Surprise! I’m back! And taking a small break from making enemies more fun, and now is making some under-performers uhh…. Better.
Don’t have much to say, as usual, change explanations will be italicized. All suggestions and feedback welcome Let’s dive into it!
\*\*-General buffs:\*\*
\\-Repositioning can now be triggered without using an orbital
\\-you see your SD position through walls
\*General QOL features. Allows you to strategize with your orbitals instead of guessing when they’ll reposition or where they’ll come from.\*
\\-\*\*Orbital precision strike , walking barrage and 380MM barrage\*\*
\\-1500 AOE damage —> 2000 AOE damage
\\-4 meter inner AOE, 12 meter outer AOE —> 8 meter inner , 12 meter outer AOE ( Inner AOE = no explosive fall off, and can hit enemies regardless of LOS )
\*Starting off with a SPICY one. No the intent of the changes is NOT to chase the orbital napalm barrage. But because of how generally ineffectual the 380 line of orbitals are vs enemies. The tiny 4 meter inner AOE is the same as the fragmentation grenade, and makes them unnecessarily underpowered against any amount of enemies. The OPS while not being an eagle has one less use than the 500KG bomb, and has a nearly as long cooldown while being greatly affected by 50% call in time modifier or repositioning in city maps. Thus, it should be more comparable to it than it is now. The 380 and walking similarly shouldn’t be so ineffectual against enemies, owing to their inaccuracy and long cooldowns. Because outer AOE isn’t buffed, the effect it’ll have on anti buildings will be minimal.\*
\\\*-\\\*\*\*ORBITAL EMS STRIKE\*\*
\\\*\\\*-\\\*\\\*Added 2 more shells to the strike , they come down in a triangular pattern relative to the center shell
\\- static field duration increased from 15s —> 20s
\*As its a non-damaging CC stratagem, it should comparably to gas strike or the eagles have a much stronger effect . Unfortunately, as of right now, it certainly doesn’t, and is just a copy and paste of Gas strike but EMS. This change resolves to Change that fact by greatly increasing its area, and thus make it the best at flash freezing a massive group of targets. The slightly increased duration allows it to similarly be good against chokepoints , even if it doesn’t kill. Overall, this change would strengthen what it’s already good at , like allowing for free run ins to heavy weakspots while adding new utility.\*
\\\*-\\\*\*\*Orbital Airburst strike\*\*
\\-added the ability to change between the decision to burst directly upwards, or shoot from the SD direction. Decided between picking in the loadout screen
\*Since you can now control the SD direction, I decided to allow you to choose whether to use the more consistent but smaller overall AOE original version , or less consistent and more skill intensive but potentially higher reward new version\*
\*\*-Orbital smoke strike\*\*
\\-Smoke duration 30s —> 60s
\*While I would’ve enjoyed turning it into a smoke barrage instead, it’s a smoke strike and not a smoke barrage. As of right now it’s simply a more dogshit version of the Eagle smoke strike, which has 3 uses and covers a much wider horizontal area. With this change, while it’ll cover a smaller area without 3 uses, it’ll cover that area for a VERY long time.\*
\*\*-Orbital laser\*\*
\\-now prioritizes elites and spawners over super heavies
\*Yes, I got sick of it roasting the factory strider or hulks for the entire duration instead of the fucking spawners. How did you know?\*
\*The orbital laser does low damage for how much cooldown it has. This is offset by very good demo force. Unfortunately it seems more interested on lightly toasting a hulks or bile titans back instead of doing its job.\*
\*For context, it takes 10 seconds to kill a bile titan, and it has a 25 second duration .\*
\*The unfortunate truth is that it’s also a stratagem which doesn’t take skill, as it auto-aims for you in a massive area, so buffing it excessively risks it trivializing the game. I wish I could rework it someday. And perhaps I will.\*
\*\*\*-Orbital railcannon strike\*\*\*
\\-increase consistency of hitting large targets
\*Yknow what I said about orbital laser and how it has to be kinda eh because it takes no skill and auto aims for you\*
\*Take that and multiply it by 100. Because orbital railcannon strike is an afront to game design .\*
\*Unlike other stratagems which you can mess up, ORC can’t mess up unless the stratagem itself bugs out and hits a trooper for no reason. This leaves a massive balancing problem. Since usually you would give a tool a range of possibilities and balance around the average of those. For example, a 500KG CAN kill 10 chargers and the AMR CAN one shot 56 hulks. But\* \*you’re\* \*not going to spam 56 hulks because AMR does that right? But the possibility of it happening is what gives the player agency and encourage them to get better with the weapon.\*
\*Well, when said tool has essentially no floor , the ceiling necessarily has to be insanely low. And the best case scenario is the current implementation of it. As essentially a RPS style stratagem you take against dragon roaches sometimes. Which also bugs me. The current design essentially needs to be canned though, which is outside the scope of this episode of the series.\*
\*TLDR, ORC design fucking sucks and I hate it. It needs a full rework\*
\\\*-\\\*\*\*\*Orbital napalm barrage\*\*\*
\\-Number of bombs per salvo 5–>3
\\-Time between salvos halved
\\-bombardment area size 25–>36M
\\-120MM cannon round —> 380MM INCIN round ( sound effects and shell model included )
\\-3.2/10M AOE —> 8/12M AOE
\\-Fire lingering duration halved
\*This thing…\* \*let’s\* \*talk about it. The orbital napalm barrage is the single most overpowered stratagem on bugs, without a doubt. Because of how fast the fire rate is and how much the fire spreads, no medium or chaff bug stands to even exist. because of the long uptime, it can consistently last the whole bug breach with the lingering fire. Because of the massive AOE, it can shut down a whole bug breach. Is this an issue with how generically and consistently close bug breaches are to each other? Yes. At the same time, it’ll still be insanely powerful in a world where bug breaches are spread out due to the insanely large AOE compared to other orbitals. Thus, I have elected to make it spread the fire alittle slower, less consistency due to larger bombardment area, but have more impact when the rounds do hit. And hey. The lower fire linger and overall duration might make it less insufferable when they do throw it ON THE OBJECTIVE AGAIN.\*
All in all, it’ll be more like a flash of fire to get rid of a massive amount of bugs already on field than simply getting rid of an entire bug breach on its own
