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Title: katastrophe's Battle
Host: DErankkatastrophe
Game version: Zero-K v1.9.4.3
Engine version: 104.0.1-1544-ge1f249f
Started: 2 years ago
Duration: 27 minutes
Players: 1
Bots: True
Mission: False
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Team 1

DErankkatastrophe
Team 2

AI: Legacy (2) <CAI>
AI: Legacy (3) <CAI>
AI: Legacy (1) <CAI>
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2 years ago
1 crabe makes it impossible to push for an entire army of cloaky...

+1 / -0

2 years ago
for the record:
not complaining about losing to thrice the value of army...

but you see how many things cloaky is not able to handle at all!

recluses, badgers, crabe, firewalker

you simply have no answer to that. it`s ok not to be able to kill everything, but to be completely chanceless against so many things is annoying.
+1 / -0
quote:
not complaining about losing to thrice the value of army...

Does that mean you are claiming you would lose against those same things at 1x army size?

quote:
you simply have no answer to that. it`s ok not to be able to kill everything, but to be completely chanceless against so many things is annoying.


IIRC Crab-cost in Knight defeats Crab if it can shoot at it.
+1 / -0
quote:
IIRC Crab-cost in Knight defeats Crab if it can shoot at it.


Might be, did you watch the replay?

I killed the crab, by usin a cloaker and i think 5 knights, but it required such an efford that my other front broke because of recluses...
+1 / -0
I've watched the replay and share DErankkatastrophe's frustration.

Cloaky simply has zero answer for many threats. Firewalker, Wolverine, pretty much any skirmisher which has good range.
Ronin is much too weak to compete against other skirmishers unless they are in large numbers. Since they can only fire in a line, the numbers advantage is lessened.

Seriously. At the 5:18 mark, a Knight gets engaged by 11 Ronin and 2 Reavers, and takes until 5:53 to die. Some damage was caused by the Reaver and if I remember correctly, one Ronin was lost.
At around 10 minutes, 5 Ronin engage 5 Recluse and 4 Ronin get destroyed, with zero HP lost by Recluse. I seriously doubt 10 Ronin, which is metal parity with 5 Recluse would win since the Recluse would just kite the Ronin line and rapidly thin it out.

Near the end of the battle, DErankkatastrophe took down a crabe with 1400 metal worth of Knights and a 600 metal Iris, with one Knight destroyed and that was from a Recluse response by AI.
The Iris was useless IMO, should have gone Conjurer cloak with priority set to level 3.

What's telling is just how crushing that small victory was, and shows my problem with Cloak.
When cloak wins, it completely eliminates the opponent. Correct Imp placement? Zero raider losses against entire raider balls. Zero losses vs skirms.
Stealth attack works fine? Absolute slaughter.

When cloak loses, like in this battle, it is also crushing. 100% cloak losses may occur with zero damage inflicted to the enemy.
Cloak gets spotted by Firewalker? 100% losses are almost guaranteed with minimal damage to Jump. Ronin gets engaged by Recluse? Goodbye Ronin.
There is nothing cloaky can do in these losing scenarios, not even run away due to their slow speed.

Problem? The losing scenarios occur a lot more than the (essentially) chance based win scenarios. Thanks to the fact, that as DErankkatastrophe points out, that Cloak lacks answers for a lot of problems.



+2 / -0


2 years ago
Cloak as a fac suffers from high attrition due to having low weight units. It is literally the fac least suited to 1v3. That is no reflection on its ability in 1v1.

If you want to play 1v3 effectively, use a fac that has play around attrition like shields + tanks.
+1 / -0
It`s not about that ivory.
In 1v1 you could fac-switch anyway.
Those are general statements about the factory. Crab is problematic for cloaky in 1v1, 1v3, small team-games, big team-games.
The recluse-interaction is the same whereever you look, sure, in 1v1 cost is a way bigger factor, it is still noticeable that there are a lot of things cloaky can`t even touch as soon as they are not naked in the fields.
+0 / -0
quote:
There is nothing cloaky can do in these losing scenarios, not even run away due to their slow speed.

Cloaky being called slow kind of raises an eyebrow.

quote:
Cloaky simply has zero answer for many threats.

Yes.

I would, however, claim that the list of threats that Cloaky has absolutely no answer to is considerably smaller than the analogous list for (most) other factories.

It's one of the most versatile factories available.

quote:
recluses


A Phantom makes 300 metal per shot when fighting Recluse from absolute safety. The other spiders except Flea, Hermit and Crab are also all in the perfect cost and health range to be oneshot for significant profit. Not making Phantom because "expensive" or because "fleas" is an excuse for a mistake.

quote:
crabe


These are a lot more difficult, yes. Crab is a heavy, and Cloaky doesn't have a real antiheavy (something it shares with quite a few other factories!).

However, Crab also costs more than a facswitch to any factory or tech that does have the answer in a symmetric scenario. In an asymmetric scenario where you are required to make 3x cost to even stay afloat, the most you can spend on defeating a crab is 500.

Frankly, what can do that? Jugg comes closest, but it alone costs more than the Crab. Herc, perhaps? My argument here is that you can't blame it on Cloaky being sux because this is a significant problem for everyone.

quote:
firewalker

Firewalker is problematic because of its anti-cloak properties and greater range than Ronin. Phantom oneshots it though, if you can approach despite the flames. 2 Scythe will usually kill the Firewalker before being stopped, but that is only 2x cost.

As with the Crab, what would you counter Firewalker with from other factories? Lance and Emissary have the same issue of being no hardcounter. Ravens suffer from the attrition constraint. Merlin totally works but you're in no position to afford one unless you won the raider phase super hard.

quote:
badgers

If you cannot raid (because presumably the opponent has 3x your army size and screens them with riots), you'll have to facswitch to a Firewalker.

quote:
pretty much any skirmisher which has good range.

Phantom.

---

I'll have to properly watch this game at some point, but from what i remember of this challenge being played on CCR is that if you've gotten to a point where they have Badger and Firewalker and you just can't raidswarm that, you've already lost no matter what factory you are, unless you cheat with terraform and Cerberus.
+4 / -0
2 years ago
Do Slings and racketeers work vs crabs?
+0 / -0


2 years ago
quote:
Do Slings and racketeers work vs crabs?

Against a human opponent, the Slings work very slowly if at all, given that human-wielded Crabs are usually deployed on spires with a dedicated squad of repairer flunkies.

The spire alone tends to destroy what little there is of Sling's range advantage on Crab, but if by some virtue the Slings manage to do damage to crab it can always hide on the spire's other side and get repaired.

Racketeers can disable a spire crab since they don't have ballistics issues, but they cannot secure the kill.

Both are kind of okay vs flatlander crabs tho.
+0 / -0
I've watched the game and i have two thoughts (and two more side-thoughts):

That thing with Knight taking forever to kill with Ronin, and dishing out as good as it gets? That's on Knight, not on Ronin. There's a reason high-elo cloaky mirrors are knight spam.

Also, that thing with recluse? Oh boy was that timing insane. One moment you're fighting knights and reavers, ten seconds later 7 Recluse and 1 Crab enter the field out of nowhere and life didn't prepare you for this.

Also: note that the 1 Knight casualty when killing the Crab was not due to Crab! That was done by a Recluse.

I also now understand the "cloaky slow" claim. The slow cloakbots are indeed slow: at the Crab/Recluse switch unveil, there were no glaives remaining alive. Given how naked that Recluse composition was, Glaive should have been able to smash it quite well.
+3 / -0