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Racketeer

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6 years ago
Racketeer - I'm not sure how objectively OP this unit is, but I really dislike its design and its effect on the game. Racketeer games are crappy. Racketeer in shieldball requires no exciting counterplay and makes heavies ineffective. Why this unit exist?
+4 / -1
Firepluk
Racketeer spam is a cancer. We treat cancer with a powerful chemo therapy - nukes
When I see racketeers starting piling up it's time for an investment ...
+1 / -1
Skasi
My 16 month old statement still stands:
quote:
To me Racketeer is not a good unit for the shieldfactory. Not because of lack of synergy or such, but because it has the potential of turning games into dull stalemates where you can not attack into a shieldball not just because of the deadly/tanky ball itself, but also because by the time you reach it half your units will be unable to shoot.

Even in other factories a long range, guided disarm missile could make for some really dull games. Artillery is supposed to keep the game interesting by forcing players to react. Racketeers do not really force a reaction because of the lack of actual damage and worse, they punish any sort of reaction with their kiting and weapon design.

In other words, Racketeer does the opposite of what artillery should do. Artillery should stop players from sitting back, it should be designed to shake up games and to make players go back to active playstyles. I don't think it's a good idea to let it dominate in or even prohibit active mobile, back and forth combat.
+2 / -0








+5 / -0
Many things in the game are built (partially) around the existence of Racketeer. I would treat any dramatic change to the unit's functionality with extreme caution. I could get behind making it more expensive or increasing its reload time to make it worse against larger numbers of units.

As for removing it, Shieldfac would probably need to be completely rebalanced/redesigned around that - Racketeer is Shieldfac's only long-range unit, and giving a conventional artillery unit to the factory that can surround such a thing with shields sounds dubious.
+1 / -0

6 years ago
I'm not sure if it's most effective against heavies like grizzly or reapers, which are bursty and may still be able to fire ocasionally. I think it also makes them lose the disarm "damage" faster. It seems more effective against medium-high weight units with relatively lower HP/cost than the heavies, namely some ships, morphed commanders, and riot units.

some of the counters to shield balls, like thunderbirds and wyverns, can be disabled by a single or a pair of racketeer shots, which may or may not randomly happen in time when they're targeted near the front line, but will probably happen on hilly maps where the wyvern needs to maneuver closer before being able to fire.

the effect of the disarm increases as the unit gets damaged, so low hp heavies will get disarmed in one shot.

a single racketeer can disable a stinger near the enemy front line after a few seconds of exposure (enough to fire twice), and costs less than it does.


On a battle between a medium army and a bigger one with a mix of medium and heavy units, if the team that's ahead adds some racketeers, key units on the weaker side are likely to get disabled leading to a decisive defeat. If it's the other way around, they may not help much. Is this desirable?
+0 / -0


6 years ago
The interaction of Racketeer and planes raises a good point. I have looked at Racketeers randomly neutralize air strikes and have thought it was a bit off. Their missile could be slower or have worse turn rate, this should at least delay the stun time until after the air has struck.

What effect would stun time have on Racketeers relative effectiveness against heavy targets? If a Racketeer takes 5s to reload but only stuns targets for 3s then you would need two to continuously disarm any unit. However you often need at least two Racketeers to reach the stun threshold of a 6K+ health unit in a reasonable timeframe so such a change should make Racketeer proportionally better against heavy units. Requiring two Racketeers to keep any target stunned would make light units a much more effective counter. Of course, just applying this change to the current Racketeer would make it terrible so some rebalancing would be required. Racketeer would probably need to be cheaper but not twice as cheap. Another effect is that Racketeer would become better against shields, since shields care just about raw damage and a Racketeer with lower disarm time would likely have more DPS/cost.
+3 / -0


6 years ago
Slower, clumsier projectile sounds aligned with the traditions of the Artillery caste, which does include "not being too good against mobiles".

Being perfectly accurate against moving targets while not even being obstructed by terrain is an exquisite violation of this norm.

I would imagine something Scalpel-level of missile clumsiness being reasonably decent. Still good enough to disable porc and slow-moving heavies, but now not so good at instantly turning off any Scythe that dares decloak nearby.
+4 / -0

6 years ago

Shield ball + cata = OP
Shield ball + racketeers = OP
Shield ball + snipers = OP
Shield ball + penetrator = OP
Shield ball + impalers = OP

Shield ball + roaches = not OP.

+0 / -0
6 years ago
I feel like Racketeers are much more of a support/special unit than an artillery. They have no real damage and cannot break porc on their own, unlike artillery from other facs. However, just add 3 Bandits and those 4 units can take out a Stardust for much less metal, which I can see being a problem since you're going to be supporting the Racketeers with other units anyways.

Don't change the accuracy, though. The whole point of the unit is to strategically disable specific enemy units that you choose. Nerfing fire rate is better.
+2 / -0
MouthOfMadness
6 years ago
quote:
Racketeer spam is a cancer. We treat cancer with a powerful chemo therapy - nukes

or you can also just spam llts... just llt nanos work fine, this is how i do this as cloakies(without any aoe stuff) vs racketeers.
+1 / -0
MouthOfMadness
6 years ago
racketeer is truely more an intelligent supporter then artillery and it needs an intelligent solution more then any exaggerated strategic change to counter...
+0 / -0
6 years ago
There are so many counters to the shieldball factory out there, nerfing Racketeers would make it even weaker...
+2 / -0