Is gauss shit pointed by ivand supposed to out range stinger?

Ah, the DeinFreund Special

gajop could only have made a small terraform wall in front of the HLT to protect it from bounced projectile. I recall I did the same move when defender overshoot exploit was in the wilds.

Technically the gauss bounce is a legit engine mechanic, however the use of that mechanic, we have witnessed in the game, is clearly an abuse and attempt to circumvent game design. Not sure what value gauss bounce brings to ZK gameplay at the moment. Perhaps it's time to change https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/blob/master/units/turretgauss.lua#L96 ?

quote: For me, every added counter to porc improves zk. Especially considering that porc beats artillery in 1v1.. Gauss loses horribly to any unit combo of the same price, so it's closer to static artillery than porc.

Now there's a post-rationalisation.

What would you think about turning Gauss into a "legit" arty/skirmish turret? There is no other use of the Gauss gun that consistency would be broken with and due to its low bullet velocity it's mostly ineffective against units at range. Maybe even increase damage and decrease fire rate so it fits the theme of detris anti heavy Gauss guns and is even worse against units. I don't really see the need for our current "turret that defies turret RPS but has bad stats" Gauss.

1v1 often leads to large porc formations due to unit artillery being expensive, slow, hard to micro and having a long payback time. A buildable artillery may lack the mobility, but unless the enemy quickly mobilises guarantees killing the porc in a short time and forcing the enemy to use mobile units instead.

If you currently have a constructor at the front and the enemy porcs up, your only possible response is retreating or building up your own parallel porc line. Thus the game leads to both sides building up big lines of porc until one player manages to get ahead far enough for an expensive assault push.

By adding BouncerGauss you take away the possibility to porc. The constructor will respond to porc with it, forcing the enemy to build his own BouncerGaussers to shoot back or move in units. If he counters with more static arty you can now move units in as his porc has become cost ineffective against units.

Thus porc lines would either finalize in overprized BouncerGauss lines to make sure they're invincible to those(in which case the enemy might as well have built a DDM or similar) or have to be kept small to not be worth BouncerGaussing.


This system already exists in a less extreme form by LLT push countering defenders. BouncerGausser would make this more reliable and remove the riot sidearm of LLT push.

quote: The proposed static Hammer would be a completely different structure and should not be called Gauss.

Here is the only description of Gauss guns I could find in our wiki

quote: but the real meat lies in the massive gauss guns designed for one purpose - to kill other heavy units quickly and efficiently

So having Gauss as a high damage, slow, low rate of fire weapon doesn't seem too far fetched. Keep in mind that it only has to outrange defender by 10%, so it wouldn't really go into artillery territory.

quote: Light artillery turrets have existed in the past and in other games. They seemed to encourage porc pushing instead of discouraging it.

That's my main concern. Reasons why Gauss should avoid this:

• Costs about as much as heavy porc(stinger)
• Ineffective against units(no aoe, slow projectile)
• Stopped by terraform

I've had the overshoot widget for some time and for a few games tried my hardest to abuse it, but Gauss never seemed worthwhile even in team games. Once it is used at long range it dies very easily to artillery, it can't defend itself against units and is generally much less effective than just force pushing with llt/stardust/stinger and a con swarm. If it really was good at porc pushing you would have seen it in team games by now.

From the way DeinFreund keeps mentioning current Gauss to elaborate on his vision for the Static Hammer, i think his idea has much less range than an impaler - not enough to project any kind of longer area-control, and just barely enough to outrange other similar-weight defenses (Stinger).

If my guess is correct, there's an interesting side effect in that many artillery units will have no problem dislodging the artillery turret. Especially if it doesn't have a bunker sidearm.

Basing Gauss redesign on an exploit is a weird way to do design.

I think Gauss is a unique anti-ground defense that can avoid damage when bunkered, and that's worth keeping. It makes it useful against arty.

Arty is already countered by a defender/stinger on a slope, so I guess an arty proof turret perfectly fits the porc > arty theme.