air, build a stack of junos so you don't lose army to scouts, and only then start playing the actual game.

This is actually the proper counter argument to what you ask for... If you are able to scout you don't need all that. This is the reasoning that 1 bar rank have: building all defense and play around with the unit, but most player are not that stupid to make only defense and wait for death.

making retrieving information less viable makes game more static and more porcy and bring more eco then more unit spam then more lag.

[Floris]

Aa shooting ground makes no sense. Scouts leaving lots of m behind doesnt either. Lets keep the game a bit straightforward.

Target prioritizing is key here. It fails to pick the best targets and instead targets fleas.

Elegant and clear solutions:
- improve targetting priority system.
- make all t2 units be invulnerable to scouts. And let the scout blow itself up when it fires its weapon at it or makes contact or comes close.

[SinbadEV]

Aa shooting ground makes no sense. Scouts leaving lots of m behind doesnt either. Lets keep the game a bit straightforward.

Target prioritizing is key here. It fails to pick the best targets and instead targets fleas.

Elegant and clear solutions:
- improve targetting priority system.
- make all t2 units be invulnerable to scouts. And let the scout blow itself up when it fires its weapon at it or makes contact or comes close.

+1 to not damaging T2

I like the part where you make the scouts fragile... that just makes sense in my interpretation of what a scout would be... I think it might make more sense to just have them be crushable by almost all T2 units... particularly if your own big guys started oppsying your scout swarm.

[Johannes]

Elegant and clear solutions:
- make all t2 units be invulnerable to scouts. And let the scout blow itself up when it fires its weapon at it or makes contact or comes close.

How is that elegant? Scouts barely do damage to tough units anyway (so it won't change much), then you'll be running past them with hold fire instead of making a drive-by shooting together with it.

Any weird special damageclass solutions are absolutely the worst.



One thing though - producing scouts takes a lot of buildpower in comparison to other units using the same amount of M. Therefore making bp (ie nanos, other forms of bp won't work it with multiple lab scoutspam) more expensive, you make starting the scout production harder.

[jamerlan]

I see only one issue with spam - CPU.
Spam is funny and counter-spam too. But it eats CPU too much.

I agree with targeting priority change for snipers, annihilators etc. They should not shoot at "spam" units.

[klapmongool]

Beherith, and all others who think there is a problem, could you please describe the problem that everyone is trying to solve? That makes solving a lot easier. As stated before I don't think there is a problem.

I agree with targeting priority change for snipers, annihilators etc. They should not shoot at "spam" units.

I would really love a target prioritisation widget if that is at all possible.

[BaNa]

The problem I see with scout spam is twofold:

It is cpu intensive.

Scouts are hard to hit - a lot of weapons dont even hit scouts properly. Ive seen snipers and co miss dozens of times. This is bad, mkay?

And no, other spammable units are not thus affected because they are not so fast and cheap. The way I see it, it is a game mechanic that requires no finesse, breaks game for many (cpu) and is not easily dealt with because, annoyingly, a lot of weapons are shite at dealing with it.
My first thought was to have kill turrets, some tower that instakills scouts in range. Adding the function to the juno is ok too imo.

[Johannes]

I don't really like the idea of a widget for auto targeting, people should be required to watch the battlefield a bit, but then it won't help against unidentified dots anyway.

[Johannes]

Scouts are hard to hit - a lot of weapons dont even hit scouts properly. Ive seen snipers and co miss dozens of times. This is bad, mkay?

And no, other spammable units are not thus affected because they are not so fast and cheap. The way I see it, it is a game mechanic that requires no finesse, breaks game for many (cpu) and is not easily dealt with because, annoyingly, a lot of weapons are shite at dealing with it.
My first thought was to have kill turrets, some tower that instakills scouts in range. Adding the function to the juno is ok too imo.

If a sniper can't hit a scout, that's a problem to be fixed on the snipers side, no? Bigger weapon velocity or something.

As far as the requiring no finesse, and being hard to deal with, what should be the situation like exactly? Nukes, berthas, krogs are much more straightforward still.
Requiring a mixed army, that has something that can deal with scouts too, seems good to me. Otherwise a lot of units that already can deal with them, would be obsoleted. It's not like anyone can win by making only scouts.

And turrets, having beamers and llts deals with scouts perfectly well already. If not, you don't have enough - they're piss cheap at that point in any case.


What's the kind of endgame people want exactly, that scout use is ruining?

[Silentwings]

It's a brainstorm about reducing the effect of late game scout spam - it's not about whether any one person thinks there is/isn't a specific problem, and not really about whether or not current BA agrees with anyones personal vision for a perfect RTS.

Two issues which have been raised by multiple people in the past concerning scoutspam are:

1) CPU load causes can't play and eventually lags out.

2) Scouts absorb fire which could be directed towards other more worthy targets.

It's not hard to spot that (1) is a problem for some people (although not for me) but I think it would be better if those with XL sized cpus/egos/wallets stopped believing that because they don't lag it doesn't matter if someone else does.

My opinions:

Solving (1) probably requires drastically reducing the number of scouts on the map at any one time. This would cause some change in gameplay & we could talk for hours.

In general spring runs much smoother than it did years ago and I think probably a combination of patience and the constant increase in gpu/cpu power over time is enough to address (1).

I think (2) is best approached with Floris/Nixtux's ideas about priority targetting. I don't see the purpose of making t2 units immune to scout attacks, but I like the idea that t2/t3 units would prioritise not to attack scouts. There are already effective methods (e.g. hllt/beamer) of killing scouts in areas of the map which are not battlegrounds.

Idea: Lets suppose we've done something that fixes (2) already. So then imo all that scout spam is useful for is actually scouting (!) and getting near-constant los in battle. Instead, there could be a t2 building, similar to targetting fac, which gives los over a large-ish area of the map (maybe radius=2500).

Of course we'd have to price that building and choose its los range through some trial and error. I haven't even tried to think about the effect of doing this on 1v1 and ffa games yet.

I very much support albas point that there needs to be a good way to scout, or games are more likely to become porcy and boring. So if scout spam is successfully mitigated then smth should replace its role in terms of giving los.

[Silentwings]

If a sniper can't hit a scout, that's a problem to be fixed on the snipers side, no? Bigger weapon velocity or something.

Fixed for the next ba release.

[albator]

The Very thing that requires no finesse at all right now is advanced fusion spam and massive spam of any shit. Scout is not the problem here

[Silentwings]

Stay on topic pls =p

[albator]

Stay on topic pls =p

This is definitely the topic. Let me explain you: with advanced fusion, you make energy and energy is converted into metal. With metal and energy you do unit.....

EDIT: I have no idea what the problem with lag, I play SSM with Thousands of fighters and unit, or massive FFA and I always keep 20 fps whatever with my i5 750 (2009) (MT ofc)

I dont think BA should be optimize for computers of last decade.

[gajop]

reduce scout dmg drastically and/or make them crushable by all t3, and most t2 (non cons)

[Beherith]

The exact problem is that scout spam really loads CPU's, and that scouts tank too much damage from defensive structures that are long range (thus low ROF and high damage).
Its difficult to set annis and snipers to not shoot at scouts. They already prioritize targets based on cost of unit (they know it from radar blip as well).

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Just make annis and ddms(and some moving laser units) have constant laser weapons like the beamer and balance accordingly.
This is the safest route as it will not upset the balance much except against hordes of fast moving low hp units.

[Johannes]

Idea: Lets suppose we've done something that fixes (2) already. So then imo all that scout spam is useful for is actually scouting (!) and getting near-constant los in battle. Instead, there could be a t2 building, similar to targetting fac, which gives los over a large-ish area of the map (maybe radius=2500).

Of course we'd have to price that building and choose its los range through some trial and error. I haven't even tried to think about the effect of doing this on 1v1 and ffa games yet.

I very much support albas point that there needs to be a good way to scout, or games are more likely to become porcy and boring. So if scout spam is successfully mitigated then smth should replace its role in terms of giving los.

Straying from the topic a bit already, but the most sensible unit to give big LOS would be t2 radar, both mobile and static ones. Potentially vulnerable to being sniped too, which adds possibilities.



As far as being a pain to target with low RoF units due to scouts, I think that's just a natural counter to such units and totally fine. If you want to make most of such unit, manually aim it.
Now if a unit, be it sniper, anni or whatever, is considered to be undesirably bad because of the targeting difficulties - just make it strong enough overall so that they're usable, than try to eliminate their natural weaknesses by something unelegant. Units having weaknesses like this is interesting. I rather have an Annihilator that's potentially devastating when it hits the right target than a constant stream of reliable mediocrity.


And if you wanna make Juno a scout killer, why not make it do a tiny amount of damage to simply everything? Say 50 damage, 2 missiles kill a scout but other units hardly notice, more elegant that way and also potential hilarity for mass junos.


Is it that ground units have a higher CPU cost than same number of air units, btw? Since they have to take into account terrain and other units in their pathing.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Seems like juno is a go to when there is some gameplay/balance holes.
Eh...what should the juno do? Kill mines?Wind gens?Radars and jammers? and now scouts?