Balance Discussion: Gameplay is getting unilinear and repetetive

Hello,

Last weeks I've been playing this game pretty intesively and so I consider myself worthy of making some comments and judgements on the gameplay and that, in my opinion, needs some balancing.

The situation at hand leads unilinear and repetitive gameplay where people favors basically either cloak bots or jumpjets (sometimes shields are one way, but not as good.) Cloak bots are the primary faction that forms the basic framework for other (usually for supportive shield bots, jumpjets or gunships) without it you most likely will lose. Why so? Because cloak bots have everything you need. It has most cost-efficient solutions for any role: raiding, assaulting, rioting etc. More over, It has the hammer! Yes, without this unit you most likely will lose the game. It is crucial unit in the beginning and in the end. The problem isn't only with cloak bots being overpowered but vehicles being very useless. Its a suicide to start with vehicles, whether the terrain is flat or not. Situation is like reversed BA in which vehicles are almost any kind of situation best solution and other units are just not needed curiosities, which player chooses not for winning but for having fun.

TLDR:
(1) Cloak bots are way too cost-efficient. In other words: Overpowered. Hammers need somekinda nerf. You can't win a game without hammers?
(2) While vehicles are almost useless,
(3) this leaves other factions (shields, gunships, jumpjets) basically in supportive role. Teamgames are won usually those who are able to combine supportive factions most efficient way (not necessarily intuitive or creative way, which would make the game interesting)
(4) Leading repetitive and unilinear games

I think problem is caused by non-flat maps crowded by people and defender spam.
This favors hammers/long range stuff

No matter what you do, please don't make it so that Comet Catcher is always light vehicles vs light vehicles.

For the general Hammer topic I agree with Licho:
"I think problem is caused by non-flat maps crowded by people and defender spam.
This favors hammers/long range stuff"
I also think commander weapons have made defence pushing from the very start far too good.

I think Hammer is a response to parallel Commander push with no room between the commanders for mobility. Once you've got Commanders spamming defence and no room to move anything the answer is artillery.

I suppose the obvious answer is 'nerf Hammer'. The alternatives are force people to play less crowded games or do something about Commanders that can push with little fear of an early raider attack. I would really rather do something about Commanders...

With possible counters to Hammer, anyone tried Firestorm or Pillager?

Crayfish I would not like to rejigger all the factories again. The units aren't redundant, there's reasons for why stuff is where it is, I'm pretty sure we're not going to move units around. Anyway teams start with lots of factories and you can multifac later on so the answer to a powerful unit isn't to nerf the factory that it is in.

I responded to a ticket about vehicles sucking but Google Code decided to timeout again so I could say it here:
"About a year ago in CA vehicles were really quite good, more common than bots and Samson spam was a really big problem. About 18 to 12 months ago we had a smaller but more experienced playerse and a fair portion of that was lost about 10 months ago with the change to Zero K.

The slow speed is due to the engine. The current engine version really really messed up pathfinding for vehicles. The old behaviour used to be really good with vehicles not slowing down at all to turn, they basically would move at top speed until they reached their move command destination.

I have tested the test engine builds and pathfinding has been fixed. So with the old knowledge that vehicles worked earlier I am hesitant to buff their manoeuvrability just to require a rebalance when the next engine version is released. But the timescale for this could be months.

Conversely some other things have changed in ZK, the bot factories have more diversity. Notably the commander is a lot more powerful which I think hurts vehicles a lot as they are more aggressive instead of skirmishy.

So maybe if people are really worried about this we could just buff their acceleration and deceleration massively as that was the main issue with the engine change then nerf it back to the current levels when the new engine is released."

In short engine broke vehicles and it will be fixed with the next engine release. Hopefully that is soon...

Somehow I prefer light vehs, when possible. But yeah cloaky bots maybe have too many specialists, stealth raider, claoker, sniper, tick.

I think that it (cloaky factory) should be removed or have some of its units changed. It has few cloaking units and many that act more like shield or specialist bots.

Totaly agree its neer impossible to win/hold front early/mid game without hammers and some LMT or roits near them, because they are so cheap,

10 Hammers > 1200m Fire walker
5 Hammers > 1 Pilleger

Hope the vehicles get fixed at the moment a 50m glaive can kill a 130m vehi raider on flat ground WTF

1000m 8 Hammers> 1000m 4 Assault Tanks on flat ground due to hammers retreating and firing and tank dying before taking any of them out WTF shouldn't work like that

Just stop complaining about Hammers. There's no reason to nerf them, rather the other way around. And there's not a single unit that has a shield in the cloaklab, so how could they act like one, TheDarkStar? Oi and "specialist bots" sound useful for every factory - it makes them all special!

Crutch, your math is teh fail. Firewalker can beat 9001 times their cost in Hammers.
If you seriously can't think of a way to beat them, just spam them yourself and see what the enemy does. That's the best way to find counters to anything.

Get fleas then. Or a tick. Or a roach. Or racketeers. Dang why am I even telling you. Go find out yourself, I just told you to!

Licho is completely right. When you talk about game balance you cannot separate it from the map you play on and the number of players.
It is important to state what (range of) maps you want to balance the game on.

If you play 6v6 / 8v8 on smaller maps you use the game in a way it wasn't intended to be used (please correct me if i am wrong here).

Imo, the game works best if there is room for each player to expand and maneuver his army's. Ie, open spaces on maps emphasize the speed difference of units while small/chokeheavy maps result in static defense spam. (note that small is relative to the ammount of players, lets call 'small' area/player)

About hammers. Stay away from crowded games and small maps then they are pretty balanced, or even weak.