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Let's brainstorm some ideas for unorthodox, but surprisingly viable units or structures (including lethal joke units/structures).

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I don't know about you guys, but I personally like to brainstorm new ideas for units, especially more unorthodox ideas that could stretch the definition of what kinds of unit concepts could fit various roles (such as raiders, riots, skirmishers, and assaults to name a few). Here are a few ideas that I have for some more unorthodox, possibly lethal joke, unit designs:

Serf (cheap construction unit): [Spoiler]

Legionnaire (cheap riot unit): [Spoiler]

Dervish (blink-teleporting melee unit): [Spoiler]

Fisher (ranged grappling unit): [Spoiler]

Harvester (sweeping melee unit): [Spoiler]

Leapfrog (walking anti-air missile): [Spoiler]

Behemoth (slow-moving mobile fortress): [Spoiler]

Scourge (anti-heavy rover): [Spoiler]

Bulldozer (heavy blockade-running rover): [Spoiler]

Troll (saturation skirmisher tank): [Spoiler]

Blackhawk (cruise missile bomber): [Spoiler]

Stirge (point defense aircraft): [Spoiler]

Zeppelin (slow-moving fortified airship): [Spoiler]

Roswell (gravity gunship): [Spoiler]

Abaddon (airborne wave motion artillery platform): [Spoiler]

Bombardier (deployable artillery gunship): [Spoiler]

Prometheus (construction strider): [Spoiler]

Skyfeller (anti-air strider): [Spoiler]

Spirit (ultra-heavy saturation bomber): [Spoiler]

Ballista (precision artillery emplacement): [Spoiler]
+7 / -0
6 years ago
wow! thats a huge wall of text
+2 / -0
Spammer: it makes your enemy hear white noise instead of in-game sounds (including music). Can be customised to play custom tracks.

Train: its a train, what alse would you want? Also it has a unique selection noise saying "Parzival was right".

Not-A-Grizzly: like Grizzly but has 2 more lasers and has twice as much hp.

Damage Sink: its a large sink that absorbes damage from your units. Its immobile of course and cost a ton of resources to make.

Teemo: Its Teemo. He has magic mushroom mines that cannot be detected by anything and will slowly kill you. There is no escape. Mushrooms scale with ability power.

Panther: its like Blitz but is radar invis and every time it kills a unit it shouts "SCREW YOU I'M A PANTHER".

Gargoyle: its a structure that produces blood with energy. The blood spills out of its gaping mouth and slowly drowns the whole map.

Synchrowarper: superweapon that creates pocket realities for each player. It basically desynchronises the game for everyone so that every player can play in their little world.
+6 / -0

6 years ago
quote:
Scourge (anti-heavy rover)

+11 / -1


6 years ago
Nice ideas. A lot seem to be either really cheap or really expensive. I like how many of these units already exist or existed at some point.

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Fisher (ranged grappling unit)

Sumo?

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Harvester (sweeping melee unit)

This was the lightsabre-weilding Slicer, but it's gone now.

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Behemoth (slow-moving mobile fortress)

Cyclops? Except for the movement speed Cyclops costs about 2/3 a Dante, beats a Dante but really lacks AoE.

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Bulldozer (heavy blockade-running rover)

Sumo had heatrays for a long time. At one point I think it had heatrays and couldn't jump.

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Roswell (gravity gunship)

This was an old Licho, although it could also abduct structures.

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Ballista (precision artillery emplacement)

This is almost exactly the Trebuchet from at least nine years ago.

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Spammer: it makes your enemy hear white noise instead of in-game sounds (including music). Can be customised to play custom tracks.

You mean Gnat.

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Damage Sink: its a large sink that absorbes damage from your units. Its immobile of course and cost a ton of resources to make.

The actual Damage Sink (technically "Damage Sink thing") is much cheaper, only costing 10 metal. Furthermore, it has some of the most powerful autohealing in the game as it is able to regenerate its full 50k health pool in a single second.
+3 / -0
6 years ago
You forgot I win button which costs a lot and when built you win.
+2 / -0
PLrankAdminSprung:
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quote:
Scourge (anti-heavy rover)

These names are a work-in-progress, and may, of course, be freely changed, just as the Ronins used to be called Rockos for example. Perhaps "Slayer" could be an alternate suggestion for this vehicle's name?
AUrankAdminGoogleFrog:
quote:
Nice ideas. A lot seem to be either really cheap or really expensive. I like how many of these units already exist or existed at some point.

Thanks, but I'm now curious as to what these old units were like?
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Fisher (ranged grappling unit)
Sumo?

I'm thinking something far cheaper, like, say, as cheap as a Ronin or Moderator.
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Harvester (sweeping melee unit)
This was the lightsabre-weilding Slicer, but it's gone now.

In addition to wanting to know more about the unit, I wonder why it was removed, when it was removed, and whether or not it would be a good idea to add it back in? Edit: Also, did the Slicer attack everything around it, like an Ultralisk from StarCraft (or a Predator from StarCraft 2)?
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Behemoth (slow-moving mobile fortress)
Cyclops? Except for the movement speed Cyclops costs about 2/3 a Dante, beats a Dante but really lacks AoE.

I didn't know that the Cyclops could do that, though since the idea behind the Behemoth was meant as a possible lethal joke unit (since I believed that ultra-slow units that would make a Detriment seem fast by comparison would normally be impractical), I still proposed adding the unit, and brainstormed ways in how the unit could be made more viable. I also wanted to find ways in how heavy units like the Cyclops and Dante could be introduced in an earlier, less sudden, more fair fashion, so I figured that adding an even cheaper heavy unit, with all of the firepower and health, but mobility equal to a tortoise, would be a good idea.
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quote:
Bulldozer (heavy blockade-running rover)
Sumo had heatrays for a long time. At one point I think it had heatrays and couldn't jump.

I doubt that the Sumo, or should I say Jugglenaut, both now and back then, would've been designed for breaking through enemy defenses through a combination of high speed and high HP. Sure, it could jump, but it couldn't jump very often, and was slow on top of that.
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Roswell (gravity gunship)
This was an old Licho, although it could also abduct structures.

Never heard of a Licho (aside from there being a developer and community member of that name), though I wonder, did it rip structures out of the ground? (I doubt I had that in mind for the Roswell, seeing as more of a support unit that helps protect other units.)
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Ballista (precision artillery emplacement)
This is almost exactly the Trebuchet from at least nine years ago.

I wonder why it was removed? I mean, Cerberus and Lucifer are nice and all, but they're both so expensive, though to their credit, they're also durable enough to survive counter-battery fire from a single Impaler or Emissary for more than half-a-minute, far longer than what I'd imagine the Trebuchet, or my idea for a Ballista, would've survived, which would be only one shot.

Now that that's out of the way, I came up with a few more ideas for more interesting units:

Cannibal (self-replicating/self-evolving assault unit): [Spoiler]

Litterer (mine-laying riot unit): [Spoiler]

Shrieker (penetrating skirmisher unit): [Spoiler]

Edit: Oh, and possibly a new factory for some of these new units. I'd call it the Budgetbot Factory, which would be able to build the Serf (super-cheap construction unit), Legionnaire (super-cheap riot unit), Fisher (ranged anti-skirmisher grappling unit), Leapfrog (walking anti-air missile), Cannibal (cheap self-replicating/self-evolving assault unit), and Behemoth (cheap ultra-slow heavy/anti-heavy mobile fortress), along with a walking artillery missile for dealing with enemy defenses, and possibly moving the Ronin to that factory (since it's a cheap skirmisher), and giving the Cloakbots a new skirmisher (such as the Shrieker).
+1 / -0
https://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/20224
But what about trains?
+1 / -0
Who'd want to use a train factory, aside for the lulz? After all, aren't trains bound to train tracks, and wouldn't constructing them be a tedious task, even more so than using air transports or a Djinn?

Now an airship plant, on the other hand, I could see being useful, especially if we envisioned the airships as being essentially slow flying tanks (much like comparing the slow and heavy tanks to the fast and lightweight rovers, think Battlecruisers from StarCraft). In addition to adding the Zeppelin (ultra-slow shielded airship) to the factory's build list, along with a construction airship, a skirmisher airship, a riot airship, an assault airship, an anti-air airship, and even an artillery airship, I'm sure that the Krow could be moved there and replaced with, say, the Abaddon (airborne anti-heavy saturation artillery platform), and I'm sure that we'd be able to bring the Eclipse's model back from Limbo to be used in some new airship. Sadly, I doubt that there'd be an airship for raiding, since they tend to be rather slow-moving, though perhaps an airship with tractor beams (possibly the Roswell) could serve in an anti-skirmisher role, and there could be cheap but slow airships for use as scouts?
+1 / -0
6 years ago
gunships are kind-of airships ?
+0 / -0
Trains could be a support strider unit, not a factory, very weird one, for example you could build structures on train. But the pathing, the complexity, the balance, the issues OH MY GOOOoooooD...
+2 / -0

6 years ago
I though of 2 units that I don't think ever existed in Zero-K or any other RTS that I know of.

The first one I call a Cob. It is a tactical missile that dumps a bunch of light mines over a target. Those mines would be preferably be called popcorn to complete the joke, but they can just be claws which is the same mine badgers use. Alternatively you can call it a Cactus or a Briar and just use claws.

The other is a warp and it is a tactical missile that is a light transport.
+2 / -0

6 years ago
In the past there was Condor, a bomber that dropped mines. I also recall a Trebuchet variante which launched Glaive drop pods but I don't remember whether it was available in multiplayer.
+0 / -0
6 years ago
USrankOflameo: That reminds me of the Brotherhood of Nod's mine drop support power from Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, when a bomber is called in to saturate whatever area you want with mines.
+1 / -0


6 years ago
Given that Claws are temporary, a Claw cluster missile is pretty much Inferno.
+0 / -0
6 years ago
quote:
The other is a warp and it is a tactical missile that is a light transport.

I love this idea.

If you load a lobster along with 3 other units you can get even further!
+0 / -0
6 years ago
could quake missiles have a slow aoe blast that penetrates shields? ís it a good idea?

funnelweb could have a pair of assist/repair drones that can heal and help build but cant reclaim or seed nano frames.. that way funnelwebs and cons can have more synergy and the funnelwebs support role is more emphasized.
+1 / -0
By the way, any thoughts about adding a sub pen, which would allow a player to build all manner of subs (possibly including the Seawolf, or even the Scylla)? I could imagine it producing units like these:

- Selkie (construction sub): [Spoiler]

- Dolphin (scout minisub): [Spoiler]

- Manatee (skirmisher sub): [Spoiler]

- Sea Lion (mine-laying riot sub): [Spoiler]

- Orca (assault sub): [Spoiler]

- Porpoise (anti-surface skirmisher sub): [Spoiler]

- October (precision artillery sub): [Spoiler]

- Penguin (anti-air minisub): [Spoiler]

- Kraken (cloaked anti-heavy robotic squid): [Spoiler]

- Poseidon (submerged aircraft carrier): [Spoiler]

Special mention should go to the Lancelet, which is a submarine bomb, though I'm unsure if it could be revived alongside these other subs. Also, I'm unsure if the Seawolf would be kept intact as a raider sub, redesigned into something else (such as the Orca assault sub), or scrapped altogether.



Of course, with the addition of a factory that produces all manner of submarine units comes a need for more units and structures to counter submerged units and structures, especially those that can/do operate at sea, such as ships, hovercraft, amphbots, and even aircraft, along with artillery, so that they may attack submerged units or (especially) structures. To alleviate the need for more dedicated anti-sub units, I'd like to propose changing the following units/structures so that they can better deal with underwater targets:

[Spoiler]

In addition, perhaps the gunship plant could be given an anti-sub gunship modeled off of the Osprey, which normally deploys sonar to reveal enemy subs, and carries depth charges to destroy enemy subs? Or better yet, since this is Zero-K, perhaps we could instead give the anti-sub gunship the ability to force subs to the surface through, say, a magnetic grappling hook, allowing other gunships that lack anti-sub capabilities to attack the exposed submarine directly?
+2 / -0
I wonder what the game would be like if there were units that could transform between a ground/sea state and a flying state, like these:

- Tengu (transforming raider mecha/multirole fighter): [Spoiler]

- Griffin (transforming raider/riot mecha/saturation bomber): [Spoiler]

- Chimera (transforming assault mecha/blockade-running plane): [Spoiler]

- Manticore (transforming anti-air mecha/air superiority fighter): [Spoiler]

- Lilith (transforming amphibious raider mecha/precision bomber): [Spoiler]

I'd imagine that countering these transforming units would normally require a mix of normal anti-ground units and anti-air units to cover both their ground and air transformations.



Edit: Perhaps there could be a "Morphbot Plant" that produces these transforming mecha, and in addition to all of the units mentioned above, and in addition to the Bombardier gunship (which I think could be renamed to a Sphinx to fit with the naming convention of mythical chimeric creatures), perhaps the plant could also allow the player to build these units below:

- Pegasus (transforming construction mecha/aircraft): [Spoiler]

- Seraph (large transforming drone-carrying mecha/aircraft): [Spoiler]
+0 / -0

5 years ago
ebook available soon?
+3 / -0
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