Detriment model

I love the shoulder gun! Conceptually, it should be a weapon with a reason to be sometimes idle and sometimes deployed... some reason other than mere reload time. Otherwise there would be little point in it retracting, and having it retract (or rather, having it *un*-retract) is what makes it cool.

Idea one: anti-swarm.

Idea two: anti-air.

Idea three: field disruptor. Within an area of effect: cloaks and jamming are disabled, shields don't recharge, and power grids don't transmit (so no overdriving mexes and no powering Annihilators). Maybe even no nanoing, so no building/repairing/reclaiming/rezzing?

Whatever the shoulder gun's effect, to use it the Det has to stop moving and firing its other guns. The idea is for the weapon a) to be useful only in certain situations, and b) to have a substantial disadvantage for using it. Otherwise it would never be retracted.

Two more ideas:

It's a limited-function nanoturret that can suck up wreckage and heal the Det.

Or, the opposite: It's a big-ass gun that does absurd amounts of damage, but also damages the Detriment.

Actually, annis counter dets quite well. They can each fire a few times before det can hit them, and they have large HP anyway. Each does about 8k damage to det, more when you have more than one. With disruptor field, it would be unable to move, but open a spot for your army to attack.

I don't think that kind of counter relationship to Anni's and DDM's is helpful for the Det at all.

The shoulder gun is a perfect activable weapon of some kind, we'll make it do something cool and impressive.

Make shouldergun shot a Red Killer (from Disco Rave Party) but with a explosion diameter of a mohogeo explosion.

The det special weapon could be a mass EMP dgun, with 0 range and and AoE extending quite a ways (like EMPing almost everything to moho geo explosion range) and stunning the det for a long time (45-60 seconds?).

Yeah we're aware of that Eddie. But disabling DDM/Anni does not add any good mechanics to the game, if anything, those units are one of the few things that can actually slow it down, there is no reason to remove that counter. Its main mechanics and counter relationships ATM are that Starlight, Ultimatum, large enough air swarms and BLOD-armed units (Bantha, Pene, Anni) can beat it before it gets into nuke radius, while anything else will generally die in its death blast (though you need to soften it up first if you expect to kill it with Anni's). This means you want to get it as deep into enemy territory as possible, and you don't want it sitting in your own defense line, the opposite of how you'd use a Bantha.

The fact that it can already kill almost anything that gets in range makes it tricky to design a special weapon for, because a long ranged one will mess up some of it's counter relationships with BLOD-armed units. We can probably change the counter mechanics somewhat so that the Gauss arm weapons are better against swarms, while the shoulder cannon freezes the Det in place (Meaning you have to stop your push/can't retreat) in place, and cuts a beam of death with a slow turret traverse (Starlight style) that can kill a few heavier units before having to reload. Due to the low traverse (And probably, a somewhat limited fire arc) you can probably potentially outrun it or split your units up so it has to re-aim when it kills one, making for interesting micro mechanics- the best way to avoid this weapon would be to to sorround the Det and attack from multiple angles

5 scorpions will kill one easily
15K in metal will do 100K emp damage when you unload the specials
beyond that i've killed a detri with skuttles

For that matter it just takes several Stilettos.

That80sJanitor: Agreed re the chest gun being too wimpy. I too would love something like the Iron Giant, or even just Iron Man. If they keep the chest gun as is, I just above suggested using it for anti-swarm. But I'd rather see something like a barrage of rockets fired from the shoulder for anti-swarm, and have the chest be some kind of big-ass-mofo oh-shit weapon.

... AND keep the retractable shoulder cannon.

For a total of FIVE weapons systems, not counting anything on the back (okay, the sticky-outy-things are reactor shells, but what about that sticky-uppy thing? what's that?). Why arm gauss cannons AND head lasers AND shoulder rockets AND a shoulder gun AND a chest beam? Why? So that there's a veritable symphony of mayhem surrounding this unit as it gently waltzes its way through the enemy base.

Overkill should be this robot's middle name. :)