A place to collect improvement suggestions
+0 / -0
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I hear lots of people complaining about amphbots, but that's about all I've got that's wrong with this game (because Zero-K is the best) only thing I would like is to slightly nerf ronin movement speed.
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I might use this thread here and there to post some of the ideas I have that I didn't want to create whole new threads for. I'll start with this one. I know it's not really about balance like direct nerfs or buffs, but I'm just gonna put it here: I think the way Bandits beat Glaives doesn't really fit the theme of their factories. Instead of having longer range and being able to kite Glaives, maybe Bandits should just win by being more durable than the Glaives, able to endure the Glaive's dps long enough to kill them? If anything I feel like the Glaives should have better range than the Bandits. I used to think of Glaives as the generic infantry unit of the game, as most people that are just starting out would probably tend to think. They look like human soldiers, they have machine guns, but instead of being a multipurpose unit like infantry should be, they actually seem to be one of the most specialized units of the game. Their effectiveness is literally only in getting up close and dealing crazy dps, and a strong gust of wind will basically kill them. That role seems like it would be a better fit for the raiding units of the more non-human-seeming factories like Spider or something. Trying to use your Glaives as the basis of your army and giving them general purpose tasks, only to see them get outranged by everything and killed instantly without getting a shot off makes you realize that they're not actually infantry, even though they look like infantry. Maybe increase the range of the Glaives, but instead give their weapons massive spread the further they fire, maybe also accompanied with a damage drop-off if just the spread isn't enough, so they don't go beyond their role and also to prevent Glaive spam from being too effective. This way they can actually be lined up on the frontlines and at least look like they're helping. It would make battles look a lot more cool too. A bunch of Glaives dug into a trench on both sides, shooting at each other but never making any progress since they're too far away. Would give you a solid place to start devising tactics on how to break the line. I'm not saying buff Glaives, they'd probably need to be nerfed in other areas to make up for it, but the only nerf I can see that would make sense would be a nerf to their dps up close, or maybe a larger spread at mid-range when there wasn't before. All of this would really change the game though, a game that already seems to be pretty balanced as it is. And I get the fact that the Glaives teach you the raid-or-be-raided aspect of Zero-K and the Rock/Paper/Scissors mechanic of Raider/Riot/Skirmisher. But I still enjoy clinging to my idea of Zero-K being the ultimate real-life combat simulator just with the intensity turned way up. As it is right now I just don't think infantry is really represented that well, when pretty much everything else is.
+3 / -0
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i agree that the bandit-glaive-matchup feels horrible. there is a ton of stuff i find pretty dumb: - Longrange AoE-Arty (exept merlin) being able to kill mobile units with ease but without micro (fight-command) - Arty-proof porc (razor, faraday, gauss in armored state) - super heavy-porc: cerberus, desolator, lucifer (why do they exist at all? what makes them necesarry in this game?) - terraform (nice feature but horrible impact on gameplay as it strenthens arty-proof porc) - snipers (ok, those at least cost energy) - area-shields in masses - cloaked roaches i find all of those pretty unfun to play against. that said, still love zk.
+1 / -1
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I somewhat agree with some of the points above, but with reservations. quote:
- Longrange AoE-Arty (exept merlin) being able to kill mobile units with ease but without micro (fight-command) |
It should either be really bad at killing mobiles, or be able to do it automatically, but never "good at killing mobiles if you micro it". Units should be smart enough to use their abilities reasonably well; if a killager can kill, it shall. My thinking here is that Emissary should not be as good as it is at killing mobiles (or maybe mobiles can be made worse at dying to killager, e.g. with idle dodge unitai?) quote:
- Arty-proof porc (razor, faraday, gauss in armored state) |
I think trading resistance to artillery for weakness to direct assault (gauss vs stinger) is a valid tradeoff. But in many cases it feels like the amount of resistance gained is too large, especially for the cheaper turrets if they can be actively repaired. quote:
- super heavy-porc: cerberus, desolator, lucifer (why do they exist at all? what makes them necesarry in this game?) |
Ideally they introduce single points of failure: cut the power, and your super duper defensive line is now just shooting practice for fleas. However, it's way too easy to provide reduntant and hardened connections. Reducing Pylon link range would make that a lot more difficult. In an extreme case, consider whether you would be afraid of a Desolator linked using Solars (which shut down when you damage them) or Winds (which blow up when you sneeze on them). quote:
- terraform (nice feature but horrible impact on gameplay as it strenthens arty-proof porc) |
I think there should be way more terrain-destroying weapons, and all factories should have terraform-busting units - ideally, integrated with UnitAI. Some steps were taken in this direction (Ogre and Ripper will now gladly shoot obstacles with minimal hassle), but not enough. Samesaid Ripper could automatically destroy walls around walled mexes etc. But many factories are completely SOL when dealing with e.g. a buried outlaw (everything besides tank, plane, maybe rover?), sunken fusion, or even a terramex. Constructors don't count for this purpose, especially as they cannot be given terraform-defeating UnitAI. quote:
- snipers (ok, those at least cost energy)
- area-shields in masses |
These are fine IMO, except for snipers being open about their role as unit-killing artillery. They are a bit unfun to play against but they aren't that degenerate IMO.
+2 / -0
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thats why they make the bottom of my list. - snipers cost energy and, more imprtant, have no AoE. Massing them up puts a serious strain on your economy. + their range is not too high. - shields are the same, but i still think their link is too stron and the funnelweb-shields have too much hp. but they are not gamebreaking nor are they somehow unnecessary. - cloaked roaches are easy to counter and can blow themself up if something happens. and they are quite an investment + they are suicide-units. the real cancer are all things that have AoE + long range. aka emissary, tremor, bertha, cerberus and to a bit lesser degree firewalker. firewalker has several downsides, it often prevent you from pushing as well, it doesn´t do that much damage and it is really clunky. but it forces longer range stuff as an answer as swarming is easily countered as well with placeholder/pyros/some amount of moderators/ puppies, juggle, so almost everything else in the jumper-fac. emissary is just not good against mobile units, it is so good because it has the potential of one-hitting multiple units at once. of course i understand that tanks need something against skirms. but the way it is now is just too much. imho just reducing the AoE a bit would make it a LOT more balanced. tremor is expensive and clunky, but simply has no real counter.    raaar said you can have impalers against it. but impalers need micro to work and they need spotting. the long range of tremor makes it really hard to spot normaly + lveh can´t really spot it on their own. they need teammates that are air or cloaky, or in 1v1 you need to switch to some of those. but then i could argue that the tremor-player can use a shield or terraform (or better cloaker + screening) for the money spend on another fac. or that in team-games, the tremor-user also has allies that can counteract the impalers. tremor needs no spotting at all and no real micro to work. tanks in general are in a strange and hard to balance spot it seems. they somehow need tremor to spot cloak and emissary to fight skirms. they would be useless as starting/main-fac in 1v1 if they wouldn´t have those. wich brings me back to my old statement that the mantra of having every fac viable as a starting fac in 1v1 causes a lot of problems that you wouldn´t have otherwise. So in contrast to emissary, i see no simple solution for the problems with tremor. and okay, what is the counter to long-range arty? longer ranged arty. aka merlin or cerberus, so merlin. the game would need to be build up from the start again to solve those problems i suppose.
+0 / -0
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quote:
I think the way Bandits beat Glaives doesn't really fit the theme of their factories. |
This is unfortunate, but you can't tweak all individual unit matchups to conform to factory identity. Bandit's comparatively long range is all about its fac identity though. It means that it can stay under a Convict or a Thug's shield and still be able to reasonably fire back. Many weapons do more than 200 but less than 250 damage (Riot cannons, Lightning guns, Duck, Ravager, Harpy, two Picket missiles...) which makes Bandit a fair bit tankier overall compared to Glaive, being able to survive those and requiring a second shot with a lot of overkill. This is a strength that can't really be emphasized much further - health is just not a raider virtue.
+3 / -0
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It's weird how people try to counter raiders with raiders. Sometimes depending on how the game goes, you have to, but most of the time the answer to raiders is a few riots. I'm not worried about glaives. I find them pretty useful and I don't care that they often lose to other raiders. Pyros seem to have a field day with pretty much all raiders and so do well controlled kodachis, but they're more expensive so whatever they can do, glaives can counter by being in multiple places at once. I don't think it's wise to buff glaives because of how they perform in one specific scenario when they perform well in other scenarios. Glaives come from a factory that can also produce scythes, and shieldbots do not have an equivalent tool to cause chaos in many parts of the map at the same time. Maybe if you're having issues with glaive vs bandit scenario, counter with a few reavers to protect and harass with scythes? EDIT: Besides, even if it was reversed and glaives did counter bandits to an extent, I would fear massing glaives early on against shieldbots and having to face outlaws. If nothing else, the fact that bandits can hold their ground against glaives is the game suggesting you should do something else.
+1 / -0
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"I'm not saying buff Glaives" was the original comment. and i agree. glaives are fine. i just found the latest bandit-buff a bit unnecessary. -if you should try to counter raiders with raiders or riots is pretty map-dependant. if you are forced to go riots in the very first minutes of the game, you lose a lot of momentum. -i already said somewhere else is that i find the whole cloaky-shield-matchup a bit weird. it´s not necesarily unbalanced, but counter-intuitive. if you can´t really use glaives it´s the shield-player that gets a theoretical speed-advantage. -maybe it´s just a lack of maps that support the cloaky-fac enough... in our mumble-games we generally prefer inculta or valiant saltscape, because the game tends to keep mobility viable for very long while still having fronts that demand heavier stuff. more of those maps would be really nice to have.
+0 / -0
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I'm not sure cloakies are meant to be faster than other factories though. They can path hills better than rovers and they can cloak. Isn't that sufficient?
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yes. well they are meant to be faster than shields tho.
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Glaives aren't faster than scorchers or darts, and they also can't cloak, don't have high hp, and don't have much range so they can't do any damage unless they get close to what they're shooting at. They're the only cheap counter cloak has to skirmishers, and cloak has already been nerfed half to death. Not to mention cloak is expensive in energy, while shields pay nothing for regen for every unit except aspis.
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Scythes are also raiders, and they usually prompt an expensive response of faradays around factories and other key buildings.
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A single scythe costs as much as a faraday, not even counting the half a solar in extra e it eats. That's the same cost as 4 glaives, and also more expensive than a kodachi and nearly as expensive as a blitz. Scythes are also mediocre at killing things like buoys which cloak sucks at dealing with thanks to having the worst skirmisher in the entire game. And the worst arty, not counting the exorbitantly expensive sniper which also eats an extra 5 solars worth of e. Glaives are practically the only unit in cloak that hasn't gotten completely shafted by balance "fixes". Reaver has no range, ronin gets outranged by llts, Knight is expensive and kinda mediocre, sling is a waste of 110 metal, and the stuff that actually cloaks is expensive and eats your whole OD budget in e. Not to mention sniper is basically just a worse lance. It does half as much damage, it can't multikill units, has less range, and since the speed nerfs, decloak range nerfs, and sight range (which is by far the dumbest) nerf, its cloak gives it minimal real advantage anymore. It's also more expensive than lance when you factor in the ~300 metal worth of energy req.
+1 / -0
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Quick question: Who uses IMPs? (Not talking about knowing what theyre good at/how to use them) Talking about actually useing ingame. How often have you used em? I can count how often on my 2 Hands...
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One thing I don't like about these conversations is how all the bad sides of something are presented but none of the good sides are mentioned. Being cloaked, even if only while moving, is a huge advantage to either sneak in or be protected from artillery. You can and probably should have a handful of scythes on the field if you're counting on that for harassment, but scythes are beefier than glaives. They actually can make use of their regeneration so they can be shot at by LLTs to take out a few mexes, walk out, regen and do it again. Glaives would likely be thinned out and eventually wiped by LLTs. They're also pretty handy to jump on expensive units that don't do well close quarters like artillery so they have multiple uses. Even if you make only one scythe, if you don't just suicide it, you probably force more than one faraday. That's metal not being used expanding, or expanding slower. Maybe the more advanced players don't, but the average player tends to cower in their corner when they see scythes until they can build enough defense to repel them without having to spend APM so that's time you can use to expand. I don't know man. In RTS we can always go in circles saying you do this, I do this, you do this... I'm just not a fan of pointing out only the downsides of things. Saying that phantoms are worse than lance by comparing the costs or specific stats is also not a great comparison. Immobile, the cloak only costs 1e/s, a phantom costs 750, a solar 70 and a lance 1000. Phantoms can still 1shot a lot of units, including lances. Lance can fire from over water and in some scenarios avoid confrontation of any kind (like in our hover vs cloakie scenario) but the reverse can be said of cloakies on steep cliffs vs hovers. The overall picture is more elaborate than the comparison of a handful of stats. The part I find frustrating is that I am convinced you know all of this. Why chose to only represent the bad side?
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quote:
Quick question: Who uses IMPs? |
  B782707 4 on TitanDuel 2.2quote:
The overall picture is more elaborate than the comparison of a handful of stats. The part I find frustrating is that I am convinced you know all of this. Why chose to only represent the bad side? |
Well, I mean you were trying to justify nerfing glaives by pointing out how awesome cloak is. It really isn't though, and cloak is one of the weaker facs under the current balance.
+1 / -0
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Just so we're clear, I think I said glaives are fine. If I didn't, then that's what I meant to say and I'm confirming it now. I just don't think they need a buff.
+1 / -0
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quote:
Just so we're clear, I think I said glaives are fine. If I didn't, then that's what I meant to say and I'm confirming it now. I just don't think they need a buff. |
lol.. in that case we're not even talking about the same thing. I agree with that, glaives are fine.
+1 / -0
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My balance complaint: Amph vs amph at sea is ultra simplistic and monotonous. Hovers and ships play like normal ZK at sea, but amph vs amph throws all of ZK's nuance away and becomes mostly about Scallops. Urchin porc is widespread and if the game goes long enough Grizzlies get used to kill Urchins. Ducks can raid but they become useless as soon as the sea gets saturated with Scallops and Urchins (which can happen quickly on mixed maps that are only partly sea). If for example amph got an underwater skirmisher capable of defeating Scallops but vulnerable to Ducks, there could be a proper raider-riot-skirmisher circle and some more play to amph vs amph.
+3 / -0
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