The most problematic zero-k units in my opinion

S

• Athene : Can resurrect wrecks.
• Ultimatum : Anti-Heavy Artillery, discourages building of heavy units, does not encourage fun game play.
• Widow : Very strong for cost, Anti-Heavy, discourages building of heavy units, does not encourage fun game play.
• Tremor : Counters screening units, counters entire shield factory, very large range, does not encourage fun game play, changes height map, but does not change texture.
• Lance : Anti-Heavy Artillery, discourages building of heavy units, does not encourage fun game play.
• Big Bertha : Provides constant damage, encourages mindless game play, hard to counter.

A

• Crab : Very strong for cost, to much HP, can counter entire army, very annoying to deal with. Visual design does not communicate this.
• Lucifer : See lance.
• Cerberus : See Tremor.
• Gauss : Bullet sponge.
• Faraday : Bullet sponge.
• Fire Walker : Does not encourage fun game play.
• Emissary : Very strong vs units, a lot of AOE, does not encourage fun game play.

B

• Ship Factory : The only factory restrict to water, yet not the best choice for water.
• Paladin : Lance with more HP, that comes with turrets.
• Detriment : DRP / Starlight almost always a better choice.
• Halberd : To much HP for cost, Visual design does not communicate this.
• Recluse : Very strong mono spam, can be easily stacked.
• Phantom : Anti-Heavy Artillery, discourages building of heavy units, prone to friendly fire, hard to use, does not encourage fun game play.
• Racheteer : Anti-Heavy Artillery, discourages building of heavy units, does not encourage fun game play.

C

• Lobster : Can have comically stupid physics, massive striders being launched liked toys
• Outlaw : Infinite light raiders stand almost no chance
• Thug : Very large amount of HP with free regeneration for the cost, can be very strong early game, and almost impossible to deal with
• Sythe : On large spread out maps next to impossible to counter.
• Sling : Very cheap Artillery, does not encourage fun game play, hard to counter due to relatively fast move speed and accuracy.
• Fencer : Very Strong vs spider factory, very strong mono spam.

F

• Zephyr : By far the worse unit in the game. Visual design does not communicate this.
• Dominatrix : Haven’t recently seen use, but can be very hard to counter.
• Dirtbag : Can ruin terrain, see Tremor
• Placeholder : Kinda Anti-Heavy, can be very annoying.
• Newton : Almost never used.
• Skuttle : Almost never used.
• Blastwing : Almost never used.

Add to the fact that screening itself is not fun. I dont like having to circle my dante with bandits that die from collatoral damage just to protect from widows(http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/914238) or ulti, and tank factory is very prone to ulti or troll com because they dont have a screening unit.

S tier are the problematic units that have the most impact, while F tier are still problematic but to a smaller degree.

The main reason why Ultimatum and Widow are so high up is because to counter them you need an army of screening units to protect your expensive Units. However having a screening army has two drawbacks

1. A lot of micro
2. A constent stream of new screening units

Micro is very difficult when you have a mixed army, draining your mental energy and the production needed to provide screening units is usually most of your metal income. So you will be constently spending most of your metal replenishing your screening units, allowing your opponent to build more artility to kill your screening units faster.

On the other hand Instead of building expensive units you can spam artility and chip your opponent to death. Artilty required next to no micro and does not drain your metal after they are built, so you will win in the long run.

Currently due to this I rarely see mixed armies fight, usually its artility doing the pushing with some units defending them. And in my opinion the main reason for this are the units in the S catagory.

While I agree that anti-heavy units should exists, you should still have a fair way to defend against them. Having to fight an invisible enemy that render you helpless or one shots you is also fairly bland. I would rather see massive armies clash then have them firing at each other from across the map or one projectile ending the game.

I feel like the above posts are overstating the difficulty of screening heavy units against cloaked anti-heavies. I have mostly been playing 4v4-ish games of late and in games with that kind of density I have not found that artillery is oppressively dominant or that Minotaur/Cyclops-based compositions are nullified by the existence of antiheavies.

Boring units.

IMHO there is only two units which is unfun and i would like them be removed - tremor and badger. Every nub can spam them but counter them is hard. They are most boring units in game.
And in some cases funellweb with its shielding ability which can even block nuke in midair (however not its aoe). This shield is op in some cases even and in some cases funnelweb spamming lead to loss because shield eat much energy and team got less metal while they have big useless builder. Not even mentioning that one wub build funnel, comes to front, eat all your reclaim and build other one funnel. GG.
-Placeholder ability to hold striders is boring or even OP in some cases.


OP/strong units:

-Only true OP unit overall in this game at moment is cornea, iris and conjurer (cuz cloaking field). You can't see anything. Energy cost is average.
-Ultimatums is very strong, almost OP. Paladins is melted and detris too. One shoot and one kill most units. Deal even with raiders in many cases. Only thing i dislike is this large dmg vs paladins and detris. 4 shoots and paladin is ded. But overall cool unit because deleted problematic trollcoms with one shoot.
-Lance is OP but reasonable OP because hovers will be shit without it and its great counter for heavy unit. Maximums need small nerfs. Like larger metal cost. Lance OPness is only against limited units and it isn't spammer choice.
-Emissary is limited OP. Also hard counter. But problem is about that its very good vs other units even more then against porc.
-In some cases guardian trollcom is OP with its drones even in midgame but as not many spam them this isn't problem in many cases.
-Artemis still very strong even with metal drain. And in same case still too squishy. Hard to balance.
-Scythe is strong but no op. Maximum need larger energy requirement to operate cloak so enemy cant make 2 of them and just raze factory. That is most problematic thing about them that you can do it from start.
-BB is very powerfull in few cases but in many cases it can be easely countered.
-Welder. 2k hp and 7,5 bp for 200 euros? Very nice price. And plus it have even attack for dealing with pesky raiders.
-Widow is strong (not OP) but its balanced with no attack and high energy upkeep.
-Limpet. Only few player have discovered how OP is this unit. Maybe even second to cloaker units.
-Phantom is strong. Agree. But it must be in.
-Snitch. Very powerful unit. But only in right hands. I'm so glad that there is only few such hands in ZK. Best scythe counter in game.

Shit/bad units:

-Athena is problematic because low level player spam them and it tend to be just big metal invest without real use. As factory its alsmsot useless except cornea + djinn trolling. As rezzing unit it doesn't make cost in most cases. 95% games useless trolling.
-Lucifer is 95% lubtrap in games which can be destroyed by single skuttle or impaler spam. It doesn't give many contributions in team games. And you need 50 energy grid.
-Detriment useless shit. One of most fuking useless unit in ZK and entire RTS gaming history. Only some units like limpet drone from Tiberian sun and brute from RA2 is more useless. To use it you need equal cost in metal in supporting units. Better two paladins or supweapon or just merlins in cost terms. It detriment for own team not enemy.
-In most cases dante. On paper its uber unit but in practice become problematic. Lance deletes it, ultimatum one shoot - one kill, most arty punishes it, two spy stun it. There is many players who spam it but only few who have mastered this awesome grill machine. However dante is hard to be balanced. Most cases this unit is great metal delivery.
-Balstwing - almost useless unit.
-Reef. Maybe second most useless unit after detri. 3000 cost for big ship with glass drones, metal costing disarm missile and three worthless airpad which do more harm then benefit.
-Hacksaw. Too limited use.
-Paladin. More medicore then bad still. Its big gun doesn't give big advantages in pitched battles. Nor also its stun guns. This unit is easy countered by ultimatums and other heavy units or you need enormous cover for it. Two scorpions also cook it. As skirmisher its useless. Only usable as assault team leading tank and worthless vs dense porc but still way better the detriment.
-Thug. Slow meathield and nothing more. Can be blowed up by snitch, stunned by imps, cooked by raiders.
-Mason. Very medicore builder with low build power.
-Crane. We all know that crane air is OP. Almost everyone who have played with planes seriously.


I will not add skuttle in bad unit lists. It have shit decloak range but it high dmg and jump is still strong thing. In right hands it can mean gruesome death to enemy coms.

BLaNK....

HATES............

ULTI'S !

REMOVE FROM GAME PLOX =]

quote: BLaNK.... HATES............ ULTI'S ! REMOVE FROM GAME PLOX =]

Once i saw how one ultis deleted three BLaNKMiND cyclops with two shoots and then humbly go away. If you play against BLaNKMiND just spam ultis. Ultimatums is best counter to BLaNKMiND. :D

quote: I would strongly agree with all the pop up "artillery resistant" turrets listed - gauss, faraday, desolator. These are chief culprits of fronts bogging down, since they can't easily be removed by artillery and can rarely be safely assaulted in large teams. Also agree lucifer design is mega shit (its a high dps riot artillery unit).

Lance, impler, open it with assault unit and shoot. They are annoying but not OP. Lucifer cost 2,2k metal and need grid. Desolator as general defense perform better. Lucifer alone is shit. You need invest mass metal in supporting defense because once units got to close lucifer its ded. I however dislike its range 1200 however. Because only general arty is impaler which counter it.

quote: Meanwhile, Multiplayer B914280 2 on FrostyCove v1.11

That isn't the first weird two-person 1v1 meta I've seen and it won't be the last. I do not feel any particular need to believe that Bertha is actually a regular part of the overall metagame outside large congested teams.

grizz seems more assault since it can move

quote: That isn't the first weird two-person 1v1 meta I've seen and it won't be the last. I do not feel any particular need to believe that Bertha is actually a regular part of the overall metagame outside large congested teams.

I thought most of the commentary here so far was about team games, anyway. If you can roll with team game arty strats in a 1v1 though and win that could imply that it's a bit too easy.

If we were talking about problematic units for 1v1 Kodachi and Locust would surely be making entries, right...? Or Thunderbird, which can just win a game in one run if you get a good bombing in and costs less than a Crab.