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please list your balance problems/solutions.. even if they are 'do nothing'.

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9 years ago
quote:
Being melee is also what makes it good against raiders (prevents dodge).


At makes it good agaist anything as well.

quote:
wrong. try to attack anything in deeper water.

It's not a problem of Raven, its a problem of lack of a Sonar, becasue Raven ccant see the unit all teh time, and failes to aim properly.

Also 98.0 has an issue, wich makes Raven miss some times, and that is even mroe annoying, becasue it is suppsoed to hit eveyrhting, btu it misses straight going slow unit, not even doing a single turn, not mentioning zig-zags.

IT clearly is teh good time to fix/change it complitely.
+0 / -0
Skasi
quote:
It's not a problem of Raven, its a problem of lack of a Sonar

No. Raven can't dive (as in 'dive water'). In deep water amphibs will be very far away from where the projectile is dropped and have enough time to dodge it.
+1 / -0

9 years ago
I don't think any units stand out as being OP right now. Rather there is a problem with a ton of useless units.

Scrubber/Panther - both got nerfed really hard and now LV is only flat map factory.

Black dawn/gnat/blastwing - useless.

Racketeer - add smart targeting. No need to all focus 1 flea.

Gauss - has a nice role now of slowing down arty. Maybe increase hp regen by 5 to get it to be used more.

Newton - Just any buff. Range,hp, cost.

Hacksaw - Reload -1 s.

Faraday - Small buff of some sort.

Swifts - Small buff, now with hawks nobody uses them.

Whole spider fac - small speed buff. It is faster to walk around a hill than walk over it with spiders... What defines spider in my mind is costly,squishy,and has a powerful gun. Does uber slow need to be in that group?

Hermits - too costly for what they do(or don't do).

Flea - +20% dps. Turret turn rate +20%.

Infiltrator - +200 sight range. +5 speed.

Archer - Some buff, its useless because ducks are better.

Napalm - Useless.

Vulture - +100 hp , +5 regen

Sumo - give it guns. Grav beams are pretty annoying to have after the novelty wears off.

Placeholder - smarter targeting.

Crane - small speed buff. Nobody ever uses these.

Light transport -> athena

Radar tower -> morphs to adv radar tower

dirtbag - cost 30->25






+1 / -0

9 years ago
I remember this game from the las tourney, where 4 gremlins (4*150=600M) can't kill a raven (300M)
So I agree raven needs a balance..


If not, gremlin needs to change of class from AA to scout. In the replay, DErankJulian123 was fooled : Omg a raven!! Hehehe, no problem I have 4 scouts to counter him!
+1 / -0

9 years ago
Split Raven into its two separate roles: divebomber/aa/amphib-murderer, and flying ravager.
+2 / -0

9 years ago
I think planes just need to be more diverse. I would like to see bombers moving into more specialized roles that allow for diversity in the air. Right now air play sort of revolves around having air superiority (not bad) and good bomber control. My main issue is that the raven makes up almost all of the second category. Pheonixes are generally not useful. I understand the power of a good napalm run, but those are so rare and so easy to mess up. A small change to help this would be to increase the drop speed of Pheonix bombs so they miss less often.

As to the Raven I have come to have mixed feelings about it currently. The Raven definitely has some cool traits, but its interaction with early game AA feels wrong to me. I would like to see it split into a low-weight bomber that can help the early game (but has severe issues with AA), and a higher weight bomber that can perform in moderate AA zones. Really I think the Raven is trying to do too many things with one unit.

Thunderbirds are pretty nice, my only potential problem is that there is very little reason to stack them. Adding more Thunderbirds to a bombing run just ensures that one will hit, nothing more. Arguably that is acceptable though.

Really I think the big issue is that the Raven fills an overly generalist role, and the rest of the plane factory's bombers are too niche. Giving an air player more options while reducing the generalist "spam raven" would likely make air much more interesting.
+6 / -0
Thats why i asked a long time ago QAranknorm0616 for :
A) Hawks to have attack like A-10 Thunder bird has ( attacks like swift from range while diving but with more dmg)( we can balance this with more metal cost or less hp for the hawk)

B)Swift to be more faster or the D gun to have faster reload speed

C)Napalm bombers to use 2 types of weponds (selecting and deselecting this feature will be done with the D gun and will only take place when you land on airpad)(firewalker shot[for the firewalker shot it doesnt need to get close to enemy, it will fire the bomb like a wyvern does] with lots of aoe or the curent drop it has but with increased lenght)

D)Thunderbird exactly 2 shots like i mentioned in the napalm bomber but with stun of course

E)Raven will be a high altitude bomber that will have more HP and it will be usless against moving targets (attacking moving targets will be the role of the hawk)

F)Give us the Eclipse

G)Give us that flying battleship with shield

H)Vulture( the scout plane with increased radar range because of its altitude)

And besides all this for the units give them anti air decoy tactic like:
-Wyvern when pressing d gun will plop up a small shield arround it for 0.5 seconds so it can dodge the aa( giving this will make air player micro planes more)
-Or flares for all planes when pressing D gun who gives 50% chance to dodge missile anti air attacks.

Consider that many tanks and other units can dodge attacks from different units while you micro them and moving them. We need this anti air decoys to compensate for the planes when attacked by missiles. How many planes can dodge missiles attacks ? None! only if you have cliffs and stuff arround it, or you have a D gun like swift has.
+1 / -0
I would be cautious about buffing Phoenix; it is not good against many things but for a few purposess it is already quite powerful:

- puppy balls
- wind farms
- okay against moderator, placeholder, wolverine

Thunderbird does not need a buff. I don't think it needs a nerf either.

This is a more controversial opinion, but I think Vulture is fine on land maps too (and obviously good on water maps). Its large LoS range is quite useful for artillery, and to know exactly what you're fighting rather than radar dots. This is the opinion of a 1v1 player where air is much less contested, though.

Raven might need changing but my understanding is that making raven "bad against mobile targets" is less simple than you might think.

Air in general has the problem that there is not much micro (especially in dogfights) and what there is is rather hard to grasp. I am not sure that putting in "D to dodge" for every unit is the right solution.

Sea in general has the problem that "terrain" is generally far less interesting, and that it is mostly not done for maps to have underwater cliffs which amph cannot traverse. (Obviously you can do this with terraform but on a large scale this is expensive and time consuming.) The different "damage types" of "antiair", "anti-surface" and "anti-submarine" further complicate things. When there is only "antiair" and "antiground" that means there is more space for interesting variation within each category.

(Yes, I know most things can in theory shoot air, and that there is overlap between all of the above categories. Even so, it appears difficult to find enough space in hover, amph and ship for a decent RPS-or-other relationship applicable to both surface and underwater fighting.)
+0 / -0
9 years ago
quote:
Whole spider fac

The problem with spider fac is lack of a proper raider.
On any map bigger than 8x8 the earlygame dominance is defined by raiders. It is not enough to be able to defend against enemy raiders - you MUST be able to threaten your opponent or else they will just outexpand you.
+2 / -0
AUrankAdminAquanim re sea: I'd not considered that very much, but a more interesting water map is a definite possibility. Wrt to the many complicated special 'anti' types, I definitely agree.

Also, tridents are utter garbage. No aoe, slow as dirt, not great dps, basically get killed by ravens without the need for anything fancy like hawks or swifts when trident is supposed to be AA. You're literally better off just spamming rapiers, which seem to be slowly shifting into the GS equivalent of the raven. I also reiterate the general sentiment regarding lack of air diversity, lack of real capships, overly hard AA counters, etc.

EDIT:
@Faelthas : I kind of agree about the panther/tanks fac. Panthers used to be fairly strong, but given how expensive they are they get killed a bit too easily and now are practically too wimpy to kill mexes. Tank fac also gets burned pretty hard by skirms, esp moderators, which are practically a hard counter to the whole fac.
+0 / -0

9 years ago
AUrankSmokeDragon, I'm unsure about how many balance iterations you observed so far. While often important balance issues get debated in the forums (and can lead to an ingame change), establishing "this unit needs nerf/buff" because one person in a "list whatever you think" thread said so is not enough of a matter to act on.

AUrankAdminGoogleFrog is the most prominent figure when it comes to balance, and he does a lot of work testing units, observing their performance in diverse situations and generally is very invested into the topic, which most people don't tend to be ("I keep getting killed by that unit, it must be OP!").

Of course, there are (multiple) valid concerns in this thread, most of them known for a long time, but the allcaps "why is this not fixed"-style stuff isn't necessary. :)


quote:
It has to be a melee unit though because if it isn't, people still make it melee (eg. before dive, people simply gave a stop order to lower altitidue)

Make it unable to throw bombs unless at cruising height (as in, x time after takeoff and not during landing)? Problem solved...
(Still leaves terrain height as bomb drop time interaction, but that's not unit AI territory.)
+0 / -0
added a disclaimer to start.. to advise people to treat this like a brain-storm and not a change-log.

"the allcaps "why is this not fixed"-style stuff isn't necessary"

noted and I agree.. it has been amended.. and I was arrogantly aggressive in my pursuit of balance.. I have changed my ways and quickly learned to cooperate.
I believe much can be achieved by working together as friends.. I endeavour to be civil, calm and cooperative. after-all is zk not the embodiment of teamwork. Born of the community, played by and perhaps even balanced by.. the very people who keep it alive.
+0 / -0

9 years ago
Well said.
+0 / -0


9 years ago
The reason raven is a melee plane is that its has a pointblank high-alpha weapon with no selfdamage, on a ravager with more speed than glaive, all the while not caring for observing any ranges because its enemies always have greater range and perfect accuracy. Attacking things in melee hit and run attacks is the obvious optimal tactic for such an unit.

If it risked damaging itself by coming too close, it would have to drop bombs from some distance. Which would then of course made it unreliable, but you could make the missile guided.

And then it'd be Kestrel.
+0 / -0
I am just here to say (once again) that Phoenix doesn't drop napalm but fire.

Oh and btw isn't it amusing that not so long ago hovers and tanks dominated flat maps and people has whined so much about it! Now that it has changed ... people complain that it is the other way around! Oh you meta gaming you.
+0 / -0

9 years ago
With regard to trident I agree it feels a bit limited as a unit. I also note that Gunship fac has no means to attack underwater units. hint, hint.

I won the one game I remember playing recently in tank vs. jumpy 1v1, and my opponent built plenty of moderators, so I'm not sure they're all that hard a counter. Reapers mostly shrug off the slow, moderator-heavy forces are terrible against even a modest amount of offensive porc, and if all else fails switch to cloaky and make glaives. "Switch to cloaky and make glaives" is core to tankfac.

PLrankOrfelius: I imagine the point is that the changes to hover/tank/lv balance are believed to be overkill, and that something in the middle is sought. I'm not quite as in touch as I used to be but I think tank is still playable vs lveh 1v1; couldn't speak for hover since I haven't played them myself in some time.
+0 / -0


9 years ago
There is already a lot of Neonstorm. I am going to ignore the other stuff for now and focus on bombers.


Raven



Raven does not dive because you could otherwise simply land it on units for full accuracy. You can disprove this by telling a Raven to land and observing how long it takes to reach the ground. Nobody is going to hit any mobile unit with it.

Initially Raven dived as a way to hit shields. Do not consider the reason for this within the current balance, the change was years ago in a different context. The design principals led me to also add the "fly low" option and eventually people used this for consistent commander snipes.

Diving was almost removed at that point but CZrankAdminLicho said it was cool. It also had the bonus of increasing ground interaction because ground units can shoot at low things. I have considered Raven without dive but with slow homing bombs. A constant force on Raven is that CZrankAdminLicho does not want Raven to home while I do not want quicktime events. Diving sort of achieves this.

There have been quite a few ideas for Raven floating around but many of them seem to want to nerf air. I think it is fine if air is really good to have in a teamgame or one of the best choices for a second factory. It moves ZK into more domains.

Splitting Raven into anti-structure and anti-unit has at least one of these problems:
  • If the anti-structure bomber is sufficiently more powerful and has a decent projectile speed then we have the return of the quicktime event.
  • The anti-unit bomber is likely to become the new Raven. This is because structures and mobiles have the same health range and being able to hit both types is much more flexible. The anti-structure bomber would be rarely used, think of how much use Impaler sees.
  • If the anti-unit bomber is less healthy than Raven then it is likely to disappear after the earlygame. Lots of other games with similar aircraft seem to suffer from air disappearing after the start of the game. I think we have overcome this and would not like to go backwards.

I do not think it is necessarily bad for there to be one 'main' bomber which can be built without needing to think about exactly what it is going to do. Bomber usage is just one facet of the game and it already seems to be sufficiently complicated. Picking targets for bombers well seems to be harder than picking targets for ground units.

Here is a change to make Ravens worse against raiders while increasing interaction: Slowed movement when diving. They had this at one point but seem to have lost it. The idea is that they would lose speed linearly based on their flight height down to about Bandit speed. So most raiders could actually run away or at least shoot the Raven a lot before they die. There is a bunch more interaction because the raiders have their movement restricted. This also reinforced the ground interaction which allows units to defend each other against Ravens.

People seem to want an extreme Raven change so I'll just go commit that now.


Phoenix



The problem with Phoenix has been correctly reiterated by Skasi. The fire weapon does not stack with itself. So instead of having a unit that can do XN damage to a clump with N Phoenixes it just does X damage. This puts some units firmly in or out of the effectiveness zone with a fair few at the boundary due to randomness.

Ideally Phoenix would deal ordinary damage but the coolness of fire has resisted this change for several years. It could always have a damage buff along with a bit of a nerf to burn time. That would improve stacking.

Making fire stack is a large task with some other benefits as well. There are many problems though. Nobody has come up with a full system for this or a way to communicate varied fire damage.


Others



Thunderbird seems basically fine to me. Wyvern has a role with toughness and AoE.
+4 / -0


9 years ago
Raven nerfs are horribly overdue imo, whatever you may feel about its position in balance the unit as is (eg. efficient and difficult to stop without planes of your own, no effective low weight land based AA) it shuts down a large number of possible units and strategies from games. Recent 2v2 tourneys have been dominated by bombers, which is bor-ring
+0 / -0
Skasi
quote:
Here is a change to make Ravens worse against raiders while increasing interaction: Slowed movement when diving. They had this at one point but seem to have lost it. The idea is that they would lose speed linearly based on their flight height down to about Bandit speed.

Wont this make the already-awful air control even worse? Still, probably worth testing. Oh oh oh! Is there going to be a "FLY EVEN HIGHER!" unit state? \o/

quote:
People seem to want an extreme Raven change so I'll just go commit that now.

Will there be a new stable that includes this change before the tournament (Saturday, March 28th)? Just curious. I'd love to see this change in a highly competitive environment, but I also understand that such a sudden change could have a huge impact on the outcome of the tournament. (edit: yes there was)
+0 / -0
9 years ago
Thank you GoogleFrog. I appears not only are you are taking the time to write a detailed explanation but that you are also willing to address the two prime balance concerns. I am positive it is appreciated by the community.
+0 / -0
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