Diabolus is diabolically OP

[The Blind One]

Dude one shots an enemy War Queen in one hit. Centipedes get fried by him like it's a barbeque. He can dodge the enemy's hellsphere cannon due to player draft commands and retaliate killing them off in 1 or 2 hits without a problem.

This guy tanks like a boss.

Hellsphere cannon does a massive 800 damage. Even an anti-grain does only 550 damage. Sure the anti grain is a lot wider in range but the hellsphere cannon can be repeatedly fired for no material cost at all and doesn't rely on quest rewards to be refilled. It is ludicrously overpowered.

If it was nerfed to half damage it would still be too powerful but as it stands right now? It's hilariously OP in the hands of a player.

[Helios]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Dude one shots an enemy War Queen in one hit. Centipedes get fried by him like it's a barbeque. He can dodge the enemy's hellsphere cannon due to player draft commands and retaliate killing them off in 1 or 2 hits without a problem.

This guy tanks like a boss.

Hellsphere cannon does a massive 800 damage. Even an anti-grain does only 550 damage. Sure the anti grain is a lot wider in range but the hellsphere cannon can be repeatedly fired for no material cost at all and doesn't rely on quest rewards to be refilled. It is ludicrously overpowered.

If it was nerfed to half damage it would still be too powerful but as it stands right now? It's hilariously OP in the hands of a player.

corridor with a tank and you can wipe out an army or manhunter pack.

[ministrog]

it's fine considering how long it takes to research it.

[Fyredrakon]

Originally posted by ministrog:

it's fine considering how long it takes to research it.

Research is a small factor overall, it is a combination of signal chips(only 2 which is not that hard), material resources(not very high), gestation time (fairly long at 12 cycles, double a centipede), high subcore(also not that bad), and 5 Bandwidth. Overall it's more expensive than every other mech. But the problem is it's just so powerful compared to the cost.
Getting a group of Diaboluses on your side and they can annihilate even late game raids with ease. They do feel overwhelmingly powerful, and although they have built in weakness against mechanoids, it doesn't make a difference, since heavy and ultraheavy mechs can only get so lucky with deflecting shots.
For mechs (200% heat armor) there is a 50% chance to deflect a hellsphere and 50% chance to take half damage, which varies, but in testing seems to be ~130 damage. It can only hit extremities (so not internal organs like hearts or brains), so centipedes will end up with very damaged rings, but can get lucky with what exactly the cannon hits.
He does two instances of explosion damage at 800 dmg 100% AP against heat armor every ~11.5 seconds. To an entire 5*5 area. I think that is the highest dps per anything, resource cost, Bandwidth, you name it.
I also feel it is worth mentioning that the projectile itself can hit cover and obstacles during travel, so if you have mechs between your Diabolus and its target, you can friendly fire them. Or just straight up hit a tree and miss.

[The Blind One]

I think the bosses should really be ultra tech just for how powerful they are.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

I think the bosses should really be ultra tech just for how powerful they are.

The war queen is ultra tech. But yea high mechtech (necessary to build Diabolus) is just at a industrial tech level for whatever reason (not even spacer weirdly enough).

[HunterSilver]

Diabolus is really love or hate. In a lot of scenarios he's either too slow or too destructive to use. He'll destroy any resources on the ground with his shot and kill any downed raiders. The long charge up time on his attack also means he usually just misses the fight.

The only time he is going to feel good to micromanage and use is the mid-game, so I think he's placed perfectly for that. Any later and you'd basically just forget about him except as maybe the starting shot to a raid on your killbox, but even then I wouldn't want him to do that.

And you do need to micromanage him. Never let him fire freely or he will very happily shoot a beam into your own troops without a second thought.

[The Blind One]

Of course you should micro him, he has a weapon that fires an anti-grain level cannon. You'd be idiotic not to micro that.

He might be slow on the attack and a bit of a pain to use for that role but on the defense? Boy oh boy ... this guy will annihilate any would be attacker that happens to stand still for more than 5 seconds.

Yeah he will destroy anything left on the ground if the cannon is used there but most of the stuff that is dropped by enemies is trash. Mechanoid scrap is barely worth it. Raider guns worthless. Raider gear, again practically worthless especially since it is all tainted and scrapping still is ehhh at best. I'd rather kill all my enemies in a few shots than have a few iron as scrap or a few silver at the cost of mechs going down or pawns getting hurt.

Since I added this guy to my roster, barely any of my mechs have gone down from enemy damage, I should've added this guy a long time ago, like right when I was able too, he's sooo good. The enemy just can't get in any significant amount of damage before they are blown away by Diabolus.

Used against summonable mech attacks, you use this guy to blow away all the adds, depending on how much HP the boss has, you either let him fire once at it or you use him to tank the bullets so your other guys can just shoot down the boss and collect the chip loot without it getting blown up.

At first I was like oh no ... 8 centipede blaster bois coming my way? I don't know if I can tank that. Now I'm like ezzz Diabolus will take care of it and he does ... they all go down as they get barbequed.

[Helios]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Of course you should micro him, he has a weapon that fires an anti-grain level cannon. You'd be idiotic not to micro that.

He might be slow on the attack and a bit of a pain to use for that role but on the defense? Boy oh boy ... this guy will annihilate any would be attacker that happens to stand still for more than 5 seconds.

Yeah he will destroy anything left on the ground if the cannon is used there but most of the stuff that is dropped by enemies is trash. Mechanoid scrap is barely worth it. Raider guns worthless. Raider gear, again practically worthless especially since it is all tainted and scrapping still is ehhh at best. I'd rather kill all my enemies in a few shots than have a few iron as scrap or a few silver at the cost of mechs going down or pawns getting hurt.

Since I added this guy to my roster, barely any of my mechs have gone down from enemy damage, I should've added this guy a long time ago, like right when I was able too, he's sooo good. The enemy just can't get in any significant amount of damage before they are blown away by Diabolus.

Used against summonable mech attacks, you use this guy to blow away all the adds, depending on how much HP the boss has, you either let him fire once at it or you use him to tank the bullets so your other guys can just shoot down the boss and collect the chip loot without it getting blown up.

At first I was like oh no ... 8 centipede blaster bois coming my way? I don't know if I can tank that. Now I'm like ezzz Diabolus will take care of it and he does ... they all go down as they get barbequed.

Standing in a killbox he can also heat up a room in seconds with his fireburst.

[Wantoomany]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

I think the bosses should really be ultra tech just for how powerful they are.

And yet if you hit it with a shock lance it just falls over.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

Originally posted by The Blind One:

I think the bosses should really be ultra tech just for how powerful they are.

And yet if you hit it with a shock lance it just falls over.

Yeah I know lol. It makes the bosses totally moot. Hilariously funny but it also sucks away the challenge of fighting them which is a bit sad. I wonder if they'll patch it at some point.

I wish the bosses also had more strategy to them, they seem to behave like ordinary prepared attack raids. It be nice if they had breach variants where termites would blast their way towards your base just to spice things up. You can too easily lure them into a killbox setting right now.

I have mines running along the main paths that they walk 99% of the time causing nearly all the support adds to die before they even get to my killbox. It's amazing what a bit of chemfuel and steel can do for you.

[princam]

What diabolus are you building that does good damage to mechanoids?

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Mr. Phishe:

What diabolus are you building that does good damage to mechanoids?

Wdym?

They absolutely cook mechanoids with their hellsphere cannon. Sometimes it bounces off but usually it'll hit them pretty hard. I've had times where it would one shot a War Queen. I'd call that good damage. I do tend to target the ground underneath the enemies rather than them directly. Not sure if that matters.

[princam]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Originally posted by Mr. Phishe:

What diabolus are you building that does good damage to mechanoids?

Wdym?

They absolutely cook mechanoids with their hellsphere cannon. Sometimes it bounces off but usually it'll hit them pretty hard. I've had times where it would one shot a War Queen. I'd call that good damage. I do tend to target the ground underneath the enemies rather than them directly. Not sure if that matters.

Huh, interesting. I built a diabolus and I use it almost every raid. Its great against humanoids and structures but I find it can take 5+ shots to down a centipede

[Fyredrakon]

Originally posted by Mr. Phishe:

Huh, interesting. I built a diabolus and I use it almost every raid. Its great against humanoids and structures but I find it can take 5+ shots to down a centipede

Its entirely luck based. The hellsphere tries to do 2 damage instances, which have chances to hit any extremity. Then each of those hits have a 50/50 of getting deflected or hitting for about 130 damage. What you're left with is a destroyed body part being a very low percent chance, since 130 isnt enough to destroy the three largest body rings. It's enough to instakill the head and second body ring.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Fyredrakon:

Originally posted by Mr. Phishe:

Huh, interesting. I built a diabolus and I use it almost every raid. Its great against humanoids and structures but I find it can take 5+ shots to down a centipede

Its entirely luck based. The hellsphere tries to do 2 damage instances, which have chances to hit any extremity. Then each of those hits have a 50/50 of getting deflected or hitting for about 130 damage. What you're left with is a destroyed body part being a very low percent chance, since 130 isnt enough to destroy the three largest body rings. It's enough to instakill the head and second body ring.

Is that what happens when you directly target a mech pawn or does it also apply if you target the ground underneath them?