Balance Feedback 03/2014

Because I like to reward the devs for their hard work with my whining feedback.

Many of my complaints since the last time I posted have been addressed, so this is getting to be a short list.

The primary bits of wobbly balance in order of severity, that in my oppinion should be addressed:


Planes and bomber-AA interaction

More detailed discussion is here: http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/7034

Shadow is too strong versus commanders early game due to lack of affordable hacksaw or other anti-bomber AA and insufficent alpha on mobile AA.

Phoenix is by comparison lacking payload and fragile for cost compared to shadow.

Licho is partially OWLed atm and is hard to make cost with.

No Zepplin bomber.


Jumpers are bad

Discussed in more detail here:
http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/6925?page=1
http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/6770

Puppy has very awkward balance and mechanics

Pyro is overcosted, and imo needs greater damage output. Buffing pyro would go a long way to increasing validity of lab.

Moderator is overcosted and imo needs to be lower weight (~180m)

Firewalker is too heavy for its role.

Sumo has very confused role and is imo too heavy @2000m


Spiders have an assault unit that is criminally unloved and underpowered

The hermit costs 160m -- it would probably still border underpowered at 150m. Why even have the unit in the lineup if its owled? This has been discussed and proved to death, and can be seen everywhere from its almost non-existant usage to its rubbish modstat performance.


The Outlaw is performing the wrong role, the dirtbag owled and the felon is a rapetrain

The outlaw makes shieldballs immune to their primary counters - ambush by cloaked units. The felon already counters bombs so this is redundant and bad desgin (covering weakness rather than emphasising strength).

The outlaw simultaniously fails hard as a riot and is very rarely used in this capacity. I personally would like it to have slower waves and more damage.

The dirtbag is near pointless. Can we please decide if to keep it and make it a viable option - currently it is too expensive to be used for scumbagging vehicles. I would strongly favor a return to leaving a wreck rather than deforming terrain.

The felon remains a problem in that frequently looks overpowered and is very easy to use. I still think shield balance needs looking at, as sheildbals are still hard work to deal with when the shield player knows their business and dosn't obligingly overextend themselves. This is probably somthing that could be ammended by changing the outlaw.


The capcar exists, the wolverine is terrible and slasher slightly UP

Self explanatory - in an ideal world we could remove one and buff the other two. The slasher could be nice with a tiny bit more DPS and AoE removed imo.


Hovers have been nerfed and halberd is awful

since the scrubber nerf, they are no longer fully viable. It would be nice to get the scrubber back up to a halfway point to where it is and where it was.

The halberd mechanic and weapon are still awaiting the gift of total rethink.


Commanders dont have an AA weapon

Self explanatory - given how dominant air can be, this seems increasingly bad. The commander missile weapon is underpowered -- perhaps a re-role?


The blastwing is a horrible cheese unit with no application beyond unfun rushes

Also self explanatory. I would like to see this turned into a cost effective ambush unit with a corresponding removal of its speed, but any change to its role would be nice.


Tremor is very bad

The tremor is worse than the pillager at everything EXCEPT draining shields. A competetive player who is trying to win will in no circumstances make this unit unless draining a huge stationery sheild stack, as against even relatively dense unit concentrations 2x pillager is still more effective. It could be nice to make it cheaper or better.


Thats it for me!

Blastwings could really take up an easier deployment mode.

I wonder if it's plausible to give them a "perma-deploy" ability where they would fire themselves as a "recursive ammo" projectile, which, upon impact, would permanently become a landmine.

Hermit is a low-hanging fruit and should probably get that 10m cost buff.

Zeppelin will either have to wait until an engine switch for superior assimp support or for replenishment of my ability to care.

quote: Any buff I could think of - other than increasing landing speed - would make it op against teams without airfac. From what I can tell (early) Avengers hardcounter Blastwings too much, at least in my experience.

That only applies in the (very strange) gunship cheese vs planes matchup. In a normal gunship cheese vs ground matchup it would probably be fine because of defenders and cheap land AA.

quote: I think the problem goes beyond coms

Then there's no reason to give coms an AA weapon. If an AA weapon has to be strong enough to take out a Shadow before it can drop it's load it will be murderous to more fragile or slower flyers like Phoenixes and gunships.

About Pyro. Buffing damage/reducing cost makes no sense as the issue with the unit is the slow turret turning. It wastes huge amounts of potential damage by not firing at all, this happens especially vs fast units like raiders. Improving it's ability to quickly start firing at a target even when facing the other direction before the fight would fix pyro's unreliable damage output.

Slasher works very well now IMO.

Felon is kind of in a weird spot. It's easy to use and also very effective against opponents who don't know how to play against it. But because of the extreme hardcounter that the stiletto provides it's more or less fine I think. In 1v1 you usually go air anyway as a second fac, so stiletto is usually readily available when felonballs start appearing.

I agree with your statements about moderator and firewalker and jumpies in general being meh.

Overall I feel ZK is quite well balanced. Small potential imbalances can be discussed like is being done in this thread, but for the most part the game works well.

quote: is there any reason NOT to give coms an AA weapon?

Yes, and it's called "ugly specific targeting classes".

If said weapon is good enough to be effective AA, it cannot be an anti-ground weapon. Having a comm weapon mountable on level 1 chassis that cannot shoot ground is a noobtrap or an inconvenience (like torpedos are).

Corollary 1: commander torpedo weapon should be able to fire at ground targets, like Duck.

Corollary 2: if commander torpedo weapon acts as a duck missile on surface, and as torpedo in water, that renders missiles unnecessary.

Corollary 3: missile and torpedo weapon should be merged for commanders in a way that allows it to shoot L->L, L->UW, and UW->UW but not UW->L (because then it would be the dreaded sonic gun)

You can also have no modules in L2 and morph a battlecom to L2 for 200m - gives an extra 600hp (survives one more shadow). This dosn't address the 'why do coms have no AA weapon' question though.

quote: Yes, and it's called "ugly specific targeting classes".

until you fix that everywhere else its irrelevant here.

quote: Having a comm weapon mountable on level 1 chassis that cannot shoot ground is a noobtrap or an inconvenience (like torpedos are)

missile is an unlockable and it can easily be made clear that it follows the same rules as all other AA. It wouldn't be an inconvenience unless compulsory to play competetively, which seems unlikely.

My unrequested opinions about what to do about the various problems you've described:

1) On comm/bomber interaction: putting this on a module creates pre-game counter. If comm needs an AA weapon, it should be stock. A core part of every comm chassis. Perhaps a new slot would be the way to go: a T1 "anti-air weapon" slot, with a T0 baseline AA equivalent to the pew-pew.

2) Wolverine: it should be a boat. Obviously there is no model for this, but still: it should be a boat. Ships need a way to shoot and defend in-land, and Vehicles need a slow entrenched second artillery unit like a hole in the head.

3) Outlaw is a great unit, but it does not belong in the shieldfac for all the reasons you described. Move it anywhere else. Make it an amphib, make it a jumpy, make it a hover (let it shoot into the water!), whatever. Then either drop the weight on the Felon or just give the Shieldbots a vanilla, traditional riot.

4) Agree that slowing-down the Blastwing would be good. While I'm not sure the unit should *exist*, I figure it could be formatted as an anti-raider defensive unit to keep it useful while removing its cheesing.

Anarchid: Now that torps shoot hovers, the Sonic Gun might be able to make a comeback (with less-OP stats). Problem with old Sonic Gun was that it could hit hovers from underwater, something that nothing else can do... which is no longer the case.

Com sniping:
Give com some kind of emergency protection ability, you can give it some limits (like can't move or fire during the protected state) and a long undeploy time or cooldown time to prevent it becoming OP.

Shadows being OP in early game:
Well, perhaps all mobile AA units should use a weak burst damage mechanism, reduce the weapon reload time to half, and use "ammo" to fire like felon or archer, with a ammo regeneration rate for each shot that is two times longer than the reload time.

Late game no-fly zones:
They have too much coverage, and hard to be demolished by land forces, better convert chainsaw and screamer to supportive roles, also give lands more options to deal with late-game AA other than the missile silo.

Transports:
Too underused in this game. Perhaps the passenger should get damaged before the transport unit. Also make transporting slower for passengers with higher weight to prevent it becoming OP.

Ships:
They are more limited by terrains in the average sea maps than vehs and tanks in the average land maps, so you can't just handle them like vehs and tanks, better give them some amphibious ships or sea planes.

Commanders:
In long term I think a single type of commander with in-game-selectable modular upgrades would be better, which is not supported by engine yet. Also it should always be resurrectable like a hero unit in Warcraft 3 to prevent any permament loss.

Regarding comm sniping, there was a time where you could micro the bombs out.
This was sadly removed as GoogleFrog and Saktoth think this kind of gameplay is not good for ZK.

I would personally prefer to give back ability to outmicro bomber with your commander.

quote: I would personally prefer to give back ability to outmicro bomber with your commander.

Let's make commanders punch shadows!