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Swift op?

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9 years ago
From #zktop20 earlier today:
quote:

[14:58] [ISP]Lauri maybe swifts are OP
[14:59] GoogleFrog how?
[14:59] [ISP]Lauri they beat both hawks and tridents for cost, have godly mobility and can shoot at ground
[14:59] [ISP]Lauri just really safe to spam
[14:59] [ISP]Lauri it's a bit of a shame since it makes things like banshee switches really weak
[15:00] [ISP]Lauri due to people often having swifts anyway
* 8.10.2014 15:00:26
[15:01] [ISP]Lauri hawks are not even nearly as dangerous to banshees as swifts due to their tiny speed advantage over banshees
[15:01] [ISP]Lauri a while ago I tried how swifts and hawks performed against various gunships and planes
[15:02] [ISP]Lauri swifts just generally outperformed or matched hawks in straight up combat
[15:02] [ISP]Lauri rapiers were an uncommon exception
[15:02] [ISP]Lauri they have a convenient amount of damage to be effective vs swifts, but not so vs hawks
[15:06] Anarchid swifts also have uber alpha and Displace ability
[15:06] Anarchid and know how to use Displace to retreat

Discuss.
+0 / -0
The lasers are unique as the only plane weapon to target everything reliably (every other plane is either AA or antiground). The dedicated AA missile is not unique because Hawk already is dedicated AA. How about removing the dedicated AA missile? As a side effect it'd be one less weapon with arbitrary targeting restrictions. On the other hand, its alpha synergizes really well with the Displace ability, so it is its strength (ie. removing would go against Quant's - though one can argue that by diminishing Swift's AA capability, Hawk compensates by becoming more unique as the dedicated AA).
+0 / -0

9 years ago
I don't have any evidence to confirm these claims, but I have been surprised several times when my hawk cloud dies to an enemy swift cloud. I might have a shitty brain, but my intuition was that hawks were like AA riots and swifts were essentially raiders/scouts. Also, the manual says of swifts:

quote:

... but enemy AA and air superiority fighters will kill it quickly.


If swifts beat hawks for cost, that's an explicit contradiction to the unit guide.
+0 / -0

9 years ago
A little known fact is that swift missiles do AoE damage, so if you clump you vamps they will lose horribly.
+0 / -0


9 years ago
Yeah so in fact swifts are the riots. ;)
+0 / -0

9 years ago
The manual is often not updated when units are tweaked so it can be quite a bit off. If Hawk is a riot, then Swift countering makes sense because Swift has skirmy features: high alpha and staying out of range (through speed and Displace). Swift reminds me a bit of Dagger regarding aerial warfare: it has massive alpha and the highest speed of its domain.

Also, I wanted to see if there was more to the original discussion but after visiting #zktop20 it seems that what Lauri posted is everything that was said, so more info on how the plane vs air matchups work would probably be needed to be gathered.
Can a Gunship player survive on Rapiers?
Can you get away with spamming only Swifts in a plane mirror? That probably makes you vulnerable to a ground switch and you won't be able to reliably kill mexes (at least at the beginning).
+0 / -0

9 years ago
My humble not-top-20 opinion is that I've built Swifts far more often than I have built Hawks. Quite besides their air-to-air (and combat in general) capability they are much better as scouts.

Swifts also have the ability to retreat easily from a losing fight whereas Hawks are exceptionally vulnerable while retreating.

Then again, I build Glaives far more often than I build Warriors. They have different use cases, and that doesn't necessarily mean that Glaive is OP or Warrior needs a buff. I don't have sufficient experience with air to comment on whether a similar relationship applies in general to swift vs. hawk but it is a possibility to keep in mind.

I suppose the other question is "Independent of their relationship to hawks are swifts overpowered?" which I'm definitely not qualified to answer. What does "overpowered" mean for a unit that has no competitors in a similar role? (I think Hawks do, or should, fill a quite different role to Swifts in an air force)
+0 / -0
AUrankAdminAquanim i think that your opinion is biased by your avatar.
On a serious note tho:
Here are some replays from recent PW (where i played as air):
Multiplayer B293788 6 on AavikkoV2
Multiplayer B294446 6 on HighGroundsDeltaV1

Notice that i am against hawks all the time but i just skirmish and jump araund with them all the time. Uh and also mind you that i am not the best air araund. So there's is that.
But no in my opinion swift is not OP. Its just way better on bigger maps, where it can do a hit and run strategy.
+0 / -0
FIrankFFC
9 years ago
If you remove AA missile from swift it will be useless
+1 / -0

9 years ago
I don't think that swifts is OP. They have great alpha damage, but using combined force this can be easily defeated. Just send some swifts first as fire decoy. I never seen game where player win only with swifts in air. Only on combined force. Of course few swifts can beat few hawks if good players use micro. Because hawks needs really much time to turn and can fire only straight. Swift missile don't need that option. But swift tiny HP makes it's very weak vs ground AA while hawk can live longer.
If swift missile will be removed then it will become useless unit. Because hawks is so slow that cannot react to intercept incoming bombers. Air sup units must be faster then slow bombers. But in reality heavy bombers in game is faster then light air sup aircraft hawk..
Swifts can be annoying but in longer game time its become really weak as ground AA start appear.
+0 / -0

9 years ago
I think swifts are the more interesting units with their boost, it makes them capable of retreating, of cool micro and tricks, and basically of interacting where generally fighter vs fighter is a single fight order. Not to mention they can harass and interact with ground in an interesting way.

If Swifts are the dominant fighter, this is good for the game IMO.

The trick is to make Vamp more interesting, not simply better.
+2 / -0


9 years ago
if their missile has any AoE, that should be removed imo.. AoE + no collide air units = unpredictable noise in balance model.

quote:
The trick is to make Vamp more interesting, not simply better.


#GiveItDamageVampirism #GimmicksF-Yea
+4 / -0

9 years ago
quote:
If Swifts are the dominant fighter, this is good for the game IMO.

It's not only about fighters, they also counter the bulk of Gunshipfac. Besides, a more interesting Hawk would not be used if it still lost to Swifts.
+1 / -0
9 years ago
NURF GUN.HONK.
+0 / -0
I think Vamp/Hawk needs some niche but currently it doesn't really have one.
Best fighter vs planes is Swift because of its high alpha, best speed, and ability to quickly react thanks to speedboost.
Best fighter to use near enemy AA/porc is still Swift because it deals big damage quickly, can't be easily hit by non-AA porc, and it can just escape at any moment. This is where Vamps were supposed to have a niche, but Vamp takes ages to kill anything and is such a slow and huge target that its HP doesn't help it much during that time.
The best fighter against gunships is not Swift, and not Vamp either, but actually... Raven.
I think only against Rapiers Vamp is the better choice.
+2 / -0
quote:
The Hawk specializes in bringing down anything else that flies.


guess source!

even a det has more AA DPS (2,0918367346938775510204081632653 times more)
+0 / -0
quote:
If Swifts are the dominant fighter, this is good for the game IMO.

Not necessarily for every aspect of the game. Banshees for example suffer quite heavily in my opinion from the dominant Swift. Slower gunships are often escorted by Tridents or Rapiers for AA support, but the whole point of Banshees is to be fast and raidery. You either don't make them at all or you use them on their own without dragging slow AA gunships with them. Currently Banshees are a very risky investment because players will often have some Swifts anyway (there's very little reason to not have a few Swifts) potentially blindcountering those Banshees. Hawks on the other hand are much more softcountery due to their inability to near instantly catch the Banshees anywhere on the map.

The way I see it, there are a large number of situations in which the Swift is much better than the Hawk and a very small number of situations in which the Hawk is slightly preferrable. I think this imbalance has a bad effect on gunship (and fighter) unit variety (specifically the Banshee) and it seems like it would be a good idea to either nerf the Swift or in some way improve the Hawk.
+4 / -0
9 years ago
quote:
The trick is to make Vamp more interesting, not simply better.

This!
Vamp really needs an unique utility that distinguishes itself from the swift. Before the afterburners has been introduced vamps had been imo a more popular choice for a players' airforce (that doesnt mean avengers werent used).
But you know what one has to do when he wants to add a special utility? Add slow ofcourse! :D
+3 / -0

9 years ago
Any comments on the "remove the AA-only missile" idea? It seems that all of the problems mentioned here involve other flying units and that its ground interaction is fine.
+0 / -0
9 years ago
I agree with what @[ffc]killer said on the matter of AA missle. However i would vote to remove the AOE thing as a slight nerf.
+1 / -0
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