How do you envision mechanical units?

[Karawasa]

As I'm sure you all know, mechanical and undead units are gaining unique characteristics. Undead has already been planned out, and hopefully will survive testing.

Mechanical on the other hand, I am interested in hearing suggestions on how these creeps should work. I'm not really satisfied with the slow and strong idea at the moment.

So post any interesting ideas you have on what would be cool for mechanical units.

[Guest GkJ-mo]

would it be technically possible to do the following:

they get an area-damage immunity, if they are not the direct target of the attack (read: immune to splash nearby), or maybe immune to splash alltogether?

[Guest mrchak]

Before they were immune to biological-based attacks:

- instant death

- poison

Also, Flesh golems did not grow from mechanical units killed

I didn't think those were bad, but if those ideas are gone (I don't see why they need to be) then here's some other ideas

Static Disruption

They could have an effect like a static discharge - when they die they send out a static charge that stuns nearby towers (radius of x from them). This could really be something new, and it could really change people's strategies.

Force Shield

When Hp reaches 20%, or maybe 10%, they gain a force shield that makes a certain number of attacks MISS (they are granted evade)

Return Fire

Reflects like 5% of damage back to the attacking tower. if a tower reaches 0 health, then the game will sell it (giving the player full credit for the tower (75% or 100% depending on their game mode)

Missile Interception

For any tower that attacks with a single-target missile that is heat-seeking (regardless of whether it does AOE; so not Artillery or Instant attack types), the mechanical units can have a chance to fire an intercepting missile to block the attacking missile in the air.

Relative Speed

The speed of the unit can be relative to how much damage it has taken. So it starts at like 350 and goes down to like 200 when the hp gets close to zero.

[Karawasa]

Static Disruption

They could have an effect like a static discharge - when they die they send out a static charge that stuns nearby towers (radius of x from them). This could really be something new, and it could really change people's strategies.

Yes, I see a lot of potential with this one.

What do you guys think? What other ideas do you have?

[Guest mrchak]

It would be something that would actually give long-range towers a benefit over other towers vs mechanical units (and as Cisz will point out, long range towers don't really have anything going for them). That's what's important for each of these classifications - it should be different enough that if you really wanted to maximize your performance against them, you have to specialize your strategy with some quick thinking (in random) or careful planning (in normal mode)

[Cisz]

I don't see why this disruption is typical for mechanical units. Especially in tft I'd expect spellcasters to pull of a trick like that.

The "slower with damage" sounds better to me.

Imo a mech unit should be tougher than a normal creep, that's one of the original reasons why wracrafts were build. (Along with beeing faster and having more firepower.)

[Guest Sancdar]

Of the abilities MrChak suggested, only that static charge really works well. I like the idea of the movespeed changing with damage though, but I think his suggestion is in the wrong direction. How about this - mechs have bonus armor and a little extra hp, but the more damage they take the less armor they have and the faster they move. With all that bulk being blown off them, they get speedier I don't know how good it would be, I just like the flavor of it.

For suggested abilities...please don't do anything based off of number of attacks, since towers have such very different attack speed. 1 basic water = all your dmg shield gone? Also, try not to use %chance abilities like evasion, because luck factors like that are mostly just annoying. It's a little less annoying on towers because at least something still happens even if you don't proc, but losing to luck is lame.

[Twilice]

Relative Speed and Force Shield sounds god.

Specially the Relative Speed, the mechanical starts burning and gets slower and slower.

[Guest mrchak]

the thing about relative speed is we already have a fast unit, so it wouldn't be that different. Static Charge would at least be different and require you to think a little bit about your strategy. I am thinking like sometimes an explosion can release an electromagnetic charge that will disrupt electronics, sortof applying this idea to the towers... Yea, Cisz, its a stretch, but it could be made to work.

Another idea: Mech units have like 50% extra HP, but when they die they make an explosion that does AEO damage (or damages the 4 closest units, so the damage doesn't get overwhelming). This would be DIFFERENT, but it would just encourage massing and AOE attacks. Just brainstorming.

[Cisz]

So far only the "unit get's slower when damaged", my own "unit is tougher" and the "unit explodes" are fitting to mechanical imo.

[Guest AlienFromBeyond]

Another idea: Mech units have like 50% extra HP, but when they die they make an explosion that does AEO damage (or damages the 4 closest units, so the damage doesn't get overwhelming). This would be DIFFERENT, but it would just encourage massing and AOE attacks. Just brainstorming.

If the explosion is strong enough, have it not give you gold if a unit is killed by an explosion. Would certainly make people think twice about super clumping units with tons of stacking slow.

[Guest Sancdar]

So far only the "unit get's slower when damaged", my own "unit is tougher" and the "unit explodes" are fitting to mechanical imo.

Aww, no "unit gets faster"?

[Cisz]

Try that with a car. See?

[Guest Sancdar]

Actually, a car does run better if you take weight off of it while keeping everything else the same. That's why when you load up a station wagon to move all your stuff back from college it doesn't accelerate very well.

[Cisz]

That's not applicable for removing weight of a car by axe, flamethrower or wrecking ball.

[Guest Sancdar]

I'm sure if you just shaved off everything but the engine and wheels it would accelerate better too. The aerodynamics wouldn't be quite as good but I bet it would still work out. Anyway, since my suggestion was implicating blowing off heavy armor plating, I still think it makes sense.

[Karawasa]

Aside from fitting it to the mechanical theme, is the whole static disruption idea (stuns tower in X radius for X seconds on death) solid?

[Guest Sancdar]

Like anything else, the numbers are going to be kind of tricky. I guess I do like the idea of something where long-range towers actually outshine regular towers, although I doubt there are going to be many of those in the next version...

[holepercent]

at least something more to consider for long-range towers... it would force a rethink of some builds especially those who build at IV or VII (at the 2nd pass)...

[Cisz]

Yes, two pass builds at 4 and 3 would suffer greatly, as they rely on the towers beeing right next to the path. In fact right now nearly all builds rely on short range, and there is no room on the ledges to move the towers elsewhere.

How long would this ability reach? If it's range was like 500, it wouldn't hit the towers that fired at it (with say 700 range) but the next towers in line.

[Guest mrchak]

It would have to be a very short range, like maybe enough radius to stun 2-4 towers that are closest to the edges,

[Karawasa]

I've a possible controversial idea. What if, they stun ALL your towers, for like a second. A wave on Very Hard would be 30 seconds of stun time total, provided you didn't kill a creep within a second of killing another.

[Cisz]

I'd rather talk about mech getting slower with damage, or them beeing tougher and slower.

[holepercent]

agree... then it would go down to brute force overbuilding just to kill everything, which isn't something we want in the game...