Continued from the Starcraft 2 thread. 1.In Zero-K the most of the scount, raider, riot，AA, defense turret, and some of the support/heavy/artillery units use weapons that are difficult or impposible to dodge, that's quite a lot. Some of them are totally understandable, like riot need fast projectiles or instant hit weapons to counter raiders, but the others doesn't seem entirely necessary. For instance, why did raiders need fast projectiles? Countering slow units like assaults and skirmishers doesn't require fast projectiles, so it seems the main reason is to make them good at intercepting other raiders, which is a job that could also be done by a well-placed riot. Slower projectiles would make raider vs raider micro (which is a big thing in high level play) more exciting to watch, good riot placements could create some drastic moments too. 2.It seems the army growth in Zero-K rely a bit too much on economy growth, and not enough on unit saving. A lot of climatic moments in other RTS games come from the fact that the loss on the army can not be rebuilt easily, it can't be like that if the army size is largely a result of the current income rate. Starcraft 2 handle this by keeping the action level low for the most of the game, the result is sometimes one game only have one battle, it's pretty boring. The better approach might be simply making units more durable, or making retreatment more valuable, we can keep the action level high while still gathering potential energy for climatic moments.
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Experience Morph was heralded as a mechanic that generated extra value in keeping units alive. It is dedicatedly the comeback mechanic in Wesnoth for example, their answer to "why can't i just spam infinite units and bury you in bodies despite taking more losses", like Reclaim is in ZK. Reclaim could be argued to be an unit conservation mechanic because losing dead bodies on enemy soil feeds your foe, but in practice this is not as simple. XP Morphs were removed because of being largely inconsistent, bug-prone and undiscoverably unintuitive. A "save the morphs" movement occured in reaction to that move and a project to generate and implement a better morph system was started. XP was normalized, removing some of the issues with old morph, etc. But now it seems to have stalled. Nothing has been heard in a long time.
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  qwerty3w, go play XTA. Almost everything seems to be dodgeable there. I think it's awful. Lowering raider projectile speed would heavily impact early raider-vs-raider battles. I'm not sure it would be "more exciting to watch". Tests might show. quote:
A lot of climatic moments in other RTS games come from the fact that the loss on the army can not be rebuilt easily, it can't be like that if the army size is largely a result of the current income rate. |
That's probably not the fact that armies can be rebuilt easier in ZK, but rather that ZK has more ways to come back. There's micro/comeback units, counters are available most of the time, etc.
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I think I disagree with the premise of both. 1. I disagree that raiding cannot be a spectacle. See Skasi Duck video for an easy example. Slower projectiles would make raiders unusable. The retreating advantage would increase to the point that any attack can be defended by raiders for much less cost. With really slow projectiles the advancing raiders would not be able to advance quickly due to their dodging. There is already a lot of dodging in the form of positioning and running away at the right time. Fights can change a lot based on this. Saving a bunch of units has impressiveness. 2. Unit saving is already really important.
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Actually to add to 2: There are units that are "designed around" not being lost. Mostly that's a combination of high HP and cost. Assaults - especially Reapers - as well as striders, Krows and similar are examples for units that can be much more cost efficient when they survive for repairs. I think some of these units are still too good even without being repaired though.
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GoogleFrog: 1.I actually know that duck spectacle before starting this thread, and was wondering why can't more encounters between raiders be like that? 2.But unlike in Brood War or Warcraft 3, the unit conservation in Zero-K seems rarely strong enough to allow the spectators see critical big clashes, so I feel it's probably not on a totally ideal level. Skasi: Having a lot of ways to counter and easy to counter are not the same thing, if the loss doesn't make countering the opponent a lot more difficult, then it is not truly a critical loss. Heavier units are easier to save, but they are also less common and less maneuverable, it might be better if the attrition could be lower for the cheaper units.
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quote:
Starcraft 2 handle this by keeping the action level low for the most of the game, the result is sometimes one game only have one battle, it's pretty boring. |
I think one of the reasons why Starcraft is so successful as an E-sport is because it have this downtime between engagements. This gives the commentators time to comment on the strategies, expansion, teching, map control and even the players themselves. When Shadowfury333 casts a game of Zero-K he usually struggles to keep a balance between commenting strategies, expansion, map control and the actual fighting because in Zero-K the raiding and fighting usually starts from minute 1 and there is little downtime inbetween. That is the game I prefer to play where there is constant action and always a fight for resources and map control.
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Focusing on the making the game for spectators instead of the players is a terrible idea.
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I agree with waldo. I also think a lot of, "engaging to spectators" comes from popularity (and more stable setup). That is when lots of people know about your game, and how it's supposed to go and what are the fun bits, they can appreciate it more. Spring RTS games are not popular, there is tiny community of players, so no one is even looking at it, there are no places to stumble upon it. So someone sees some replay video somewhere, he will thing oh this is some niche game i never heard of. I can bet that most of replay watchers are players themselves, considering that spring has at most something like 1k people online, this means that stable player base is rather small, thus there are little people who would even be interested in sepctating. Comparing to starcraft is not very good here, it has huge legacy and player base, this give it large viewing audience. I would guess that after steam launch things would become better, even from additional exposure only.
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I sort of agree with   luckywaldo7 but then why cant both parties be satisfied? Engaging for spectators can be also engaging for players. For example making some more projectiles dodgeable by units is not going to make the game on low level worse and it might even be more enjoyable at high level play.   morphles a lot of SC2 e-sport watchers are not SC2 players themsleves. They just like to watch... I like to watch games too...
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I know that a lot of SC watchers are not players. But you can not expect anything much with such low knowledge of a game.
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quote:
2.But unlike in Brood War or Warcraft 3, the unit conservation in Zero-K seems rarely strong enough to allow the spectators see critical big clashes, so I feel it's probably not on a totally ideal level. |
Unit tradeoffs are still very important in ZK. You can have a higher income and still lose due to poorer unit trades. SC2 comes down to big battles because neither side is willing to risk fighting with such a gross lack of information (ie radar and cheap scouting) and impending economic collapse looming over them the whole game. Unit counters are also so rigid in SC2 that battles are often very one sided, and units and eco and everything else requires so much babysitting that players hardly have time to micro their armies meaningfully. I think the main reason ZK rarely comes down to big battles is because of poor economic flow. Early game you start with barely enough resources for 3 mex 3 solar and a bunch of really inflexible build power (ie a commander). Then you're pretty badly stalled if you try to produce units and expand at the same time, and screwed if you don't. Any porc is a heavy drain early game too. Mid game eco is a lot of flailing around because on most maps mexes are all spread out individually and can't be defended or overdriven cost effectively. A lot of maps just don't have enough metal for significant escalation even then. Late game sucks because overdrive is biased towards singus while fusions and solars give like nothing, assuming you can manage to connect the mexes on a given map in the first place. Typically only metal heavy maps like CCR see a whole lot of action, and the amount of territory each side is required to hold is disproportionately large compared to the income they get. IMO SC2 maps are a lot more interesting too, with stronger choke points, contrasting open areas and transitional spaces that would make battles more interesting if it were ZK. In ZK it's like "ok every part of this map is bot pathable, I'll go cloaky". For that matter watching veh get randomly stuck in the fac or on a ramp or on some invisible bump in the ground isn't much fun either, whether you're playing or spectating. There are other things that could be improved, but that's the main point wrt what you were talking about.
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 aeoniosI like the way you think and present your points, although I don't think I agree that your economy and game flow analysis applies to high-level play (1v1 in particular). I'm more inclined to point to wrecks and reclaim; you need to be way more careful about where large engagements take place because a whole lot of resources are going to be dropped right there. (Q: perhaps wrecks should 'degrade' over time?) quote:
IMO SC2 maps are a lot more interesting too, with stronger choke points, contrasting open areas and transitional spaces that would make battles more interesting if it were ZK. In ZK it's like "ok every part of this map is bot pathable, I'll go cloaky". For that matter watching veh get randomly stuck in the fac or on a ramp or on some invisible bump in the ground isn't much fun either, whether you're playing or spectating. |
One of my ever-in-progress projects is a "concept map", focused around choke points, but specifically pertaining to the much more complicated movement types in ZK. I.E. Deep narrow water is accessible to jumpers and hovers to jump/pass over. Steep cliff is accessible to jumpers and spiders to jump/climb up.. Deep narrow water below a steep cliff will only allow jumpers to jump over and up. And many other combinations. Ultimately you would be left with a map that looked difference for every factory. Although I already anticipate problems such as gunships being overpowered in their ability to simply "go everywhere".
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quote:
Mid game eco is a lot of flailing around because on most maps mexes are all spread out individually and can't be defended or overdriven cost effectively. |
I agree with this and like always I repeat this again: We need more metal maps like this ( rysia).
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Reclaim as a tradeoff mechanism in Zero-K is biased towards heavy units. Heavy units have wreckages that are more difficult to be shattered into debris and lose a large part of their metal values. But I think it is the lighter units that need more conservation, not heavy units, heavy units already have more conservation due to high hp and repairing. Fighting on map control sometimes could merely mean driving away enemies or being driven away, not necessary have units killed or all of the units killed, so I don't see why unit conservation is inherently connected with the lack of constant actions.
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quote:
One of my ever-in-progress projects is a "concept map", focused around choke points, but specifically pertaining to the much more complicated movement types in ZK.
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I think i've done that. I would like to do more on this though, expand and explore the spaces that were not achieved on Coag, add more finesse to execution. Collab is welcome! quote:
Fighting on map control sometimes could merely mean driving away enemies or being driven away, not necessary have units killed or all of the units killed, so I don't see why unit conservation is inherently connected with the lack of constant actions. |
Are you sure you aren't looking to fix experience morph?
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Free&&instant world-wide delivery of beer, chips and prostitutes to each spectator! Teleport power to the masses! HELL YEA
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quote:
Heavy units have wreckages that are more difficult to be shattered into debris and lose a large part of their metal values. |
Just to clarify: debris ≠ debris Debris created on unit-death has a lower value, but debris created from driving-over and crushing wreckages has the same value as wreckages.
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Last time I tested, a sumo wreckage has 680m, after I destoryed the wreckage with 3 skuttles, only 340m left.
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Yes, that's "debris created on unit-death". If you order a Detriment to move over a [edit] Sumo Reaper wreckage then it turns into debris without losing any metal. However this is not true for Sumo. That means rules differ between units -> ZK is bugged.[/edit]
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