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Sea is boring

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4 years ago
Sea revolves around Claymore and Scallop, everything else is support.

Boats get hard countered by Scallop + lobster and can't deal with it at all since the Siren gets hard countered by it.
+3 / -1
sea also has siren with skeeter and cons... it can win but yeah that takes good micro and luck

edit: oh lobster scallop kills siren.. umm gg
+0 / -0
4 years ago
I agree, boats aren't worth starting with ATM. The risk of getting hard-countered by amphibious bots is too great, and you're getting units that can't leave the sea while everyone else can.

Claymores are simultaneously OP due to their immense AoE and also a pain to use due to how easily they blow themselves and allies up.
+0 / -0
4 years ago
I agree with the sentiment of sea battles not being as fleshed out as the other aspects of the game, some may describe as 'boring'.

When there are competitive games in which amphbots are built on maps that have no water, and shipyards are not built on maps that are comprised entirely of water, I believe a closer look at the balancing is warranted.

The power of the amphbots should be in their versatility. Ships should reign supreme in water, as they can do nothing but be in water.

Perhaps another factory called something like Submarine Factory would also help in the longer term, along with the nerfs/buffs to Amphbot Factory and Shipyard in the short term. Because having units that fight on the ocean floor (And thus are only susceptible to torpedoes or other ocean-floor units) should not be a specialty of the Amphbot Factory, a factory that can also fight on land. The Submarine Factory will also be able to include interesting things like underwater EMPs and such.

The power of the Shipyard units as opposed to the Submarine units will be in their ability to help the battlefield on land once they've conquered the seas, i.e their artillery and battleships, while the Submarine units will exclusively battle for the sea, with maybe one Scylla-lite type unit thrown in there just for versatility's sake.

I only suggest this because balancing the existing units of the Shipyard and Amphbot Factory will not help the criticism of sea battles not being as dynamic as the other areas of the game, but adjusting the Shipyard/Amphbot relationship should be first and foremost.
+2 / -0
In terms of maps and game sizes, what context are these statements being made in?

I ask because Shipfac punts Amph pretty badly in 1v1 according to https://zkstats.antihype.space/# , but I would expect Amph to look much stronger on, say, Sail Away team games. I'm guessing you are referring to some point in between but I don't know where, hence why I have to ask.

+0 / -0
4 years ago
Its probably due to the speed advantage, which matters a lot more in a 1v1 in a water map than in a team game in a semi-water map.

But I don't think sea being able to beat amphibious bots when a lot of space is involved makes up for it. Sea should be able to win at sea in any situation.
+0 / -0
Sea in general was never really rebalanced after the introduction of Lobster; Siren was a pretty good counter to Scallop before that. Perhaps it could use some thought... although there has been some thought directed to an Amph rework which might make it moot.
+0 / -0

4 years ago
The weakness of ship vs amph sounds like another expression of the no underwater skirmisher issue that has been discussed elsewhere. Underwater riots consequently have an easy time at sea (and Lobster gives them the ability to close with Siren, which being a heavier riot ought to dispose of the lighter riot).

A simple stop gap would be to stop lobster working underwater. Siren would then kite scallop all day long. However back door amph surprise would also become impossible.

Alternatively, maybe Hunter could be reworked into a torpedo skirmisher? It's not a good raider to begin with and other factories (e.g. spider) lack a light raider but do have a scout (as ship does in the Cutter). Imagine it as a floating Ronin - mediocre range for a skirmisher (indeed, probably even less range than Ronin - perhaps 420 or even 400), but cheap and stackable. Maybe 100-110 metal if the torpedo is unguided, 130-140 if it is guided. Give it a similar movement penalty to the ronin after firing. Speed wise it'll need to outrun Scallop but be reasonably easy to intercept with Duck. Increase reload time to 3.5 sec, modest increase in HP to 400 to bring it closer to light skirmisher HP levels.

While this might seem to have an adverse effect on Mistral, ship sometimes doubles up on roles anyway as do certain other factories. Claymore doesn't make Mace obsolete, they just have different targets. Ship itself has two riots in shape of Siren and Corsair, while current Hunter and Seawolf are a light/heavy raider combo (like Glaive/Scythe). Mistral and skirmisher Hunter would be complementary rather than stepping on each other's toes. Mistral can take shots at coastal targets that Hunter can't touch and hopefully defeat Hunter in even valued skirmisher duels.

Giving ship the unique ability to skirmish above and below water would seem to go a long way towards making the fac king on the water, which it should be given the versatility of hover and amph.
+0 / -0


4 years ago
Claymore is wrong.
+4 / -0
4 years ago
Making lobster not work underwater would undermine the main purpose of lobster, which is to enable amphibious invasions where it would normally be too steep.

I do think the current raider submarine is useful, rather than reworking it into a skirmisher, the old sniper submarine could be brought back and retooled as to be that skirmisher. Having an extra submarine would be nice anyways, submarines are cool, so its weird that we only have one plus the tactical missile sub (which is rarely used).
+0 / -0


4 years ago
Sea has been at its worst when there were long ranged units that fire while underwater. The ability to avoid artillery bombardment makes them the best option for attrition.
+0 / -0


4 years ago
The biggest problem that makes sea boring in my opinion is the limited amount of units that can actually even fight in sea, and even among many of them have rather similar weaponry and weapon behaviour with short ranges and all. Sea is probably the most fleshed out among the 3 sea capable factories with somewhat working interaction between underwater and overwater combat between its units, but same can't be said for hover or amph as hover relies pretty much solely on Claymore for underwater fire power and amph prefers to hide underwater with lines of scallops.

Rather than surface battles. The sea battles are too focused on underwater combat which lacks skirmisher, assault and artillery roles. I think it would be better if sea battles had more surface interaction with underwater only weaponry better specialised to wipe out certain unit types that lack underwater weaponry, but there would be unit specialised in hunting underwater targets with worse performance against surface ones.
One example would be making the Claymore bomb have less range against surface targets by making the bomb sink as it goes, giving more range against UW targets but requiring close distance to surface ones to properly hit them.
+5 / -0
You're right about that, the moment amphibious bots get involved, sea battles becomes all about the underwater.

Maybe their capacity to fight underwater should be nerfed, so that amphibious bots want to avoid that and instead quickly rush to land when engaged at sea. Lots of maps have narrow seas or plenty of islands, so it doesn't necessarily inviabilize amphibious bots. They shouldn't be good in wide open sea maps anyways, except when you're amphibious invading the other shore.

I guess they should get something in return for it. More speed maybe? Maybe only underwater? More range so that they can shot ships from beaches better?
+0 / -0
I think it is unrealistic to expect ship to defeat amph (as amph is currently designed) in all situations. Specifically as a game becomes more and more congested, being underwater just inherently becomes a better place to be... and there are pretty much no limits to how congested a game ZK players seem to be willing to play. Having watched a handful of less-congested teamgame replays it does not seem like amph dominates the meta in that context. Having room to retreat a little from a lobbed ball of Scallops without losing anything you can't afford to lose helps a lot.

Also remember that as a ship player, (a) switching for Claymore is a valid strategy and (b) if the amph player does not have surface support Urchin spam can pose a problem for them.

That being said, perhaps Scallop should just not exist as it is. It has on-and-off been a problem for years, no matter how it's nerfed or what is added to the game to counter it.
+1 / -0
4 years ago
Siren can beat scallops easily and has way more utility thanks to speed, attack range and area damage. You can see a scallop lobster ball coming in from a mile away and kite it forever, just build a single 70 value Cutter to provide vision.

The only amphbot unit that can beat an experienced ship player is the grizzly, because it can safely kill sirens. Amphbot factory has only 2 units that can fire and move in water, duck and scallop. Duck is a scout. Everyone is spamming scallop when they play amphbots in water because there is no other viable unit that can actually shoot while walking. Since scallop is the only viable unit and siren is a direct counter to scallop, it's reasonable to see both frequently.

Units that cannot move while firing are food for enemy reclaim graph, especially when they have short attack range and can only hit units over water. Amphbots are powerless against hovers since claymore exists. If you're facing a hover player in water as an amphbot player, your only chance of winning is for enemy to never build claymores or use them badly.

As for why it might seem "boring": everything in/over water moves slowly, fires slowly and has short attack range. There's no eco to raid since all eco is built on land, there's no strategic terrain to control since everything is flat water. All sea battles revolve around who can reclaim the massive frontline unit graveyard faster. Mix in shields and cloakers for even more emphasized slowness and short range respectively.

Ultimatum can safely stroll down into enemy army and make cost in water, despite having no benefit of cloak in water and being seen a long distance away. That's how short the engagement distances are.
+0 / -0
4 years ago
I don't think ships have to beat amphibious bots in every situation, but I'd say the situation in which they should lose is when the amphibious bots can make good use of their ability to go on land as well, which opens up other firing and cover opportunities, not to mention more strategic opportunities.
+0 / -0
Ship factory has, on top of raider/riot/skirmisher, a surface vs. underwater dimension. In the context of just the ship factory this is kind of ok, but mostly probably a throwback to C&CRA.

Then amph comes in and breaks everything because their entire lineup can move (and sometimes fight) underwater. They can even build their factory underwater. Ship options to fight them are instantly limited to 3/8 units. In the other direction, pretty much every amph unit that shoots can hit surface ships and of the two that can shoot underwater, one happens to be a really useful riot that doesn't have much trouble killing Seawolf at cost.

Statistics and anecdotes aside, it's not much fun to fight amphbots as ships. They don't even have units that can shoot underwater to have a complete raider/riot/skirmisher interplay. When ships win the matchup it's probably mostly by spamming Siren because that's almost all you can do against Scallop attack moving on top of your stuff. When they start using Lobster it's even less fun. What's the counter to Lobster, Newton? Only shoots at surface targets, and is pretty weak at pushing floating amphbots.

By the way, there's a bug preventing Newton from shooting at Archer under any conditions.
+2 / -0
quote:
There's no eco to raid since all eco is built on land, there's no strategic terrain to control since everything is flat water

IMO most of these maps should just not exist or get played on, but people really like their Small Supreme * for some reason despite it consistently playing poorly... not to mention Sapphire Shore Duo or Sail Away.

For instance I would expect Aurelian and Bellicose Islands to play much more reasonably. However, neither of these maps have been played in team games for upwards of two months. I am left with the question of whether the community at large wants to play what I would consider reasonable sea games or whether they actually prefer the kind of games being derided in this thread.
+0 / -0
USranknop
4 years ago
Here is a tweak turning Seawolf into a skirmisher. Should fit in better.

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+0 / -0
I am fairly sure that if one monospammed that unit (possibly backed by a handful of Hunters) Amph would have literally no possible composition that didn't get steamrolled by it.
+0 / -0
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