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Phoenix

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3 years ago
Is the Phoenix good at the moment? Did the HP buff suit the unit or did it hurt its "personality"?

What would it be like if the increase in HP was exchanged for a larger bombed area? How about 40% for example?
+0 / -0


3 years ago
I say the current phoenix is fine. The increased health really helped it to reach a level of survivality where it is better armored than wet toilet paper. It still has potential to do much more damage compared to single bombing compared to Raven when targetting stacks of units, and multiple can even wipe decent amount of riots or skirmishers like recluses.
+0 / -0
Sure, the damage it does to a tightly packed enemy is pretty good (attacks on a realistic AFK army spread seem to do around 1000-1500 damage). It's just so bad at actually killing anything.

A single Phoenix can basically only kill Fleas (yep, a group of Glaives on the move will survive and be healthy again ten seconds later) and in practice you aren't going to get enough of them to kill anything with over 1000 hp.

It's biggest issue is that it's countered via a single quick command. It would probably be a lot better in a game where it wasn't very easy to tell your units to scatter. Against an aware opponent? You're going to do very little damage (some of which will get repaired).
It's second biggest issue is that it only works effectively against small early game units. In a lobsterpot small units don't survive very long any way and in a 1v1 you've got better things to make by the time you've got the metal for a second factory: For instance, Ravens will make cost in one or two attack runs and a Thunderbird can kill armies whereas even in the ideal situation (a bunch of fairly clustered Slings left attacking some porc) it will take two runs for a Phoenix to make cost (or so my recent checks indicate).

I think Phoenix should cost a lot less. Certainly less than Raven and probably around 250 metal.
+4 / -0

3 years ago
What? Phoenix isn't useless any more? What is the world coming to ... :P
+0 / -0


3 years ago
Phoenix does have awful scaling though, as most of its damage on singular unit will most likely be from the 10 second burn time (150 damage). The bombs themselves have so low damage and AoE and are so spread out that they are mostly just to tag units to ignite them.

3 Phoenixes can barely kill 3 reavers from a huge stack of reavers, which is better than trying to do same with 3 ravens as most of them will be nearly dead or at least half dead after the initial bombings.

Still, if we are looking for Phoenix reworks, here is some ideas:

Idea 1:Make it scale better. decrease the burn time and move the dame from it to the actual bombs.
However, for this to actually work, there needs to be either of the following changes as well:
1.Increase the AoE of the bomb explosions to ensure that they actually hit multiple enough units to make the 450 damage or so payload do more damage to groups of enemies compared to just using Ravens to bomb the target.
2.Increase the total damage of the bombing, but make the bombs spread so much more that trying to bomb singular units would waste most of the damage. Basically the Tremor treatment. Would have a high risk of turning into better Raven/Likho against all late game unit balls.


Idea 2: Make it scale less (my preferred). Most of the damage is moven to the afterburn instead. As a result, a Phoenix hitting and igniting raiders like Bandit would ensure it would burn down eventually, while being mostly harmless against tougher units.
The bad side is that bringing multiple phoenix would only help you if it lets you tag more units to burn them, though it would still be useful to have one coming and going to ignite stacks of units before the fire goes out to keep them burning.
+1 / -0
3 years ago
GBrankdyth68, thank you. That was an interesting post. Nonetheless, the bombardment area could be much bigger and the bombs could be ejected at a high velocity. How would one avoid that? Does the airplane aim poorly or is it too slow? The enemy could be set aflame for 105 extra damage as well by increasing the duration to 17 seconds. Perhaps the time units need to burn for isn't shorter even if they manage to nearly avoid the explosions.
+0 / -0
USranknop
3 years ago
Phoenix is doing good, in team games it solves the problem of airfac having nothing to do early game except spam Swift and snipe comms/factories. Torching a blob of raiders or skirms is impactful air play.
+0 / -0
Firepluk
Imo, but zk air needs some re-balance in general.

- all planes should fly considerably higher(mainly to prevent ground turrets chewing through planes like thru paper)
- everything that targets air should be probabilistic in nature
- increase flight height should grant higher LOS to all fighters/bombers, right now it's extremely frustrating to use air because if target goes out of LOS/radar bombers will just lose interest and start flying over enemy AA until death does them part - which is bad and extremely dumb considering that bomber is airborn and having big LOS in air should be a natural ability(even staying at a hill and using some basic optics u can see for tens of miles in clear weather, and when u are flying and have some decent equipment this distance goes way-way up)

I'm curious to see how zk would play if we increased flight height of all planes x2-x2,5 and what should be further tweaked to make it balanced at this height

Right now both gunships and planes have almost similar layering in the air and it's confusing(that nimbus balls chew through raptor and raven packs)
+3 / -0
3 years ago
The potential problem with higher flying aircraft is that you might need to zoom out way more than usual just to see them. I agree that planes could use being more different from gunships though.
+1 / -0
3 years ago
quote:
The potential problem with higher flying aircraft is that you might need to zoom out way more than usual just to see them. I agree that planes could use being more different from gunships though.


This is not a problem, I already tried increasing air heights when I was looking at this a few weeks ago. Increasing height of them doesn't make much difference because you don't need a huge change in height to improve things considerably.


quote:
everything that targets air should be probabilistic in nature


Almost everything that hits air fires missiles.
The missiles have ridiculous turn rates.
Unless its a swift and uses afterburner at exactly the right time, the missiles will be a guaranteed hit.
That's not fun.

quote:
start flying over enemy AA until death does them part


Why doesn't all air on idle have the same behaviour as the radar plane?
Where if it gets attacked it moves away from enemy.
This would fix many times where you have giant ball of swifts, look away to micro your lichos and look back to find no swifts. They all decided to fly halfway across map into wall of aa...




As a side node. The Flak turret appears to have a bit too much health for its cost and damage ability, the splash lets it brutally decimate air (especially since air LOVES to clump into a nice small ball)
+4 / -0


3 years ago
Isn't it annoying to have your units randomly miss aircraft?
+0 / -0


3 years ago
I think its more annoying not being able to predict whether your ravens are going to gib from groundfire when they try to attack. The unit looks and feels so awful, and before dive was implemented it was the most mechanically graceful unit in Zero-k.
+0 / -0


3 years ago
Look at what is on the ground and think about whether they will kill the Raven before it hits. The same happens with AA against all units or raiders against defenses. How is this significantly different from any other type of hit and run attack?

quote:
The unit looks and feels so awful, and before dive was implemented it was the most mechanically graceful unit in Zero-k.

I disagree, and you are talking about a completely different unit since the game has changed so much. Was no-dive Raven ever technically in ZK? There were essentially two versions of Raven 10+ years ago:
  • Prior to this version was the current Raven that simply did not dive. It could be dodged by walking in a circle, unless the player using the Raven manually landed it on the enemy unit, essentially doing what dive automates.
  • Prior to that was more standard bomb-dropping Raven. It could be dodged by moving so had to be manually targeted at comms (probably, my memory is a bit hazy). It also failed to fire if it did not have a long enough period of uninterrupted flight leading up to the target. Imagine a Pheonix with a single bomb that has to hit.
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3 years ago
This HP buff was needed for phoenix. At least its not totally from paper now and can sustain longer. Vs raiders, skirms, riots, badgers phoenixes are fairly good when u have at least two of them (and no aa near) Phoenix in masses and no opposed by aa becomes powerful threat but of course it mean you have to invest great metal value in and if they lost its great feed. Even wits no AA fellons shred them instantly and area shields protect fully from napalm bombing but if there is disarmt then with 4 - 5 of them its possible to inflict great demage and destroy most units in ball. One likho cost like ~6 of them and seems in many cases better investment because of more hp.
I have used them with some success in several games. However phoenix still is usable until midgame or as defence plane vs larger raider masses in later game. And if enemy have good air player then phoenix even faster becomes absolute or just defensive weapon against enemy raider bands in air player teritory (of cousre if enemy air cant get there).
Phoenix isn't unit who is supposed to be spammed like ravens. It rarely make cost then if enemy is prepared.
+0 / -0

3 years ago
Insta hit enemies shred ravens in deep dive. Felons shred them. Venoms area stun them, units with slow just laugh at ravens who is slowed trying to reach target and cant and then is killed. Especially bolas is good at such trolling.
And still most annoying aa thing (after artemis of course) is little humble farady who alone with one nearby stardust can stop entire mass ravens trying to get Firepluk silo or com.
However i wil be fair and notice that hover aa flail is shit almost again every aircrat in game. Missile dmg is pretty large but dis eterenity long launching time is awful thing. Nothing like crashers.
+0 / -0