Watching today's 1vs1 tournament (won by a player using hovers : http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/9633 ), someone said that it would be normal if hovers were as strong as light vehicles on flat maps. I don't understand this. As I can see it, fac design is based on strengths regards to terrain. So let's imagine a big, completely flat map with no water. I consider obvious that light vehicles should beat hovers on this kind of map. As you add waterways/lakes on that map, hovers should become better, until at some water %, hovers start to beat light vehicles. Now if the map was small, so that mobility isn't such a big factor as brute damage/health, you should have tanks > light vehicles > hovers. While it would seem that in the current state of the game hovers dominate vehicles and tanks on flat maps. I've seen that in another thread that hovers are designed to be faster than light vehicles : http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/4698I feel this is a big part of why the balance is broken : it seems to me that speed should be the strength of the light vehicle factory, not the hover factory (which already can go over water). Another reason why the hovers are so good might be because dagger kind of has a triple role : it's a good scout, great raider, and not too bad riot with it's penetrating shot. So you can't even beat dagger territory control with darts (too weak) or scorchers (too slow).
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How many maps with lakes and waterways that are hover pathable? Moreso how many of them that are not, simply, water maps? How many of those are hovers so strong as to be the only option? Hovers working on flat maps offers a lot more potential factory play on a lot more maps than them being purely water specialists. Vehicles still have a niche, since hovers have a speed penalty on slopes beyond that of vehicles and have less ways to project power into hills: Vehicles have Slashers, Wolverines and Impalers etc. It's harder to play hovers on a slightly hilly map than it is Vehicle. Hovers are probably just a bit too strong right now. There is nothing wrong with the philosophy that hovers should be competitive on flat maps.
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I'd like to see more games played in those matchups. I'm always up for some flat map games and I'll gladly play tanks or vehicles when somebody wants to test hovers against them. Tourney games seemed inconclusive to me. Fealthas played really well and GoogleFrog wasn't playing nearly as well as he usually is. Hovers are good, no doubt about that. The whole package is good. It's not just Daggers, it's also Maces, Scalpels, Halberds. They are all very good and often surprisingly all-round units (like Scalpels being decent against some raiders, Maces beating some assaults, etc). They are units that are all really good at certain things but their weaknesses might not be as obvious as those of similar units in other factories. The question is, are they too good or does it only seem that way? A while ago I gathered winrate data on flat maps between somewhat evenly matched players in more than 100 games. The result was that hovers had a very high winrate (71%) and were quite clearly beating other land factories on dry, flat, open maps. Vehicles on the other hand were performing poorly (40% WR). Tanks were somewhat in the middle (53% WR). However, since then hovers have received some small nerfs (Dagger +5 cost, Mace -0.1 speed) and vehicles have received some small buffs (Slasher -10 cost, Ravager +0.05 speed, Wolverine learned to skirmish). Those seem like tiny changes but they have in my opinion had a sizeable impact on the matchup. Unless somebody botheres to gather winrate data after the patch we can only speculate and throw around opinions. It's better than nothing I guess.
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Nothing wrong with hovers being competitive on flat, dry maps. But why shouldn't they be less competitive than vehicles for any map size, and about as competitive as tanks, cloak and shield bots as long as the map isn't too big? How many maps there are, that are just slightly hilly enough for vehicles to beat hovers, but not so hilly that bots beat vehicles?
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The first problem in testing that is that if such a map is indeed hly enough to give vehicles an advantage over hovers, the pleyers will intelligently choose a bot factory to provide them is more freedom of motion. The second problem in testing that is that if any map is hilly yet traversable by flatland factories then that map will be full of dips and divots, which will interfere with the 'turning arc' for flatland vehicles to the point of frustration, leading back to the first point! The only way to test this would be to host a flatland-factory-2v2-tournament to see if there is a real discrepancy between vehicle and hover or if player ingeuity needs to be re-inspired to fully explore the capabiilites of vehicles vs. hovers and how to take advantage of the vehicle facsgreater pathing ability!
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I think the main problem with light vehiggles is that they are so inconsistent. Maces, Dongers and Scalpels all have projectiles that are guaranteed to hit. This makes it easy to know which engagements you can win, and helps you make better decisions. Meanwhile, lvhen has scorchers which can't seem to aim correctly, and the amount of damage they do is hard to calculate because the tooltip is very vague(I still dont know how much dps they do at max/min range). Ravagers shoot like drunk walruses, and if they hit constantly they are pretty good, otherwise they suck. Levelers, Slashers are good at hitting things but they have abysmal dps which makes them bad against non raiders.
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quote:
How many maps with lakes and waterways that are hover pathable? Moreso how many of them that are not, simply, water maps? How many of those are hovers so strong as to be the only option? |
How many are needed? I take requests.
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Imo hovers still seem to rule over the other both flat ground factories and they also are (very) good against every bot factory (on land). Maby you can make somthing out of it when playing against hovers with lvs but that certainly is hard when facing a simmilar (or higher) skill level player. I honestly cannot think of any slightly hilly 1v1 map where lvs have a slight edge on hovers other than maby Geyser Plains and Intersection.
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quote:
How many maps with lakes and waterways that are hover pathable? Moreso how many of them that are not, simply, water maps? How many of those are hovers so strong as to be the only option? |
I'd say these are good candidates: TempestSmall Supreme BattlefieldGrts RiverMouthTangerineLike     Saktoth said, this probably sums it up. quote:
Hovers are probably just a bit too strong right now. There is nothing wrong with the philosophy that hovers should be competitive on flat maps. |
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quote:
I consider obvious that light vehicles should beat hovers on this kind of map. |
That leads to the BA route, where your choice of fac is dictated by the map only. I'd prefer every lab to be competitive (to some degree) on most maps (mountain/water maps obvs an exception) so we have plenty of enjoyable non-symmetry.
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Except for River Mouth, the rest of those maps have water on 50%+ of the map. I wouldn't say that is a good way to let a factory's special ability shine without completely making it stomp all the others. What is really needed are things like small pools to let daggers run away a tiny bit faster(not that they need it), or let amphibious units get the bonus regen. These features should not completely dominate the whole map/game.
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Agree with @Faelthas. Many maps have small strategically unomimportant hills and craters that give bots an edge in mixed combat, but I can't think of any that do the same with water. Anyhow, the big challenge with hovers is that the Dagger is the most micro-rewarding raider in the game. Newbs have zero chance at mastering the Dagger, while pros make many other labs look utterly ridiculous with Dagger expertise.
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quote:
That leads to the BA route, where your choice of fac is dictated by the map only. I'd prefer every lab to be competitive (to some degree) on most maps (mountain/water maps obvs an exception) so we have plenty of enjoyable non-symmetry.
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Again, maybe "beat" isn't the right term then. Using your words, hovers should be competitive to some degree on big, flat, dry maps compared to light vehicles (where light vehicles are supposed to be the strongest). But probably less competitive than tanks, and about as much as cloak and shield bots. While the current situation is that hovers pretty much dominate, and light vehicles seem to be pretty bad on this type of map (according to Lauri not up to date statistics and what I observed in the tournament).
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I would say that Light vehicles should have the better general toolset for combat over flats than hovers - that is a better selection of units and synergies, not better individual units. That mostly holds true - light vehicles begin to fare better once the lines become more static. Unfortunately, the nerfed scorcher dosn't hold up to dagger in low density combat on flat terrain, and nothing else is fast/heavy enough to be useful in this situation.
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For 1v1 maps with pathable lakes we have: Calayo2 OnyxClaudron1.6 DunePatrol You could also count Tangled Ishimus Revised and Rapids. However they are not a good match up for LVs/tanks vs hovers. Also there's Finns Revenge but it has mostly water not lakes. Skasi: SmallSupremeBattlefield doesnt count since its mostly a water map after all. Along these you could also add The Cold Place Remake and Charlie in The Hills too.
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I believe BlueTemplar is referring to my expressed opinion that hovers ~= lveh on Comet Catcher or similar maps is ok. quote:
Hovers are good, no doubt about that. The whole package is good. It's not just Daggers, it's also Maces, Scalpels, Halberds. They are all very good and often surprisingly all-round units (like Scalpels being decent against some raiders, Maces beating some assaults, etc). They are units that are all really good at certain things but their weaknesses might not be as obvious as those of similar units in other factories. The question is, are they too good or does it only seem that way? |
Each individual hover unit has counters (more or less). One of the biggest problems is how well they complement each other. For instance, slasher/ravager was (I believe) raised as a possible counter to Mace. Does it still work if the hover player has a couple of Scalpels? Combine a couple of units with "non-obvious" weaknesses together, and you have an incredibly difficult-to-beat force. Due to insufficient sample size I'm still not convinced that hovers vs. heavy tanks is completely out of whack balance-wise. Tanks at least have a unit that kills dagger cost-effectively (Kodachi). Scalpels are probably the biggest problem with that matchup. quote:
Anyhow, the big challenge with hovers is that the Dagger is the most micro-rewarding raider in the game. Newbs have zero chance at mastering the Dagger, while pros make many other labs look utterly ridiculous with Dagger expertise. |
A well-put point.
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Maces are a ridiclous unit. They even counter heavy assaults like reapers wich i have experienced 2 times today. I thought they were supossed to be riots not antiheavies. I know that it is aligned with pure DPS output but maces for the same cost as reapers just plow down trough reapers. http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/296867 - a link to game (wich i lost because of eco) that shows how ridiculous maces can be against reapers.
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I think the issue is that for maces to have only single-target damage and still be viable against raiders, they have to have extremely high damage for their range and speed - making them very effective against single targets. For their cost Maces are one of the weaker riots in a strictly anti-raider role IMO (they're plausibly killable by swarming with glaives, for instance.) However, since daggers are quite good against most raiders and scalpels aren't completely helpless, hover has the tools to cope with that weakness. I suspect I should have built banishers against the maces in the linked game; banishers two-hit maces, move faster, and have slightly greater range. Also they don't miss (much).
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I think Daggers are very well balanced. There are a lot of counters to them. But Mace with the lack of real counter units is a bit to strong. What do you think about a small range and speed nerf? That would make banisher and dominatix to a good counter. And 2 worriors should be able to beat 1 mace too because of nearly similar range. And shieldbots don't need a counter. They got racketeer to counter everything. I think that should fix a lot.
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As much as i'd love to see more dominatrix deathballs: What if Mace had line aoe and could shoot underwater? 1) no more need for a separate UW riot 2) is more rioty 3) can lose some dps or range
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