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Buoy

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11 years ago
I'm sure everyone must be aware that Buoy is becoming hyper popular for its combination of range, resilience and slow damage. It seems much too powerful, especially compared to the cripplingly fragile/expensive moderator. Its a much better skirmisher than rocko in teamgames.
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11 years ago
From it's inception this unit reminded me of The NOTA Problem. But since then I have tried to use it and it doesn't seem super effective unless massed. Additionally modstats shows that it is not that great. Basically I think this unit should be OP but haven't seen much evidence yet so left it.
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11 years ago
Remove the predictBoost.
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11 years ago
I'd love to hear more about The NOTA Problem.
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FIrankFFC
11 years ago
wtf is NOTA problem?
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11 years ago
buoy are OP ghosts.
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11 years ago
I don't know why, but I always find Buoys are so much more effective against raiders than other skirms. Otherwise the buoy seems fine.
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FIrankFFC
11 years ago
2 or 3 byous pwns lv1 coms
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11 years ago
When I tried NOTA it seemed that all the units had a relatively small range of DPS and heatlh ranges. So I just spammed the longest range unit and it was super effective.

Buoy is a bit too average. Like Morty.
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FIrankFFC
11 years ago
buoy is epic mass of em kill almost everythink
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11 years ago
Buoys should pwn comms, like most skirms should. Comm is assault/antiswarm, which is vulnerable to anything that can kite it.
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NOTA units have (had?) very samey stats, the long range units all have good HP and DPS too. They benefit greatly from Lancaster's square law because they can all fire at once, can kite and can kill the enemy before they even get in range. Once you get up a big ball of these things, they're unstoppable because the enemy isn't even getting in range to do damage and you stop losing units so it snowballs. XTA had a similiar thing with their 'AA' missile units.

Bouy has good HP, DPS and skirm range. It has exactly that problem where 1 is counterable, but if you keep them alive they snowball as you can do damage without putting them in danger. This is made even worse by the slow damage, which exacerbates the kiting effects and means that all adjacent shots after the first land, negating the poor accuracy. Recluse does the same thing, but it has a lot less HP so it's vulnerable to things like firewalkers and napalm bombers.
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11 years ago
But Recluse fires arced projectile which makes it harder to hit raiders that will pass underneath the projectile as they close into firing range. Recluse does have similar deathball problems though (I still think experimenting with swapping the Recluse and Rogue's missile-behavior would be interesting, but that's a subject for another thread).

Perhaps making the Buoy immobile-while-firing on land just like it is in water? That would reduce its ability to kite the target.
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11 years ago
>Perhaps making the Buoy immobile-while-firing on land just like it is in water? That would reduce its ability to kite the target.

NO. I hate units that can't move and fire. Soon the game will turn into a stutter-stepping microfest aka SC. Even if we remove stutterstepping, it's still a bad idea for a skirm. Units that can't move and fire are definitely more assaulty than skirmy. Skirm warfare, by its nature, is hit-and-run.
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11 years ago
Buoy is not OP
its 300 metal, dreadfully slow

its just the only unit in that lab worth building, barring ducks for sea rush
to get rid of it is simple, at least i find it so
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11 years ago
USrankAntelope

Normally I agree, but the Buoy is kind of a special case isn't it? Its slow/damage weapon makes it functional against raiders (much like the Slasher), and any other nerf would likely reduce its efficacy as a naval unit. The Buoy is meant for killing ships while immobile, after all.

Consider that in general, boats are a bit more powerful than land units. The Buoy is meant to kill boats, and is less powerful in water than it is on land. That's always going to be tricky. So give it the same weakness on land that it has in water - immobility while firing
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11 years ago
Stop to fire would make a bit of sense in this case:
  • Bouy combat in sea is stop to fire so it's role in sea would not be weakened.
  • It has health.
  • The factory lacks other cheap assault.

Who says Buoy has to be a skirm?
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11 years ago
Can we go back the poll where users voted heavily in favor of "more automation, less micro"?;

Units that stop to fire break any chance of relieving micro strain. If you have to manually skirm any unit, you're failing to use one of the things that sets ZK apart from every other RTS out there: incredible automation.

With any other Skirm unit, I hit F for fight command, give a direction in which to attack, and let my units skirm in and out of range. With Slasher, this can't happen. You have to watch each Slasher soooo carefully because they are low HP units with a slow turnrate that can't move and fire. By the sound of this discussion, we're going to do the same thing to the Buoy now.

Seriously: autoskirm is one of the best things to happen to an RTS in a long time. It sets ZK apart from other RTS and is one of its strongest points. Let's be honest: the graphics are mediocre and incomplete, the resources required are incredibly high, the engine and game are still pretty buggy, but the underlying game mechanics and automation are some of the best in the genre. Start messing with that, and you're taking away one of ZK's strongest points.

I play StarCraft (or any other generic RTS) when I want to feel like a squad leader.

I play ZK when I want to feel like a General.

Don't mess that up.
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11 years ago
You could make the same argument about the Crabe. Imho, the autoretreat function works best for these cases - the unit is committed once it starts shooting, and you don't move it until you're pulling it out of combat for repairs. The units' cooldown-before-moving and other attributes should be designed to match this behavior - obviously, you're quite right that manual micro should be discouraged, but simply providing long deploy/cooldown times will get you that. If moving it in-combat will cost you time it could be firing, you won't move it unless it's necessary for the unit's survival. Boom, no micro.

To me, the bigger problem with autoskirm is how badly it handles units with low turn-rates - watching them charge closer as they attempt to manoeuvre away, or the reverse - being stuck outside of firing range too often (Glaives sometimes do this) is spectacularly frustrating. Maces have to be carefully positioned ass-backwards before combat starts if you want to get decent kiting behavior.
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11 years ago
Except Crabes can fire while moving, so there's no stutter-stepping, and they cost more than five times as much as Buoys.
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