Blastwing

Before the last update, blastwing was only useful in the first 60s of game to deny mexes, and then sporadically and unreliably in case of major missteps by the opponent.

With the last update, Blastwing is unable to kill a single mex on its own, leaving it without a role. A partial mex health nerf to let it be OHK'd by a Blastwing is one option, but truly, is 60s of viability something you'd call a niche?

Here's an idea to fix that.

Instead of blowing up as a napalm bomb, Blastwing gets a Puppy-style suicide attack that drops straight down (and with some delay) something like a Claw at very short distance. This is a cloaked landmine that lasts indefinitely and has the same nominal cost as the Blastwing did. The attack could be activable by all the usual commands such as Attack, Fire, or even Deploy.

(You could even have the mine be deployable back into a blastwing, whatever)

Consequently:

- There is no more explosion when killed while Blastwing is not deployed, so a mass of Blastwings can attack a single target without chain-exploding very stupidly.

- The landmine can give Gunships an opportunity to counteract AA in a defensive fashion, where currently Gnat does it offensively, and current Blastwing just sucks at it tbh.

- Deploying the landmine can take sufficient time that a Picket can defeat Blastwing much more reliably, or even be unnecessary if other units can kill a deploying BW before it deploys.

- Naked mexes are still vulnerable, and the blastmine damage could be tuned such that it would kill them in one shot.

- There is no need for fire, because the delay time means that wearing out commanders with a continuous stream of unstoppable blastwings is not possible. Fire is of course still an option.

- Because the deployment time eliminates so many previously critical cases, the unit could have its damage increased sufficiently to be otherwise useful.

- The mine effect could also be tuned such that it is less damaging to friendlies - for example, like a literal Claw - making deployment alongside turrets worthwhile.

TL:DR replace the nuisance/cheese/footgun unit with a practical landmine option.

quote: Kodachi also can no longer 1 shot mexes, which is it's purpose stated in the last update iirc. Mex health could use a nerf, or the kodachi a damage buff to compensate.

quote: partial mex health nerf to let it be OHK'd by a Blastwing is one option, but truly, is 60s of viability something you'd call a niche?

Saltwing: Full of salt. Cannot grow date palms in its area of effect for 5 epochs

Alot of its early game usefulness is directly related to the fire bomb attack. Like you can set them up on your opponents mexes as scouts, which then do area denial on the mex after being triggered which frustrates your opponents early expansion. In addition to this theres the obvious benefits like if your opponent goes wind you can send them backwards 60 seconds in one fell swoop.

Gunships are really vulnerable starts in 1v1 and the first 60 seconds of blastwing magic is necessary to compete with them. All your stuff costs a fortune and you need to set back your opponents econ enough to stay on an even footing.

Basically i'd be careful trying to rebalance them with a place in large battles because if it diminishes their current ultra-early game usefulness then it will throw gunships all off kilter.

quote: Your proposed change would make it have to be a mine, aka, make it less versatile, and it would probably still end up being a rarely used unit.

Having to be a mine allows it to be a good mine. Currently it's a really bad mine on top of a really unstable sixty second one-trick cheese-pony.

There are also some underspecified details in my proposal. For example, what kind of mine? I think that those leeways should allow it to be made versatile enough to be used more often. For the scouting role, for example, the mine could have decent LOS.

Of course, there are units in ZK that are potentially good but still not used often - like Imp in cloak 1v1.

quote: Gunships are really vulnerable starts in 1v1 and the first 60 seconds of blastwing magic is necessary to compete with them. All your stuff costs a fortune and you need to set back your opponents econ enough to stay on an even footing.

The magic you talk of is dispelled by one correctly placed Picket -- but only if the opponent places it preemptively. This is essentially pregame RPS. I find that pregame RPS is a bad way to build factory balance.

I think that the current blastwing does not have enough damage against mobiles to be a real option to harm invading pieces of AA, so you are reduced to trying to swarm them with Gnat+Locust.

Being able to trip them with a mine!Blastwing could possibly provide this defensive option and thus make Gunships starts easier to stabilize in a different way.

quote: Adding a Puppy-like capability to Blastwing might buff it enough to be more useful and not need a nerf.

I am a bit frankly terrified of something that is essentially a flying puppy. But this could also be interesting.

I'm not sure if a "good" mine will be usable enough to justify having a unit that only does that, at least if we make it out of the blastwing. Its fast, its flying, it costs only 55 metal: it can't be strong, which might result into it being too weak to be a useful mine.

I mean, consider the snitch: its a devastating mine, yet still rarely used as a mine. Mine tactics are hard to pull off right because your own units are also trying to be in that space you're mining, and there's always the danger of random shots or raiders setting off your minefield and revealing the gambit at a low cost. And once the gambit is revealed, the value of the minefield drops drastically.

On the other hand, it could be a really annoying unit because its cheap and can be setup anywhere. How do you deal with a minefield of 55-cost mines that can be deployed anywhere because flight? Random artillery shots? Sending raiders to their deaths, all of whom cost more than the mines?

It feels like pure-mine blastwings will either be useless or have no real means of dealing with them for most facs.

Also, personal preference, but I think flying bombs are cooler than flying mines.

I think a "flying bomb" unit might work better as an expensive unit, say, somewhere in the 200 to 300 metal range. Then you can make it into an actually good flying bomb without enabling flying bomb swarms from hell.

Only problem is that gunships don't have many small units currently, and apparently people want it to be viable on 1v1 so... yeah.

Give Disarm to Skuttle since it is the worst bomb.

I like the kodachi bomb blastwing idea.

eh I'm not caught up yet but what has changed with blasting

it used to be able to kill comms early game in clusters and do decent damage with shrapnel, did you guys nerf it into oblivion or something?

ahh you did, i see... well sucks to be you, your not following your initial directive of ''nerf weakness, buff strengths''

here's a tip : revert all the changed on blasting and bring it back in line with its flying bomb namesake, make it do damage again based on shrapnel and velocity