March 3rd 2v2 Tournament and Zero-K v1.6.2.14 - Tank Buffs

The tank changes are interesting, but welder+kodachi pushes and raids are probably op now.


The level 4 commander (dual weapon) cost nerf was necessary I think. But where are the late game comander buffs to compensate??

The nerf to high powered servos is bad. If you dislike fast commanders running around the battlefield at near-raider speed you could lower the servos cap from 8 to 6.

This breaks the balance between commander modules further as it makes getting build power, hp or maybe a regen module on the first few levels even better compared to the other options.

Kodachi was never weak to start with imo.. and nerfing comm modules? Really? I lived under impression almost none are worth it already..

Increasing the combat costeffectiveness by 185% is a pretty huge buff for tank cons.

Kodachi was trash, which is part of why nobody played HT ever in tourneys.

But idk why the random comm nerfs, its not like comm morph wern't a massive waste of money anyways...

welders are OP in the sense that they have better value/cost than other builders by a significant margin as they're also a decent combat unit for its cost (if it didn't build at all it would only be slightly underpowered, just slightly worse than redback, not useless).


There may still be other issues with the lineup that make tanks have trouble competing in 1v1.

This brings the question again:
A- balance prioritizing the "raw" cost effectiveness of singular units : welder OP


B- balance prioritizing the factory set, not minding about singular units' cost-effectiveness very much : welder ok, maybe slightly OP, for the same reason redback could be considered ok as spiders factory still wins matchups reasonably well by itself.


I think B type balancing is slightly worse than A type balancing, as it's more likely to lead to bad things like power creep and whack-a-mole balance issues when a player is forced to build the "underpowered" unit from its factory, or when units are kept OP because "they can still be countered and often are".

Now combat in Zero-K will rarely follow Lanchesters square law exactly, that is where you have a point.

terrible at BP/cost? not really, it's just 10% worse than weaver in bp/cost.
(and has a bandit sidearm, 20% more speed and more than twice as much hp)

bp/cost of welder is about the same as the cloaky bot builder and lveh builder and better than the shieldbot builder.

EDIT: actually the shieldbot builder is the same cost as the cloaky, so the bp/cost is the same. I thought it was more expensive for some reason.

Kodachi is really strong in some raider match-ups but not in others. It's weak good scorcher control in the very early game, which is probably why it's considered weak. A kodachi can at best trade against a scorcher if microed really well, leaving both wrecks in opponents territory.

Kodachi do scale really well vs. most raiders (including scorchers), but they scale really poorly against most other things, so this tends not to be how they are used.

I think these buffs are too far, but that just means they'll be partially reversed later if I'm right.

I'm not sure about the commander changes. Commanders that are morphed are bad, but conditionally okay in big teams where it's difficult to address them with anti-heavy. I don't really know why they're being nerfed further.

Welder buff is crazy. Like... genuinely insane. They're a mini-commander for 220.

Blitz was already good especially vs. raiders. This is a 20% reduction in opposing up-time, for a 10% nerf in damage (assuming you're stunning with every hit which is not always the case).

TB nerf shouldn't change too much, but I like it.

I disagree with GF that BP/cost is the main important attribute of cons. Weight, speed, movement type, survivability, and utility are all important. Conjurer, convict, and constable are among the best cons (before this patch obv.), but none of these stand out for their BP/cost efficiency. If your con comes out earlier with less investment, then arrives at the expansion location faster due to travel time, it doesn't matter that it technically takes longer for them to build the mex. They started earlier.

Even after the cost reduction Welder is still at the inefficient end of land constructors. At 250 cost it was clearly the worst.

Catapults are really bad.