Vandal VS. new Jethro

Well, now that the Jethro got some love, what is to be about the Vandal?

It's terribly underused for one reason : It's just not worth it. Since it doesn't have any special snowflake stuff like many of the other AA units, the simplest solution would be to reduce the price down to 80.

Basically making it more of a mass-AA that can more easily survive against slower units by spreading out.

Any opinions on how to improve it?

quote: Alternatively give it shield.

Yes. Give shieldcon shield. Give cloakcon cloak. Give cloak-aa cloak. Give shield-aa shield.

Give all shieldbots shields. Give all cloakbots cloak >.<

There's no reason to buff it. It's already on the edge of being too powerful.

The Felon problem is not related to AA, it's just too powerful altogether. Don't mix up things.

uh?
to my knowledge, vandal has always been the worst mobile AA.
I wouldn't call it underused, but I would call it ineffective.

if I could change somthing about it, I would increase its alpha (keep DPS the same, increase reload time.) it does fire missiles, afterall.

vandal can get away with being half-useless because shield-bots are hyper resilient and also have the felon & outlaw (which owns many gunship types).

vandal is still a noobtrap though. When I play shieldbot I use the resilient cons to push with my units and throw up fixed AA as I move forward. relying on exclusively on vandals for AA is cruisin for a bruisin

^ it still has its uses..

what? its projectiles only do 70 damage! its problem is that it has no alpha, meaning its efficiency against bombers is virtually nill.

Make its weapon do a little slow-damage in addition to straight damage like the Outlaw does. Boom, you've got your special power that's distinct, thematic to the lab (like the Outlaw, it's a damage + slow weapon) without resorting to "all shieldbots must have shields!"

Vandal is alright. IMO we should probably go through and do a general reappraisal of mobile AA DPS to make sure they're all in reasonable values, possibly tone them down a little, and strengthen flex-AA units.

I've considered slow on the felon, however...

1. This makes it way worse when wasting its shots vs razors, solars, etc- the slow component is totally wasted.
2. Slow is actually really good against air, and is likely to make them even better.
3. They sort of 'snipe' targets. The slow will help when retreating/low on shields, but there isn't much point slowing a target that you intend to kill with your massive alpha-strike.

It might tone down their 'all or nothing' nature where they're useful as support if drained and arent the major DPS in your shieldball anymore, but that's kind of what makes them interesting?

We've done that a couple of times. We can't do it much more without rebalancing the defender. But I mean more like the Janus having a longer track distance and more acceleration, some units that can fire at air such as the banisher having a faster turret traverse rate, the scout boat getting a bit more DPS, the slasher getting a long-needed overhaul, jump fac relying more on the slow from moderator to synergize with the archangel.