Proposed Lance fix: switch to continuous fire

So, Lance's problem is that it combines long range, instant hit, perfect accuracy, burst and AoE with a shedload of damage. Making it very oppressive and doesn't have much counterplay. It's just "Boom, your commander is suddenly dead".

A solution is to reverse the recent small Lance nerfs and instead change it's beam to:
* Deal 150dps continuous damage at 1000 range
* Take 10 seconds to switch target
* Can continue firing at a target that leaves its range up to +50 elmo further than max range
* Will continue trying to fire at the targetted unit even if it is blocked by other enemy units (will end up instead hitting blocking units), but not when blocked by terrain

This stops it decimating entire glaive hordes and allows fine micro counterplay when units are targetted (e.g. jumping your com back out of range or moving your Minotaur in front of your Ogre) while still giving hoverfac a way of dealing with Stinger and Grizzlies.

Solves the raider decimation problem (what kind of "anti-heavy" decimates a glaive swarm?!), the friendly fire problem and the counterplay/oppression problems all at once!


I suspect this will probably be technically difficult, but am wondering if the technicalities could be worked out, would this be a good change?

hmm...

I dislike the idea. Lance's concept is solid. It may just be slightly OP atm and also exist in a context where few mobile artillery units actually outrange it and are actually able to hit them.

What often keeps lances behind shields in check in team games is cerberus and berthas.

alternative suggestion:
- 5% range reduction and 10% fire rate reduction for lance
- +10% cost, +5% range, +5-10% projectile speed to tank and ship artillery

Cmon already, try a different approach to this problem. Make lance explosion-when-destroyed bigger. It will still be a powerful unit and to be feared. But there will be less of them. It will be more attractive target. Problem solved.

All raiders using the ball formation deserve to be destroyed. Lance often has escorts with it, raiders likely die plenty from them too. Escorts likely to die from lance/chain lances explosions too.

I just want "cloaked lances" to have a new meaning. Snitch is getting so old. <- Joke.

SmokeDragon 's idea is interesting. give it a small laser weapon which deals 1dps in a different color to reveal its location, and block main gun for some time ( 5 secs?). so people get warning. statics cannot run.

I would agree that Lance isn't too bad right now. I like the idea of making its death explosion bigger. Also I have some random ideas that could work:

-When Lance fires, it could decloak nearby units
-Or even, Lance could have a slight charge up time for the shot (like half a second or so), and while it is charging it decloaks nearby units (since decloaking takes a second)
-When Lance fires, it could damage (or maybe slow) itself or/and nearby units a little bit
-Lance's laser beam's damage could start out small and then get big, so it punishes staying in the beam and maybe doesn't kill something that's only in the beam for the first half a second (like a glaive)

quote: LARGE_BUILDINGEX (Stardust, factories, falling Krow)?

I missed that, I was looking at Pylon explosions. The explosion def names don't make a lot of sense.

Overall I don't see the need for inconsistency with explosion sizes. There are units that have their own explosion, but they tend to justify it with a combination of balance and making sense.

FYI most of my recent experience is of moderately dense games: something like 2v2 on a 12x12 map.

My problem with Lance is that in moderately good hands it causes a whole lot of problems to counter whilst itself requiring little effort to manage. It seems like it's not unbalanced, otherwise it would proliferate in all game types, it's just quite unfun to deal with in battles where there isn't an obvious hole where the Lance isn't. Typically as soon a Lance appears I have to do one or more of the following:

- Concede territory that I can't defend without huge losses.
- Rush in and trade really badly with the inevitable riots / point defences. Lance retreating plus ability to massacre groups means this doesn't go well.
- Wait for several minutes to get some planes, probably a Licho to have much chance of delivering a shot. This is expensive and usually comes too late to turn the tide.

AFAICT there's little point in trying to get your own arty because Lance will just take that apart bit by bit, plus several facs don't have one with enough range to cause problems. In theory there are other plans like those involving Cloaky, but I have even less success trying to coordinate Imps for example.

Overall if a Lance appears in a relatively balanced game and I don't have enough army to push through and kill it right away, I'm pretty much doomed to lose.

My feeling is, if Lance has to remain as awesome as it is (and it is fun to use), then it should be made more difficult to use as well. Something like making it very difficult to retreat after firing, or more prone to causing damage to ally units, for example, but I'm sure there are other options.

I think that terraform is quite underused at present as an answer to Lance. Some terraform walls make it much more difficult for Lance to put pressure on you, and as long as you don't build them too high most of your own artillery can still fire over them. Caretakers can build terraform walls at a distance, allowing you to creep forward at opportune times.

quote: Typically as soon a Lance appears I have to do one or more of the following:

Another option is to press Ctrl+M and draw a line covering your important stuff. I updated the terraform page: https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Terraform

Perhaps that will help nerf Lance.