Currently the factory you chose as your opening can give you a large advantage or disadvantage based on random luck. Some factories are just better than others, and you can't really do anything about it. This makes the game feel RPSy at times, which is very unfun. So what if the plop factory was revealed to your opponent at the start of the game? If you have a bad factory matchup this would let you start to adapt for this and make the game less one sided from the start. Cheesy tactics like GS or plane start would suffer from this...but then again I don't really know if those starts lead to healthy gameplay anyways. A way to think about this would be to ask: what does not knowing your opponents factory at start add to the game? How does it make game-play better? I would argue it adds the possibility for early surprise attacks with unusual units....and thats about it. Enemy factory gets discovered soon enough usually. You can't really prepare for these surprise attacks because the first time you see them its probably too late anyways. This RPS type gameplay is not very fun/healthy. Thoughts?
+2 / -4
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Certainly could be a modoption. If you're going to reveal fac choices at the start of the game, I'd also go one step further and reveal them before the game starts, so that the two players can essentially negotiate what the matchup will be in advance. That eliminates the blind RPS aspect entirely. Neither of these actually needs any coding unless you intend for it to be the default. If the players want to do this, they can just do it via chat. Having UI support would be more elegant, though.
+2 / -1
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It would be interesting to see which factory matchup gets picked the most. Also, side-note: Does anyone else really like playing mirror match ups? I know I do. I feel like these games are more fun because you start on equal ground and aren't frustrated by special abilities of other factories.
+1 / -0
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I think consistent information is important. No information is gained from vacuum, everything has to be scouted by your units.
+4 / -0
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Not knowing what your opponent started with forces one to play in a way that can deal with a wider array of strategies. This means you can be less optimized against rare surprise strategies. I feel like facreveal would probably buff any kind of factories with good aggressive raiders and nerf factories with expensive or less aggressive ones. I haven't played in a long time, but when I did I liked to start tanks. I feel like if one could always see when I started as tanks it would have been easier to punish. Strategy diversity is good so I think the surprise factor from unusual starting factories is somewhat valuable.
+6 / -0
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Then enemy factory should be known after you plop your factory and it doesn't give very big advantages if enemy already picked better factory. Other option is play with same factory as enemy which is randomly chosen before game or with both player agreement. ZK isn't very balanced game like Starcraft. And will never be. Too much factory, too much specifications.
+0 / -0
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If it's revealed the moment it is plopped you may have the amusing situation of two players not plopping their fac to first see what the other one is plopping.
+3 / -0
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Two games which were lost with a victory chance ~90% because of factory RPS:   B482490 2 on Living Lands 3.2 B482506 2 on Living Lands 3.2Me steamrolling a game with only 25% victory chance because of a lucky factory choice: B482671 2 on TitanDuel 2.2Fighting an uphill battle for twenty minutes simply because of an unlucky factory matchup is pretty much the most frustrating part about 1v1 for me. It is impossible to control and thus feels like a game of luck. On the other hand there is no thrill to winning a game where you get all the map for free simply because your raiders hardcounter the opponent's raiders. I know there are some amazingly creative 1v1 players who always find a way to make their units work. This usually relies heavily on defensive play and using large raider groups to locally overwhelm the enemy. This has only become harder since the defender nerf.
+3 / -0
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Devs just need to do something with no-brainer stupid pregame RPS units like Blastwings, which are basically uncounterable. Factory reveal is a wrong solution to the problem IMO. It will also have bad side effects to legit matchups like Tanks vs LV or Tanks vs Cloaky, as tanks "surprise" opening is their only chance to stay relevant. Unfortunately, our project leader don't seem to realize such issue exists and the tickets I created on github have got no attention for weeks.
+1 / -0
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B482506 2 on Living Lands 3.2 looks like poor earlygame play that just snowballed. Consider especially the first Pyro. It stops before entering the enemy base and does literally nothing the whole game. I think rushing in that Pyro would've been gamewinning at the spot (base only had LLT, it would all burn) but even if playing it safe there was no reason not to go closer (can always jump away if need be). Then there's composition (Puppy vs Glaive: makes slight cost, but defensively Pyro works much better; Placeholder vs Rocko/Warrior: doesn't really help Moderator who has CC on his own and doesn't care much about the root), mismicro (jumping Pyros onto Reavers multiple times), and misc decisions: no radar, hardly expanding north, maybe even the unusually early base nano (I realize it was to make use of the second nano's reclaim income but I think it sacrificed too much tempo).
+0 / -0
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I have thought about this topic for a long time and I often look jealously at other games Scout Cavalry and Probes. In Zero-K it is just about impossible to scout your opponents factory without revealing your own. Worse, you are sure to reveal your own factory while your opponent may manage to hide theirs.
+1 / -0
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Looking at the replays linked above and comparing with my own knowledge, I feel like the problem has more to do with 1v1 Jumpbot start and the Hover vs. Rover matchup than blind factory RPS in this instance. Both of those things have historically been very wonky. When plopping Jump what matchup did you think you might get that would be good/playable? Last I checked the Hover vs Rover matchup was felt by the general public to be hover-favoured, what changed? Certainly I don't think strategies would have significantly changed had the players known each others' factories at the start, I don't think that aspect of the problem determined the outcome of this game. The blastwing gunship starts are kind of dumb but that may be addressable in other ways. They only seem to be common on some maps.
+1 / -0
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I do agree that scouting for your opponents factory reveals just as much information to them as it does to you unless you're using Cloakybots (and you probably are) or Fleas, maybe. Maybe it would be interesting if in 1v1s everyone starts with a commander AND a generic basic scout that can't be rebuilt so you don't reveal your unit type when you go hunting for the enemy's?
+0 / -0
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I've considered a generic scout but as a solution it feels so messy. The single commander start is nice and elegant.
+2 / -0
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Maybe the unbalance between some factorys just needs to become smaller? Scouts view range could also be increased by the way
+1 / -0
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What about forcing both players to plop the same fac? The first player that choses what fac to plop determines what fac will be. Then, when the second one plops, his fac will be the same that his enemy plopped no matter what he chose. But now that I think about it. What about ship fac? It can only be built in water. If the second comm tries to plop his fac in ground. Hmmm maybe is not a good idea.
+0 / -0
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My preferred solution would be allowing two factories. I usually build a second factory within the first 10 minutes of the game anyway. Choosing a combination of two factories even increases the amount of possible matchups. Revealing the opponent's factory or forcing mirror matches feels like making the game less interesting to me.
+4 / -0
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