Half Baking.

So it recently occurred to me that some experimentals, like the Cicada, don't necessarily need to attack to prove useful.
In this case, what is the downside to half-baking aside from the fact that they come out of the factory with lower health and occasionally stop moving? As long as a Cicada's ability remains active during the EMP, it doesn't really matter if it's half-baked or not, and its already sizeable healthpool still remains quite considerable, even at 1/2.|||I have not half baked a cicada, but every XP I have bake is nearly useless. The ML, for example, has to re-accelerate after every EMP, cutting it's speed to *maybe* as high as half as without the EMP.
Also, the cicada's primary defense is it's speed... it can dodge as well as a small unit. I would say half baking a cicada is prolly not worth it.|||Quote:|||Air forts are nice to half bake, but only when you dont really have time. Ive never really had the need to, and the ability to move them is pretty neat.
Still, I would like the EMP to wear down at some point.|||Air forts have almost as much ground dps as AC-1000s.|||I particularly like their crash damage, but thats just to rub into someones face that his power farm strategy fails.
Step 1: make 4 air forts
Step 2: Fill each with 25 gunships
Step 3: Move to enemy base and launch them
Step 4: Crash air forts into enemy power farm
Step 5: Snipe ACU with gunships before his air/AA kills them all|||I have only half-baked a unit once. I was playing a 3v3 and we were about to be overrun. So, i half-baked my fatboy and when my opponent saw the shells he completely stopped his advance and retreated. Thats the only time i've seen it work. If he kept pushing though, he would have easily wiped out my base.|||I think that this was one of CTs really great ideas, it just wasn't implemented properly. It's obviously a niche ability; it's only used if you are out of time. I think that if they had the EMP stop once the machine was fully repaired, or if not that, then after a certain amount of time, it might be used more often. Granted, this has been discussed huge already, but I still stand by this.|||If the EMP stopped when it was repaired there would be no point in not half baking. I like half baking the way it is myself. It's not something you do because you could use it earlier, it's something you do when you're desperate. I won a 4v4 by half baking a cicada to save me from a certain red menace's protobrains just today. The game I played against Cyclonic in the CEVO tournament I half baked a bomb bouncer to save my commander from a tank drop. I don't understand the complaints about half baking. You don't have to use it, and if you do, you do so knowing you're gimping your experimental.|||The point I was trying to make is that something like the Cicada, whose primary effect isn't at all impacted by being half-baked, would probably benefit more from being finished in 1/2 the time than it would be gimped by the EMP.
It might actually be effective, especially when rushing it in a 1v1 or the like, to half bake your cicada and just send an engineer to follow it around, slowly repairing it whenever it EMP's. It takes half the time to build it, but its stealth ability isn't affected at all (atleast, I assume so).
Megaforts are the same idea; nobody ever builds megaforts for anything other than buildpower, so assuming the EMP doesn't pause production, there's really no reason to not HB them.|||With a commander assisting it, you're only getting yourself a little extra time by half baking it, but you're also slowing its deployment anyways due to the emp, so I'd say it's not worth half baking unless you need it immediately.|||I have never half baked. Only fully baked. |||Well, Having the EMP stop after a while STILL gives you a reason to not use it: The few minutes in between, you cant really use it offensively. You try to kite with an EMPing megalith..|||Yeah a BB can be useful to HB...you usually want one over your com anyway and it doesn't really need to move.