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A sugestion on how to make superweapons be possible to counter without spying on enemy 24/7.

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5 years ago
Today, i was just calmly playing the game, preparing to attack the enemy. And guess what.

Everything i had got annihilated by Disco Rave Party, and i didnt knew the AI can even build this damn thing.

Superweapons in RTS games are meant to be obscenely powerfull - you waste a year worth of resources and a lot of time to make them, after all, and if you get one - it can turn the tide of battle within seconds.

However, what should really not be a thing is being impossible to tell if the enemy is making a Superweapon until you get annihilated by it. I had no idea whatsoever that the enemy was doing anything special than 100's of Striders until i suddenly got my entire base annihilated within seconds just because they decided to throw a party.

My suggestion would be to make some alert when the enemy starts building a superweapon, or at least a very expensive radar that can only detect massive units, like a Paladin, Detriment, or what i just got annihilated by - the Disco Rave Party.

Being able to know that you need to quickly prepare a strong assault and destroy the superweapon before it makes pancakes out of you would possibly make for some very fun gameplay, where the builder of the superweapon needs to prepare great defences and the attacker must try his best to counter them, until its all too late, and how it is now is just purely annoying, as far as i played this game i found no way whatsoever to be able to scout on the enemy and precisely see what he is doing.

I really hope something will be done about high chance of a sudden death from a superweapon, as it really takes away from the game, and so far i absolutely love Zero-K.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
The idea of the superweapon is a game-ending device. So your suggestion would defeat the purpose of superweapon. Besides, if you have the metal to build tons of assault units, you can spend some on scouts.
+4 / -0

5 years ago
No offense, but you were not calmly playing the game and preparing to attack.

You had turtled up in the corner somewhere and were huddled behind a forest of stingers and stardusts and shields, trying to beat off endless Dante attacks. Zero-K is meant to punish turtling. It's meant to punish not scouting and it's meant to punish not raiding. If you huddle behind porc you will lose. Because you ceded map control to the enemy, they probably had 2-3 times more metal and energy than you. By that point the game is lost.

You did have a warning, btw.

The moment that multiple striders appear you know that the enemy has the metal and energy to build a superweapon and is probably doing so.

This is against AI, which is pretty chilled about teching up and raiding. Human opponents will swarm your ass so fast that your head will spin. I suggest that you expand your area of influence faster and raid the enemy yourself. If like me, you are a porc-lover, then you have to do it intelligently. You have to grab a large wedge of the map and set up defences at least at the midpoint, so that you are controlling or contesting the lions share of mexes.

If you don't like the sound of this then another suggestion is using the options to disable superweapons altogether. Nobody says that you HAVE to play with zenith or drp vs AI if you don't want to.

Hope this helps.
+5 / -0

5 years ago
I think it's pretty good that game doesn't inform you when they're being built -> it encourages you to scout and anticipate enemy actions. They often do get spotted before completion, and by the time your enemy can build them, you should be able to create either flea or air fighters which are pretty decent at scouting.
+0 / -0


5 years ago
Best late game scout units:

Swift

If you time the speed boost(Swifts special ability) well, then there is basically no amount of AA that is going to stop you from scouting the enemy base. Select 5-10 Swifts, spread them out evenly by using line move, draw a line on the other side of the map behind the enemy base and as they are passing by the heaviest amount of Anti-Air, use the speed boost to get deep into the enemy base to scout it.


Owl

It will not be able to penetrate as deep as Swifts if the enemy have excessive amounts of Anti-Air, but it is easier to use and each plane has huge Line of Sight.
Select 3-5 Owls, choose a path to the enemy base where there is the least amount of Anti-Air, as you reach the enemy base, use line draw to spread them out and scout the base or just keep them in a pack as you scout the enemy base.

Widow

A cheap but micro intensive option. This cloaked Spider bot can climb any cliff and is only stopped by deep water.
If you watch it carefully, you should be able to avoid enemy units and get deep into the enemy base. You probably want to avoid the main reinforcement lines directly between your base and the enemy base, so I recommend going into the enemy base from the side or from behind. Sometimes the enemy clusters their buildings so much that you can't scout everything but on the plus side; if you have a nuke and time it well, you can send a nuke and then stun the Anti-Nuke(s) with the Widow(s) so that the nuke goes through.
+4 / -0
Your cue was when 30,000 metal was missing from your opponents forces.

In 1v1 you can usually "feel" the absence of 800 metal in opponents forces: detecting the fac switch without seeing it. If you somehow allow 30k metal to go missing without realising it, you've made a mistake.
+3 / -0
quote:
Everything i had got annihilated by Disco Rave Party, and i didnt knew the AI can even build this damn thing.


That year spent working on the AI is a gift that keeps on giving

The AI was designed to try to win :)
+5 / -0
5 years ago
SErankGodde
You fotgot
It is cloacked, fast and have greated LOS than Widow.
+1 / -0
I've heard this idea, but it conflicts with my sense of arbitrariness too strongly. Revealing some set of powerful structures from across the map does not match my idea of the game worlds physics. It is possibly a good idea mechanically, but it does not get past my filter for consistency.

+3 / -0
5 years ago
tl;dr of this thread

"git gud"
+1 / -1
5 years ago
How about some sort of long range artillery that has slow firerate and the only thing it does is give vision of where it fires at? Sort of a gun version of terran scan.
+3 / -0
Terran scan is imo boring because it's entirely non-interactive. For actual long-range weapons you have options to locally defend against them even without going out for a kill - shields, terraforming, antis, denying targetting information all kinda work. For the current long-range scouting options (like swift waves and widow spies) you can deploy counters like Hawk screens or flea patrols. Plus the widows and swifts are often sacrificed for the information they provide.

You could make scanner sweep a stockpiled weapon with a price per shot - say a Missile Silo thing - but it would still be non-interactive.

+0 / -0
5 years ago
We already have this> How about some sort of long range artillery that has slow firerate and the only thing it does is give vision of where it fires at? Sort of a gun version of terran scan.

Make Newtons and launch fleas =D
+3 / -0
5 years ago
Heavens Shield? ...flat shield above land with crazy regen rate...not bublle only in heaven..protectiong from fire above or Very high arc fire
+0 / -0

5 years ago
Ever since the boost ability was added to swifts a few years ago scouting has been super easy and practically impossible to stop as the swifts became too fast to shoot down. Personally I found it a bit too powerful as the enemy only needs to remember to scout occasionally, making secret superweapons an impossibility.
+2 / -0