Re-balancing game parameters around hueg teamsizes

A topic that gets visited in the discord chats but rarely in the forum is that big team sizes alter how ZK plays in a negative way. This is my opinion. I appreciate that it isn't everyone's opinion.

My chief assumptions

- Huge team sizes are here to stay.

- Huge team sizes should be a good thing for ZK

- Huge team sizes break ZK balance. Specifically due to:

> Proliferation of tanky riot commanders stops raiding

> Proliferation of players getting +4/+4 intrinsic increases overall income for the map size way above what it was designed in mind for; mass intrinsic income moves too much income away from the need to hold territory.

> Unit density becomes extremely high

> In these situations, static defences and artillery trump as they require minimum of risk and player management.

> the list of 'viable' units becomes very low.


The levers I see that can be used to fix this are:

> increase map size (bigger map = lower unit density).

Unfortunately, I don't feel ZK is fun on maps above a certain size (caps out around 16x20). It becomes too unmanageable.

The best that can be done with this lever is to actively prevent maps that are small in large team sizes. Eg. It should be possible for players to vote in such a map, but the lobby should never autorotate to a map that is less than 16x20 type size.

You could tilt this further by making over-small maps for the team size require a higher percentage of votes than a map fitting the team size, and by including a warning in the lobby when it is voted ("WARNING: map is too small for number of players, will make game silly!")

> reduce commander power.

Frankly, ZK big teams played better when commanders were tied to income and were fragile, as there was much less of a 'built in wall of tanky riots' to defend with in the early game.

Another method might be to re-introduce "commander ends" for big team games. Eg. when a player's commander dies, all their units self destruct.

> decrease intrinsic player income.

By reducing metal income, you reduce unit density, which alleviates the map size issue at the same time.

I picture this being managed by an algorithm. The inputs would be team size and map surface area, with a minimum threshold of 8 players total.

After you exceed 8 players total, steadily reduce the intrinsic income of players (proprtional to map size - smaller map surface area equals bigger reduction in intrinsic income) down to a minimum of +1/+1

> make high end turtling weaker.

High end turtling is using terraform, caretakers, pop-up turrets, shields and heavy turrets to create obstacles that are ruinous to assault and very time consuming to remove with artillery.

If this was not possible, fronts would remain more elastic and games would remain relatively slippery slope.


Just my 2c, peace & love!

Thanks for the correction, that change passed me by

> Which, i think, goes against your thesis that these maps are "designed good, but ZK ruins them".

I think any given map has sweet spot for player counts to deliver different types of gameplay. And a threshold of player count that, if exceeded, tips the game into "turtle clusterfuck".

Not so much a matter of ZK ruining a map. To stretch a metaphor, I see it more like the map being like a table with a number of optimal seat configurations, which if all are exceeded, result in everyone struggling to access their meal. I recommend large tables for bigger groups of people, appreciate there is a maximum practical size for the table, and suggest therefore swapping the chairs for smaller chairs - or in extremes, stools - when the number of participants gets too big for the table.

> I actually don't think that the "turtle clusterfuck" is primarily a consequence of the map

Ah, see, I think it is a direct consequence of map size verus player count. You wont get clusterfuck gameplay on a perfectly flat 20x20 map even with 16v16, because player density is too low and flanking is too viable. The front line likely won't form thick enough for things to bog down.

The same 16v16 game on a 10x10 flat map will become a nightmare of popup defences and artillery in 10 minutes flat.

quote: Why? The only negative I see to huge maps is lag. And I think that's exactly the reason huge maps never caught on in large team games.

The same reason basket ball doesn't work well on a court eight times the size. The distances that player actions can affect do not scale up with distances involved. You can't throw a basketball from the midpoint into the net in an awesome display of skill, if the net is eight times further away than regulation. You can't even throw the ball half that far.

ZK works really well - is tuned for - maps around a certain size. Maps that are bigger or smaller than that range make most the unit roster less viable, or nonviable.

I hope I'm not being too negative, but isn't this kind of missing the point? Big teams are popular because people like to play them as they are. Now the people who don't like them try to fix them to make them "better"? Not having to mex, only having to play one lane, not needing to raid and turtling being a viable strategy are the things that define big teams. What is the point of trying to make it feel like smaller teams, when you could just play smaller teams?

quote: I hope I'm not being too negative, but isn't this kind of missing the point? Big teams are popular because people like to play them as they are. Now the people who don't like them try to fix them to make them "better"?

Isn't that exactly what you did when you introduced autohosts and the !map command? Before the !map command was a thing, sea maps were almost never played. Now sea maps are played all the time, even though I've never heard anyone liking them better then ground maps.

And speaking of bad and obscure systems, I swear there's a pattern to which maps the !map command suggests. It seems to suggest the same maps again and again.

psaniac Yes. I touched big teams and now I try to tell others not to make the same mistake.

Is the big teams autohost a bad thing though? Remember autohosts didn't exist at all after the server switch, it was always Chesti or Firepluk host. The map vote works by suggesting maps that were voted for often more frequently. It seems the people like sea maps. It came in response to people complaining about !map/!start vote snipes, so now it's no longer about who starts the first poll.

If you want to criticize me, I would focus on things like the "Do you want to play Small Teams" pop-up. That's something I intentionally added to promote small teams instead of big teams.

You really can look into making a mod, like ZeroWars, but differ only slightly

My idea would be very tough Metal Extractor produce higher income of M&E. So the large game could be fun with more units.
Make it noob friendly but adovcate to link for much better efficiency is necessary.

Buff Missile Silo, make its tactical nuke deal 4001/4500 damage capable of killing a factory/singularity reactor in one shot.

Add Athena into airpad and gunship, air force really need its radar jammer to survive large game. Also resurrection is way easier and earlier for large battlefield.

Besides, I insist Bertha shall require energy grid to function.
Bertha range scale with E supply, 20 to shot 1200 ELMO, 50 to shoot 3000ELMO, 100 to full range.


+1 ignore the following
Maybe I shall play some more games to raise my rank to blue first. I wish I could have best environment to play games. Next time I will setup everything well - not surrounded by my mess and play sepcifically to win games, at least I can type in game now, and I will use a gaming mouse instead of trackball - I was so lazy to get my gaming mouse out. Use a monitor size greater than 13 inch did help.

quote: Now the people who don't like them try to fix them to make them "better"? Not having to mex, only having to play one lane, not needing to raid and turtling being a viable strategy are the things that define big teams.

I prefer big parties to small parties, but I don't like the way that my house's narrow corridors get hard to move through when the house has too many people in. I still prefer big parties overall.
Now if you gave me the choice to have the same big party, but with wider corridors, it'd be the preferable outcome.

In ZK terms. People have a strong preference for playing in big teams.

That does not mean that people have a strong preference for the distorting effects high player density has on gameplay. It just comes with the territory.

Nobody has been presented with the choice to have huge teams but without the distorting effects high player density has on gameplay. So it is wrong to conflate the two.

Honestly I think its not just large metal densities that break Zero-K: large amounts of metal in general break Zero-K.

Consider the fact that the overwhelming majority of units and defenses in the game are under the 1k bracket. Once the amount of metal across the sizes reaches the point where they can afford multiple striders and large defenses, the game largely starts revolving around a relatively small group of units. And I believe a great part of the reason why Zero-K tends to get static and boring at that point is that.

Aka: Zero-K has many units that are viable to build from the start, but few late-game units, those few late-game units are good enough to make the game revolve around them once they can be built, and that is tragic because they're few, therefore the game's variety is compromised.

I'd be interested to see what Zero-K would look like if striders, heavy units and large defenses were made smaller across the board. Maybe lobsterpots wouldn't revolve so much around things like merlin, funnelweb, cerberus, etc.

Another thing is that the scale of our game-ending superweapons has not kept pace with the "times", so to speak. Currently, on large 20v20 games, rushing a superweapon from the start of the game is perfectly viable, to the point where they often decide games, which is off course very lame. Game-ending superweapons should be so expensive that the're at most rarely built in any game size that is regularly played, which includes lobsterpots.