Thunderbird Balance

A unit thats probably sparked the most debate in this game and spawned the entire disarm mechanic. Sometimes blamed to be missing in discussions about factory matchups or balanced threads as the main tilting factor between army encounters.... what are the better players opinions on its current state and its influence as a support factory (which is pretty much all planes are)?

I personally feel it does too much still, specially on defense and against slower units, and drive a huge speed advantage to show between units that can simply run away till the debuff passes and trivializes a lot of defenses.

As far as changes im not sure, I do realize its current animation to be very cool... but the area it can cover is insane for the amount of disarm it can put out... I was thinking that it could do less but more safely perhaps switching its animation to a more napalm/licho style in a smaller aoe and perhaps change its damage type to slow instead of disarm.

>feels too effective against static defences.
Consider you are shields or amph and need to deal with some porc.
You can either facswitch to air and get thunOPbird or go lv and get merl.
Which is better against porc?
Thunderbird, by a mile. It also costs like ~100m less than a merl.

Its almost comical how bad artillery is in ZK.

Thunderbird!

the name fits the unit perfectly, it's a bird that shoots thunders. It has a unique look and feel. The sweeping behavior looks nice.

ah, this is a thread about balance. Well then, thunderbird balance is HORRIBLE:


- it allows riots and defenses to be swept by the much faster raiders they're supposed to counter at a fraction of their cost
- a single thunderbird can disable both swarms of light units and heavies, including most striders
- it affects slow units much harder than fast ones because they're much easier to attack while disarmed
- it'll often do a successful pass even in the target is escorted by similar cost in AA


what could be done to fix?


- replace long duration disarm by short duration stun (3s) to be more effective against fast units relative to slow but tougher units
- reduce damage so it doesn't easily disable high HP heavies
- deal bonus damage to shields to keep the shieldbreaking role

I want you to want more than one Thunderbird in many more situations, and not for resilience to AA. Currently if a Thunderbird goes off it stuns most of an army. People make more than one against:

• Particularly heavy units.
• Very, extremely, spread armies.
• AA, to ensure that at least one Thunderbird gets through.
• The rearm time of Thunderbird.

It would be better if extra Thunderbirds were beneficial in many more situations. This would make it more granular. There would be a choice about whether to reveal your single TB or save up a few. AA could partially fight off TB in more situations than at present. This could be achieved with less AoE, spread or damage.

I like the idea of lower AoE or spread because forcing an army to spread out feels like good counterplay. Currently, if an army wants to spread it has to spread impractically far. I don't particularly think TB is too good against static defenses as stunning defenses for an assault is a decent role.

I had the idea that there could be a short delay between when the Thunderbird fires its lightning, and when the hit actually registers. It could force the Thunderbird's user to be more predictive about where the lightning run should land, as well as giving the assailed player more time to react and spread their army.

I think part of the reason why of isn't abused much is that its a situational unit.

Effective usage requires a few conditions:
1:Enemy units are slower than yours.
2:Your units are fast enough to close the gap while enemies are stunned.
3:Your units kill stuff fast enough to make it worth it.

Of course it can always be used as artillery :)

Even slow units could benefit from Thunderbird then.
Lets make it 30 second stun time instead :P

[Spoiler]

3-5s would make it almost never practical to deploy one Thunderbird, or to deploy it with anything besides a select few units.

Very few if any,units can cross the typical standoff distance in 5 seconds and then deal any reasonable damage.

what if the units were already trading shots, like a mixed army advancing into another.

3 seconds without being able to move or fire is a significant setback for either force, for 550 metal.

scorpion itself is slow, scorpion's multistunner has much less aoe and can be obstructed by terrain or units that were already in the way and stunned to the max.