Status Effects

Zero-K has a lot of status effects, special debuffs that can be applied to enemy units to help suppress them and support your armies in battle. They work by filling separate damage meters underneath the target's hit points, and generate various effects.

EMP damage

EMP damage stuns enemies, completely disabling them and preventing them from moving, using abilities, or returning fire.

• When an instance of EMP damage is applied to an enemy, it is checked in proportion to the enemy's current health and converted into a stacking percentage.
• When EMP percentage reaches 100% or higher, the unit is stunned.
• EMP percentage on units decay at a rate of 2.5% per second. The moment the unit's percentage drops below 100%, it is no longer stunned.
• Even though EMP percentage stacks, it doesn't stack freely: every EMP weapon has a maximum percentage it can raise a unit to. This is described in the weapon stat block as a maximum stun time - each second effectively being a 2.5% maximum over 100% since EMP decays at that rate.
  • For example, a Venom has a maximum stun time of 1s, which means it can at most raise an enemy's stun percentage to 102.5%.
  • Meanwhile a Widow can stun a unit for 30s, which means it can raise an enemy's stun percentage to 100 + 30 × 2.5 = 175%.

Against shields, EMP damage is divided by 3 and converted into normal shield damage. If a weapon deals normal and EMP damage together, the EMP damage is applied last.

EMP is yellow, or in the case of the self-destructing Imp, blue.

Disarm damage

Disarm is a particular type of EMP that will leave the afflicted units able to move, but unable to use any weapons or special abilities (this includes jumping, using build power, regeneration or receiving income from the commander's Vanguard economy module). Disarm damage is converted into a separate disarm percentage bar tracked independently from EMP percentage. Disarmed units flash yellow instead of blue.

Slow damage

Slow damage gradually decreases the movement speed and rate of fire of enemy units.

• Unlike EMP or disarm damage, slow damage is tracked and stored directly on the affected unit as a total rather than being converted into a percentage.
• As long as a unit has slow damage on it, it is slowed in proportion to the slow damage / its current health. This means that damaging a unit can increase its slow since the slow damage buffer becomes proportionally larger.
• Slow damage is always capped at 50% of the unit's current health. If a unit is damaged to the point that slow damage would rise over this limit, the extra slow damage is cleared.
• After 0.5s of taking no slow damage, units start clearing slow damage = 4% of their current health per second.
• Some units (the Limpet and Moderator) apply overslow:
  • This is a secondary status effect that raises the slow damage cap of the target to higher than 50% of the target's current HP.
  • Even when a unit's slow damage taken is higher than 50% of its current health, it is still only slowed down by 50%. Overslow effectively "stretches out" the 50% slow longer.
  • Overslow is tracked and cleared separately from slow.

Like EMP damage, slow damage is divided by 3 and converted into normal damage against shields.

Slow is purple.

Capture damage

Capture damage is a special kind of damage only dealt by the Dominatrix and the Reef's drones. It can steal a unit from an enemy and place it under your (potentially permanent) control.

• When an instance of capture damage is applied to an enemy, it is directly converted into a percentage just like with EMP damage. Unlike with EMP damage, it's divided by (the target enemy's current HP + 500) instead of just the target's current HP.
• When a unit reaches 100% capture percentage, it is captured and belongs to the unit who dealt that last bit of capture damage. It stays this way until the controller is destroyed.
• After 5s of taking no capture damage, capture percentage decays at a rate of 4% per second.
• If a captured unit's controller is destroyed, it is returned to its original owner with 95% capture percentage.
• Capturing a controller grants control of all its subordinates, in a tree-like control structure.
• Even though capture percentage stacks, it does not stack between players who belong on different teams. Each team gets their own capture bar for the target unit, and the UI will only display the highest percentage.

When a capturing unit takes control of an enemy unit, a visible control line is drawn leading from the controller to its victim. The full line is visible to any enemy player who has vision of either end of the line, so they can spot hidden controllers.

Even though the Dominatrix has a 12 second reload time after capturing a unit, this only applies to the Dominatrix that dealt the final instance of capture damage - every other Dominatrix that contributed can fire on new targets immediately. Reef's drones have individual capture reload timers but their damage counts for the Reef.

Capturing a unit that originally belonged to an ally returns it to that ally without creating a control link.