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Fac balance (Discussion)

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One of my favorite things about Zero-k that differentiates it from other RTS games is the wide range of units. Not only do they have various roles such as riot/skirm/raider, they also have more in depth niche roles and crossover roles (Pyro as a raider/riot, Panther as Raider/Assault, Firewalker as a riot/skirm/arty). In addition to the units themselves, various stratagies can be used to surprise your enemy such as any of the cloaked units (especially well used Athenas), airdrops, terraform, or any speciallty units(dirtbag, fleaspam, ticks/roaches/skuttles/blastwings, missile silos).

I was considering what new fac could be made to serve a new role and first wanted to classify the common fac matchups based on terrain. A fac in parentheses indicates it is less common but still viable (of course any fac can be somewhat viable depending on the situation and team composition).

VERY FLAT:
Light Vehicles/Heavy Tanks/(Hover)

GENTLE HILLS:
Cloakybots/Shieldbots/(Jumpbots)/(Amphib)

STEEP HILLS:
Spiders/Jumpbots

OPEN OCEAN:
Shipyard/(Hover)(Amphib)

SUPPORT ROLE:
Planes/Gunships/Strider Hub

There appears to be good balance between the facs on each terrain type.

(1) Do you agree with my matchups?
(2) Do you agree that facs as a whole are well balanced?
(3) If a new fac was added, which catagory should it fall under?
+0 / -0
Shiedbots are quite bad on hilly maps because their weapons either don't get the advantage of being on a hill while having disadvantage while being downhill OR not having either.
Thug - has plasma cannons that barely gain range with attitude
Bandit - the only unit that gains some power because it can fire upwards without any range falloff
Rogue - gets terribly inaccurate
Outlaw - its range is not affected, it speed is greatly and it was slow to begin with actually google brought a good point below at it being able to fire trough the ground
Felon - by obstructing its view its easy to hide from it on the hilltop
Roach - this things are super powerful when hid on hilltops or just on the ridge since the enemy wont be able to react while slowling going up hill
Vandals - obstructing line of fire

The map I am trying to portrait here is something along the line of Cooperhill or Badlands.

On the contrary cloaky bots have generally speaking more speed, range gain with attitude with things like warrior and glaives, snipers (while they also get small disatvantages while going upwards), there are ticks which have the same quality as roaches and they get zeuses that can easily get in range with their lightning guns on top of the hill.
The unit that becomes near useless on this sort of maps is rocko because they rely on range and kiting they transform into this weird shotgun glasscannons. There is gremlin too but its pretty terrible to begin with and scythes are gonna scythe regardless of terrain.

Keep in mind that amphs, JJs and spiders are equally (or almost) as good as both bot factories on hilly maps.
+0 / -0
8 years ago
quote:
Shipyard/(Hover)(Amphib)


I think right now it's

OPEN OCEAN:

Amphib/Strider Hub/(Hover)(Shipyard)
+0 / -0


8 years ago
Shieldbots are awesome on hilly maps because many of their weapons are arcing or ignore hills.
  • Thug and Rogue arc over hills, possibly hitting things without retribution.
  • Outlaw is the best in hilly areas because it has the range to benefit significantly from cover and ignores cover when firing. Outlaws walking over a ridge can be impossible to stop.
  • Felon has the height to shoot first over ridges, it is nothing special though.
  • Dirtbag can efficiently scout in areas which require close proximity to see.

Cloakybots do worse in hilly areas because all of their weapons need a direct line of fire.
+2 / -0
Racketeer also shoots over obstacles, Sniper does not. The whole fac was explicitly designed to be better in rough terrain, thus the Dirtbag. In truth they're fairly even, the factories are more on a scale from flat to mountainous, from wet to dry and from small to large. Maps are not merely 'Hills' or 'Water', but a mix of terrains that slightly alters the viability of one factory or another. "Cliff" maps contain both height extremes, enough flat land for veh, enough cliffs for spiders, and are a common choice because they allow a very large range of factories.

Flatter
Hover
Tank
Vehicle
Cloak
Amph
Shield
Jump
Spider
Plane
Gunship
Steeper

Wetter
Ship
Amph
Hover
Plane
Gunship
Everything else
Dryer

Smaller
Amph
Spider
Shield
Jump
Cloak
Tank
Hover
Vehicle
Gunship
Plane
Larger

Plane and gun are always better the larger the map and with more obstacles, but become less viable on open ocean maps because sea AA is brutal (A bit of water helps them though).
+1 / -0