In this game, shockleys basically single-handedly defeated:

• 4 Palas
• A detri, which was then domi'd
• A giant shieldball
• Various funnels and merlins

Shockley is a generic hard counter to virtually all units and heavily discourages using armies late game. It also introduces game-deciding randomness (sure it's partly prediction skill, but there remains a large element of chance). The entire mid-to-late game in large teams revolves around Shockley IMO.

Lobster is not enough; Shockley is cheap and they'll just spam more until you eventually slip up. Funnel is too expensive since a single one easily falls victim to this general purpose counter too. Running away on every silo launch isn't a very fun minigame, and it neuters your army offensively (and sometimes the launch sound gets lost when there's too much going on, I think).

I like the idea of making it disarm instead of EMP, or much shorter stun time (15s?), and/or cost increase. Shields might need a concurrent nerf.

raaar: I suggest felon vs ramped snitch. Sometimes picket works too (if they're not too fast), or wall.

Shockleys are one of the few things capable of countering massive balls of units, particularly shieldballs. They are one of the few things forcing players to (sometimes) spread their units. They are expensive too.

I do tend to agree that trying to dodge them constantly isn't super fun. I played a game where I was doing that...

quote: Shockleys are annoying? Sounds like fun.

son, you have no idea. back in the day, shockleys where even homing. meaning hitting 100%. THAT was annoying.

Ultimately, I think ZK would be better off if it had sort of a functional "Tier 2"
Truly enormous assault units that could crack open these degenerate shieldballs with simple conventional firepower. Sure, price them at detri or above, but I really think an enormous walking superweapon would be more fun to play around than burying a superweapon behind a stalefront or the gigantic bloated shieldballs we see.

Maybe Aspis's just too strong, and striders too ineffective at powering through clumps of shields. I agree these should have more simple conventional firepower, namely detriment (the big arm cannons are specifically underwhelming), but disagree that there should be a t2 with more "raw" power than clumps of low weight units.