Skuttle Redesign

Skuttle is not good and has not been good for a while. This is mostly to do with other changes in Jumpjets and its poor role/design. Skuttle was not really designed but it has sort of been owled.

Originally Skuttle existed for symmetry between Jumpies and Spiders. Spy and Skuttle are both cloaking anti-heavy units. Skuttle and Jack were also an excuse for a lack of artillery in the factory. Skuttle can jump at heavy defenses and Jack can shrug off light ones. Skuttle still had the anti-shield role with the introduction of the old Firewalker.

The fleshing out of Jumpies has pushed Skuttle out of its potential roles:

• Placeholder is great anti-heavy.
• Firewalker is great artillery.

In theory Skuttle works great with Placeholder but in practice it is the worst of many options. Jack, Pyro and Firewalker can also be great with Placeholder. Jumpies are, in a sense, too fleshed out and powerful to use Skuttle. An improved Skuttle would need to have a decent role and this would just make its factory more powerful. This is the first problem with Skuttle.

The second problem with Skuttle is its poor design. Cloaked units generally have a problem with player interaction and counterplay. They all share a basic form of interaction: if you want to use cloaked units then you may need to drive back your opponents light screeners. But for this to be interactive your opponent has to consider screening important. Mostly sneaking cloaked units into place is a solo activity.

Most cloaked units augment the sneaky phase of their use with a high-interaction phase. A non-kamikaze cloaked unit begins a game of "kill/track down the intruder" when it attacks and this game tends to be highly interactive. Good examples are Scythes, Scorpions or Cloaker armies. The responding player has to rally forces to deal with the threat and knows to sweep a fairly specific area. Infiltrators are often equivalent to a kamikaze unit but they start a game of "protect my stunned thing" which has plenty of interaction. Cloakered Ticks and Roaches also begin a game of "find the cloaker".

The poor design of Skuttle that underpins its second problem is that it lacks interaction. A revealed Skuttle usually resolves itself within a fraction of a second. A Skuttle can be a stand alone attack with no possible local response after it is revealed. Infiltrator use is much more interesting because it requires a follow-up. Skuttle is also fiddly to use and very high risk high reward. These factors are its design problem, it is not fun to use or to have used against. Its high decloak radius was an attempt to accentuate the chaff decloaker game because there is nothing else to Skuttle.

There has been one idea for a Skuttle change. Saktoth wanted to make it deal some sort of fast burning fire damage so players had the option to rapidly retreat and repair. The problem with this is that all on-fire damage is standardized to one value. It also weakens the anti-static role because statics are more likely to be near constructors than mobile units.


Here is the core of my Skuttle redesign idea:

• Move Skuttle to Amph.
• Give it 300 or so cost.
• Make it a large area slowbomb, probably pure.

Skuttle is moved to Amph because Amph wants more units and Jump does not need Skuttle. Amph lacks good artillery options and historically Skuttle has been considered as a fake artillery replacement. The idea of the artillery replacement is you could jump a Skuttle into a defense line and follow up with units. A slowed defense effectively doubles the HP of your units and prevents opposing units from running away. Buoy energizes by maintaining the slow. A large AoE slowbomb is less fiddly because failure is more gradual. Failing to hit the center of a unit blob just reduces the number or amount that the units are slowed.

Of course, the downside is that an extra thing gets slow damage. Perhaps there should be a Quants-type rule against adding magic effects. What do people think? Any other ideas?

I agree with sprang, introducing an amph bomb and removing skuttle are independent matters.

while the skuttle may be unnecessary in its current form balance-wise, it's still a fun unit to use, which imo is a valid reason to keep it.

And as for an amph bomb, I've suggested that a few times, it needs to be underwater too and be called "Clam".

Problems amphs face:

- Sea -

- Dealing with urchin forests against another amph player (buoy can't attack UW units -- duck, scallop -- pure scallop would beat scallop + buoy with symmetrical metal application in UW domain)

- Dealing with scallop spam

- No cheap screening units under water + sonar is god. Makes it effectively anti-skuttle. Impossible to balance both land and sea applications for the skuttle without it being overpowered on land or underwhelming in sea.

- Terra porc without grizzley is a pain in the ass to deal with.

How would the slow skuttle deal with these things?

I agree with the problem of no interaction, but I am against removing it.
As others said it is an iconic unit, one of its kind. It can give great satisfaction when it succeeds, even if it failed 10 times before. And getting skuttled gives you this rare OMGWTF moment, when you realize your safe and well-protected whatever, wasn't actually that safe and well-protected...


My random idea to increase interaction and lessen the "very high risk high reward" factor:
Skuttle is not a cloaked jumping bomb, but a cloaked-jumping-bomb controller. :D The controller unit is cloaked too and spawns a single Skuttle "drone" with a long reload. Then the Skuttle-drone can be used like the current Skuttle, jump on targets and explode. But to do it, the controller unit has to be nearby, otherwise the Skuttle-drone wont explode. Lets say it has some short range antimatter teleporting device or whatever. :D Now whether the Skuttle-drone succeeds or not, there will begin the interaction game. Enemy will know the controller is nearby and needs to find it or will be skuttled again. Because the Skuttle-drone will be respawnable, it stats could be nerfed to make it easier to counter.
Effects of this idea:
- more interaction, the controller has to escape and enemy has to find it
- less risk that your expensive unit will do nothing, Skuttles are respawnable


Ok after putting more thought into it, it sounds like what cloaker + roaches already do. Whatever :)

Skuttle might conflict with ulti, but looking at how often games are lost to heavy/high-attrition units/balls, I wouldn't remove any anti-heavies.

The current skuttle is too random though. How about making it attack like puppy? This means once it's in range it gets a guaranteed hit on the target.

The lack of anti-heavy power jumpy has would be made worse with scuttle removal. Jacks can deal with 1 heavy unit, maybe two, but after that they start getting 1shot and lose by attrition.

quote: The controller unit is cloaked too and spawns a single Skuttle "drone" with a long reload. Then the Skuttle-drone can be used like the current Skuttle, jump on targets and explode. (..) Because the Skuttle-drone will be respawnable, it stats could be nerfed to make it easier to counter.

The Bomb-Controller is interesting idea but I think it with several small explosions it would also be quite good at anti-swarm. Not sure if that is wanted.

Sometimes Skuttle is fun. Sneak sneak, jump, boom, much reward. But often it feels very meh and annoying.
I do not like that the best way to skuttle things is when enemy does not pay attention because then they did not see the how their things exploded.

The size and model of units is supposed to reflect their function. Skuttle can cause big explosion that can massively shift the game but it is supertiny and hardly visible even when not cloaked.
There is already Tick & Roach that have the same mechanic of microing tiny thing that make or break the game and then go poff to one stray shot.

Why do the crawling bombs always have to be tiny units, fragile and cloaked? Every TA-mod has done that.
Why can it not be a large walking bomb that looks like a bomb? I think walking bombs deserve to be fat. A smaller but more explosive Sumo. With a scary logo on back. With a burning fuse on head. With enough health to waddle towards stuff so that the stuff gets scared and has to walk away.
The interactivity would be much improved: Even if an explosion might miss, it forces other units to retreat/react.
The fat Skuttle would be a most interactive experience ever.

Introduce a new fireball class? Like "thermite" fireball for high-temperature damaging fire? Or a D-gun fireball?

Pxtl it's not like there is any unit in zk that is uncounterable (Except iwin). As long as this is the case, you'll always find that the cause of your death could've been avoided by predicting and countering the counter.

If you're trying to say that every battle should have some kind of interaction, you're right that once you spotted the skittle, the battle is already over. Either it blows you up on decloak or it doesn't.

I'd agree that cloaked units in general are not much fun to interact with, but they also have interaction in the form of predicting attacks and screening areas.

The only thing that I'd change regarding the skuttle is its reliability. Luck should not be a deciding factor, even if it acts in the victim's favor.

More luck! More randomness! Leave it as it is and make damage randomly variate - I for one would welcome 1/100 chance of nuke level explosion...