new unit sketch: exploding healer

Hi!

This is a rough idea for a unit concept that has been in my head for a while and I'd like to describe it here to get your reactions to it.

The gist of it would be: a unit somewhat like the Roach or the Puppy, but when it explodes, it doesn't do damage - it heals within its area of effect. In more detail:

- The unit is defenseless. It can only suicide voluntarily or be destroyed. In either case, the effect is the same.
- When the unit explodes, it heals a certain amount of hitpoints within the explosion's area of effect. This effect does not distinguish between friend or foe.
- The unit should probably be slow and vulnerable. It's just a walking health pack for one time use.
- The unit should probably only leave metal for reclaim if it was damaged, not when it suicided. That way, the player using the unit has to pay the metal cost, but risks feeding metal as well as healing to the opposition if not careful.

New kinds of scenarios with this unit:
- "instant-healing" of precious units by a swarm of these units
- accidential healing of the enemy: the enemy attacks your position, you fail to retreat your units in time and these healers get blown up by the enemy while his units are standing next to them. ouch!
- accidential healing: your units are too close to the enemy when you activae this unit, healing both sides

Using these things should always come with the risk of helping the enemy instead. I think this might add some really funny twists to some skirmishes.

What do you think?

There's still a tradeoff - producing these units still takes time that could be used to build other units. So although the final act of healing may be near-instantaneous, the buildup to it is not.

One of these things should probably heal roughly 100 points in total or so - not too much, but it should be noticable. So you'd nead a huge swarm to restore something like a Dante or Krow to full health. But it could save the life of a retreating precious unit if used correctly.

Of course repair interacts with enemy. Havent u ever stumbled across situation when u sent ur con to cap a far mex, and so did your enemy, and both of u didnt pay much attention to the cons? In the output either of you (depending who get there 1st) helps the other one to build the mex. And you are enemies. The same with reclaiming half-built enemy structures. Im sure that if i told my con to repair enemy unit manually, it would do so. Well, at least tryied, i suppose it wouldnt live long enough to actually repair it...

I meant that the enemy cannot do anything to prevent or influence the repairing process if it is done all immediately.

The repair command can technically be targeted at enemies but that is not related to the issue at hand.

Perhaps if not insta heal these heal bombs could give some kind of healing aura for the unit after the explosion?

uh and Blaswings do next to nothing btw with minimum of enemy AA in the area.

Thanks for your thoughts everyone.

Shadowfury333: I read your post several times but I don't quite understand your "health trap". What gave you the idea of such a thing? I agree that a healing unit competes with caretakers.

sprang: I guess I don't yet understand your definition of interactivity.

Orphelius: a healing aura would have the added benefit of showing more clearly what happened. And if it were localised around the explosion (e.g. "a swarm of repair nanobots" or whatever") it would be an incentive to grab and hold that area until the effect fades. But some units already have self-healing capabilities. So an aura seems slightly out of place to me in the ZK universe.

Okay, let's play with the unit properties for the fun of it. Here are some variations on the concept that come to my mind:

- make it explode violently if killed by the enemy (e.g. Roach-like damaging explosion): nobody would take it to the front line and use it there because you don't place obvious time bombs next to your units.
- make it move really slowly so it cannot effectively retreat: then it's better and more efficient to move damaged units to the back to repair them, where caretakers and cons can do the same job in (relative) safety.
- bigger change: make it a support unit that simultaneously reclaims metal and repairs nearby units from the reclaimed metal at a high speed (separate from your normal metal economy). If it explodes, it leaves a healing aura where it was destroyed. That way, it's only useful during/after battles and only in areas with debris. Its high repair rate is the incentive for use, but it can be killed before it completes its job and would then potentially help the enemy for a while. What if this were a unit from the strider hub? Would that make it too expensive?

Some long-winded bonus story: the inspiration for that unit came while remembering the game Magicka. It's an excellent game focused on coop spellcasting where the spells of different players interact when cast. The results can be anything from suprisingly good to devastatingly bad. The hallmark of that game is that the stressful situation in which the spells need to be cast just generate total chaos, but in a fun way. For example: player A heals player B with a healing beam, player C fires an arcane beam at an opponent - crossing player A's healing beam. The resulting explosion kills player A. Ups. Luckily, the revive spell is the first one the game teaches you.

While such total chaos is obviously not appropriate in an RTS, I still like the concept of actions being able to backfire on the player in a surprising, slightly annoying, but not game-losing way. This healing unit was intended as a way to do just that.

I brought up "healing trap" because one of the qualities I mentioned that make suicide units make sense over more permanent ones is "sneakiness", and roaches and ticks are typically used as traps to lure enemies onto.

Anyway, your suggestions for how it backfires definitely help with the interaction angle, however I'm still not sure what the motivation for the player to use it is. Presumably it would be part of a factory, so that would need to be something to consider as well in terms of tradeoffs.

Your bigger change idea actually sounds like a neat interaction for cons in general, or maybe as a differentiator for one of the constructors. Granted, it does remove the reclaim xor repair decision that needs to be made for cons. Whether that decision is truly meaningful or useful is the question there.

As for Magicka: What about healing mines? You bring all that up about life+arcane beams and forget the most obvious parallel? Granted, that may be because I mainly play Wizard Wars rather than vanilla Magicka. Life mines + Life walls + self-targeted explosion (usually arcane/death, doesn't hurt user) is the only way to heal midfight without dying first.

There is no possible way to counter it since it will do its job anyhow.

You see the healing bomb and you have 2 options:
- you leave it alive meaning that enemy can use its healing burst to heal things on later date
- you kill it thus making it heal things around it anyhow

Either way the unit will acheive its goal which makes it almost uncounterable and also quite frustrating when encountered.

If you also want to make it expload then what is the point? Is it meant to deal damage and heal at the same time?

Buff for outlaw: waves heal friendly units.

The real thing is:
There is no need for such unit. Idea is cool that is granted but why have it since there are constructors already that do all the things that suicide healer does? Alse this wont change for a simple matter of how healing, hitpoints, building and repair is handled by spring engine: cons need to have ability to repair in order to build things so it can't be restricted anyhow.

Please prove me wrong tot_durch_sterben.

Also to show some light of Sprung means.
Like he (I am pretty sure he is male? please don't judge me SF333) and I repeated after: repair cannot be prevented with case of heal bombs. They will heal no matter what opponent does.
- Kill heal bomb - it heals.
- Don't kill heal bomb it self destructs - it still heals.
In opposition to constructors which might be just killed stopping the process of healing the unit.
Also your proposal of making it abruptly expload when killed by enemy makes the unit incostant and inconstancy in ZK is avoided with a swiftness of a lynx.