The Colossus needs some upgrades

My idea was an extension of Gasmaskguy's.

If you want to immediately make it attack the one target then you just flip it back to "focus fire". Double clicking wouldn't work as well i think, but that's just my opinion.

 

i think gaskmaskguy's simple version is better, just have focus fire and spread fire

 

But then how would you control both the beams? It wouldn't be that great if you commanded one beam and the computer commanded the other.

 

well, it is just what happens to every unit when you use attack move. they just choose the one closest etc. But, the Colossus on the other hand, would be able to control 50% of the attack move. sort of.
so you should not really have anything against this unless you don't like the attack move function either.

And if you STILL think that it makes your colossus f*ck you over choosing bad targets, just flip it to consentrated fire. This mechanic is optional for microers.

 

it could just be attacking the closest units
that could be an ability though, for 5-15 seconds the colossus just overpowers and will attack faster and stronger
thats probly too much like the phoenix though :-\

 

I don't think it would make it too much like the phoenix, its attack hits all nearby units. The colossus's special would only hit certain areas at a time and probably not make it shut down afterwards.

 

while a button that allows the colossus to toggle focus fires and spread fires might seem quite insignificant, it actually has a lot of micro potential in the right hands

 

If the Colossus is to have an upgrade, I wouldn't make it a huge one. I think a simple increased range or increased speed would suffice.

Maybe an option to allow it to be transported, or something like that. Which brings me another thought.

A racial upgrade that increases the amout of energy a Phase Prism can store by a slight amount, which would allow it to transport a Colossus. That would indeed be quite interesting.

 

i like the toggle more than my other idea

 

toggling is good but the transport idea with phase prisms doesn't seen too useful since colossus can climb cliffs, unless for an emergency escape, but one at a time is almost the same as none at all.

the ability to target two units at once would make the colossus much better than being able to transport them

P.S. About the transport ability, I just though of an area that the ability would be extremely effective; colossus can't cross water can they? What about maps that are only islands? No transport = royally screwed then?

 

Haven't you guys heard. The colossus is transportable. You don't need to be doing what ifs about it.

 

I was going on with what others have wrote in these forums. Talking about upgrades to let the colossus be transportable lead me to believe it wasn't. Easy mistake considering the size of the colossus; must take a hugh ass computer to digitize something THAT big into matter particles, LOL

 

Yeah. I am betting that the collosus will take up a full prism though due to its size. Also due to its power I can image that either the up/download will take longer thn normal and/or it will require an upgrade first.

 

I think that the Colossus, Reapers and such (inter-tier units) can cross small rivers or gaps in space platforms and other things like that. I'm not positive about it, but it does make sense. If there is a small river in the Colossus' way, then it will just step over it, and same with Reapers, they're just going to jet pack across it. Obviously it won't work when having to cross vast areas like in island games, otherwise they would basically be flying units.

 

Okay, now I'm going to try and let you see why spread fire would be totally useless, not meant offensive, but I would like to make an end to this.

--> Example (the real statistics don't matter, it's purely for the comparisons)
Colossus has 500 life and does 10 damage per shot per beam.
There are 2 enemies facing the Colossus.
They have each 200 life. They do 5 damage each.
The Colossus has to fire 20 beams at each enemy before it dies.
The enemies have to fire (together) 50 shots to kill the Colossus.
The enemies fire at the same rate as the Colossus.

The Colossus firing at both enemies separately (with spread fire) will result at it firing 40 separate beams.
The enemies die at the same time in this way and can do 40 X 2 X 5 = 400 damage this way.

The Colossus firing at one enemy at the time will result in it firing 40 beams to kill them to, BUT:
--> The enemies will do 20 (and so does the Colossus) shots until the first one dies, resulting in letting them do 20 X 2 X 5 = 200 damage this way.
Then the remaining enemy will fire 20 X 5 = 100 damage until it dies, so the total comes at 300 damage.

The spread fire thing will leave the Colossus with only 100 life left, without it it will have 200 left.

So you now must understand that it's useless to let it attack multiple enemies at the same time. :

 

Yeah very nice post! and it should be a focused beam that targets and focuses on one enemy at a time and iff the enemy it is attacking dies and it still has some beam time left before the cool down then it may be able to attack another enemy then! and it should be a very strong beam because its quite slowish and most likley quite expensive of its size so make it strong because it will suit the expensive and site parts together! so it does need to be strong!

 

@ Forsaken. That's why there would be an option. If the Colossus was on its own, then it would obviously use the concentrated fire. However if the Colossus is supported and out of combat (as it usually would be), it would probably be advisable to have 2 beams of separate fire as opposed to a focused one. Especially against weak units, there is no point in doing excess damage to a unit, so attacking multiple units would probably finish them off a lot quicker and be more damage efficient.

 

I don't thinck so, since the attack is a "sweep" attack it can already attack multiple units while focussing, because when one unit is dead it just goes on to the next one if there is still some "beam time" left.

As I said, even when it is used just for supporting fire there is almost no use in letting it attack multiple units, even when the enemie comes from both sides and both sides need support, the total damage given will be lower when it would just attack ONE unit at a time.

 

That doesn't mean that using the beams separate wouldn't be more damage effective. For example, if both lasers do 20 damage per second, and Zerglings have 45 health or so, then concentrated fire would waste 5 damage per second, because it would take 3 seconds to take it down and would do 15 unnecessary damage points. However, if each beam operated separately and did 10dps with each beam, then even though it would take 5 seconds to take them down now, there would only be 1 dps wastage.
Choosing concentrated or separate fire would depend on what situation your in. As you said earlier, concentrated fire would be better for survivability, but separated would be more damage efficient.

 

Almost every unit has a designed achillies heel. A massive unit like the collosus has its uses, however it needs to have its weaknesses too. I think it's one of the few units thats either close to, or pretty much finished design-wise.