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Starlight needs a nerf

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So I've played quite a lot of FFAs and enjoyed quite a lot of them recently. However, it seems that on any map where you can get 80+ metal per second, the safest strategy seems to be to rush a starlight.

It makes quite a lot of sense: why spend actions expanding and fighting, when you can settle in, make singus and then rush a starlight.

Starlight costs 45k. If you can push 100 metal/second to it, you can make it in 7.5 minutes. For what it can do, there is no reason not to build it if you have the economy. (+ 10k of units to defend it, but since you aren't attacking, then you will have that army.)

Starlight used to have weaknesses:
It could be blocked with a large amount of shields
It could be blocked with a terraformed building
It used to have less range (I think?)

Now it's a glorified I win button. I mean, it's supposed to be, but it's way more effective at destruction then the other superweapons. I've had 2 games this week where my finished Starlight got zapped by the enemy Starlight because they finished it less then 20 seconds earlier. There's no way to block the Starlight beam even for 30 seconds. It's also much more effective then Zenith or DRP and it hard-counters them.

Now, while I think it should get nerfed, I don't know what would be the best way of going about it.

What I want is for the interval between "Starlight turns on" and "All opposition is dead, resign already" to be a little longer. Right now it can be as low as 30 seconds. My point is that it's a lot longer for other supers and it gives more time to react to them.
+2 / -7

2 years ago
You're calling it an "I win button"? so it's like Age of Empires 2's wonder win mechanic.

So announce it. At half construction, launch the satalight and make it visible to the whole map. So it's a 22.5K metal sink to half finish it, then you need to put 22.5k metal into it to complete it while everyone should know it's there.
+3 / -0

2 years ago
I've made a similar argument in the past regarding artillery and the feedback I got was that there are so many ways to end a game at multiple points that there isn't a solid reason to nerf anything at the moment.

My initial argument was for artil in 1v1. Whoever manages to build one first can start chipping at no risk while repelling what is otherwise an even battle, and that was shut down stating there's pretty much always a way to handle that situation.

Tech switches... or in ffa, teaming vs the online super... stuff like that.
+1 / -0
2 years ago
If they let you pour 45k + defence into something (without noticeing) they dont deserve mercy.

If they still keep attacking each other insted of focussing the starlight user they also dont deserve victory.
+5 / -0


2 years ago
Starlight does seem much better than Zennith in FFA...
Zenith is probably the weakest FFA superweapon as it takes a while before it can start doing damage while a DRP can be popping singus 20 seconds after completion.

Starlight relies a lot more on scouting than a DRP so can be countered by blocking scouting. e.g. a cloud of swifts, chainsaws, artemis, etc with a lot of depth.
+1 / -0
2 years ago
If you nerf it you can then make the exact same argument about DRP. Perhaps at that point people will actually build Zenith St. Petershburg.
+0 / -0
2 years ago
There has to be a Game Ender which leaves no(/low) chance for a stalemate.
+1 / -0
Zeniths dps is a joke for a super. Can be blocked by terraform.

Drp good AoE dmg output but limited range. Fast at targeting vertical bad at switching targets on horizontal axis. Direct fire can be blocked by combination of shields and terraform.

Starlight most dps & dpm of all supers range only 2. to Trinity, nothing can save you from it but only single target. Good at range and switching targets horizontal, bad a switching vertical also poor performance witin like 1k of the Starlight.
+0 / -0
quote:
Starlight relies a lot more on scouting than a DRP so can be countered by blocking scouting. e.g. a cloud of swifts, chainsaws, artemis, etc with a lot of depth.


Hard disagree on this particular point.

SL is amazing at everything. The only thing other supers do better than SL IMO is area denial. If you really need to create a no man's land, then I guess DRP and Zenith are better. But if you need to focus a particular building or even an army walking your way, SL will nearly instantly vaporize whatever it aims at.

And with ZK showing explosions through FOW, you can just wait until boom, move to other target. The other supers will take time as they randomly scatter across a large area.

SL also messes up the terrain pretty good. It's not rare to make area mex fail at scale beause the laser is digging metal spots into a slant and you first need to restore or somehow level.

I dunno. The original discussion was about how great an asset it is to have a SL ready in FFA. That's one argument I don't really have an opinion on.

But when it comes to which super I would rather build, I'd take SL all the time. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to bother making something else moving forward until I'm either shown something I didn't think of or the supers change.
+2 / -0
Personally I am very much for the Reveal-at-half-finsihed starlight. IT makes sense from both a lorewise perspective (22.5k for the emmiter station on the ground and 2.25k for the focusing satelight). Prehaps make the starlight start shooting it's beam into the space at 22.5k buildt and as it gets more and more build the beams gets bigger and bigger and glint flies higher and higher until at 45k built you get control of the beam. It also means we can have an I-win button to end uber-stalemates while also keeping it balanced for FFAs

As for buffing Zenith, I would suggest making it shield-penetrating. Why can a box of dirt (dirtbag) pass through shields unimpeded but a block of dirt (zenith asteroid) be stopped by it?
+1 / -0
2 years ago
Complaining about a game ending weapon ending games seems redundant, if they're dedicating their eco to a game ending weapons they're not dedicating it to defenses or units. The only time you can safely rush it is if you're already dominating the game.
+2 / -0
2 years ago
the problem with starlight in FFAs is that in FFAs attacking is really, really bad. while in an team game trading 1:1.1 is a good trade, in FFAs you are just hurting yourself while all but one other player is not being effected. Superweapons are balanced in team games because 30k or more spent in something that isn't murduring your opponent's face off is nearly a death sentence. but in FFAs a few deolators, a cerb and a funnel can make the costs of attacking so high as to be not worth it. FFAs really favor playing defensively, and superweps becomes less of a game ender and more part of the natural transition towards bigger arty.
+0 / -0


2 years ago
My understanding is that the superweapons are there is finish these neverending games.
+1 / -0
2 years ago
Starlight isn't effective at ending neverending games. If 2 players make 2 Starlights just out of range of each other, this can easily prolong a game by 30 minutes.
+1 / -1
2 years ago
Starlight needs to look a bit assymetric, so that one would now which way is the laser gonna go after it is built. This way, you build your starlight in your base, it is surrounded by a few funnels, some aa, etc., and you are just praying that that laser wont destroy most of it.
+1 / -0
quote:
Starlight needs to look a bit assymetric, so that one would now which way is the laser gonna go after it is built. This way, you build your starlight in your base, it is surrounded by a few funnels, some aa, etc., and you are just praying that that laser wont destroy most of it.

Factory-style indicator arrow would be cool.

Edit: here you go
+7 / -0


2 years ago
quote:
Starlight isn't effective at ending neverending games. If 2 players make 2 Starlights just out of range of each other, this can easily prolong a game by 30 minutes.


good argument for giving disco, starlight and zenith effectively infinite range.
+3 / -0
2 years ago
I also like the idea of revealing superweapons in some visible way, either immediately upon placement or after some certain build progress.

I see the argument that if the enemy pours 30k+ into a super then you should be winning, but even 45k is actually quite insignificant amount of metal compared to total metal used in large team games. For 1h+ games it can easily be 300-500k metal.

Basically in long team games they normally end up appearing when the game is still quite interesting and just obliterate everything with very few meaningful counters with such low metal income. This was actually the original idea behind my super long range detri jump, but that got nerfed to the ground :(

There was an excellent example of this happening last night http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1151334
game was very back and forth, west managed to recover after being nuked a few times. Pulled back on eco, etc. We knew the starlight was there, but just didn't have the time to do anything about it. Would have been fun to see what would have happened if they didn't build the starlight honestly. Would it not be more fun to build 45k worth of units, that would probably end the game sooner.
+1 / -0
2 years ago
We need to add mini-starlight as a counter to full blown starlight, so then you can make mini-starlight equipped raiders or mini-starlight bertha or something.
+1 / -0
quote:
We need to add mini-starlight as a counter to full blown starlight, so then you can make mini-starlight equipped raiders or mini-starlight bertha or something.

A structure capable of rather reliably defeating superweapons, if allowed in range, existed before the current iteration of Funnelweb.

Back then safe operation of the superweapon required relentlessly controlling everything in the strike radius, including checking for cloak.
+1 / -0
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