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Hovercraft balance

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I'm sure I'm not the only one who still considers Scalpel too good. I think it could lose some of its AOE or gain some cost. Such a change alone would probably just make Hovers a weak pick on dry maps. So...

Dagger and Mace could receive some microbuffs to solidify the hover lineup. Both of those units feel mediocre at best at the moment and I think even truly minuscule buffs might put them in a good place.

Halberd, Penetrator and Flail seem in a very good spot balane wise.
+5 / -0
Skasi
quote:
I'm sure I'm not the only one who still considers Scalpel too good. I think it could lose some of its AOE or gain some cost. Such a change alone would probably just make Hovers a weak pick on dry maps

I support this! Hovers should be a bit of a "weak pick" on pure land maps. They've got very specialized Halberds and Penetrators, both but especially the latter can be a good incentive to still pick Hovers.
+4 / -3
8 years ago
Mace buff then.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
They're already a "weak pick" on all-land maps, at least from games I have seen.
+0 / -0
I think hover isn't so much a weak pick as it has scalpels seem like a low-effort pick. At upper mid to high level play it's counterable without too much relative extra effort, but once it gets down to mid-lower level play dealing with the AoE and tracking requires more effort than is typical, since raiders don't counter it that well as one would naïvely expect. It ends up feeling really strong since it feels like it takes more effort there to counter than to play, and requires a fair bit of knowledge about the interactions of reload time, unit speed, and AoE. Dealing with the Halberd support is also tricky, but at that point the hover player is putting in quite a bit of effort.
+2 / -0

8 years ago
quote:
Such a change alone would probably just make Hovers a weak pick on dry maps

play iog
+0 / -0
Skasi
quote:
They're already a "weak pick" on all-land maps, at least from games I have seen.

Saw a CCR team game today with 3 hover fac plops, 2 lveh facs and 1 tank fac. Multiplayer B389250 10 on Comet Catcher Redux Could've just been a funny coincidence of course.

Anyway, I guess so many players preferring mixed-map factories to be just as good as pure land factories on pure land maps explains why sea balance has been in such a weird/bad state for over a year. People just fail to grasp Balancing 101. Luckily hovers don't dominate pure land maps just yet, at least not in high skill games, but looking at this thread and ZK's past balance changes (amphs and jumpfacs needing to be at least as viable as kbots on any map) really leaves me worried that this will soon change.
+0 / -0
quote:
Luckily hovers don't dominate pure land maps just yet, at least not in high skill games, but looking at this thread and ZK's past balance changes (amphs and jumpfacs needing to be at least as viable as kbots on any map) really leaves me worried that this will soon change.

I'm fairly sure hovers have been stronger than they are right now, both during multihit Dagger spam times and all-vehicle killing Mace spam times.

The popularity and overall strength of the factory seems quite fine to me at the moment, but too much of that power comes from Scalpel being a monster and not enough of it comes from other core hover units, such as Mace or Dagger.
+0 / -0
8 years ago
mace not being able to attack over your other units is a huge pain. it seems like a more reasonable design would have its laser up high like the penetrator's
+2 / -0
8 years ago
Or redback's.
+0 / -0


8 years ago
I think the Mace is designed around having some signficant weaknesses, as its accurate DPS is a ludicrous strength.
+0 / -0


8 years ago
Where is Scalpel used? It must be situational otherwise I would see it a lot more frequently. I heard that balls of it could roam teamgames, does anyone have replays of that?
+0 / -0

8 years ago
Cut the AoE, Riotskirm is bad. Look at the last nerfs to mace and dagger and find some mid point between that state and the current (Do the same thing with Rocko, as an aside).
+3 / -0
Uhm...

Multiplayer B390162 10 on TitanDuel
Multiplayer B390110 15 on Red Comet
Multiplayer B390104 8 on Red Comet
Multiplayer B389465 8 on Red Comet

Pretty much any game size with 3+ players on a team with a flat map will have some scalpel spammer. It's rather distasteful to see. At this point, whenever I see a hover fac, I pretty much know "this person is gonna spam scalpels. Oh joy."

From my understanding, most team players hate scalpel spam. It's skillless to do, and yet requires a lot of skill to counter. Quite frankly, the unit itself needs to be tossed into the deepest pit of hell and left there to burn for all eternity.

I have made this visual to illustrate the problem


PS: Unitguide needs new pene icon.


ON the other hand, after boredom made me look at the scalpel buildpic, I noticed one saving grace.
[Spoiler]
+8 / -0

8 years ago
if scalpels are so OP why didnt I see any during tournament
+1 / -0
Skasi
8 years ago
Probably cuz you chickened out when you still had 3+ games to play. I bet you were afraid of Scalpel spam.
+3 / -0

8 years ago
might have been inclined to stay if people were doing interesting things like scalpel spam
+0 / -0

8 years ago
problem:
- halberd OP
- scalpel OP
- mace UP

solution:
- nerf halberd armored form to be 2.5x as tough as normal, instead of 4x
- reduce scalpel AOE from 96 to 48 and increase cost by 20
- increase mace range from 340 to 370
+0 / -0

8 years ago
2.5 toughness is inconsistent with other armored units.
+0 / -0
Skasi
8 years ago
PTrankraaar I rather play ZK with "OP" Halberds than with old OP Maces. At least you can play around Halberds: kite, dodge, etc. Halberd is a much more interesting and unique concept than Mace too. Mace is basically a mobile LLT.

CArankPxtl to be fair, some units having 4x while others have 3x armor bonus is not consistent either.
+1 / -0
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