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shield implementation thoughts

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4 years ago
background:
in Multiplayer B755425 23 on Incandescence 2 , we failed to advance through porc in a reasonable timeframe (by reasonable i mean within some minutes). enemy had in the end 15 funnywebs. we brought tanks, catapults and in the end tremors which finally did the job (while being bertha-ed at).

current state:
shield link transfer energy, shields can assist others with no regeneration penalty and at a really cheap energy upkeep

proposition:
while shield has draniage from
* taking fire or
* from sharing with other shields
regeneration should be stopped or heavily reduced. say, 10s or 15s since last time the shield lost energy. this reduces game stallmating.


alternative:
regeneration while under fire could be very costy. right now, shield regen is ridiculously cheap.

up next:
regeneration of amphibs in water while under fire is ridiculously high.
+0 / -0


4 years ago
Funnelwebs already do what you are suggesting. Did they have shields apart from the Funnelwebs?
+3 / -0
to destroy massive protected funnelweb swarms cloaked units and tremor balls seems only way to do it safely and both can be hard to do if funnelwebs have screens and merlins
+0 / -0
yes they have had multiple static shields there too.

quote:
Funnelwebs already do what you are suggesting.


i know about funnelwebs not/reduced recharging when shield takes damage.

but does it also
* not/reduced recharging when assisting(linking) other shields (under fire) to recharge?
* take link energy when under fire (meaning recharge from external link while own shiled does not contribute to recharge due to taking damage)
* you imply static shields (and probably other shield units too) and funnelwebs are inconsistent in their behaviour. why is that? (and i do not like this!)
+1 / -0


4 years ago
Funnelwebs do not link. The mechanics are completely different because GBrankdyth68 wanted to make a giant shield and none of the old mechanics would work well with it.
+2 / -0


4 years ago
Shieldporc is worrying, but I don't see much to worry about in this game. At what point in the game did you have the issue? I let the game run for a while and came back to it.

At 41:00 your team had 17k in units on that front and were trying to push into 40k in enemy units and defenses. There were some terraformed trenches partially blocking the way. On your side were two Merlins, a Tremor, and an Impaler. They were facing seven Funnelwebs and four Aegis. The Aegis were permanently drained the Funnelwebs were mostly drained, with some occasionally being swapped out.

Your side had built many defenses and had a Funnelweb. This Funnelweb was not protecting all the artillery from the enemy Bertha.

By 47:00 your side had three Tremors in addition to the Impaler and two Merlins. They were now facing eight Funnelwebs. Your opponents had some energy and factories in the area (this was their startbox) which you have managed to destroy. The Aegis have been destroyed. All the small supporting units have been destroyed. Your opposition is just a few turrets and a large number of Funnelwebs. I think this is pretty good work given the disparity in metal invested in this area.

On your side someone tried to build a Cerberus but it was killed by a Bertha. There is some terraform blocking the Bertha. There is a lack of shields and shield coordination.

At this point you could swarm an army through their Funnelwebs. Hermits could work. Halberds would work on the flat bits. Glaives could even work depending on the defenses.

Nothing much has changed by 51:00. Your side still only has around 12k in artillery facing off against 27k in Funnelwebs. The Funnelwebs have been pushed back about 300 elmos. Soon afterwards a Zenith is built and the game changes.

Relevant things may have happened prior to 41:00. Your side consistently had relatively little artillery so I don't expect anything to change if I rewatch the replay. Give a more precise timeframe (with screenshots) if you need to clarify this. Here are my thoughts:
  • This has nothing to do with Aegis as there were very few and they died quite early. A single Tremor was draining them constantly.
  • The Bertha was relevant to preventing advancement of artillery.
  • The terrain of the map made assaulting with an army difficult, however this was never attempted.
  • Your side made a lot of defenses in response to no opposing army. This wasted a lot of metal.
+1 / -0
Honestly, while this game doesn't really demonstrate it (TinySpider's Funnelwebs were a huge metal and energy sink that didn't contribute much for their cost), the regeneration rate of the Funnelweb's shields are high enough to make them much too hard to wear down when massed without specific counters (mostly Tremor).

If consistency and simplicity weren't considerations I'd want to:

1. Increase Shockley shield damage 33%->66%. Increase DRP shield damage 33%->100%.
These two changes would only affects Funnelweb interactions and would make Shockley viable against Funnelwebs and prevent Funnelweb countering DRP (I don't think any superweapon should be counterable).

2. Reduce Funnelweb shield regen to 200hp/s but make them "storable". Meaning you could suppress the shield, preventing it blocking damage but still being able to recharge (taking around ~10 secs to change state and triggering automatically when near 0 hp).
This would still let people use Funnelwebs near the front line but wouldn't have the degeneracy-at-scale that the high recharge rate does.


Unfortunately, simplicity and consistency are actually important so I'm still scratching my head for a solution here. :/
Should probably reduce the regen rate to 250hp/s regardless though... (and hp back to 6000hp, damn things are near unkillable atm if the user is skilled and paying attention)
+0 / -0
drp already pwns funnels. 1 drp can kill a ball of same cost in funnels super easy.. while funnels try hopelessly to micro rotation. shockey emp missile is blocked by funnels hard.
+0 / -0
AUrankSmokeDragon Funnels block Shockley missiles hard? Interestingly worthy of an awesome test considering how much shock dmg the shockley missiles do
Imo Shields are indeed worrisome because of the linking and sharing of shield power but I believe it's a must to encourage counter-play of utilizing shock damage by building ticks and etc.
Though a bit of a nerf to shields probably wouldn't hurt to change the current theme/season of the game much like league or other moba balance changes XD
+0 / -0
4 years ago
shock can make it through but i think you need like 7 to get past 2 funnels
+0 / -0

4 years ago
I dislike the fact that funnelweb's shields don't follow the same rules as the others. They should have less shield HP, but it should regenerate constantly and link with other big shields, even if it's a bit bigger (felon's shield is also bigger than other small shields and links with them).

as is, players can bypass the shield regen delay by using multiple funnelwebs and having them take damage in turns (which probably happens often, even if not deliberately, as i see people making groups of them).
+0 / -0


4 years ago
AUrankSmokeDragon: It's untrue that DRP kills Funnelwebs easily.
A DRP has a rather poor DPS of 1742 against shields.
12 Funnelwebs cost 36000 and have a combined shield hp of 276000. Even in the best case scenario a DRP takes three minutes to get through.
Even a modest amount of micro will defend against the DRP indefinitely with their theoretical (perfect micro) shield regeneration of 3300hp/s (just have to occasionally cycle them out as I just did in sandbox).
Reducing the regen down to 200hp/s and the DRP Blue Shocker to 100% shield changes things so that the DRP is doing 3076dps vs shields and the Funnelwebs are regenning at most 2200hp/s, nowhere near enough.


PTrankraaar : There are a few reasons not to do linking and to have regen delay.
1. Linking massively overpowers felons. A Felon and a high hp shield to drain from becomes unstoppable.
2. Linking hugely increases the power of massed Funnelwebs, allowing them to have the combined shield regen of the entire group. The reasons Aspis can sort of get away with this are:
2a. A huge Aspis/shield ball is extremely vulnerable to Shockleys.
2b. The smaller shield radius means recluse (and other skirms) and cloaked snitches can somewhat counter the ball (also, Funnelwebs have too much hp to be snitched).
3. Regen delay introduces a counter to defensive Funnelweb use.

Now, in practice, once you get above about 4 Funnelwebs the regen delay becomes much less of an issue...

Funnelwebs even in their current state can be efficiently countered with Tremors, but they should also be counterable by a couple of other things too.


As a side note, I originally reduced the shield hp to make it more counterable by missile silos and to reduce the frustration of waiting for it to charge, but the accompanying weight reduction seems to have had the side effect of making massed Funnelwebs a thing. :/
+0 / -0
your probably right.. this replay shows how long mass funnel stand up vs 4 drp.. im dead inside of 10 mins but i also had low power so maybe shields could not recharge

https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/756541
+0 / -0


4 years ago
I'm not changing the amount of damage Blue Shocker deals to shields since aim is for status effects to consistently deal 1/3 damage to shields. You have more chance:
  • changing the amount of damage Blue Shocker deals, or
  • making status effects deal a different amount of damage to shields (the candidates are 1/2 and full damage).

+1 / -0


4 years ago
AUrankAdminGoogleFrog : Was more idle musing than a serious suggestion.

I think increasing the damage of the Shocker or the Shockley would affect their interactions with Paladin and Detriment a lot, though for the Blue Shocker that's not the end of the world.

Changing status effects to 1/2 rather than 1/3rd is not something I had considered because it seemed like such a drastic change (too drastic to be a solution for two bad interactions with a new unit). But thinking about it, the main impacts to matchups would be to Moderator and Faraday interactions with shieldballs...
Faraday isn't too much of a concern given its static nature and the effect it already has on shieldballs, but the Moderator change would be large as it would let moderators ignore Thug shielding. The reason I'm not saying "huge" rather than large is that the individual Moderator-Thug interaction (in mass battles and armies Thugs get drained somewhat and thus Moderators go through anyway) isn't a vitally important one, given Felons hard counter Moderators, Rogues also beat Moderators and Jugglenaught hard counters almost all of shieldfac.
/rambling

+0 / -0
4 years ago
placeholders are good vs shields too because they stop them running away.. and placeholder are firepluck killers.. if firepluck is playing make them to grab his d-gun com and he will always fear.. those and widow.. killing firepluck is worth so much morale boost for team because he always resigns after he looses com
+2 / -0
4 years ago
We need a new award for countering this trollcom stupidity. Awarded for killing any d-gun equipped commander.
+4 / -0
least efficient player award? nullAi award?
+0 / -0
firepluck does make a difference if he kills a heavy because the team already waited for the heavy and is weaker while they wait.. then BLAMM its gone.. but we are getting good at killing him now =P

ordinary players do much better mostly because of all the reclaim and the ability to push a front and hold it while they gather metals.. a few raiders and keep the heavies behind a screen then fireplucks lack of diversity in army starts to let him down.

if only fireplucks com had cloak field and some kind of unit support.. maybe lobster to throw emp'd/black hole'd com out of danger idk i shouldnt backseat drive because he must know what he is doing. after all he is a master of troll and all.
+0 / -0


4 years ago
quote:
placeholders are good vs shields too because they stop them running away

Placeholder weaponry is entirely blocked by shields. Shields hard-counter placeholders.
+2 / -0
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