If you could change/add/remove anything from ZK, what would it be?

How quickly does firewalker actually deal with assaults? Which ones? Because defenders get absolutely throttled by assaults of any colour or creed. Even dirtbags.

As for artillery, are you talking specifically about the low weight ones? Because I can't see firewalker doing much to pillager or impaler.

With air, do brawlers and wyvern not hard counter a mix of defender/firewalker?

I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong, it's just I've never really had issues dealing with this particular tactic, and am trying to understand. Defenders can't move, which means you've always got time to make the right units for the job, unless they manage to cover every weakness somehow, which is unlikely.

One of the main reason I don't like defender is because it's used against its main purpose, i.e. defend. It's very frequent to see that defender is being used as a 'static skirmisher unit' against other defense, so it out-ranges LLT, gauss, urchin, faraday, stardust.

Secondly defender gains power from height of placement. Almost all assaults have limited arc of aiming/shooting, so that if defender is high enough they simply won't be able to shoot. As for artillery, defender on the hill easily out-ranges hammers and wolverines.

Thirdly there's a concern that defender nerf will cause skirmisher outbreak. This is of course a valid worry, however skirmisher power will need to be contained anyway. I second someone's opinion in this thread that mainline units should be assaults and raiders, rather than riot + BSS.

quote: Higestromm a single Flea can kill a Starlight and probably a DRP. Just saying. Not sure about Zenith.

Give a flea to a noob like me and I'm pretty sure it will die before getting to it.

quote: There is countertrategy to making super weapons. It is called pounding enemy harder with more stuff because they are making a super expensive weapon.

Again I talk as a noob player. A noob player have difficulties to adapt it's strategy because a lack of knowlege in HUNDREDS of units. A noob player take slowers decisions.
And finaly the noob player like me and my friends finaly expands slowly because it's hard to anticipate the ennemi attack.
So the intuitive method for a noob is making a safe point with porcs and then expand our controlled zone.
OK OK I see everyone come here and say that it's not a good thing, blah blah... And yes you are true, WE KNOW THAT, but we just can't because our knowlege of the game is not enough.
In my last game for example i've tried to expand, to reduce my porcs, but finally it didn't work because I don't really know how to do to have a better controlled progression. In one word, I don't have the experience.
The thing I want to explain is that in a noob play, 50% of the game are ending with superweapon.

quote: But you wanted to have them nerfed! Now you call them a noobtrap and nerfing them would push them even harder inro that possition.

I say it's a noobtrap because High rank player say it, not because my experience told me it's a noobtrap.

quote: But how is it not fun? You make a laser that can chisel trough the map or a device that summons a rain of meteors or a giant rotating cannon shooting all colors of the rainbow. That is pretty fun if you ask me.

Of course the idea of a Death Star that kill everything with big EXPLOSIONS is always fun on the paper. But (in my experience) in practice, when I win or loose using it I feel a little bit sad.

quote: Absolutely. If you want to play against AI feel free to, but consider the fact, that the AI that ZK uses is not good at the game at all. The balance of the game (which you questioned) is dictated from the point of high level plays (mostly 1v1s), not PvE fights. I could take you an average ZK player and they would whoop CAI's ass in around 30 mins without using superweapons.

That's why we play against AI. Because the community of Zero-k is an old community. There are not so many noob and so if we play with other people, we have 90% to make teammate enrage because we're playing as they want.
And so we have 90% to be frustrated because if we make bad decisions we immediatly get some agressive messages (a friend of mine receive a message 15 sec after the begining of a game juste because the factory he build was not approved by some player)
So we enjoy playing against "stupid AI" but this one is still better than us so it's OK.

We just disable superweapons before playing because Cuicuit AI generally make a disco rave party after 20 minutes and we just can't handle that.

It may be difficult to hear for an experienced player but try to remember how it was when you just begin the game.

quote: We just disable superweapons before playing because Cuicuit AI generally make a disco rave party after 20 minutes and we just can't handle that.

Circuit is a pretty brutal opponent as AI goes, especially if you are using the latest version.

It would be swaping hotkeys to be able to use classic "A+Click" to do attack move. It is supposed to be standart for RTS games. But not in ZK for some reason.

quote: It would be swaping hotkeys to be able to use classic "A+Click" to do attack move. It is supposed to be standart for RTS games. But not in ZK for some reason.

Yeah and as a bonus, A-click makes your units act extra stupidly by firing at ground, instead of the extra-smart fight command that ZK has.

Not de iure but de facto.

The smurfs! remove them

Add a real official campain to learn the game.

Just like Supreme Commander you begin with only one factory available, add objective to learn to play with etc..

Maybe around 10 to 15 scenario are a good number to learn to face to many situations.

There's possibility to write a great story based on planetwars.

quote: quote: It is supposed to be standart for RTS games. Skasi: Why?

Well, Zero-K do not exist in vacuum. There was another RTS games before. Starcraft series, for example. So there are expectations exist.
So it is not about "Why?" It is about "Why the hell not?". And it is not time consuming feature - it is about simple rebinding default hotkeys. I hope devs want to make Zero-K popular. So why not to do simple things by using things that players expect to see?

quote: sprang: Yeah and as a bonus, A-click makes your units act extra stupidly by firing at ground, instead of the extra-smart fight command that ZK has.

See? That is "why"! Why newbie player shouldn't close the game and run away after that?

quote: Firestorm_01 you can customize that in the settings.

Yes I can. But I don't have to rebind move keys on WASD in FPS games, for example.