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Lobster capabilities need a "review"

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Firepluk
There are a lot of units in ZK that were designed with specific weaknesses in mind(like slow movement, slow retreat) and lobster just takes and removes them., breaking all possible balance considerations and turning a good RTS game into a clown fiesta with jumping cloaked shit flyng invisible from the middle of nowhere while shooting u in the head from midair.

I'd either suggest to remove the unit completely which is not likely or do a redesign with the sole focus of removing offensive capabilities of lobster. Suggested list of changes

- Lobstered unit loses cloaking state if any(doesn't matter if it's personal cloak or cornea)
- Lobstered unit gets all his weapons blocked during the lobstering and some time after it

This would essentially render offensive lobster capabilities to near zero and turn unit into a transport / retreat device

The worst offender right now is ultimatum + cornea + lobster

It also would be interesting to do a community-wide poll on changes to this unit with several options
- nuke out of existence
- nurf into oblivion to be used exclusively as non offensive weapon(TBD)
- nurf moderately(TBD)
- keep as is and play circus-k
+6 / -1
3 years ago
Lobster is what i'd call stupid gimmicry gone too far.
I dont even care that much about the balance in this case, it just feels dumb to have a unit that can throw an arbitrary number of units.
It feels dumb, it looks dumb, and as Pluk has said it destabilizes the game balance.
+1 / -0

3 years ago
Lobster destroys the typing of units, namely artillery. In a recent game, Godde just threw my crab in the air and killed it with particular ease, it was a sad. How many games have I lost to lobster
+0 / -0

3 years ago
I would rather remove Detriment than Lobster if I had to pick. Lobster isn't boring, and I doubt it is broken.
+2 / -0
3 years ago
I like lobsters used for amphibious invasions or hill invasions that wouldn't normally be possible. The proposed changes seem fair, but the wait period before shooting shouldn't be long. Something like 1 to 3 seconds.
+1 / -0
Lobster play is dramatic and engaging.

That said, I would have zero objections to it decloaking units it throws. They are clearly freaking glowing on the graphic, it just makes sense and will diminish some extreme case exploits.

I also wouldn't mind it if lobster couldn't be thrown slightly before and after firing, so 2 lobsters cannot repeatably jump the entire group.
+3 / -0
3 years ago
I assume you are refering to this game :D
https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/996405
I could have played it better, but this game at least demonstrates that cornea + lobster + djinn + teleported ulti have some potential.
On the other hand, usually five minutes into the game, sneak attacks with lobsters involving getting behind enemy lines become almost impossible.
As of lobster throwing enemy crab somewhere where it is vulnerable, is not much different than sniping it with a snitch or other crawling bomb - if you let your opponent get close enough with such a unit, you had it coming.
However, if you wanted to prevent such use of lobster, the solution could be decreasing the radius in which units you want to throw have to be or that you'd have to have two lobsters to throw something heavier.
+0 / -0

3 years ago
quote:
cornea + lobster
i remember SErankGodde lobbing an iris at me. i guess he wanted to cloak me to death. and he was raging afterwards in forum about it.
+2 / -0
Firepluk
Hey look, I'm all in for cool and shiny ... I just don't like where zk been headed in the last time and it's headed in a circus direction far away from well defined RTS
RTS should have predictable and calculatable balance and less gimmicky stuff which outcome is based on rng-jesus and there is nothing you can do to counter/protect from it except to be lucky and favored by rng-jesus.

Let's take ultimatum for example, it's damage output is based on target width and an angle you fire at target - hard to predict and impossible to calculate ahead of time, goes against each and every other unit in zk universe.

Let's take lobster... While throwing units might be fun it's still hard to predict what exactly will happen, because well... cliffs, slopes and other weird terrain do exist and UI is not clear about what exactly is going to happen
I've seen and did too many attempts where lobster just scattered my army across top of the hill/slope which units were supposed to fly over(regarding UI)...
On top of this it adds whole new dimension of complexity into balance, totally breaking some units balance-wise and it's next to impossible balance this nonsence, because we just added a second zk on top of existing one in which -ALL- units are airborn and even those which already were airborn before lobster I bet could have some really weird alterations to their default behavior if you factor the lobstering in the equation(very confused smile goes here)...

For example today I saw unknownrankShaman abusing lobster and newtons to precisely throw jacks into the enemy base across whole map avoiding the whole frontline...
https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/996464
in this particular game this did not do any good, but I saw games on this exact map where enemy noticed too late and lost whole eco clusters due to this nonsence...
Is this how zk "supposed to be played nowdays"?

In my opinion good RTS should have no such barely predictable things... or things you can barely protect yourself from no matter what you do(cloaked lobstered ultimatum flying right into your face right over the protective flea screen, uncloaking couple of elmo in front of you and shooting right into your dumb and unsuspecting face)

Can we have a spherical screen of fleas maybe to protect from flying ultimatums? let's give fleas an ability to fly too!
All the way into the circus-k

[Spoiler]
+2 / -0


3 years ago
quote:
- Lobstered unit loses cloaking state if any(doesn't matter if it's personal cloak or cornea)
- Lobstered unit gets all his weapons blocked during the lobstering and some time after it

I'm pretty sure I was thinking about the first one, and implemented it for crawling bombs as they'd be broken otherwise. It looks like crawling bombs just unburrow when thrown (makes sense) and I forgot to do something for cloaking in general. I've made it so that units are uncloakable for the duration of the green effect.

I dislike the second one. While it would fix a few things it feels a little arbitrary and reduces the amount of stuff you can do with it.

quote:
I assume you are refering to this game :D
https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/996405

Cool stuff like this is nice, but it doesn't hinge on lobbed units not being decloaked. I say this because Lobster already decloaked when activated so you couldn't have a cloaked Lobster ball hop around a base. Your opponents have to be inattentive.

quote:
For example today I saw unknownrankShaman abusing lobster and newtons to precisely throw jacks into the enemy base across whole map avoiding the whole frontline...
https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/996464
in this particular game this did not do any good, but I saw games on this exact map where enemy noticed too late and lost whole eco clusters due to this nonsence...
Is this how zk "supposed to be played nowdays"?

This has been happening almost since Newton was added. It's counterable, as you saw, and the people on the other team weren't even using Lobster to do it. I balance it with fixes and refinements of the mechanics, but otherwise, creative stuff like this is meant to be possible. Snitch cannon is like a cheaper Bertha with metal drain and projectiles that have to be shot down rather than blocked. Pyro/Jack insertion can be killed on the way down or in place. Skuttle drop would be OP if it could jump midair, but that is why jumplegs were invented. A spray of Fleas would be by far the best way to scout, but that is why I added a gadget that reduces ground units LOS when they fly high in the sky (approximating an ellipsoid of sight).

A lot of that wasn't particularly relevant to Lobster. Just be aware that I'm watching it for making the game too silly.
+3 / -0