More units in Zero-K

Budded off from the discussion here: http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/19887?page=1#141597

Basically, it is about how many more units Zero-K can support, in terms of current factory lineups and even adding more factories. Whether there are even enough fresh ideas to add more to the game and whether the limited factory lineups actually encourage factory identity (IMO no, Shield has a huge lineup and tonnes of identity).

quote: Orfelius Honestly? I don't see a good theme or even name for another factory that could be added. But perhaps you are *the designer* of Zero-K after all and thus you are always going to have at least some influence over the things that happen here despite you thinking otherwise.

I'm really not going to try to exercise a design mandate when I'm so out of the dev cycle right now (Don't even have git set up). Google is incredibly talented, very competent and I have a lot of faith in him.

But you want factory ideas? Just off the top of my head: Levitation platforms. We have two veh and three bots, so this is like a second hovercraft. This is how I would implement hover if I did it from scratch, but hover has it's own identity now. Instead of turning, levitation platforms have momentum like gunships, and have no 'facing'. However, they all have turrets that take time to turn to their location in fixed-world space, that is independent of their direction of movement. Many can be 'deployed' with "D" into a static unit with new abilities.

Constructor
A medium weight constructor
Deploy to gain additional build radius and build power.

Scout
50m, fast unarmed scout with decent HP. When it dies, spawns 3 mines which shoot a single laser blast for 150 damage each.
When deployed, gains radar range and periodically places mines around it.

Raider
Fast with a low range rocket. Mostly for raiding mexes and bursting out slower units, but can launch rockets back at units that pursue.
Deploy's into 90 degree turret with +400 range for hitting LLT's or light bombardment

Heavy Raider
A short ranged laser with a vampiric effect, causing it to leach a portion of the HP it damages.
Rather than deploying, D causes it to double it's speed, but lose much of it's maneuverability.

Riot
A fastish unit that shoots a damaging but brief blackhole, causing units to stutter and cluster up.
Deploy into a 180 degree turret with a larger AoE, longer duration and no damage. Can allow slower projectiles rocket raider in either mode to hit approaching targets, or cluster units up for other undeployed riots.

Assault
A beefy ravager-like fast assault, which shoots a starlight-like laser which slowly tracks it's target. Since turrets have global facing, stopping or keeping a moving target at the same angle decreases tracking time.
Deploy grants a considerable HP bonus, but decreases turret turn rate.

Skirmisher
Lobs plasma projectiles at skirmisher range (We have no plasma skirmisher!)
Deploy to cause it to float upwards, gaining extra ballistic range, and making it harder to hit by other weapons (Like a Skydust).

Artillery
Shoots slow, homing missiles, a bit slower than a Janus which can be outrun.
Deploy: 90 degree arc and additional range, but adds a minimum range.

Anti-Heavy
A fast, burrowing armoured crawling blackhole bomb with a long duration.
Deploy causes it to generate a constant blackhole field.


The concept of the factory is that movement is momentum based, so they can build up a lot of speed in one direction, but take time to slow down and move the other direction, but without having to turn. With no movement 'facing', this lets turrets aim in global space rather than relative to the facing, so you have to be conscious of where your arcs are pointed, and you can be flanked. They use various lock-down blackhole abilities to allow their turrets time to draw a bead and some of their slower projectiles to hit mobiles, as well as letting AoE wreak havoc. The deploy modes allow them to set up static firebases and assault positions, but limits their arcs and makes them even easier to flank, so they have to use blackholes, mines and their range to excercise spatial control and lure the enemy into traps.

So all of this is drawing on a lot of ideas I've had for a long time, but I prettymuch came up with this off the top of my head. I'm not advocating or even proposing that this factory actually be implemented, but there is way more space in the game for things we've never done, from speed-boost abilitieslike the old Zipper to transformer modes to height-changing units to vampiric weapons etc etc etc.

Burrowers. They have spider-like AT but move very, very slowly over rough terrain. However, many of them deform the terrain as they move, creating new slopes and paths as more and more of them move around the map, to speed up traversal and allow even other factories new paths just by forging their own. They have a variety of terraforming attacks as their primary disables, paying a price to lock units down pits or up spires, from which they can themselves perch for range or lurk inside. They also have impulse attacks, to knock units off spires for damage or into their pits. They use melee weapons, dragging units into range with impulse or hiding down pits to ambush them, or chewing on enemies as they're knocked into pits and immobilized.

Practically speaking, there would probably have to be more flexible and intuitive options for dealing with terraform and impulse fall/collision damage would probably have to be reduced for this factory to really work.

Yogzototh
Frankly, I think a stumpy with slow damage is actually interesting enough if added to, say, hover. It's slightly different but in an interesting enough way, and unlocks all the other units in the factory by having this dependable assault choice. Halberd was meant to be the Stumpy (Has many of the same stats) but with it's niche quirky armour, it was an unstoppable monospam god when it had a reasonable speed projectile, and having it unable to work as a mainline assault unit comparable to ravager hurts the viability of Hover as a whole. Though I still believe in "Insane" units too, and think if something were added which could keep pace with Halberd and protect them properly from Scorchers, that would be even more interesting.

Yogzototh: Sounds kind of like the replacement vehicles from the second Company of Heroes expansion (I forget the name, Tales of Valor maybe?). Never did convince me as a good idea, but then some of the replacements there were quite dramatic.

quote: whether the limited factory lineups actually encourage factory identity (IMO no, Shield has a huge lineup and tonnes of identity).

I'd be very careful in saying exactly what is meant here. I'm inclined to think that smaller factory lineups make it easier to avoid including units which hinder factory identity.

Shieldfac has the advantage that as themes go not all of its units have to have shields (so Bandit and Rogue get away with being largely generic). Dirtbag is only very tenuously related to the shield theme but works so well in terms of gameplay with the rest of the fac that it's fine. Racketeer works fairly well in tandem with shields kind of. Roach doesn't really fit with shields much at all but it has to go somewhere and the mirror relationship with Cloakyfac gets it over the line.

All three of these are "peripheral" units too, they don't make up the main body of your Shield factory army. (Dirtbag flooding aside.)

Compare to Hover or Amph, in which all of their units have to have the "gimmick" of aquatic movement. (Incidentally, I have toyed with the idea of an Amph which swims on the surface and is stationary while healing underwater, or a Hover which can dive under water temporarily, to mix this up some and round out the factories' options. As a concept it's pretty out there though.)

I'd just love the burrower as a strider, for handling late-game terra. A big kamikaze/terraform assault unit to open up the porc-wall.

Let the neonstorm begin!

The most important question have not been unanswered here though: how would burrow actually work.
In SC 2 burrow is basically a variation of cloaking where units slow down so how would you deal with detection of the burrowers?

I've always felt like Spiders stand out as especially fragile and slow in addition to their all terrain capabilities. Crabe is an exception with situational tankiness and Flea with speed, but other than that fragility and lack of level ground speed characterise them pretty well.

It makes no sense for an artillery unit to have homing missiles, no? Also, skirmisher could just turn into arty upon deployment, so you would need one unit less in the factory. Not sure if satisfactory unit AI can be made to choose to deploy or not...

I like the concept of a factory consisting of units based on lack of face direction and emphasis on using momentum.

However I'm not a fan of all those deployment options. IMO Zero-K is already way too static with all the turretspam and I feel like if new units would be added I'd like them to reward being mobile instead of rewarding sitting in one place and synergising even more with slow porc creep.

It's illustrative, both of a theme (beyond the weird new movement type, which is theme enough) and of new things you can do that are trade-offs rather than APM sinks. It's meant to allow them to be fast for large maps, but without the crash-through style of Veh and Hover: More siege, assault and zone control like shieldbots are. When Hover were a non-pick factory, we considered making them ALL slow down to fire as a factory theme, so they could be meaningfully faster than vehicles without being any more the kiting-monsters that they already are. It was ultimately decided among other things that having to holdfire to run away was kludgey, compared to the very simple Slasher behavior of 'press stop to shoot, press move to run': But I still think there is space in the game for units like this.

It illustrates a lot of other things too. We don't really use transformation states that change how a unit behaves, other than two-way static-mobile morphs. All "D" commands are one-shots rather than toggles: Toggles are cool and interesting. We don't have anything that really uses fixed arcs (Wolverine was the last real one), units, arty or turrets, mobile or fixed, and most of the units that have interestingly slow turret turn rates have had the feature muscled out of the game by aggressive unit turnspeed increases in the name of better pathing and control. We don't use minimum ranges, and we definitely don't have units that can dynamically control their own heights, other than (maybe) Shadow. We don't have sprinting, other than the fighter (Where it works superbly).

The static movement thing is just meant to really demonstrate limited arcs, a permutation of the idea introduced by the slower (but global space) turret turn rates: In this more extreme example you pick a single facing and are stuck for some time which was really interesting with s44's artillery.

Zombies/Organic X Burrowers = Shoggoth Factory