Sentry Drone is rarely used #862
Comments
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Sentry Drone is a disgrace for Zero Hour. |
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In 1.04, it's so ashamed of itself that it doesn't even play a voice line when leaving the factory. |
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Detection range is either 200 or 225. Depending on if DetectionRange is implemented correctly in StealthDetectorUpdate or if the VisionRange is always used. Fog of war revealed is 350 vs 400 of a Missile Defender. That means that the Missile Defender reveals 30% more area. For comparison, a Listening Outposts reveals 500, which is more than twice the area. |
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upgrading vision to 400 wouldn't hurt then. what's detection range for outpost or lotus? |
Daym, that hate is real 😂 show some love. |
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Stubbjax: |
xezon
added
Design
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I think one idea to improving them is making them stealth all the time except when shooting, instead of stealth only when stationary |
Maybe could give machinegun by default and replace it with stealth upgrade for cheap, maybe from strat center so it doesn't delay important production. |
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I would prefer to make it not overcomplicated. It just becomes a maintenance burden for the developers if we add new designs for this crap unit. |
Agree, dont make it too complicated with this unit. |
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Added all mentioned proposals to main post. So far I think the following proposals are accepted by everyone as minimum change:
Decrease to 25 or 50%.
Add sound.
Standardize price to $800 for all factions.
Reduce to $800, same like TOW.
Match MD range of 400. These changes however don't satisfy the needs of everyone, so #discussion ongoing. |
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As for Proposal 7, what do you mean by Vision Range? Vision range, Shroud clearing range or Stealth detection range? Maybe make all of them individual proposals. |
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Splitted them up. |
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Relevant Stats Dump |
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Here is my analysis on Sentry Drone. Vehicle costsThere is no way the Sentry Drones are more valuable than Humvee. Yes they have Stealth detection and Stealth capability, but they spawn without gun by default, have no transport slots and cannot buy drones. It looks safe to match price with Humvee. On a side note, I would even consider matching Humvee price of SWG with AFG to 800. SWG is factually worse General than AFG, and it also ranks bottom in casual games (42.67% winrate) and second last in pro games (39.19% winrate) (see GenTool data in our Design Balancing folder). So it should not be more expensive than AFG, maybe not even more expensive than USA. And then Sentry Drone Price can match it. As for AFG, it does not need to be priced any better than 800. AFG has stealth detection on King Raptors. It can be happy with a generous 50 cost reduction as is.
Alternative to favor SWG more:
Vehicle build timesAll Humvees and Sentry Drones build in 10 seconds (+ door time). It is not clear to me whether or not this needs adjusting. The data does not indicate. I do like the simplicity of consistency. LocomotorSentry Drone And Humvee have very similar locomotor. Both have same top speed and turn speed. There are 2 differences: Sentry Drone drives faster than Humvee when damaged and has lower acceleration than Humvee. The faster SpeedDamaged looks reasonable. It is a scout unit, so ability to flee the scene quick is nice perk. However, the slower acceleration is not something it needs. It takes 1.00 seconds to accelerate, as opposed to 0.06 seconds for Humvee.
DeploymentSentry Drone has a depoyment time of 1000 millisecond for both packing and unpacking. That means it requires 1 second to acquire a fresh target, and 2 seconds between engaging two targets if it needs to move to new position. This is a huge time and performance penalty. And not just that: It will also make the unit feel clunky and unresponsive, which is comparable to how units feel unresponsive in laggy matches. And no one likes laggy matches. Therefore, a removal of the deployment is reasonable, or alternatively a significant reduction if it can be accompanied with charge sound or model animation (complex, more work). Machine Gun WeaponMachine Gun strength of Humvee and Sentry Drone is comparable. Sentry Drone deals 20% less damage, but the vehicle tanks 30% more damage, because Sentry Drone has more health. This looks fair. However, Sentry Drone is not trainable, meaning it will not benefit from veterancy buffs like Humvee does.
Humvee gun gains an astonishing 80% damage boost on Vet 2 with its Machine gun. This will outperform the Sentry Gun more than twice. Perhaps it is justified to match the Sentry Drone Gun damage with Humvee Gun damage, maybe even surpassing it a bit.
UpgradeSentry Drone Gun has some things going against it. Drone starts without gun by default, but Humvee has it always. Humvee can get a second gun for 20% less cost at same build time. And that second gun is really good, because it does not just target ground units, but also air units.
Structures and light vehicles have around 50% COMANCHE_VULCAN and 100% EXPLOSION, and tanks have 25% COMANCHE_VULCAN and 100% EXPLOSION. EXPLOSION is a much better damage type than COMANCHE_VULCAN. We can roughly say that Humvee Damage Output vs all things on ground is effectively doubled. Since SentryDroneGun is not better than HumveeGun, there is no justification to price it at 1000. 800 to match it with TOW Missile Upgrade is fair. As for build time, it looks fair to halve it from 30 seconds to 15 seconds, because it is nowhere near as good as TOW, since it cannot shoot on Aircraft. Maybe another 5 seconds can be cut to compensate for the 20% lower damage output and/or the Drone requiring an upgrade to begin with to do any sorts of combat.
HealingWhen Drone is hurt, it can be repaired by driving back to home base. It drives fast. And it can be repaired with Ambulance. And with Repair Generals Power. It does not need auto healing. Handling
Stealth Detection Range
Stealth Detection range looks okay. It is lower than of other units, but it is cheap and moves fast to compensate for it. Shroud Clearing Range
Sentry Drone has slightly better Shroud Clearing Range than Humvee, but it is completely dwarfed by Scout Drone (100 cost). An increase to 400 or higher is reasonable. ConclusionThere are many things that can be adjusted as shown above. We do not need to overcrank. Many small tweaks look very safe. |
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I would still go with all these safe changes, it's certainly an improvement over 1.04. These are my choices:
Is it completely satisfying though?Not completely, the setup is still problematic, it's still too expensive without MG and MG Upgrade is still a waste of time/money compared to TOW. My best suggestion would still be to make the MG an Unit Upgrade with the following SAFE costs:
Building a few is cheaper and faster, spamming will be worse.
If it's too controversial I just forget about it and happily move along with the accepted changes. Auto RepairI would still like to further discuss the Auto-Repair feature though, I think it would be a nice improvement because:
Balancing Auto-Repair:
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I go with the following: CostI say it should be standardized regardless of faction at 700 build TimeLeave as is LocomotorLeave as is DeploymentRemove Machine gunLeave as is Upgrade$500 @ 10s HealingNo. Shroud Clearing Range400 We don't need to buff the unit itself it's fine, it's the upgrade that's the issue, i think with these solutions it will be a solid choice. One More important noteIt does benefit from Drone armor doesn't it? Well how much? We haven't considered that it seems. |
Off Topic: should china outposts also don't have |
Outpost has |
Few findings:
As can be seen in the pictures above, it's very hard to be stealthy at all.
New proposals:
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Agreed. That's hilarious.
Same is true for every other unit or building in the game. Requires engine changes.
Or Ambo. |
Can't smoke rendering be removed all together for specific units (no matter whether it can stealth or not)?
Quoting my previous post:
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It can, but then why does the same issue persist on other units? Not saying this shouldn't be fixed, but if so, it should be fixed in Thyme, for all units, thus keeping the smoke as indicator for damage. |
Maybe it should prevent them |
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Lets take further discussion here as it's the main topic, no need to open anything new.
Wouldn't recommend investing almost 2k and 40 seconds of production time into one single MG drone early game, sounds like a sure loss in any matchup. Like rebels are much cheaper, don't delay WF production and can be produced in higher quantities to guard mode multiple locations at once. It sounds like a decent tactic that surely others have thought of aswell, yet never seen anybody do it. |
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Instead of always stealth, another way of doing it, is making it reveal shortly during the deploy and undeploy transitions. Then you might think: Ok now you can just waypoint it in circles to keep it unrevealed. Well no, then audio will give away it's presence. |
Not clear to me if this is possible with current scripting capabilities. I do like the removal of the deployment. It felt like lag. |
Is it possible to reveal it only for a few seconds after giving a move command? That was actually more the intention of the idea.
True, because it's lacking visual or aural clues. The nuke cannon for example has a much longer deploy time, yet it doesn't feel like lag because of the clear animations. Edit: I actually got an animation idea, but I'm not sure how hard it is, what about tilting the gun up (like 45 degrees) when it's packed? Btw, regarding scaffold hunting, perhaps it's possible to remove it's structure targeting capability? Though would that also deny targeting demo traps eg? Another cool feature would be the ability to clear mines or disarm traps, again just brainstorming :D And another thing, I feel the moving sound is way too low pitched, it sounds like a heavy vehicle and doesn't sound very distinctive either. |
Potential good uses for the unit:
*MG needed.
Negatives:
Stats
Price & Build Time:
DPS, AttackRange & Armor:
*Battleplan from Strategy Center.
**Drone Armor upgrade from Strategy Center.
Vision & Stealth Detection Range:
Proposals
Proposal 1:
Remove or decrease deployment time.
Proposal 2:
Add visual and/or audio clues for deployment.
Proposal 3:
Reevaluate pricing and/or build time.
Proposal 4:
Reevaluate pricing and/or build time for the MachineGun upgrade.
Proposal 5:
Give MachineGun by default, or reimplement it as unit upgrade (same like a HellFire Drone or Propaganda Tower).
Proposal 6:
Add auto-repair.
Proposal 7:
Enhance shroud clearing range.
Proposal 8:
Enhance stealth detection range.
Proposal 9:
Remove tire tracks, they completely give away the Sentry's position.
Proposal 10:
Remove smoke effects when damaged (Auto-Repair alternative), smoke makes the Sentry visible permanently.
Proposal 11:
Sentry Drone can climb mountains. Helps with sneakily entering and escaping enemy bases, it already has trouble doing that since it's revealed when moving. Many maps are chokepointy aswell.
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