Jacks can attack while submerged - intended?

All three melee units in ZK can attack underwater. This is intentional afaik.

My dream is to one day have the micro skills to launch a Djinn with a Newton and ramp, teleport a Lobster and a Jack into the air, use the Lobster on the Jack, then have the Jack jump. One day! Small smile.

nono, googlefrog makes a good point

As long as you can maneuver a Lobsterright next to the pit, you are entirely capeable of tossing the jack out of the water. Then your response is to use gnats/a couple raiders or locusts to end it.
Granted it's very rough to force someone to be 100% focused in response to a focused player microing cheese in the backline, it's now much more forgiving given factory plates exist.

i dont like orbital jacks,because i cant defend against them and agaisnt silo at same time,shoot jack right on top of singu/moho GG.
On isis if you dont bury geo your gonna get tac nuked 100%,then you loose.If i dont burry geo to defend against orbital jacks or morph geo then make lobster throw it in next to moho,then switch to gnats,thats a lot of things you need to do.Not to mention you have to become this human radar allways just looking at the screen waiting for the next jack like a retard

One might argue that people ought to adapt their econ strategy to the map.

Everyone knows the geos are hard to defend in the Field of Isis. There's the option of not upgrading them, or making sure to not build anything near them.

Also, you can spread fusions all over your base, or you can make sure your singu is far away from anything else in case it explodes. You can place your singu far from the center so that jack ramps, which can't aim, can't fire jacks near your singu, since the're usually aimed so that they can fire jacks at the enemy's geo.

quote: jack ramps, which can't aim

both jack ramp and jack lobster can aim...

not the design, but how you use it, you put the jack alittle bit left or right, or you not use some of the newtons

To the points:

1. Flying jacks happen on lots of maps - they delete fusion plants (killing 2 makes cost for the ramp, jack, & a few swifts to scout).

2. A jack laughs at anything less than 8-10 raiders and even then can often kill a fusion, some mexes, and several raiders.

3. The jumpbots are a strong factory 1v1 - pyro beats all raiders; very strong toad; a well played jug. eats tanks (even cyclops), all raiders, bombers, crabs, shieldballs, many skirmishers, and proc (except faraday). Grizzly, Nimbus (but toad hard counters the Nimbus), and lance are good against the jack, but otherwise it takes striders or lots of well played skirmishers or stun bots. Moderators are great skirmishers with a very high alpha strike. A high skill level factory no doubt, but very very strong on all but water maps (which is part of the reason that jacks should not fight submerged).

4. Flying jacks are much stronger and require much less micro and much less risk than scythes. Just spend 1k metal on lotus turrets or a couple stingers and you can pretty much shut scythes down. I.E. you can counter scythes for far less than they cost - plus spend almost no micro countering them. Further, scythes must walk clear across the map to be useful while jacks fly as fast as an after-burning swift. Additionally, scythes will cannot hit submerged economy or even walled economy while jacks can hit both (unless you very accurately throw the scythes I suppose).

5. Jacks jump walls (even if it takes multiple jumps) or into water so I don't understand the idea that walls can stop them.

Basically, the problem is that the low-risk high-reward flying-jack tactic costs too little micro and metal.

If some air players wouldnt be playing with closed eyes and keep some ravens in the back the whole jack launcher issue wouldnt exit.

Go raven and thy 4 the metal.

Actually if you do the math killing 1 fusion is usually not worth it at all. assume the enemy reclaims.

eco player lose a fusion (-1000m, -1000e, -1000bp), but gain a jack wreck (+240m, -240bp), a fusion wreck (-400m, -400bp) and a swift scrap (+30m, -30bp)
total:
330m lost
1000e lost
1670 bp used

jack yeeter lose a jack (-600m, -600e, -600bp) and a swift (scouting, -150m, 150e, 150bp)
total:
750m lost
750e lost
750bp used

result:
eco player comes out 420m on top
jack yeeter comes out 250e on top
jack yeeter comes out 920 bp on top

now time to translate E, bp and other stuff into metal.
let's assume a overdrive rate of 8e -> 1m (which is the point the game tells you to stop being a lobster and build more mexes). 250e translates to 31.25m
at a 8e -> 1m convertion rate, a fusion would take a little under 4 minutes to pay itself back. so lets assume your cons (which will be the generic-ish 130m cost 5 bp) also need to pay themselves back in 4mins, and that half their time is spent walking. that gives us aprox 0.216 m/e per bp, or 0.243m per bp, or aprox. 224m for the whole 920 bp.

lets say it takes 30s for for the fusion to get back up again. this will mean 1050 lost E and therefore 131.25 lost M

so all in all, the jack yeeter loses cost even in a successful hit. if they managed to kill more stuff they might be able to make even, but remember that the gotta make back the full cost of their ramp in 4 minutes and keep the rate up or else a singu would've been a better choice.

TL:DR - Singus or mohos are usually better than jack ramp.

EDIT: forgot to take into accout the cost of the BP needed to build the cons or caretakers having better BP rates than regular cons but should've really matter that much.