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fix gunships?

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9 years ago
moved from:
http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/8890?page=1

some things like the banshee and rapier really need a buff. the only problem is creating a specialisation for those gunships, preventing overlap, and avoiding monounit spam...

for example:

Black Dawn : heavy strike
high hp, high alpha, medium speed
focused on single unit kills and survivability
(perfect atm, maybe even more alpha if posible)

Brawler : fire support
high hp, high sustain, medium speed
focused on providing supressive fire for ground forces, and preventing enemy offencive action
(perfect atm, just perfect)

Banshee : ultralight raider (needs refinment since avengers kill too easily)
low hp, medium-high dps, high speed
focused on hit and run attacks of undefended areas and retreating
(someone broke this, banshee should be the fastest air unit in game(with really low acceleration)*)

raipier : general assult
high hp, low speed, low dps, hit both air and ground
reletevly harmless damage output, but can take alot of hits and survive medium AA
(someone broke this, rapier should be the slowest and toughest air unit in game not "a slightly more shitty banshee"*)


*this is just an example, but to be practical each gunship must be highly polarized to its role, and exceed planes lab in some aspect to remain competetive in the air game.
+1 / -0
Rapier do not need a buff, they have been op as gunship ball and have never been nerf, they are just not that frequently used. Discuss with USrankRyMarq or other for more info
+0 / -0
Rapiers do not need a buff, they need to be specialised into something.

As they are now, they serve no purpose.

they do same thing as BD, but worse.
they do the same thing as brawler, but worse.
they do the same thing as rapier (should) do, but worse.
+0 / -0
Rapiers have stupidly low damage for their 300 metal cost. They arent that fast either.

If you want to kill a target, ravens are better 99% of the time.

Cmon, do you ever see a non-noob go gunships? In team games or 1v1, planes are chosen 99% of the time, and choosing gunships makes you a troll.

Two of their units are super troll, blastwing and stunner thing. They both die to light aa, and blastwings are better at killing other blastwings than anything else.

They have TWO transports, which makes absolutely no sense, considering none of their units are ground. Moving one of them to a factory like amphib would benefit both factories.

Banshees are balanced around being mobile air, but they fly so low they might as well be spiders in terms of usage. They are only good against naked mexes or builders, as soon as light defence goes up you cant trade at all.

Rapiers are bad because they do no damage for their cost. What are they supposed to be? Radiers? Assults? AA?

Black dawns are good, but too expensive.

Brawlers are ok, they dont feel very powerful for their cost either.

Also it doesnt help that most aa seems to be balanced around bursting down bombers(with dps, excluding defenders, and the other aa which nobody uses), which doesn't do favors to the dps focused gunships.

Anti air also seems to be much more powerful against air then ground defence is against ground. This makes sense considering the mobility advantage, but currently its balanced around bombers. Gunships need lots of time to do do equivalent damage of bombers, which this bomber focused aa doesnt provide.

I hope you can make sense out of this rambling.
+2 / -0

9 years ago
Gunships have the deathballing advantage. Just that nobody uses that atm doesn't mean they are weak. You can have extreme dps at any point of the map within seconds, that's the advantage here. Bombers sort of do the same thing, but with alpha not dps.
+2 / -0
Yep. I can't be the only one who's scrambled to figure out how to put some blast-radius into the air when facing a dense-packed mass of gunships. Rapiers are generally UP on their own, but they make up for that by being one of the most generalist units in the game and very deathballable.
+2 / -0


9 years ago
I have not forgotten the banshee balls of six months ago.. since then, all that has really changed is their max firing angle. banshee is deffo not underpowered!
+0 / -0
Skasi
9 years ago
quote:
since then, all that has really changed is their max firing angle. banshee is deffo not underpowered!

Just to clarify, that nerf was not really small. It stopped Banshees from roflstomping fighters. Not saying it was too big of a change, just that it should not be underestimated.
+0 / -0
9 years ago
quote:
Just to clarify, that nerf was not really small. It stopped Banshees from roflstomping fighters. Not saying it was too big of a change, just that it should not be underestimated.

It should be reverted. ZK was better when banshees countered avengers!
+0 / -0
9 years ago
If it is so good? They why does everyone mass bombers instead? I have not seen anyone mass gunships. Ok I lie, I saw it twice in the past 3 months. Then they got torn apart by redbacks and panthers after doing nothing.

10 rapiers vs 10 bombers - same cost and hp, but bombers kill stuff much faster and more of them survive because they dont have to sit around.
+0 / -0
9 years ago
Well gunships now have tridents so maybe rapier AA role can be reduced to give them a better ground role? How about giving them a fast non tracking missile and inceased HP?
+1 / -1
quote:
If it is so good? They why does everyone mass bombers instead? I have not seen anyone mass gunships.

This is due to a big shift in the metagame. 6 months ago banshees were extremely common. Banshee switches were perhaps about as common as raven switches now. Firing angle nerf was significant, but that didn't necessarily drop them from being super good to useless.

When bomber meta started taking over everybody just kind of went with it. A bomber switch is not strictly better than a banshee switch although usually safer and more difficult to counter with ground units. Depending on how many and what kind of defenses your opponent has and what type of army he has banshees and other gunships can still be deadly.

For instance, when enemy is massing rockos a suprise banshee swarm could ravage them very quickly. A banshee makes cost vs a swarm of rockos in approximately 30 seconds. A raven would need a few minutes for that due to the very low weight of rockos. Raiding naked mexes is also where banshees shine - ravens are quite impractically slow at that in comparison.

Obviously there are also significant disadvantages to a gunship switch over a plane switch, but more science needs to be done. Gunships just haven't been played enough in 1v1s after the meta shifted.
+1 / -0


9 years ago
When talking about Gunships they are going to have to be compared to Planes. Their AA units fight each other directly and they broadly have the same role as a start factory; to encourage the other team to spend resources on AA. The method by which they achieve this should be distinct though.

Fighters were buffed and differentiated fairly recently (9 months ago) and Hacksaw was nerfed a year ago. Also Raven was reworked and last buffed 9 months ago. So there have been changes which make Planes a more attractive choice.

I am currently happy with how Planes work. Both fighters have a role and the bombers are useful but tend not to dominate games. A general problem with aircraft is that they become obsolete later in the game as more long range AA appears but Planes seem to be quite resistant to becoming obsolete. It may be a problem that Raven is the most widely applicable bomber but I think that is ok because it is not easy to use and you still have to balance it with fighters. Keeping track of the entire battle and deciding where to use Ravens is not an easy task.

If Gunship AA is to be slower than fighters it should at least beat fighters. Rapier needs to be a bit of a better AA option. Maybe Banshee needs changing but I would look at changing the AA first. I agree that roles are good, BD has a decent role while Brawler and Banshee roles are not so pronounced. Rapier has a confused role and is trying to be good vs fighters without being too good vs ground and rendering Banshee obsolete.
+3 / -0

9 years ago
why is krow not in strider hub?
+1 / -0
9 years ago
Rapier could be re-purposed to an assault gunship. We wouldn't want to make it the aa unit, because the trident is supposed to fill that role.

They suffer because they have the advantages and disadvantages of being air, but they can't control air as well as the plane factory.
+0 / -0
Well, 2 mostly used gunships (BlackDawn and Krow) are used hit-and-run like. That means they dont differ much from bombers. Well, except that they dont have to go all the way back to the base in order to reload.

That clearly shows there is something wrong with GSes. They should get much more HP (3x planes for cost) so they can withstand flying over enemy AA longer, or much higher DPS, so they dont have to sit ducks over enemy AA long.

Personaly I'd like the 1st option more, to make them less bombers-like. To me, GSes should be to planes, what HVs are to LVs.
+9 / -0
9 years ago
Things I like about gunships:
They can turn a battle on a dime with proper use adding needed power to large battles allowing one side to push for victory and take the wreckage field

A good gunship in the right situation is one of the best assets you can have

Things I don't like about gunships:
They rely mostly on "ZUPRIZE I'M GUNSHIPS" as gunships are so easily countered across the board, not only does AA counter them, but most riots and some raiders (see panther) also counter gunships.

Really I often feel like it's more important that I just had gunships in general instead of having one particular type over another, I want my gunship decisions to actually mean something.

The only uses of transports I see are to either rush a large unit in or comnap, I'm unsure if that can be changed but eh.

+2 / -0
9 years ago
ZK airdrop mechanic is much beter then the one in BA, so i have no complaints about it

"ZUPRIZE I'M GUNSHIPS" is actualy what banshees should be doing, but as they are they can't; being too slow, and low DPS (i would actualy be all for a HP nerf to banshee).

So that role is relegated to the gunships that are not meant to fill that role (BD, Brawler), and creates an odd game where banshee cant be used for rading.


also banshee should actualy be faster then swifts, simply because swifts are the equiveland of anti-plane riots, and banshee are the equivelant of glaives.
+1 / -1
9 years ago
Well to be specific I don't mind the surprise mechanic for banshees or even as a general "ha take that" but I dislike how the factory seems to rely on that surprise.

I have a suspicion that this is due to how easily gunships are countered, not only do they die to AA, but also to certain types of anti-surface units. Although I like this mechanic, gunships are inherently easy to counter as quite a few units counter the whole factory.

This leads me to believe, and agree with GBrankKyubey in the original post, that gunships need diversification.
+1 / -0
Yes, they are easly countered by raiders, as raiders are usualy faster, or not much slower than gunships, thus they can keep chainsing tehm (and damaging) for a long time> It can't happen to planes, tahts why GSes should have like 3x more Hp than planes (for cost OFC)

Once again - to me, the yshould be some sort of "heavy planes"
+1 / -0
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