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emissary (again)

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4 years ago
http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/781128

http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/781148

why does every team-game has to degenerate into tank-arty-spam?



+0 / -0
4 years ago
because inherently, artillery counters all other units in-game if allowed to grow in number. Tanks, in general, have the greatest advantage when it comes to this with high damage, high aoe shells that destroy all other unit classes. Raider's late-game just gets destroyed by the emissary as when you launch like 15 rounds, even a single hit is fatal. add in the fact you can make an ogre or 2 and you have the ultimate unit combo late game.

good vs:
porc
raiders
skirmishers
riots
other arty
structures
constructors
everything that is basically hitible(is this a word, if not, now its a new one:)
counters:
none :D
enough shots and your gonna hit something.
+0 / -0
4 years ago
It's interesting that the meta has taken this direction, and it's a sign of good unit/game balance. It's mentally easier to keep pumping resources into the factories that are already producing units, rather than focusing it on the superweapons, and it gives a payoff much sooner (while a superweapon costs much more, and gives you nothing until its finished).

I think that the other reason why team games (especially large team games) turn into arty spam contests is because people build a lot of static defenses, and artillery counters that hard.

However, if you want to beat arty spam, you do have some options, but they often require a bit more mental effort/practice. Generally, you want to have attacked earlier in the game and prevented the buildup of arty but... sometimes you just don't have a choice. Some options are:

-Construct Cornea/Iris units to cloak your raiders' movements, and use fast-moving strikes to hit and run before the arty shells arrive (note: you cannot cloak shielded units). Scythes and/or ultimatums are excellent alternatives, but you can always morph a cornea to an iris to attack with different raiders. A personal favorite tactic of mine is to make a handful of corneas in patches around the map, and fly Revenant gunships to surprise attack and then retreat back to safety quickly.
-Along those lines, use terraform to create radar blocks (often players forget to build additional radar to see around this). These terraformed objects can also soak artillery fire. Many people just build a wall, but it's probably more effective defensively to build a bunch of high pillars, making an enemy advance more difficult (so you kill them a few at a time if they attack), but maintaining it is much more difficult.
-Construct hardened turrets (Razor, Gauss, Faraday), which take reduced damage when not deployed and heal while closed. Set them to hold fire, and bury a caretaker nearby. The enemy will waste shells targeting your turret, and it'll remain at full health unless assaulted. Preferably, build these turrets up high, so assaulting them is even more difficult
-Speaking of burying caretakers, remember that burying things can help prevent detection. I've even seen [Rooks]Vegan bury stinger turrets to a perfect depths so they don't show up on radar/visually, but they can still fire over the ground level.
-Construct a few (not too many) cheap units to patrol ahead of your front line in order to soak fire from slower-firing artillery units (not ideal, because it costs you metal, but you can set fleas or hermits to patrol, and an enemy who isn't paying attention might not realize they're wasting shots).
-Build Arty of your own, and terraform a ramp to give you better range than the enemy.
-ATTACK! Sometimes, your enemy has seen you try to be tricky with aerial sneak attacks or raiders and prepared for those targets with the appropriate turrets. Switch it up and swing with a dozen cheap assault units, like hermits or Ravagers (which actually isn't that huge of a mass investment). Preferably, attack a corridor that you haven't focused on yet - hopefully their defenses aren't as strong there.

Of course, these tactics aren't easy, especially if you've been playing for a while and/or your're tired. Heck, my own rank is obviously not high enough to make a statement about how effective these are. But hey, give these a try.

-Ruy
+3 / -0


4 years ago
quote:
because inherently, artillery counters all other units in-game if allowed to grow in number

Impaler and Sling don't have this inherent ability to counter every other unit.
+2 / -0

4 years ago
if there's half a dozen emissaries pounding a front line, the opposing team could have half a dozen impalers countering them.

Impalers are less generalist but they have other advantages (better survivability, higher range, can fire on the move and hit and run, and are better at sniping buildings, especially ones covered by terraform walls.

+0 / -0
I don't think Impaler counters Emissary in any way.

At best, it contests part of the niche that Emissary occupies.
+0 / -0
What if all artillery had high trajectory? Exclude Lance.

If you remove anti-units Emissary capability the Tanks will lack Skirmisher a lot more and loose to them quite hard.
+1 / -0
4 years ago
Even a ball of slings is bound to hit the target. If they fire enough shells, then the dispersion is enough to hit something. This is why tremor and merlin are actually the best artillery in-game, they have a very high volume of fire, destroying any other unit or damaging it.
+0 / -0
Merlin cheats because its missiles are actually slightly homing to compensate for their wobble. Additionally, it has decent AoE.

A mass of Sling is guaranteed to hit something eventually, but it won't counter most of those things even at insane densities.

Tremor is not good anti-unit artillery, yeah.
+0 / -0

4 years ago
quote:
Even a ball of slings is bound to hit the target.

Not really. Slings aren't actually inaccurate in the way you're describing (mostly). If a bunch of slings are all aiming at the same moving target and making the same motion prediction on that target, and the target jinks, all the slings will miss.

Slings don't have any wobble in their shots, they're just slow to aim and their shot has a long travel time and no aoe. Increasing their numbers (and they're a bit too expensive to mass) doesn't really increase their chances of hitting a given target by much. That also makes them terrible at shooting at radar dots, since their accuracy is high enough that if the radar wobble puts the dot off center they all uniformly fail to hit the target in the same way.

If it were otherwise you'd probably see a lot more sling spam, but slings are legitimately terrible.
+1 / -0

4 years ago
In the second game, the fist Emissary didn't get built until 6 minutes in. Artillery doesn't work by itself. It needs lots of support to work properly.
+0 / -0


4 years ago
quote:
In the second game, the fist Emissary didn't get built until 6 minutes in. Artillery doesn't work by itself. It needs lots of support to work properly.


Here's one where Emissary gets made first unit out of the factory.
+0 / -0

4 years ago
The East team, the one without the Emissary, didn't use a single raider the whole game. It looks like East was planning on use Riots to set up a porc perimeter which got shut down by West's emissary. East started to build assaults instead and got raided.
+0 / -0
4 years ago
EErankAdminAnarchid Icy Run is a bit of a special case due to its size though. Raiding is borderline impossible in 2v2, and just plain impossible in 3v3 or larger matches. With the threat of raiding gone, the game naturally favors porc/anti-porc gameplay.
+1 / -0
4 years ago
Oh well, I was mistaken on the sling accuracy, however, an easy counter to this is to order the sling ball to area attack terrain, so each sling fires at a point in an area. with enough slings, you get a high volume of fire once more. Or if your really really skilled and love microing, force fire your sling on the ground where you predict the enemy unit will be after the time needed for shell travel. In theory, if the sling is accurate, then this can be very deadly.
+0 / -0


4 years ago
... As long as the enemy does precisely nothing to counter your micro in the 15 seconds of Sling projectile flight time.
+3 / -0
4 years ago
That is surprisingly common
+1 / -0
4 years ago
Tremor/emissary a match made in heaven :0
+0 / -0
4 years ago
Then again, the tank fac has arguably the best unit line up, the only downside being cost.
+0 / -0

4 years ago
Nurf.
+0 / -0