Scout bird rework.

[Dagravian]

Well its pretty hard to see this unit being used given that towers and ranged units overhelm them easilly, so what about some changes on it?

- Same stats, but stealth.

Also had this weird idea for them aswell:

- New Research added on TC or ADV center to allow them to be upgraded to "explosive scout birds" if you have gunpowder researched.

[SirPat]

"explosive scout birds" if you have gunpowder researched.

This reminds of Angry birds 'that black bird that explodes'
For the Idea I think suicidal explosive birds sounds too diff from scout bird
How about just make upgrade him into a hunting bird or some kind of hawk that have stronger attack and itll act as interceptors instead
And give them Arrow dodge counter

[Dagravian]

Well, that would take out the role of scout from it and that isn't what i would like to see there... As for hunting birds, we could have a falcon tammer infantry, that would act like the druid of AOF, but more focused on melee combat and summoning these hunting birds to assist as they are more suited to combat. But that would be a thing for another post.

[makazuwr32]

I use scout birds.
Mainly because it is hard to notice them, hehe. And because they are flying scouts.

Alas some upgrade that will give them higher hp, higher speed and sight range would be appreciated.

Definately no for suicide birds because that is waaaay too fantasy. Unless you want for them like 95% chance to not trigger ability, 4.5% chance that it will just kill bird itself and only 0.5% chance that it will deal some damage to enemy.

[SirPat]

Some kind of Falcon trainer sounds good but summoning? i dont like, maybe transforms the scout bird(ability) can you give transform skill range? And would it even work? I suggest giving it more hp dmg and p.armor? And one of the problems with scout birds when encountering any ranged tower was the fact that they cant escape from them or they cant pass by scout birds have speed 6 and 2hp so if I have a guard tower 5 range so the bird have 2 options here, one is he could be 1tile before the max rang of the tower(5th tile) so that at the next turn he could move 6 tileswhich is just at the back of the tower but since you cant pass by an enemy tower you would be at its side instead so all he could do is pray to the bird gods to save him from the treacherous arrows of these evolved apes or second thing he could do is just train an army of scout birds acting nore like distractors/interceptors to increase the chance of a bird entering the enemies base remember towers and units dont just have lets say 5 range that 5 range is just the radius so for example an archers range have an overall circumferrence of about 11 tiles 5 at this side then 5 at the opposite side and that extra one tile is for the tile his steping at so its impossible for a single lonely scout bird to pass by that tower

Sincerely, Patrick

[Dagravian]

I use scout birds.
Mainly because it is hard to notice them, hehe. And because they are flying scouts.

Alas some upgrade that will give them higher hp, higher speed and sight range would be appreciated.

I Use them pretty often aswell, that's why i'm looking for some love for them here , but they aren't that hard to notice, in fact they are pretty easy to deal, but not target priority, but when it is or someone decide to kill it first, it is just doomed...

So for me ideally it just need to be stealth.

No higher HP. Bcz for a significant hp boost, the "elite bird" would have its base HP 3 times or higher than the "basic bird" in order to survive a single arrow which isn't what we would be looking since they should be killed anyway... And no other unit ever had such boost in HP... Currently i think the HP for it is ok for its size and role.

If dodges where reliable, then we could make use of them, but remeber that ranged unit here aren't like of AOF, here its a slaughter for anything flying xD

Some kind of Falcon trainer sounds good but summoning? i dont like, maybe transforms the scout bird(ability) can you give transform skill range? And would it even work? I suggest giving it more hp dmg and p.armor? And one of the problems with scout birds when encountering any ranged tower was the fact that they cant escape from them or they cant pass by scout birds have speed 6 and 2hp so if I have a guard tower 5 range so the bird have 2 options here, one is he could be 1tile before the max rang of the tower(5th tile) so that at the next turn he could move 6 tileswhich is just at the back of the tower but since you cant pass by an enemy tower you would be at its side instead so all he could do is pray to the bird gods to save him from the treacherous arrows of these evolved apes or second thing he could do is just train an army of scout birds acting nore like distractors/interceptors to increase the chance of a bird entering the enemies base remember towers and units dont just have lets say 5 range that 5 range is just the radius so for example an archers range have an overall circumferrence of about 11 tiles 5 at this side then 5 at the opposite side and that extra one tile is for the tile his steping at so its impossible for a single lonely scout bird to pass by that tower

Sincerely, Patrick

I didn't understand the ability you suggested, you want an ability like ninja shurikens for the birds?? Definitelly no! But for Falconer, its just a druid alike, so we know it works.

Ballistraria adds extra range to towers, so you have 5+1 range... Then it is Impossible for it to make this move. And the "pigeon swarm" idea is just unpratical.

[SirPat]

No what I meant was Can we make a transform skill that transforms other units into this unit so that the Falcon trainer could just transform the scout bird into a Falcon

And the tower thing I was saying was my suggestion to increase speed of Scout bird or maybe tech to increase speed of scout bird

[Dagravian]

Nope, that's not possible, in fact there where some ideas for "3rd party" transformation or veterancy on AOF, but we don't have a mechanic to make that possible.

Well, you didn't mentioned speed adjustments on any message, btw, you could just had said "what about more speed?" Instead of those 2 examples and i would had agreed, tho, speed alone would not make it more usefull as stated before.

[Squirrel5555]

Of course it would make it more useful, but only slightly

[Dagravian]

As i said, that alone would not solve the problem.

[SirPat]

Well, you didn't mentioned speed adjustments on any message, btw, you could just had said "what about more speed?" Instead of those 2 examples and i would had agreed, tho, speed alone would not make it more usefull as stated before.

Sorry about that im not a man of short talk

And how about make them stealthy or cant be auto attacked

[Dagravian]

Well, making it stealth is what i suggested, and that feature partially does what you said, any unit became un-targetable while stealth (at least for normal attack, abilities otherwise can be exploited to attack stealth units even if there is no one to detect them), so any tower or ranged unit would be unable to attack it if there is no unit to detect it. Making it and watchtowers more valuable in game.

[SirPat]

Yeah but making watchtowers/scouts more valuable would make the scout bird unusable though the only way I used these are for scouting terrain not bases so we need some kind of idea to make the scout bird good for scouting terrain and enemy bases

How about give them some kind of scanning capability(not skill) when it moves all tiles that it pass by at will reveal(show up on the screen as if it was a trail of sight)

Or

Give it other uses. Make it to a messenger bird that can give technologies to a teammate

[Dagravian]

Nope, not all scouts can detect stealth, and no one spam watchtowers everywhere, just regular towers, so if there is no one to detect it, no one can attack it, meaning that you can explore the whole map with the stealth bird without problems.

None of these abilities you suggested are viable.

We don't have a mechanic to reveal spots in the fog.
We don't have a mechanic to trade techs between allieds yet (it was proposed before already).

[Endru1241]

Imho - p.armor (representing dodge ability), speed, stealth and additional reveal effect are all acceptable. The question is what exact combination to use.
And what exactly should be done - rebalance, upgrade?
I write about reveal effect, because we do have that in fact - SYSTEM_SPECIAL_EFFECT_REVEAL - it was added in last few months by stratego.

[SirPat]

And what exactly should be done - rebalance, upgrade?
I write about reveal effect, because we do have that in fact - SYSTEM_SPECIAL_EFFECT_REVEAL - it was added in last few months by stratego.

Epic I was thinking of a rebalance

[Dagravian]

Rebalance indeed, in fact we got some nice ideas here for several unit types that can be applied for some new bird types.

For scout bird, being stealth and have this "fog scan" seens nice options.

I will be more detailed about the others ideas on the Falconry post.

[SirPat]

Yeah these ideas will be a good addition

[SirPat]

Hehe got carried away there

So yeah scout bird rework

Scout bird must have either increased speed or movement ability/teleport but imagine it as movement

More hp 4-6 hp cause i dont think a dude without a ranged weapon can kill a bird in 2 turns

Sight buff
Every tile it passes by will reveal the tile itself in a radius of how many sight the bird have cause I forgot how much sight so in theory the scout bird will have some sort of scanning capabilities to make it more realistic cause how would a bird not see what he's passing by at I mean like come on does he blink his eyes when he moves, no offence to doomsdaydragonfire cause I believe dragons and birds are related

Armor +1 representing melee dodge

Dmg must be increased to 2 to give it some offensive and defensive capabilities

And make his attack for pierce armor, the concept here is shielded units can protect there selves from the talons of these birdsbecause of the shield being more effective protection against soaring birds than your armor so

And bonus vs those animals and dogs and light cavalry about 50%


OR

This could be an upgrade for the scout bird transforming it to a hunting bird/ War bird
That cost 6 turns and is researched at the Advancement center

[Dagravian]

Ofc anyone can, actually, a single hit is enough, but did you forget that flying units receive only 1 damage from ground melee units? No extra hp and armor are needed as they can already survive some hits of melee units, but still, are meant to be really fragile to ranged, which is perfect atm.

No atk buffs, it's just a scout brid, not a plane. It's role is not to be a sort of fighter. But a scout... So all it needs is to stay out of sight, that could be made with dodges or by using stealth...

An upgrade can have extra stats as 1-3 hp, sight, attack or smt, but the base still needs to have only one of the 2 options mentioned above since more stuff means increased cost and i like its 2 cost.

[SirPat]

Oh yeah Ive forgoten about that so stats should stay the same but with stealth, Field scanning and movement ability