an idea

i have an idea

roles..

so you could for example set yourself as air role.. or eco role.. or frontline role.. in the comander setup page

when games balance they try to distribute roles on both teams evenly

i know that in theory all players should adapt to all roles.. and they still can.. the roles dont force them not to..

i was thinking this because many times in team games almost the whole team is avoiding the frontline while the other team is pushing the frontline .. and i noticed its often due to some players being frontline pushers and they all ended up on one team.. or sometimes one team will have 2 air players and the other none

players names could get a small icon that indicates there prefered role

idk.. what are your thoughts

as you probably know, bar has this already and it works fine. but zero k is not a game where you are a set role all game for the most part, as people can switch from air, switch back, etc. bar also has a very established team size which allows for this, but in zero k taw there is waaay more variation in team sizes which would make it very difficult to do.

attack eco kinda works with pylons sometimes.. on a side note i made a mod where you get to plop a super singu that explodes huge.. but i never thought of the fact that players would send air cons into enemy base and plop singu on them =P needless to say i died and left a hole in the world

bucky made a good point.. ill try to think of a solution

=P unlocks were very unpopular yes.. but even if the balancer compleatly ignored roles.. there needs to be better comunication in a team about who will do what

I think a lot of roles are pretty fluid in Zero-K.
Good players know when to change role or pick a role that seems to be lacking when players choose start position and place their factories before the game starts.
It is also map dependent and player count dependent aswell as skill distribution dependent.
Like if a player is experimenting with some playstyle they haven't tried before, their effectiveness in that role will be a lot smaller than a player that perfected that playstyle.
In some games, you can do fine without having any fighters in the air, and in some games it will be crucial that you have fighters in the air.
Like for an air player, there are arguably like 4-6 distinct subroles that is impactful to what your teammates or enemies are doing:
1. Fighters or no fighters? If the map is small, it is arguably better to make some ground AA to deny enemy fighters and let the airplayer just bomb the enemy.
2. Thunderbolt suppression. A Thunderbolt is kinda bad if there are no fast units on your team to capitalize on chasing down slow disarmed enemies or if the enemy is all raiders while your team has just slow units.
3. Pheonix to burn down groups of enemies and killing groups of raiders.
4. Single target reliable damage with Ravens or Magpie.
5. Rushing out Likhos for high survivability and killing shieldballs or other groups of enemies or high value targets. Will easily fail if there is not enough AA on your team and the enemy has Swifts.
6. Forcing out AA on the enemy team and switching to ground units once there is too much enemy AA on the field.

How many clear roles are there even in teamgames?

1. Airplayer/gunship players both have the same impact that they can be strong if left unchecked but is countered by AA.
2. Frontline player. Most players should be doing this.
3. Economy player. It can be nice to a have a few players dedicated to this but it easy to switch to air or the frontline later.

What alternative roles are there?
Is support a role where you make units like Racketeer or Placeholder?
Does a shieldball count as a role?
Does rushing a heavy count as a role?
Does raiding count as a role?
Is cloaked bombs a role?
Like if you want to rush out a heavy, that is more about teamplay rather than a role, and if you tell your teammates that you are rushing out an expensive unit, they will be a bit more careful with pushing and wait for the heavy unit to get finished and push with it or provide support for it.

There is already an unofficial system everyone in the lobpot typically follows (or should).
-Starting at the front implies standard frontline role.
-Starting at the back implies eco/support role.
-Starting with air fac implies air role ofc.

If there is a role imbalance, serious players of the team should try to kindly discuss it, pre-game preferably.

But sometimes roles change and things don't go as planned, so be flexible. A lot of being good at the lobpot just boils down to looking for ways to synergize with non-serious players.

To sum up, Zero-K is designed to not need this crutch.