Flem Spore summoning issues (Flem Meteor is weak)

[evilspacetomato]

I built a test a**** to compare how many flem spores the chex guys made.

The tests where 1 minute long each.
The tests where under optimal conditions, they could see enemies and get close to them, and the enemies could not return fire.
The a**** was a 1024x1024 square with pillars that had immobile cyberdemons on them.
Each unit was tested 3 times to get an average value.

Lord Snot: 11,13,6 = 10 spores / min
Flembomination: 2,3,3 = 2.6 spores / min
Flem Meteor: 16,12,13 = 13.66 spores / min

In my opinion the Meteor spawns too few spores.
A meteor costs (assuming hero mana is = to 4x regular mana) 40+30x4 = 160 mana
Each spore is worth the cost of the unit it produces (89% basic flems, 10% biped flems, 1% larva flems)
.89x2 + .10x3 + .01x4 = 2.12 mana

Assuming the optimal spawn rate as mentioned above a flem meteor will take 160 / (2.12 x 13.66) minutes = 5 minutes and 30 seconds to be worth the mana spent on it.

To earn back its cost a Flem Meteor must be optimally spawning for 5.30 minutes.

I have yet to see a flem meteor used effectively in zdoom wars, but I have a few suggestions to make it more useful.
Any or all of these may work...
1. Seeing a monster will activate the flem meteor and cause it to temporary spawn a large number of spores like 15, afterward for 30 seconds it has to wait and recharge, if it can still see monsters it would activate again.
2. Make flem meteors summon at a slightly faster rate (8 spores/min) if they can see their master, but not any enemies.
3. Meteors flem spores can summon better guys (armored bipeds, cyclops, Quadrampus) 50% basic, 19% biped, 14% Larva, 9% armored bipeds, 6% cyclops, 2% Quadrampus.
4. Allow Meteors to regenerate health when not under attack.
5. Make flem meteor spawn 2 spores when it enters its pain state.
6. Flem meteors immediately summon 10 of the improved spores (from #3) when spawned then go back to summoning regular spores.

Also I would be willing to write the decorate for this if people agree.

[Avernus]

Yeah I almost never even use them, thinking it as a bad investment of my mana. Sure these MIGHT make me use more; we'll have to see what Ventris says.

[Damage]

O.o With those results I'm surprised Ventris hasn't said anything yet. Nice statistics.

[Captain Ventris]

Well actually math scares me, so I had to stare at this for a while before some manner of comprehension began to dawn on me.

Basically, I'm thinking that the idea of it activating in a nightmarish flurry of spawning for a temporary period upon sighting an enemy would be nice (then having to recharge or revert to a slow rate, as you stated). I'll fiddle with it.

EDIT: The Slime Meteor is supposed to be a gradual thing, so I instead opted to make the idle spawn rate the same as the current active spawn rate, and made the active spawn rate create 2 spores every time, instead of 1.

[$-$lyfox-$]

the math lost me, so ill go agree with avernus