History lesson time: Back in Total Annihilation, the heaviest land units were the Comm and the Goliath. The comm had a nukedeath, but that didn't matter because your game was over when the comm died (Game Ends was intended playstyle). Cavedog didn't really bother rebalancing TA, they just added more units because the game was so moddable. For the Core Contingency they added a unit called the Krogoth, which was a giant killer monster that was meant to be the end-boss of the campaign. It had missiles, arm-cannons, and a head-mounted annihilator.
The Krogoth was included as a buildable unit, but it was hopelessly overpriced and worthless for regular play. They threw a lot of "gag" units in there like that, like a ludicrously expensive unit that was basically a Ferris-wheel made out of short-ranged Big Berthas.
Because the Krogoth was the end-boss of the Core Contingency campaign, it had a nukedeath. After all, it doesn't matter what happens after you kill the end boss, right? And that didn't cause problems in multiplayer because the unit was hopelessly UP. Also, this game had no shields. So a stack of Berthas basically ended the game by anti-building attrition. Krogoth was like having a game ender that cost way more than existing game-enders.
Then modders started bolting on more units into the game, including an Arm-faction Krogoth-clone called the Detriment. As an experiment, they gave it weapons with the D-gun-like feature of being able to shoot through things. However, these special units were thrown together into ludicrous mods that just stuffed every crazy weapon into the game. There were other kinds of mods, like Uberhack, that mostly focused on fixing the balance bugs of TA. Uberhack also fixed the Krogoth's balance so it was usable in late-game.
Then a terrible player (but good idea-man) named Caydr came along and merged Uberhack with the crazy-omg-wtf unit packs and made Absolute Annihilation, splitting the difference between crazy units and balance, and a star was born.
Then he ported it to SpringRTS.
Then he got eaten by Real Life and abandoned AA. Then BA and CA picked up where he left off, and CA became Zero-K.
All through that time, the Detriment was basically a few stat-tweaks from being the old Krogoth, a unit that was never really designed to be used in multiplayer. A fun, scary end-boss unit for a single-player game. It had no role beyond "OMG WTF". It had a nukedeath because nukedeaths were cool for an end-boss. Notice they took the nukedeath off the commanders.
The ZK team has done fantastic and clever things re-designing and re-arranging classic units into new roles and new ideas and adding their own units, to the point that you really have to squint to see Total Annihilation in some parts of ZK.
But the Detriment? It's a Krogoth with Gauss instead of plasma. And Krogoth was a stupid unit for multiplayer.
It wasn't designed, it was *grown*. Many units in ZK are like that, but they fit well enough into the main game that they're hammered into a solid role.
The Krogoth was included as a buildable unit, but it was hopelessly overpriced and worthless for regular play. They threw a lot of "gag" units in there like that, like a ludicrously expensive unit that was basically a Ferris-wheel made out of short-ranged Big Berthas.
Because the Krogoth was the end-boss of the Core Contingency campaign, it had a nukedeath. After all, it doesn't matter what happens after you kill the end boss, right? And that didn't cause problems in multiplayer because the unit was hopelessly UP. Also, this game had no shields. So a stack of Berthas basically ended the game by anti-building attrition. Krogoth was like having a game ender that cost way more than existing game-enders.
Then modders started bolting on more units into the game, including an Arm-faction Krogoth-clone called the Detriment. As an experiment, they gave it weapons with the D-gun-like feature of being able to shoot through things. However, these special units were thrown together into ludicrous mods that just stuffed every crazy weapon into the game. There were other kinds of mods, like Uberhack, that mostly focused on fixing the balance bugs of TA. Uberhack also fixed the Krogoth's balance so it was usable in late-game.
Then a terrible player (but good idea-man) named Caydr came along and merged Uberhack with the crazy-omg-wtf unit packs and made Absolute Annihilation, splitting the difference between crazy units and balance, and a star was born.
Then he ported it to SpringRTS.
Then he got eaten by Real Life and abandoned AA. Then BA and CA picked up where he left off, and CA became Zero-K.
All through that time, the Detriment was basically a few stat-tweaks from being the old Krogoth, a unit that was never really designed to be used in multiplayer. A fun, scary end-boss unit for a single-player game. It had no role beyond "OMG WTF". It had a nukedeath because nukedeaths were cool for an end-boss. Notice they took the nukedeath off the commanders.
The ZK team has done fantastic and clever things re-designing and re-arranging classic units into new roles and new ideas and adding their own units, to the point that you really have to squint to see Total Annihilation in some parts of ZK.
But the Detriment? It's a Krogoth with Gauss instead of plasma. And Krogoth was a stupid unit for multiplayer.
It wasn't designed, it was *grown*. Many units in ZK are like that, but they fit well enough into the main game that they're hammered into a solid role.