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Static shield and mobile shield almost same cost
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   [DE]Rick
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There is like 70m cost difference between static shield and mobile shield. Last thing i heard is that static def has a cost efficiency of 1.5? That means static shield is a bit underpowered i guess. |
   [LCC]GoogleFrog[0K]
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The main difference is that mobile shield costs 33% more energy to charge. This isn't that much of a difference so yea something else could be done. |
  luckywaldo7
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I still don't like the accessability of shields. Remove static shield from build menus and make it deploy-only from mobile shield. Effectively requiring users to have a shieldbot lab to get shields. |
 SaktothIVL
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I'd rather have a larger, more expensive static shield, and have the mobile shield be factory exclusive. You can still use the big one to stop concerted artillery, but need the shield factory if you want to make a shield ball. |
  Jasper
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Ya if you do something remove shield morp and cloaker morp. |
   NeonStorm
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+1 for Jasper Eraser has a too small radius for it's cost+energyConsumtion. But Aspis is fine - walking shields need more micro and dies easier to bombs/snipers just because they move with your army to undiscovered area. |
 Antero
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+1 Jasper. Most people, when wanting a mobile shield, just build a static one and then spend half a minute morphing it. Would be more interesting if shieldbot fac was actually required for this. |
  jseah
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Aw. I do that ALL the time. Light veh. wolverines/slashers work magnificently when they have a mobile shield with them. Ticks and roaches are devastating with a mobile cloaker. Definitely worth the e cost. |
[LCC]GoogleFrog[0K]
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I like common use of utility things such as shields and cloakers. If the units were restricted to a factory or larger and more expensive they would see less use. Eraser is that expensive because mobile cloaking is really really powerful. |
luckywaldo7
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I like common use of utility things, I don't like easy accessability to both shields and cloakers at the same time, anywhere on the map you have cons. I feel like it cheapens their coolness, and strategic value of getting mobile versions in their respective labs. |
jseah
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^I don't ever build the mobile versions in the lab. Even when I have a cloaky bot plant and want to get cloaky ticks, I plonk down a cloak tower and morph it, rather than take up build time in the lab. Cloak towers and shields are support/utility units. They're not as important as those few glaives you need *now*. |
Jasper
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What about giving Eraser a 20 energy requirement bigger radius and removing morp. |
 [pikts]wolas
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Radius is already big enough. |
[LCC]GoogleFrog[0K]
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Someone added mobile shield and cloaker to their factories for completeness. I don't know any other purpose for their presence there because I rarely produce them from the factory. Energy drain is more powerful than equivalent extra metal cost for a few reasons. * If you build energy to support a shield only the cost of the unit is in danger. * If you lose the unit you don't have to rebuild the energy to support it (like *craft supply). * If the unit's ability is disabled you can use the energy elsewhere, maybe for overdrive. * Energy drain tends to make units particularly expensive early game but the energy drain can almost be ignored late game. Energy drain is mainly to prevent rushes. The radius is not increasing because this version was nerfed to balance cloaked armies, particularly explosive ones. Low radius puts Eraser in danger so it is possible to find and kill. |
luckywaldo7
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And before that someone merged the two different factions so you weren't limited to either shield or cloak depending on the faction you chose. (Ignoring for the moment that you could steal or borrow technology; it didn't really happen that often anyway) And before that someone gave intermorphing between static and mobile versions, so it became silly easy to get a mobile version without the required factory. >> I don't know any other purpose for their presence there because I rarely produce them from the factory. If shields and cloakers were only accessible from their factories, then people would build them from the factories. It's not like they would suddenly become useless. They would just be a little harder to get. Right now its just much easier to plop one on the front like and then morph. That is silly. And a cloakybot or shieldbot factory would be more interesting because their tech would suddenly be more exclusive. |
luckywaldo7
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*weren't -> meant were |
luckywaldo7
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Bottom line pretty much being, a mobile cloaker is better made by dropping a static and morphing, than made from the cloaky bot factory. This we can all seem to agree on. And imho, this is counterintuitive and silly. |
NeonStorm
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I would like to have a direct weapons factory and an indirect weapons factory instead. Felon is to much a direct fire unit, and the shield factory is not the only indirect bot factory ( Puppy, Firewalker, Jump, .., ) - it need more units. |
   Skasi
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I think shields and cloaks being available to any builder makes them much better support units, just like striders being buildable anywhere would. That should stay. Mobile versions should be removed from factories for less unit clutter. The more units in a factory, the more confusing for newbies. Static vs mobile balances seem fine, imo. |
luckywaldo7
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I don't really think factory clutter (<=12 units each) would be more confusing than static clutter (~60?). And being available to every builder doesn't make them better, it makes the more accessable. Which, IMHO, takes away from the strategy a bit. It's too easy to say "hey, cloaker would be nice right now", and almost instantly have one. In starcraft you can never have things so easy, you need to plan your way to get them. You don't do so well with simply impulsive play. I would settle for removing mobile <-> static morph. So you can get a static anytime, but you need the factory for the mobile version. |
 [1uP]archl
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Produce from factory is annoying due to production list reset, at least, you won't need more than 1 earser in most cases. How about a adjustment radius for different level of energy consumption |
luckywaldo7
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Hold alt, click on 'build eraser' button. It will insert 1 eraser into the next spot in your build queue (after finishing current unit) and non-repeating, even if the rest of the queue is on repeat. Hotkey your factory and there is pretty much no annoyance in production. |
[LCC]GoogleFrog[0K]
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I don't think restricting them to factories adds anything, here are some reasons: * Almost all teamgames have a Shield or Cloaky player. Asking for a unit is extra trouble and a reason to be frustrated at allies. * 1v1s do not have the above effect yet I think they are underused in 1v1 so do not want to add another barrier. * Their energy drain prohibits early use. Later in the game 550 cost factory is not significant. |
Skasi
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I agree that static clutter is no better, lucky. Hence why I often complain about it. :) |
luckywaldo7
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> * Almost all teamgames have a Shield or Cloaky player. Asking for a unit is extra trouble and a reason to be frustrated at allies. Why even have factories then, why not just give everyone access to every unit at once? There are always units limited to factories that happen to be better than anything else at a particular job. Is it really so bad to reward teamwork in team games? > * 1v1s do not have the above effect yet I think they are underused in 1v1 so do not want to add another barrier. Perhaps they are underpowered then? Too expensive, either in itial cost or maintaining cost? > * Their energy drain prohibits early use. Later in the game 550 cost factory is not significant. I also support raising factory costs a bit. Not to mention, to get both cloaker and shield, currently you would need 1100 metal. If that is still insignificant, then why, like above, do we even have multiple factories at all? Also like above, are they underpowered because of their prohibitive cost? |
 robburdon
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Restricting the use of shields would make for less porcy games, but at the same time would make artillery pretty dominant.. |
luckywaldo7
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It isn't that I want to see fewer shields, I just want to see shield play be characteristic of someone playing the shield lab. Likewise with cloaker. So instead of seeing a few shields or cloakers scattered here or there, it would be someone using shields or using cloakers as the focus of their gameplay. More deliberate use. |
Skasi
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robburdon, shields do not counter artillery. It's the other way around. |
[DE]Rick
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Well that depends on situation too but currently static shield is so costly it hardly makes cost. |
[pikts]wolas
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Static shield easily makes cost, if enemy using napalm bombers, if someone likes napalm nuke, it also counters 1 tactical nuke, great against volverines and probably against somenthing more. |
[DE]Rick
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What dumb person would napalm bomb shields...Anyone with a decent brain would use emp bombers and prec bomber to take out shield and paralyse THEN you napalm the shit out of them. |
[pikts]wolas
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Well actually that happens a lot and sometimes its useful to have "little shielded porc base", because if they want to tacnuke some anihilator or something they must emp shield which instantly makes its cost because tacnuke arent goin through, but his is best case scenario, often first goes few failed napalms, tacnukes and so on. |
luckywaldo7
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Undocumented feature: napalm bombers actually fly lower than shield's maximum height. If you attack command right on the center, they will fire too early and the bombs sill hit the shield. If you attack command a bit behind center, bombers will drop their bombs while they are inside the shield, effectively negating the effects of the shield. |
Skasi
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Undocumented feature: shields don't counter Wolverine. |
  Pxtl
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@lucky - the problem I have is that a lab is only 500 metal... teh main reason players don't use 3 or 4 techs is the micromanagement frustration. Likewise, that's why you don't see a single shield or two mixed into a mobile force, instead you see the fat stack of 3 or 5 shields, because of micro troubles - adding a shield to your conqueue, waiting for it to get started, waiting for it to complete and start morphing, and then adding it to your squad... vs. just adding a shield walker to your construction queue at the shieldbot lab? I only roll out a shield-walker outside of the shieldbot lab when I'm building a game-ending force and it's worth the time to think "okay, build a few extra shield generators and morph them". The micromanagement aspect can make something that seems optimal suddenly rare and tricky. I remember wanting a cheap 200 metal micro-lab for the mobile stuff that you could get by morphing something immobile, just because of that frustration. Either way, though, if the shield walker and the cloak walker become exclusives of their respective labs, I'd want to see more really-darn-special stuff appearing in other labs. Or we could look at the reverse - why doesn't the Venom morph into the Faraday (and vice versa)? The Goliath into the Behemoth? Bring back the mobile radar unit and its radar-tower morphing? Etc. |
[1uP]archl
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Thanks lucky. I dislike shield so I quit ZK and made my own without shield, but now, all these gone with poor laptop. |
[LCC]GoogleFrog[0K]
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> Either way, though, if the shield walker and the cloak walker become exclusives of their respective labs, I'd want to see more really-darn-special stuff appearing in other labs. This is similar to my feeling. Shields and cloakers are really different utility units with no comparison. You can't compare their accessibility to normal units because we have many implementations of similar unit roles spread throughout the factories. Shields and cloakers must be used to support an army, not as an army, so whatever a player does with them will still have the flavour of the factories that they own. They can also be used dramatically with every type of unit so I think any kind of limit is a massive waste of potentially interesting combinations. >> * 1v1s do not have the above effect yet I think they are underused in 1v1 so do not want to add another barrier. > Perhaps they are underpowered then? Too expensive, either in itial cost or maintaining cost? No, 1v1s are often too short or the front is too large for focused a slow moving armies that use a cloaker or shield. But they are interesting when used well and I don't want to reduce that. > So instead of seeing a few shields or cloakers scattered here or there, it would be someone using shields or using cloakers as the focus of their gameplay. More deliberate use. This already happens. With limited accessibility deliberate use would be reduced because of the extra effort required to use them. You're suggesting narrow deliberate use that is limited to cloaking a handful of units. > waiting for it to complete and start morphing, This step is not required. Morph command can be given to units under construction. > I dislike shield so I quit ZK and made my own without shield, but now, all these gone with poor laptop. That's pretty extreme... I see many games without shields. You do realise they are counterable? |
Pxtl
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@Frog - so what "special stuff" would you put in other labs? Move the Athena into a the airlab? Make that mobile powerplant/storage a hover unit people were chatting about in another thread? Bring back the mobile radar land unit? Bring back the Owl? You'd probably want to move the Tick out of the Cloaky lab just because ticks are so damned powerful that some other lab probably deserves that special ability (vehicle? It would have wonderful synergy with the Dominatrix). I've often fantasized about some special landscaping powers for the Tank lab since Tanks often both *create* and *struggle with* heavily cratered battlefields. |
[1uP]archl
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It is counterable with high DPS long range units when combining with builder commander tower+unit rush. So I modified the game with generally unit range no less than Defense. |
luckywaldo7
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> This already happens. With limited accessibility deliberate use would be reduced because of the extra effort required to use them. You're suggesting narrow deliberate use that is limited to cloaking a handful of units. I don't know what you think I mean by 'deliberate use'. I mean pre-meditated use, where your strategy involves accessing cloaker or shield tech deliberately, planned ahead of time before you need it. Deliberate use requires more difficulty. Otherwise, you can make one on impulse or right exactly when you decide when you want it, because you can make it pretty much wherever and whenever you want, no forethought required. I think this might be a good time to mention that I would assume cloaker/shield building cost or maintaining cost could be reduced to compensate for requiring to tech to get access. So I think your fears of seeing less cloaker/shield use are unsubstantiated. Naturally you would see none in games where no players built the required lab, but I would expect/hope to see much more use when people do go cloakies or shieldies. Although given some number of players times the average number of factories per player, I find it unlikely to see many games with neither. >> Either way, though, if the shield walker and the cloak walker become exclusives of their respective labs, I'd want to see more really-darn-special stuff appearing in other labs. > This is similar to my feeling. Shields and cloakers are really different utility units with no comparison. You can't compare their accessibility to normal units because we have many implementations of similar unit roles spread throughout the factories. Shields and cloakers must be used to support an army, not as an army, so whatever a player does with them will still have the flavour of the factories that they own. They can also be used dramatically with every type of unit so I think any kind of limit is a massive waste of potentially interesting combinations. Other support units: moderator, venom, spy. You can't make an army out of any of these alone either. Should we, as Pxtl brought up, have faraday<->venom intermorph and a new slowturret<->moderator intermorph? Why only allow jumpies to get the anti-buff skirmisher when it works well with pretty much all units? Or spiders to get the major stun units? Are we wasting the potential of these assist units by limiting their use to their factories? I don't think so, I think that is what makes them and their factories interesting. I don't know, everything about what you say makes me think you lean toward a design with absolutely no teching at all. Flat balance is not no tech. |
luckywaldo7
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I tend to be all over the place, so let me lay out a summary of what I dislike: I dislike getting mobiles from statics. This undermines the decision you often need to make between making a static that is more cost efficient but can't move, and a mobile unit. I dislike the massive versatility of con build lists. There are so many options that factories and factory units play almost second role to static placement. It dilutes the interestingness of making unique factory choices when the factory choice only effects a fraction of your build options anyway. I dislike the inconsistency of the inter-morphs, and actually, there isn't really anything I like about morphing at all, except for the com level-up morphs. So basically that all is what brings me to my position |
[1uP]archl
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I think the morph is good - if it have no cost~ |
 Shazzeh
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I think morphing in general is a pretty interesting mechanic and I'm sad that I don't use it more often. More units should have morphs and units should stay operational during morphing (like commanders). |
NeonStorm
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If you morph Aspis back to Aegis, you should get your metal back. As I would support a 100/150 metal lab for < 250 metal units to give you a second chance when your factory is destroyed, I would also support a Stardust to Warrior morph. And Stinger to Mace? |
[LCC]GoogleFrog[0K]
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@Pxtl - Did you read my post? I agreed with you that there is no comparable special stuff to put in other labs. > I think this might be a good time to mention that I would assume cloaker/shield building cost or maintaining cost could be reduced to compensate for requiring to tech to get access. I disagree completely with the effects of such a change. Increasing the tech cost and decreasing individual cost invariably improves unit spam. I don't think these kind of units should be spammed as they can be tactically interesting by themselves. > I dislike getting mobiles from statics. This undermines the decision you often need to make between making a static that is more cost efficient but can't move, and a mobile unit. Morph cost is significant for cloaker. Not so significant for shield because mobile shield is not that much better. > I dislike the massive versatility of con build lists. There are so many options that factories and factory units play almost second role to static placement. It dilutes the interestingness of making unique factory choices when the factory choice only effects a fraction of your build options anyway. As I said, these units have absolutely no damage at all so must be used with other units. These other units are of the flavour of whatever factory you have. I also think there are many interesting combinations of flavour X + cloaker so it is a waste to limit it to one flavour. > Other support units: moderator, venom, spy. You can't make an army out of any of these alone either. These units are distinct from cloaker and shield because cloaker and shield deal no damage at all. Moderator etc... have roles and damage-like interactions with other units. Venom is riot and Spy is anti-heavy, cloaker and shield have nothing like these roles because it all depends on what you use with them. Disable units are also widespread and almost all factory has at least one. Panther, Zeus, Gnat, Spy, Stiletto, Tick, Outlaw, Moderator, Dirtbag and Outlaw are all arguably disable units. Unrelated: > I've often fantasized about some special landscaping powers for the Tank lab since Tanks often both *create* and *struggle with* heavily cratered battlefields. A while ago I gave the smooth effect to Goliath. More recently for the next stable I buffed Goliath and added the effect to Leveler and Banisher. Aside from this Welder is a constructor, it can terraform and has the health to do so in dangerous areas. |
[1uP]archl
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modern tank shall be able to climb any slope though :D |
NeonStorm
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they should be able to turn at the point by a different spin direction of it's chains. |
Pxtl
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Yeah, Frog, you're right - the problem is that the mobile-cloaker and mobile-shield have no peers. What do you mean that the Goliath has smoothing? You mean its projectile has a smoothing effect? Or the tank itself generates some kind of smoothing field? The more I think about it: if every other fac loses mobile cloak, then the Cloakybot lab should lose its stun-bomb. Move it to the Spider lab and revamp it specifically to fight raiders and light defenses so that it can be used to stun targets for Fleas. Then spiders can have a real raiding game and be more specifically defined as "the stun lab". If you moved the Dominatrix's weapon into the spider lab (put it on the assault spider, for example) it would be *horrifying*, and would give the Spider lab an *extremely* distinct character from other labs... but it would take away the specialest thing the vehicles have, and what do you do for the vehicles then? Give them back the mobile radar? Oooh, how exciting, mobile radar. I guess I'm rambling. If you want to be really extreme, you could remove terraforming from all units other than the Welder and the Caretaker. Then the Welder becomes the "mobile terraformer" to correspond to other labs sporting a "mobile X", but that would make it tedious to terraform canals for boats or ramps for hovers... it would create a mess... terraforming really does need to be mobile to be useful. Moving Resurrection from the Necro to, say, the Mason would work and wouldn't be nearly as hard though. How is Outlaw a "disable unit"? Oh god, I'm turning into NeonStorm. |
 [ACP]Zag
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It seems to me that the Necro is the only builder that really doesn't have the special ability of its factory. The cloaky con can cloak, jumper con can jump, spider con can climb vertical surfaces, etc. Maybe instead of resing (which would fit well with the LV con because of the capture veh), the necro should have a shield. Just on a random note, would it be possible to have a unit that makes a bunch of dots appear on enemies' radars, essentially a decoy? |
[pikts]wolas
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LoL zag resurecting it is so OP, and you say its not special ability... I would trade claoking, jumping for it. |
[pikts]wolas
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By the way zag you can make those dots with Q just make line of llts with shift + Q and instead of building them it will just start them = many dots. |
Pxtl
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@Zag - decoy was an attempted feature back in the CA days as a part of the cloakfield generator. It was a nightmare of bugs. |
[ACP]Zag
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@Wolas I was not saying that it was not a super powerful ability, I was just saying that the necro doesn't connect the same way to its factory as all the others do, and the resing just seems to go well with capturing. As for decoy, I guess you could just spam fleas and make sure they don't stop moving. |
luckywaldo7
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> I disagree completely with the effects of such a change. Increasing the tech cost and decreasing individual cost invariably improves unit spam. I don't think these kind of units should be spammed as they can be tactically interesting by themselves. I suppose this gives me the understanding of the source of our fundamental disagreement. You want tactical interestingness, I want strategic interestingness. |
Pxtl
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I have to say I'm with Frog on buffing the unit if it becomes a factory exclusive. One of the things that I love about Zero-K is that every unit is supposed to be theoretically equal in value-per-cost, not that some unit is "better" than another by virtue of its location in an expensive or esoteric factory. |