This is something that's been gnawing at me for a little while. Looking at the flea, the Dart seems really underpowered. It wins in a straight fight vs the flea, sure, but it: - Can't climb - Has much less dps/cost - Can't really outpace the flea - Can't cloak - Can only be fielded in half the numbers fleas can - Is still horribly beaten by anything that fleas can't take on, including all other raiders. All these things mean it's a worse scout and a worse raider. I'd be in favour of increasing its hp, alpha or even speed (slightly). Should it be changed? Edit: Or maybe this means the flea is overpowered. I mean, I think I'd still use it to scout even if it had no guns.
+5 / -0
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Dart is faster and can perform amazing things. Also it one-shots flea. Maybe it could have a bit more sting though.
+0 / -0
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I have see dart use to clear "fleas wall", so cloak roach, dgun com, snipers, etc, can atk, it's very effective, guy can clear fleas wall without losing any dart and retreat, and fleas guy have to keep making more fleas, costing metal/time, it's a very good plan in low metal maps like Icy... But yeah, i do not see another role that very simple scout and to counter fleas, another units have more roles/are more flexible/can be used in more situations..
+0 / -0
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It's faster by 0.29. 5.09 versus 4.8. About 6%. It's not really the difference, when flea can shorten its path by climbing walls etc. Truth is you make darts only when you can't make fleas.
+1 / -0
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Dart compares badly to Glaive as well.. its the unloved bastard child of the raider family
+2 / -0
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I think that weakness of dart is unnoticeable because LV has also scorchers as raider. So having an UP raider-unit isn't really trouble for vehicles and can exist. But I'm not sure that ZeroK wants that. (ofc it's still under discussion if dart is UP or something)
+1 / -0
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It's easy to see how it happened - the Flea has to be useful since it's the spider lab's only raider. The Dart only has to fill in the gaps where the Scorcher fails, so it stays UP in the Scorcher's shadow. Plus, vehicles kind of live a bit disjoint from the bot labs in that "vehicle maps" are kind of set apart from "bot/spider maps"... this makes vehicle balance problems harder to notice.
+1 / -0
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http://zero-k.info/Wiki/SpecificUnitGuides#DartThis covers it pretty well. While I agree that Fleas are The spam unit in teamgames to provide LoS on the whole map and uncloak enemy units now that Dirtbags cost much more, Darts still remain potent raiders in 1v1 and smaller teamgames. If you play spiders on a flat map Darts will simply counter Flea spam and provide much better raiding capabilities.
+0 / -0
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That's evil. I mean, giving hash-links into the manual causes some part of the site framework to go berserk endless loop.
+4 / -0
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Darts have relatively high burst for their weight. Thanks to this they can - in small groups - overpower a Glaive or two without taking any loss. I like thinking of them as mini-Scrubbers. Darts survive one Defender missile, so only two Darts are needed to destroy a lone Defender, the loss is 40m compared to Fleas' 60m. When scouting Darts have a much easier time to get out of LLT range without dying. When raiding windgens they aren't as suicidal as Fleas because of both range and hp. There's many more things, but those are the ones I experienced the most. P.S.: I luv Darts! Go buff them, I don't care! (Hp from 120 to 123 would look more fun!)
+0 / -0
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but compared to glaives..
+0 / -0
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Hrrm I didn't know Flea was that close to Dart in speed. If you compare their speed, cost and utility Dart seems worse. But the dart has 1.5x the HP for cost, a much higher alpha and more range. Like Skasi said, this makes it like a mini-scrubber, you can do drive-by's with that high alpha and instagib enemies. It doesn't die to winds and death explosions like the flea. The Dart is really important in the vehicle factory, with the high-weight scorcher being too big to do a lot of scouting. It's a great scout, one of the best things for spotting early cheese (Doesn't die instantly to an llt/defender), great for cleaning out naked expansion and finding enemy positions and can out-run any other raider. If you had the choice between Flea and Dart in the vehicle factory you might pick the flea, but since the flea is the spiders only raider unit, I'm not sure this really makes the Dart 'UP'.
+0 / -0
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quote:
Skasi They can - in small groups - overpower a Glaive or two without taking any loss. |
What cost in darts do you need to gib a glaive? Remember, that glaive only costs as much as ~1.6 darts. For cost, they get horribly butchered. But I agree with your other points. A little survivability can go a long way. quote:
    Saktoth doesn't die to winds and death explosions |
I hadn't thought about that; I imagine it makes quite a difference. The flea still has crazy utility/cost though. The bottom line I take from the above discussion: it is a bit UP as a raider, but since it's primarily for scouting/raiding naked mexes, and since cars have the scorcher, that may not be a bad thing. Still... 5M cost buff? :)
+0 / -0
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4 darts. But this means you can snipe one glaive, run away, snipe one glaive, run away, and make pretty good cost this way for such a fast unit. Compare to flea, which gets butchered by glaives in prettymuch every way. The dart has 180 range to the glaives 185, so you're not even taking any damage closing range as long as all your darts can get in range at once (IE, not chasing a fleeing target and using lots of line move orders). Seriously it's not a bad raider. Mostly though it's a scout to give you superior intel and positioning for your scorcher ball, to waste shots and make for-cost trades for things like roach and tick where the Scorcher is too heavy, etc.
+0 / -0
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Dart morphs to Goliath. Flea morphs to Funnelweb. Dart is UP.
+2 / -0
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@Zoidburger - Saktoth's comment does highlight a challenge with buffing the Dart - if it became more powerful in a 1v1 scenario, it could be ferocious in the hands of a pro. Any buffs to the Dart would have to be done very carefully since it could be used as a zero-attrition raider, which would really break the early 1v1 game. It's kind of unfortunate - both the Veh lab raiders are really fiddly to use well. The Scorcher needs to be micro'd into point-blank range to maximize damage (this is really hard to do when fighting Ravagers in my experience) since the autoswarm AI fights against the Scorcher's need for close range. The Dart needs perfect hit-and-run swarming to do 1-shot clusters. Compare vs. the Bandit and the Glaive and Pyro that all Just Work. Raiders with legs = easy mode :P I still fantasize about a unit-AI for high-alpha, high-mobility units that makes them cowardly while they rearm, but it would be super-fiddly to get it timed just right that they were back into firing range in time to pop their next shot.
+0 / -0
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The Dart also have 580 sight range. Is there any other raider that got more? Flea has 560.
+0 / -0
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FWIW, the only issue I can see is that flea is unnecessarily quick.
+0 / -0
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   zoidburgerYou clearly missed the part where I said 'Mostly though it's a scout'. We've already outlined all of it's myriad uses and advantages. The fact it can, sometimes, beat glaive without taking any damage is just a bonus on that. @[RD]Godde Jethro. :P (I know it's not a raider).
+1 / -0
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