If we are going to nerf cloaking because "it isn't fun to spectate" and/or "area cloaking makes the units invisiable, and now I don't know what units the enemy has", as    fiendicus_prime and     Anarchid have said more than once, THAT MEANS THAT THE CLOAKING IS WORKING! Cloaking's whole point is to not let your opponent know what units you have and where they are, and trying to nerf it because it does it's job seems really counterintuitive. And with the "it isn't fun to spectate" argument, nobody cares. If we nerfed or buffed things to make them more fun to watch, unit balance would be thrown out the window. Trying to nerf something because you find annoying to be faced against is just plain dumb, instead maybe use the time trying to nerf it because you're a crybaby to find counters to it. Just because you don't know how to deal with it yet doesn't mean that there are no ways to deal with it. Who knows, you might find the best counter to it yet! Point is, learn to deal with something first before complaining that something is too hard to deal with. EDIT-I would like to apologize for my rudeness in this post, I took out my anger at something else on you-( fiendicus_prime- Anarchid), and I hope you will forgive me.
+5 / -3
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For starters, I would like to apologize for my rudeness earlier, I believe that I misinterpreted the situation. I'll try to not do that again. fiendicus_prime What I like about the current cloaking system is that you can hide anything in it, and that it allows you to make it harder for the enemy to figure out what units you have, and in general, its flexibility and usefulness in all stages of the game. After taking a break and thinking about it, I'll agree that cloaking could use a small nerf. However, I do not believe that doing anything that doesn't allow or makes it harder for the cloaker to do its job should be done, such as increasing the decloak time or decreasing area cloaking's range. Instead, I think that making every unit in the area cloak's radius pay for it's cloak in energy would work. This is because of a couple reasons; 1. Increasing the energy cost to use cloakers would be stupid, as you could just build more energy, and it would make shields seem superior as they don't have any passive energy consumption. 2. So far as I've seen, area cloakers have a flat energy consumption rate for their abilities, so taking that away and implementing consumption biased on the number of units might balance it out with its effectiveness. Of course, this would disproportionately affect raiders, so some tweaks would have to be implemented, such as all light and raider units not costing anything, units that already cloak costing whichever energy usage is lower, medium and heavy units costing maybe their metal cost/10000, with a max at around 10 for medium, and 20 for heavy. Or you could ignore this and use artillery. As stated earlier, all of this makes shields seem superior, so maybe a passive energy cost for them too?
+2 / -0
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   Jhopmemes: I think you're possibly looking at it from the wrong angle. "Is cloaking too cost effective" (e.g. too powerful) is only one of the axes to consider. The right approach is to think "What sorts of cloak interactions and features are fun on the net? What designs and properties of a cloaking system make the game more fun if both teams have plentiful access to it?". The main interaction/use case that is considered fun is cloaked infiltrations: A medium sized force sneaking into the enemy base and suddenly appearing to wreck havoc.
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These are good because they give cloaking player a skilled thing to do:
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Realizing the infiltration possibility and manoeuvring through the enemy lines
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And the players on the other team skilled things to do:
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Beforehand:
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The placement of backline defences on key points
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The creation of a quick reaction force and unit tripwires
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Afterwards:
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Noticing an assault is taking place
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Communicating it to other players
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Taking a quick reaction force and responding to the attack
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Assessing what forces can reach in time and what is needed to fend it off
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These events also have a short time of high excitement and high stakes (that nonetheless has plenty of opportunity for tactics, judgement and agency).
The main one that is considered unfun is cloaked lance balls plinking away for ten minutes.
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Later on (after cloaking spreads) there is often little for the cloakball player to do but configure his lances appropriately and wait for enemies to be revealed.
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There is limited opportunity for counterplay:
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Firewalker tends to be a one-shot (generally getting lanced due to shorter range). Inferno mostly just forces units to move.
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Raids or assaults aren't viable without knowing enemy force composition.
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Likhos are only an option for one/two players, take a while to build and can be hardcountered (Artemis).
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Walls are good defensive options, but encourage long stalemates with little movement or bold plays.
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Cloaked Snitches only work against unskilled players who do not screen.
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Area cloakers of their own often results in very high randomness. Which sides unit or firewalker shot happens to wander into the others cloakball first has a pretty big impact. And two big cloakballs coming into contact is sudden chaos with little agency.
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It's nonetheless the best option.
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It occurs over a very long period of time with no real moments of triumph or despair (barring a sudden well targetted Likhoing). (the previously mentioned chaotic melee doesn't hit the right notes due to low agency)
Ideally you want a cloaking system that makes the former possible but not the latter.
+7 / -0
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 dyth68quote:
This seems like it doesn't solve the issues you list. |
True. I don't see this as a solution but more as an exploration of the space of things possible, specifically in the direction of making large-area tactical cloak significantly different from small-area strategic cloak. Flat out removing Iris, Cornea, and Commander Area Cloak (with some consequent buffs to alternate anti-shield strategies, or nerfs to shield spam) so far remains my favorite solution, but i think that few would agree. Jhopmemes: quote:
And with the "it isn't fun to spectate" argument, nobody cares. If we nerfed or buffed things to make them more fun to watch, unit balance would be thrown out the window. |
There is in fact a design goal for this game called "rule of cool". It's for example why Lance can skewer half a dozen raiders, something outside of its antiheavy artillery role: it's just cool for a powerful laser to do that. I am somewhat sad ZK haven't made a rule of beautiful or something like that. quote:
Trying to nerf something because you find annoying to be faced against is just plain dumb |
I find it unpleasant to play with, play against, and spectate, compared to a counterfactual in which it does not exist. I find it actually more annoying when i am forced to transition to cloaked snitch because it's the only practical counter to shieldballs, than when i get blown up by cloak snitch. I really wish there was something that worked besides this silly trick. quote:
However, I do not believe that doing anything that doesn't allow or makes it harder for the cloaker to do its job should be done, such as increasing the decloak time or decreasing area cloaking's range. Instead, I think that making every unit in the area cloak's radius pay for it's cloak in energy would work |
This seems to be the solution that most commenters in this thread gravitate to. However, it's likely unfun to play with - "numbery", as   GoogleFrog puts above. --- Here's an alternative giga-nerf idea: any projectile landing within the cloaker's radius decloaks every unit in that cloaker's field. This makes tactical cloak extremely easy to defeat (just point a Sling or Impaler inside the static cloaker's area) while perhaps not entirely useless (if you can kill the source of projectiles), and doesn't touch strategic cloak at all (because decloaking one unit in the strategic sneak ball already betrays the whole strategy). It possibly even leaves cloak snitch usable, albeit less reliably.
+1 / -0
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I strongly disagree with the premise that even "tactical" cloaking needs to be changed. There are plenty of ways to counter cloaked frontline armies (they're countered in the majority of games I see them in, eventually). Cloaking is one of the things that makes the game so much fun, and adds a layer of strategy that wouldn't be as present if tactical cloaking were nerfed. With a heavy tactical cloaking nerf, the game could become more of just a braindead race to build more units, with hardly any consideration for complex strategic decisions before deciding to attack. Also, many times its an absolute necessity to cloak frontline units when youre up against a superior force, (or multiple people) because its already extremely difficult to beat a larger army even with good unit composition and excellent micro. Lessening the ability to do that would make it even harder to comeback against a frustrating situation where maybe the enemy team has 1.5x the army or you're 2v1.
+1 / -0
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quote:
Cloaking is one of the things that makes the game so much fun, and adds a layer of strategy that wouldn't be as present if tactical cloaking were nerfed. With a heavy tactical cloaking nerf, the game could become more of just a braindead race to build more units, with hardly any consideration for complex strategic decisions before deciding to attack |
Are you seriously claiming that "!setoptions disabledunits=Cornea,Iris" is all that stands between ZK and "just a braindead race to build more units"? A majority of 1v1 games don't feature area cloakers used in tactical role. I presume you also will have to claim they're braindead unit spam? I also assume that any pot games in which the cloaker use did not tile the entire frontline are examples of "braindead race to build more units"? Very well, then we indeed disagree. quote:
You'd need to at least make it require hitting units. |
Fair. What if any unit firing, being damaged, or being touched by decloak radius inside the cloaker field acts as the trigger to decloak everything else inside? Essentially current rules, but all units inside the field (possibly with exception for ones with innate cloak) share the decloak triggers and decloak as one.
+2 / -1
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 bbar97quote:
With a heavy tactical cloaking nerf, the game could become more of just a braindead race to build more units, with hardly any consideration for complex strategic decisions before deciding to attack. |
I'm really struggling with this logic. Actually being able to see the enemy army composition actually increases the complexity of strategic considerations as you now have extra information that varies from game to game (as opposed to the "build standard anti-unknown-cloaked-army stuff that you fall back on without information). Also, you seem to be suggesting that cloaking helps the smaller army, but it seems symmetrical to me, helping large and small equally (excluding very high density edgecases where the smaller army is able to spread against snitch while the letter can't).
+2 / -0
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Here's an idea that is not numbery, favors strategic over tactical cloaking and removes the hassle to try to keep units within a reduced area: Remove all cloaking fields. Every mobile unit can morph to a cloaked version of itself.
+0 / -0
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quote:
Fair. What if any unit firing, being damaged, or being touched by decloak radius inside the cloaker field acts as the trigger to decloak everything else inside? Essentially current rules, but all units inside the field (possibly with exception for ones with innate cloak) share the decloak triggers and decloak as one. |
This would nerf strategic cloak too, which most people seem think is ok as it is. My earlier suggestion (having the area decloak when a friendly unit fired) seems to tick all the boxes - nerf tac cloak without removing it completely, strategic nerf unchanged, no disco llt, cloaked snitch still intact, lances on front line more vulnerable because they decloak their screening units, not complicated, not number based. quote:
There are plenty of ways to counter cloaked frontline armies
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If there are lances, which is usually the case is lobpot, artillery like firewalker doesn't last long. The main counter I can think of is dirtbag spam, which imho is laggy, cheesy, only partly effective and tends to bog/slow down the battle for all units.
+1 / -0
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has anyone explored the interaction with shields? from my opinion, the bad experience is that units are both under cloak and shield, which makes breaking this position (with added static defences) unbearable. maybe dont allow shield AND cloak at the same unit, meaning under area shield, cloaking is disabled.
+1 / -0
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quote:
This would nerf strategic cloak too, which most people seem think is ok as it is.
My earlier suggestion (having the area decloak when a friendly unit fired) seems to tick all the boxes - nerf tac cloak without removing it completely, strategic nerf unchanged, no disco llt, cloaked snitch still intact, lances on front line more vulnerable because they decloak their screening units, not complicated, not number based. |
Strategic cloak kinda breaks when any part of it is revealed anyway. This version is also a bit less consistent with normal decloak sources, but i guess it's okay too.
+0 / -0
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The main difference might be that screening against strat cloak would be easier and involve annoying things, like disco lotus and force fire spam. You are right though in that its a bigger change, so would be good to get more feedback on it.
+0 / -0
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I sort of find myself agreeing with Jhopmemes the most (although he was a bit rude). I'm not looking for ways to remove (or effectively remove) any applications of cloaking. A lot of cloaking has counterplay and it doesn't seem to be ubiquitous in practice. So I don't really buy claims that cloaking absolutely everything is optimal or that it makes it impossible to know what is going on. The proponents for cloak nerfs seem to be trying to prove much more than my range of uncertainty, so I must not share the same premise of data set. I started off with the hunch that cloaking is a bit too good so I'm looking for precisely what is too good, and ways to give it a bit more counterplay (which could involve just making it less powerful). Here is where I am at.
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I don't see a significant amount of cloaker usage in my games. Each side will often have one or two cloaking a ball of units or for snitches, but 80% of fronts remain unclocked. So the claims that everything is cloaked in all games beyond a certain point don't ring true. I'm not playing the EU prime time games, but I randomly sampled one and didn't seem cloak do much there either. So on this point, I would want replays.
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Variable costs or thresholds for cloakers seem too ugly to me. A lot of UI would be required to give people a good chance of understanding the mechanic, and it would seem to lead to a lot of accidental griefing. Having to clear the area of everything but your Lances, to save on energy drain or whatever, feels weird.
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New decloak mechanics for area cloaking seem very tricky to get right. I could see them either deleting some applications of area cloakers, or doing very little in practice. For example, decloaking everything in an area cloaker when anything in the cloaker takes damage amounts to deleting cloakers for almost all uses. Decloaking when a nearby unit fires would do a bit, but I'm not sure if it would be enough.
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Relatedly, there isn't a clear line between strategic and tactical cloaking. Strategic cloaking is hurt by extra decloak mechanics because it can be possible to salvage a lost strategic cloak by sacrificing a few units, buying a few seconds to get into a better shape to fight. Powerful tactical cloaking ends up buffing strategic cloaking in practice because the latter tends to decay into the former. Keeping units dormant on the front line is also a fine use of cloaking, an arguably strategic.
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This isn't a fight vs base infiltration and cloaked Lance. I want both to be possible, and base infiltration isn't exactly an amazing mechanic either. I suspect it would get old if it were as common as cloaked Lance too.
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Being able to see enemy units does not invariably increase strategic complexity, as making plans with uncertain or incomplete information is more complicated than with full information. When you know everything, you don't need contingencies. I am fine with people hiding reserve units from Swift flyovers, it seems like a good use of cloaking.
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I don't worry much about frontline cloaking making it harder to know what the enemy has, because I don't think cloaking makes this significantly harder. With some poking and a bit of situational awareness it is fairly easy to have enough of an idea of what the enemy has to make plans. If you have seen a unit, or even a unit's projectile, and the unit hasn't died, then it is still alive. Keeping units completely hidden seems somewhat costly as they are dead metal until they fire. Using cloakers to not know about a Merlin before it fires is fine by me.
My current feeling is that static cloakers would be the biggest offender in widespread cloak since a single cloaker can cover a decent chunk of a static front. They have enough area to simultaneously enable cloaked Snitches and a hard-to-snipe Merlin. Neither of these uses seem far too good on their own, but getting both in one unit, at the same time, could be a bit much. I see mobile cloakers used as more dedicated cloakers for single armies or Snitches. Spreading out to fight while under a mobile cloaker is tricky since armies want to fight as a concave, but have to position themselves convex to protect the cloaker. The current radius of 400 doesn't leave quite enough room in front of the cloaker. So here is what I would try. Test it out on a test version host. Cornea:
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Jamming range 550 -> 600
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Cloaker range 550 -> 400
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Cloaker origin can be shifted up to 200 away.
Reducing the jamming range to 400 seemed a bit too sad, and perhaps moving the cloak origin is interesting. This actually makes Cornea able to cloak things further away than before, but not in a wide area. Iris:
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Jamming range 400 -> 360
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Cloaker range 400 -> 360
The radius nerf might be a bit extreme, but the unit still looks useful. Fighting under one Iris will be particularly awkward, but it should be fine for strategic cloak. It may be worth decreasing its quite large decloak radius at some point.
+3 / -0
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quote:
I'm not playing the EU prime time games |
Probably has more to do with balanced large games. The more resources higher the chance to have cloackers. The map style will also have a lot to do with it - the more regular/flat the front higher the chance of having massive cloacks. It is still a very good idea to provide replays where people feel there is too much cloack. I think there is a separate discussion between balance (maybe it is balanced) and fun (maybe it is not fun). Fun is hard to assess but if the number of ideas about changing cloack is a proxy I would say there are many people interested in making it more fun.
+1 / -0
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