Remove beetle cloak, increase hp, and reduce speed

[lL1l1]

Description of the proposed changes

My reasoning from the Discord thread:

Problem 1: Beetle is uninteractable due to its cloak until omni comes out or ACU is available on the front (and then ACU is immediately in danger to beetle snipe...)

Remove cloak. Considering my experience with beetle performance under omni at T3 stage the speed is still enough to keep beetles good.

Problem 2: Beetle is barely interactable due to its high speed because there isn't enough time to turn around and kite.

Reduce the speed so it can be kited viably but greatly increase the HP so that retreating beetles is also possible. This allows a bit of a back-and-forth trying to kill off beetles without running into them while trying to get to the higher range T2/T3 cybran units.
I suggest 5 -> 3.5 speed (faster than mainline land and mongoose/hoplite/mobile shields, but slower than hover and titan/loya) and 400 -> ~1.2k HP (arbitrary choice based on existing unit hp/mass) as a starting point.

Problem 3: Evaluate the mass efficiency of the unit.

This is a more nebulous topic but after the above changes reworking the unit the cost and dmg the unit deals needs to be evaluated.
I think the HP buff will make it much better against structures when dropped, so its damage should be reduced around 33% so it 3 shots t2 mex (1100 dmg -> 900-500 dmg).
The energy drain of the unit would have to be removed as there is no cloak and any other abilities would not make sense (you would turn off personal stealth in favor of deceivers, and for weapon firing costs - it only fires once). I would like to keep it because it scales the cost of the unit down in later stage where T3 units are better at countering it due to range and DPS density.
A different way that beetle can scale better into T3 stage is through its stun, since the stun deals "damage" in proportion to enemy dps density, and just 1 beetle getting in deals very similar stunning as multiple beetles.

Adjustments after testing:

• 3.8 speed since kiting is very powerful for even slower units. The amount of HP to balance 3.5 speed would be excessive.
• Give 10 regen to allow beetles to have secondary value in tanking DPS and getting out of range before dying. It creates an interesting decision for both the beetle user and their opponent. This synergizes in a good way with Rhino/Hoplite/Brick range.
• HP slightly higher at 1340 instead of 1200 since kiting seemed quite powerful even for slower units.

Testing done on the proposed changes

See how 10 beetles trade against 8 obsidians/ilshies in sandbox. It's a large mass deficit for beetles (1900 vs 2880) but the beetles can damage around half of the enemy units' total HP anyway, which means it is quite powerful, considering that it has additional scaling with stuns and huge AoE damage.
Harb (840 mass) can kite 4 beetles (760 mass) before taking damage (it starts taking damage at 5 beetles 950 mass) because of bad beetle pathfinding when right clicked. But that Harb has perfect pathfinding due to no other units or shields and beetle will get better value from AoE, stealth, and bricks in practical scenarios.

I noticed that formations for beetles are terrible. Beetles are in the directfire bot category which goes behind t4-t3 and t2 tanks, so a lot of the time they'll just be in the middle of the formation and not ready to engage the enemy.

Checklist

- [ ] Changes are annotated, including comments where useful

• Changes are documented in a changelog snippet according to the guidelines.
• Request 2-3 reviewers from the list of reviewers and their areas of knowledge.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Balance Changes
  • Fire Beetle (T2 Mobile Bomb) rebalanced: removed cloak ability and related effects, increased health from 500 to 1340, added health regeneration of 10 per second, reduced movement speed from 5 to 3.8, and removed the unit's maintenance energy consumption.

[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The Fire Beetle (XRL0302) unit is rebalanced: cloak capability is removed from both the Lua script (stripping IntelEffects, PeriodicFXThread, HideUnit, and related FX wiring) and the blueprint (removing Intel.Cloak, energy upkeep, and cloak toggle UI). Health increases from 400 to 1340 with regen added, and speed is reduced from 5 to 3.8.

Changes

Fire Beetle (XRL0302) Rebalance

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Blueprint: remove cloak, update stats units/XRL0302/XRL0302_unit.bp	AverageDensity, Health, and MaxHealth raised from 400 to 1340; RegenRate = 10 added; MaintenanceConsumptionPerSecondEnergy removed; Intel.Cloak and OrderOverrides replaced with simplified ToggleCaps; MaxBrake and MaxSpeed reduced from 5 to 3.8.
Script: strip cloak FX and exhaust wiring units/XRL0302/XRL0302_Script.lua	OnCreate stripped of IntelEffects, ambient exhaust emitter setup, and PeriodicFXThread start; HideUnit and EmitPeriodicEffects calls removed; DoDeathWeapon no longer explicitly destroys effect bags or PeriodicFXThread.
Changelog entry changelog/snippets/balance.7143.md	New snippet documents cloak removal, health/regen increase, and speed reduction for the Fire Beetle.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~10 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• FAForever/fa#6897: Directly inverse change — that PR added cloak energy drain (MaintenanceConsumptionPerSecondEnergy = 10) and enabled RULEUTC_CloakToggle for XRL0302, both of which are now being removed.

Suggested labels

area: balance

Suggested reviewers

• Rhaelya
• BlackYps

Poem

🐛 The beetle once hid in the shadows so sly,
No more shall it cloak as it scurries on by.
With health boosted high and a slower-paced stride,
It tanks through the fire with nowhere to hide!
A chunky wee bomb, no upkeep to pay —
The Fire Beetle marches in plain sight today! 🔥

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely summarizes the three main changes: removing cloak, increasing health, and reducing speed.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description comprehensively covers proposed changes with detailed reasoning, testing results, and design rationale, though annotations checklist item remains incomplete.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@changelog/snippets/balance.7143.md`:
- Line 5: The changelog entry in the balance.7143.md file has an incorrect
health baseline value. In the line containing "Health: 500 -> 1340", change the
initial value from 500 to 400 to accurately reflect that the blueprint updates
MaxHealth/Health from 400 to 1340, not from 500 to 1340.

🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

• Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
• Create a new PR with the fixes

---

ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 009ee7f7-7df6-4e9e-9932-4e0537d0009f

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between c35a745 and 627794d.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• changelog/snippets/balance.7143.md
• units/XRL0302/XRL0302_Script.lua
• units/XRL0302/XRL0302_unit.bp

💤 Files with no reviewable changes (1)

• units/XRL0302/XRL0302_Script.lua

[coderabbitai]

⚠️ Potential issue | 🟡 Minor | ⚡ Quick win

Fix the health baseline in patch notes.

Line 5 says Health: 500 -> 1340, but this PR’s blueprint updates Health/MaxHealth from 400 to 1340. Please correct the changelog value to avoid misleading release notes.

Proposed patch

-  - Health: 500 -> 1340
+  - Health: 400 -> 1340

📝 Committable suggestion

‼️ IMPORTANT
Carefully review the code before committing. Ensure that it accurately replaces the highlighted code, contains no missing lines, and has no issues with indentation. Thoroughly test & benchmark the code to ensure it meets the requirements.

Suggested change

	- Health: 500 -> 1340
	- Health: 400 -> 1340

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@changelog/snippets/balance.7143.md` at line 5, The changelog entry in the
balance.7143.md file has an incorrect health baseline value. In the line
containing "Health: 500 -> 1340", change the initial value from 500 to 400 to
accurately reflect that the blueprint updates MaxHealth/Health from 400 to 1340,
not from 500 to 1340.

[Rhaelya]

Works as intended.