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ZK Sea Metagame

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USrankQrow
8 years ago
Hello fellow ZK players, today I create a thread about a very important yet neglected aspect of ZK: Sea. Yes, the part of Zero-K we all !votemap away and it never gets played. I plan to go over some basic meta/unit stuff in this post, and list possible corrections.



Gameplay



So, sea's gameplay is pretty screwy. We have Hovers, Ships, and Anphibs all working in equal measure but its usually Hovers or Anphibs that win with Ships coming in last. With that we have another factory, planes, that does a decent job of dealing with water threats with raven. This one unit relationship with sea actually ended up spawning a few units (Angler much?) To specifically deal with air threats.

Economy in the damp is a pretty big thing, so lets go ahead and say this: Compared to the rest of sea meta, economy is pretty dang good. It has both forms of m and semi-stable e that aren't land dependent, which help it stay unique from the rest of ZK. Not to say that we don't want similarities, but we don't want Sea-K becoming a thing here.

Possible corrections for sea unit interaction will be discussed later.

Factories

Here's where things get pretty advanced (and messed up).

Ships

Ships have some problems, namely among them a lack of ways to get rid of the rest of sea without spamming an easily counterable unit.

Skeeter: Good for essentially suicide scouting and that's about it. I've never seen it being used for anything other than that.

Mariner: Good, decent constructor with decent buildpower. Maybe add disarm missile and make Skeeter some sort of underwater flea with sonar?

Snake: Most spammable decent sea unit. Probably needs nerf or buff hunter to counter.

Hunter: Supposedly anti-sub but really doesn't do that well. Buff needed, also maybe decrease reload time.

Enforcer: Not seen often but does really good damage to land/shore targets. Leave as is, maybe decrease cost.

Typoon: Decent damage, REALLY needs more range.

Destroyer: Arty part is fine, depthcharge needs to be a proper depthcharge.

Serpent: Leave as is.

Shredder: Decent aa, leave as is.

Will add other two factories tomorrow.


+0 / -0

USrankFealthas
8 years ago
Sea Metagame really seems to be:
1: Spam random units to gain map control.
2: Quickly spam urchins to keep that map control.
3: Mass sniper subs.
4: Warlord
+11 / -0
USrankRebel0
8 years ago
(edited 8 years ago)
If you're lucky you can stall rival facs and cons by rushing a skeeter into the enemy at early game. A few can stall early rushes of even anphib for a while since they can fire underwater somewhat.

Like Fealthas said, subspam is pretty common. What is weird is, you don't see many nuke subs.


I'm ideaguying past this point: a boat that can harpoon and drag units or a second construction boat with some light unit-spawning capabilities like the athena would bring in some new synergies (Drag dantes into the ocean and swarm with subs, stacking arty and cons together like a shieldball and rushing cheap mobs on-the-go) .
+0 / -0
USrankQrow
8 years ago
What USrankFealthas said is what we want sea NOT to be.
+7 / -1
USrankKshatriya
8 years ago
quote:
3: Mass sniper subs.

I think Sniper subs should be removed. They aren't as vulnrable as they should be given their firepower and range. They also take on the unusual role of Anti-Heavy/ Artillery
I've seen them used primarily in two ways:
1) Anti Urchin
2) Anti Fleet (Especcially against Warlord or Reef)

Destroyers should be used as the primary artillery for dealing with porc, and regular subs (snakes) should be used to deal with Reefs or Warlords.
+3 / -0
PLrankOrfelius
8 years ago
#sonarlives
+6 / -1

ATrankhokomoko
8 years ago
Sorry, but I disagree a bit. Sea metagame is a bit more complex if you don't limit yourself to ships only.
Also notably missing from the above posts is reclaim, which usually decides sea battles in my experience.

Scallops + some buoys against hunters pack a nice punch until the enemy gets claymores (and sometimes even after). Penetrators can also deal with porc, units and whatever is needed.
A correctly timed air/gs switch is just as effective as on land.
+0 / -0

LVrankSenaven
8 years ago
My thought about sea.
>Ships are best factory in sea. They have good con, powerfull arthy, subs, powerfull sniper sub. Ships raides is pretty weak, hunter seems however bad vs scallop swarms, enforcer mostly is mostly useless ship (i also rarely seen it and mostly it just fail), ship aa is strong at slow gs but sucks vs lichos and bombers.
>Amph factory is mostly weak against mass scale porc - urchin over ranges scallops balls but other units can be killed by other porc. Amphs suffer of arty lack. Thay have good sea raider and scallOP masses, but vs porc they become weak. Amph need at least light arthy unit (i know about that there was unit named lobster who was arthy).
>hovers suffer from all three facs most. It's not friendly factory for inexperienced players. They have good raider unit vs submarines (dagger) and they have suicidal unit clymore who can blow up masses of submerged units. However using claymore with good success requires large experience and vs individual units it looses its power. Hover arthy is penetrator who suffers from 30 sec reload (but still have great firepower). Of course hovers have halberd but its isn't argument vs dense porc. Mostly assault on porcy player with hovers will be just feeding.


Most used strategies in sea team battles i have seen.
>Ships - subs for raiding and protected crusaders (with snakes or hunters) in start can clean porc. Later spam serpents and gg.
>amphs - in start successful raiding with awesome quacks. And later spam scallops in masses. Boys and grizzly is tanky but require float up and down.
>hover is nice raiding factory at start and can really done wonders in start. Later need also claymores and if you mange use them correctly then also wonder can be done (example halberd first and then send two claymores after enemy com un blow it in his porc mid or just go into scallop ball and blow them all up). Halberd is more important vs porc in start then penetrator. Rushing pene in early game as porc counter is mostly loose game.
>In lategame sea play mostly become just boring unit cluster or porc cluster or strider ship battle. And if this boring cluster is too long then player with most bb in endgame wons.


>Current sonar is useless crap. All serious sea battles is depended on air sonar. That is one of most annoying thing in sea games. If you haven't good air player in team then you just mostly loose because lack of sight.
>Also sbility to use terraform with urchins is annoying.
>Current reef and warlord is good enought.
>Leviathan is useless. Only player who use it is CHrankAdminDeinFreund on FFA games. Even terraforming silo is better than Leviathan. It need buff or rework.
+1 / -0


EErankAdminAnarchid
8 years ago
Removing sonar would be great but it also entails figuring out how cloaking should work with water.

- Spherical proximity decloak (current) means that you have to screen double in deep areas. For example, an ulti could pass under a ship undetected if water is deep enough.
- Cylinder decloak requires implementation (though iirc CHrankivand did it in his ZKE thing?). It is also a weird special case.
- Maybe water could just disable cloak, Predator style. But then Ultimatum can no longer counter Detriment in water.
- Maybe touching water should just double the decloak radius (or add a flat bonus).
+1 / -0
USrankQrow
8 years ago
Make levi full nuke with limited range for 6000... sounds good.
+0 / -1


EErankAdminAnarchid
8 years ago
(edited 8 years ago)
Things i would do to ships:
1) Remove Crusader's ability to hit moving targets
2) Remove Crusader's depth charge
3) Remove Crusader
4) Remove Leviathan
5) Remove Serpent
6) Replace all of the above with a missile artillery ship armed with the Reef missile (some AoE, decent damage, enough range to bombard deep into land, cannot hit mobiles unless they act stupid).

Alternatively, the missile artillery ship could further inherit from Serpent and Leviathan by being a submarine. It would have to surface to fire and be killable by surface attack weapons when surfaced. It would not be able to hit underwater targets.
+3 / -0
USrankRebel0
8 years ago
EErankAdminAnarchid

y u no rike arty?
+0 / -1


EErankAdminAnarchid
8 years ago
(edited 8 years ago)
I like arty that doesn't have a leveler sidearm, and a day job as generalist hyper-speed skirmisher. Neither do i like arty that has conditional invulnerability and permanent cloak and a secret life as an anti-heavy agent (Spectre is bad enough and it doesn't have conditional invuln!).

Removing Crusader would make Enforcer have a role again. Currently Crusader does everything that Enforcer does - but better.
Removing Serpent will downregulate the porc war. All remaining naval bullshit skirmishers capable of sniping mobiles will be permanently surfaced, and thus much more vulnerable.
Removing Leviathan is optional, but it is not very useful atm. Replacing it with a missile artillery submarine would instead generate something with a purpose and a niche.

Another option to go about Leviathan is to keep its tacnuke sidearm, require surfacing,and give it Reef missile (in which case Reef loses it). Then it is one of the three naval artillery striders and ugh that isn't good because there are too many sea artillery striders anyway.

If anything, something like the Vanquisher (but bigger, scarier, and prettier) could shake up that pattern. Basically a sea!Goliath.
+2 / -0

GBrankAdminDeinFreund
8 years ago
(edited 8 years ago)
quote:
LVrankSenaven EErankAdminAnarchid
Leviathan is useless

Objection! Thanks to it's ability to hit and run it is even more effective than missile silo when water is nearby. (But the silo is also foreign to most players as the tacnuke thread has shown..)
AUrankAdminGoogleFrog A little price decrease would be nice doe.
+0 / -0


EErankAdminAnarchid
8 years ago
It is also twice as expensive and only has one type of missile, which it can only launch in sequence.
+0 / -0
Firepluk
8 years ago
just remove all water map, no water - no problems
+6 / -4
DErankKlon
8 years ago
(edited 8 years ago)
turn crusader into assault instead, there is no real assault in ships so far. (typhoon just has silly amounts of hp and is otherwise more like a raider/riot). there is already a lot of water bound arty the only thing that crusader has got going for it that it is the cheapest kind.

leviathan / reef situtation could be solved by removing reefs arty weapon. currently reef is plain better than the other water striders, and extremely generalist. so if had say missile aa instead of cruise missiles suddenly you would have make a descicion if you want powerful arty (warlord), sneaky longer range arty (leviathan) or drones&anti&aa.

leviathan is fine imo just wasnt adjusted to the fact that it lost the anti (still costs ~3k ?). if it had the ability to build all silo missiles it would suddenly be much, much more useful (and cooler too).
+0 / -0
GGrankCovertMagic
8 years ago
I like these ideas of heavy ship reshuffles.

### Crusader

- weight, - depth charges, + direct fire

### Leviathian

-- move to ship fac, - weight, + missile

### Reef

- missile

### Serpent

Your model is weird anyway. Owled.
+0 / -0
Firepluk
8 years ago
remember lobsters u will NEVER balance sea as good as land is balanaced right now., unless you provide THE SAME unit diversity as available on land
which is not acceptable
+1 / -0

GBrankAdminDeinFreund
8 years ago
quote:
Firepuk
remember lobsters u will NEVER balance sea as good as land is balanaced right now., unless you provide THE SAME unit diversity as available on land


What if we made all units amphibious and make all weapons able to fire underwater? Ships would be Water-Gunships!
+2 / -0
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