fleas are overpowered

I really don't know why they aren't getting nerfed. They're tied for the cheapest unit, they're far and away the cheapest armed unit, they have great DPS/cost, they have insane LOS, they're ridiculously fast, and they cloak for free. The last part is most ridiculous because you can park a flea on a cliff at the start of the game and have perfect LOS on someone's factory for a total investment of 20 metal.

They should have zero LOS while cloaked. This would let you use fleas to watch certain areas of the map (when something decloaks them they get LOS), but not use them as a permanent almost-free spy network.

They're meant to offer the Spider factory a considerable intelligence advantage over other factories. Given that spiders are totally reliant on the flea to raid, keeping track of the enemy with them and finding insolated cons etc is incredibly important. I think they have good mechanics.

What is needed, I think, is an active form of cloak detection, which would solve this and a host of other issues.

I've been waiting for something like this thread to come up so i could rotflmao.

Next thread: firefly is op.

The skuttle was owled because we have no reliable way to detect it. Active detection would allow us to revert, even buff it.

It wouldn't be a way 'to stop fleas' (What fleas do with intel is good and allows you to really pull some neat tricks), but a way to make it so they can at least be detected under SOME circumstances, rather than being free intel the whole game.

Right now, there is an active form of detection. It is called spamming every square of the map with units. With units like the Clogger and Flea this is not actually as hard as it seems. You can also use nanoshields (nanoframes at < 1% complete). This hasn't caught on in the metagame so you guys probably don't realize that the way you to stop cloaked units right now, is to spam zenith nanoframes in every unused inch of your base (Seriously, I do this!). Also stops tacnukes (zenith is tall enough).

This mechanic is dumb. DumbdumbDUMB.

So right now the favored implementation is about 30%-20% of radar distance reveals cloaked units, but entering radar range with a cloaked unit reveals the radar itself. This way, you can know easily where the enemy radar is and avoid the detection zone with your cloaked units. This preserves the sneaking-into-a-base mechanic, while creating some interaction and back and forth between players as to where they place and how they avoid the no-cloak zones.

I only worry that the current radar, with any reasonable decloak range, is so cheap that you can probably spam the whole map with them- Though it's only this cheap to encourage people to make it, and with decloak people are probably more likely to make it so maybe we can up the price. Or perhaps we can have it off by default and add an e-cost (Though people are awful about turning such things on).

Right now the only mobile radar units are comm with radar module and radar plane, both of which are underused. So that's not so much of a problem IMO.

I just told you, there is already a form of active cloak detection, and it's actually quite cheap and 100% foolproof. It's spamming nanoframes, burrowed fleas, or cloggers everywhere, and it's quite easy to cover as large an area as any active detector would if you're really that worried about cloak. You lack imagination if you do not see how spamming long lines of 0.01% built zeniths several rows thick behind (Or in front!) of all your static defenses is actually really effective at preventing cloaked units getting in your base. You've probably never seen it done but your elo is high enough that you should understand how well this works.

No, I do not think fleas need a nerf. I think skuttle needs to be de-owled, Scythes can easily blow up superfusions or mohogeos on any spread out map or FFA and can kill a whole base pretty nicely as a rush unit in 1v1, the nanoframe spam mechanic is dumb as dirt, as is rubbing up against things to see them, and licho thinks Snipers are too frustrating to deal with and would probably owl them too unless we get active detection.

SC2 uses active detection and it works quite well. Corsair + DT was a common pro level strategy in SC1, corsairs to snipe overlords (Which are UBIQUITOUS detectors). You'll always know where a detection structure is, so it becomes a specific target to snipe if you want to utilize cloak.

The proposal has some problems and they can be discussed, but that it 'completely ruins the stealth game, thats just how it is, no way around it.' is not going to get far when we already have active detection (rubbing up against stuff like a horny dog).

I want to, but this bug actually exists to balance the game at higher level play. With the APM of a high level player you can pull off some horrible things with cloaked units, especially in FFA and spread out maps. I also personally dislike clogger spam.

Nanoframes can also be used to block shots, which is THE method of getting your comm unstunned from racketeers (You can even use it in front of other static defenses, and the racketeer will just keep stunning the nanoframe uselessly). It's great at forcing snipers and penetrators to holdfire, I always lay down razors kiss nanoframes behind me if I have to retreat my commander from those units. Get this too: You can use a zenith nanoframe to block tacnukes. You heard me right. You can thank me for ruining the missile silo if you guys start using this regularly.

I'd like to fix all of that but first we need some other, better mechanic to replace it.

Then you get 'spam radar planes on patrol'. Which would be fine if you could maybe, slip between the gaps in the radar planes or snipe them somehow. But planes are very hard to snipe (maybe you can drive them back with a screamer) and they travel really fast, and to see them to avoid them probably, they'd have to be always visible, etc.

20-30% of a radar is only 600/400~ range, a HLT or LLT, and is not that great. Either way that implimentation might not work and we'd have to cut it down to 10% even (210 range, basically nothing) or have it only for the adv radar. I think the best is probably 20-30% and an E drain and on/off, so you can elect whether you want to make your radars visible to the enemy and spot cloak, or keep them invisible and not.

i also think the problem lies in the abuse of nanoframes. i never felt cloaking units were too powerful, nor were detection methods anywhere as realiable as a building or unit that has a certain radius in which all cloak isnt working anymore. to me, this looks quite balanced, introducing a 100% hardcounter to all cloaks will break it.

using zenith frames as a method on the front lines may help sometimes but is just a different thing from a radius of detection, the zenith just decloaks in a tiny radius and can be killed with just about anything. to kill a single radar that is behind the front line is a different subject, if you can do that you can probably just kill the porc as whole - esp since you dont have any cloakers to kill that single, weak structure, which is one of the main jobs of cloaking units.

so far nanoframes did not have a great impact on any game i have played. i cant remember any situation where a cloaker of mine was detected by a frame. but in any case, a quick and easy fix for that would be to just remove los from frames and/or make them decay. also reduce los on dirtbags :)

that it works in other games doesnt mean its gonna work here. i didnt play sc online, but from what i know from sc1 single player the whole game is different. zk has unlimited ressources, while sc does afaik not -> you cant just build tons of detection units in sc because at some point you have wasted all your ressources on something that doesnt shoot. in zk its not a big problem to build a few more of this and that when needed, in the long run. at some point in the game, you will be able to afford to plaster every inch of your territory with detectors -> cloak is out of the game. if you do the same with zenith frames, you cant walk there anymore, and its a huge effort to do that, you would have to start each individual frame manually, thats not only a lot of mouseclicks but you also have to watch the builder doing it all the time walking from one spot to another. you cant compare that to a detector.

oh :) well thx

It is OP. But even klon with his 2k elo doesn't know how to do it. It's an underexploited high level play. So are cloaked units, because they take so much micro to dodge things. At high levels and in certain circumstances (open maps) they keep eachother balanced.

But nanospam is stupid and exploitative, so if we're going to remove it, we need another way to counter cloak. Also, removing LoS from things doesn't help, it's decloak radius, not LoS, that matters.

And yeah, overlords were everywhere, yet corsair DT was one of the strongest protoss strats (The 'Bisu build').