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Neon: Minor Abilities for Factories

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8 years ago
I was thinking maybe some small flavourful abilities on factories could be a means to tune up some factory limitations while also giving more options for creative play. Similar to how planes gets a 'free' docking zone.

Example ideas:

Heavy tank: small pewpew sidearm just like their worker. It's a pain in the arse for HT to defend against factory snipes and it feels unfair when they've also got an expensive worker and not light raiders. Notably, Godde places lotuses immediately behind his fac to prevent scorchers/glaives, because if he doesn't do it immediately he's either wide open until another worker pops, or has to come back with his commander, wasting more expansion time.

Amph: Can set a djinn beacon to return units home. This way, when going amphib, a djinn is effectively two ways.

Claok: Can cloak for energy. Possibly emit cloaking field for more energy. Radar jamming?

Shield: Shield for energy.

Gunships: Can fly for energy slowly.

+11 / -0

8 years ago
quote:
Gunships: Can fly for energy slowly.

Nah, that's jumpfac. :P
+2 / -0

8 years ago
The fewer abilities units have, the better. This makes it easier to detect and exploit weaknesses, something that's instrumental in a skilled game. This follows from "Quant's rule" I believe?
+0 / -0

8 years ago
I'm unsure how this looks from a technical standpoint. IIRC facs can't receive orders themselves because these instead go to the waypoint queue for units (see how jumpfac works with jump).
+2 / -0
Skasi
8 years ago
Spider factory: can be placed on cliffs.
+12 / -0
8 years ago
Lately I was toying with the idea of morphable gunship plant that would transform into a Krow since Krow is already a strider class and it just doesn't match the metal/size class of units built outside of striderhub. The bloody thing is even bigger than the factory its build in!
+3 / -0
Skasi
On that topic, Krow should be moved to Striderhub.
[Spoiler]
+5 / -2
8 years ago
morphing would preclude any nanos assisting construction wouldn't it
+0 / -0

8 years ago
Moving krow to strider was proposed but deemed inconsistent.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
JPrankgajop
I think that's a valid concern. My response would be that these mechanics, while being relatively small in power level, can be skillfully exploited/played around, rewarding creativity. I'm not sure about Quant's rule, since you would be building on the factory's strength while also mitigating a weakness. Yes it would make facs technically more general, but paradoxically, this would be through further specialisation. This would not result in homogenisation of units or gameplay (except arguably in the defensive use cases), and would grow the individual identities of the factories.

My thinking is that, with many other games, I find mastery to be in expert use of the smaller elements to accrue advantages. The clearest example I can think of is Magic: the Gathering, where lands that do even a small amount more than basic are consistently in very high demand. It's very satisfying to swing the course of a game with a seemingly meaningless ability.

If such a thing were implemented, abilities that can be used defensively would need to be very carefully balanced to prevent them overshadowing statics.

PLrankAdminSprung
I had no idea that's how it worked. So I can Que pyros to jump up cliffs from production?

PLrankOrfelius
If there was a good transformation animation I could get behind that. Take the price down by 500 and have you sacrifice the factory? This would also prevent team krow rush strategies though, which, depending on your opinion on those, could be an upside or a downside. I personally find krow rushes unfun unless I'm the dude who ends up with a krow. It makes one team do nothing with the exception of the krow pilot, and forces the other team to deal with krow instead of playing the game they wanted. Building dedicated AA is no fun at all.
+0 / -0
quote:
Amph: Can set a djinn beacon to return units home. This way, when going amphib, a djinn is effectively two ways.

this sounds disgustingly good
+2 / -0
quote:
So I can Que pyros to jump up cliffs from production?

Yes. But remember Moderator etc will ignore this.

quote:
(free djinn) sounds disgustingly good

Throughput could be limited and worse than a real Djinn.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
I'm not sure there is a place for that ability between "irrelevant" and "too good".

Then again, my question about this entire thing is "why?".
+0 / -0
quote:
Heavy tank: small pewpew sidearm just like their worker. It's a pain in the arse for HT to defend against factory snipes and it feels unfair when they've also got an expensive worker and not light raiders.

Nice stealth necro.
The leveler sidearm is reborn.



Also more seriously, you do realize defenders exist? They are good at defending, as the name would suggest. People are just greedy and don't build defense, but this is a problem with the player, not the game.
+4 / -0

8 years ago
Spider factory being placable on hills sounds OK actually, and I'd extend that to gunship/airfac always being buildable above ground/water (i.e. levitating slightly in place). Following the "factory is buildable on terrain that can be used by its units" is a decent train of thought.

Still, I don't think sidearms are necessary. It makes balancing such units more difficult since you'd be balancing them both for the main utility and the 'sidearm'. It's almost a certainty that this would further increase the cost of factories which would make factory switches less likely to happen, and I think this would make 1v1/2v2s less dynamic.

In all cases you can just build the djin/shield/jammer so I don't see why you wouldn't do just that.
+0 / -0


8 years ago
If you arm a factory people are going to factory plop rush (perhaps even with a teammate sharing transports). The idea is ok but I have trouble thinking of reasonable bonuses for each of the factories. Shield for shield factory makes some sense and helps things charge. Intel-abilities for cloak does not make sense because cloaking a factory is pointless. Cloaking nearby units is usually pointless.

I think it is better to stick with factories which only do one thing: be factories. We effectively have a modular factory system at the moment and this is a system which gives a lot of choice. If you want an armed factory make LLT. If you want a shield factory make a shield. Leaving these things off by default gives the player the option to not spend their resources on it.
+4 / -0
Skasi
quote:
Moving krow to strider was proposed but deemed inconsistent.

The inconsistent thing is Krow not being in the strider hub. There would be nothing inconsistent about moving it there. Same for Goliath and Grizzly, or instead moving Ultimatum to cloakfac; then all units above a certain price would be in the strider hub.

As I understand it, the reason behind Strider hub is stopping super-expensive units from dying just because their factory got blown up. All units above a certain price (eg. 2k to 4k metal) would share this "problem" and thus all of them should be "allowed" to "benefit" (for lack of better words) from this solution.
+2 / -0
8 years ago
myself i personally kinda like having the ability to make strong units like crab in a starter factory..
+0 / -0

8 years ago
You're right GF, arming it would up the cheese. What about giving it more HP? IIRC ship lab has more HP too, so it's not unprecedented. I can't really see any way doubling or even tripling its HP could be meaningfully abused.

+0 / -0

8 years ago
And yeah Aqua, just giving it the abilities of an immobile djinn would be even more broken in teams. Even on large maps: Vindicator -> com drop near opposing start position -> amph lab -> teleport in everything else the team has.
+0 / -0
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