Amphfac Discussion!

Since the Amphfac is in the latest test version, and can be tested I think it's time to discuss it! Altough it still doesn't have much unit, I think the factory would benefit from early discussion on balance and stuff.

Here are my findings/thoughts:

Clam is cool. Digging the name etc.

Archers are neat, I love every bit of them, but their extreme moving arround of stuff looks and feels silly. The idea of blasting stuff around would much better fit a larger unit.

Scalop is awesome but has some problems when you fight-command them onto a beach, they will reach a point where they try firing but can't so don't and just stand still. The same thing happens when they meet a floating building, which they can't hit but they'll just stay there doing nothing! I like how it has double damage when it's on land and firing water targets (Like a HLT build near the beach, in water)

Grizzly doesn't "feel" right yet, it is same cost as Sumo but seems vastly inferior. It's low DPS makes it feel "sluggish" which is good, but it might need a HP buff to back that up, and maybe some cool D-gun ability or other weapon to give it a bit more "feel"

AA (Don't know name) seems okay too, didn't mess arround with it lots. I did get to react to a late brawler "rush" with one of them tough. I was assisting it with a clam, and I think I did like 70% damage? Wasn't paying attention to the battle tough due to doing stuff elsewhere (Combined with crappy APM/Multitasking skill), so will have to try again later.

What are your thoughts?

Amphfac seems good.

Grizzly does feel weak.

I should point out how complete the unit lineup is and what the roles are suppose to be as well as the factory concept.

In general the factory is suppose to be slow and healthy. This is similar to the Shieldbots approach except there are no shields and the amph units are all expensive whereas shielbots are rather cheap. This role (expensive, slow, healthy) was chosen to contrast with hovercraft and also because there are no bot labs with those attributes.

The mains aims are to increase the difficulty in holding sea and flesh out the sub combat. Holding sea is currently a matter of a bit of AA and Enforcer, very little antisub is required if you have sea. Amph also opens up stealth along the coastlines and adds something for sea to do to invade land. The factory may or may not be completely land viable but at least some interesting units can be added that people could make on the land.

It is suppose to be particularly good at fighting on the coastlines as they can escape unfavourable situations by moving to or from the sea. For a heavily mixed Land/Sea map it would be nice to increase the viable factory count to 2.


Clam is the construction unit. It is fairly standard with 9bp, slow speed, high health and the ability to rez.

Archer is suppose to be a land raider that still depends on the sea. It gets a weapon buff from water and heals quickly while submerged. It is also able to push units into the sea or away from the coast so can be used with other amphs. It has completed mechanics but still needs balance work. Of course we're not expecting good balance but the current impulse looks too extreme.

Scalop should be able equal for cost with Hunter but worse strategically due to the large speed difference. On land it is a riot/assault type unit with low range. I tested out the values KR put in for the shotgun (which seem reasonable) and balanced the torpedo myself. So it is completed for now as far as rough balance goes.

Angler is Haxzor type AA because we both lack that kind of mobile AA and amphs are most likely to have problems with Shadow due to it's ability to hit submerged units. 2 Anglers combined have the burst damage to kill a Shadow for 440 cost total. They have long reload, low speed and low range.

There is a unit that is not found in the factory which is maybe the most Gimp-like. It is incomplete but the plan is to make a reasonably fast, cheap and weak torpedo raider that can kill undefended ships but loses to armed ships and turrets. On land it will have a similar weapon to Halberd. This is because Archer is already good against mobiles but is unable to deal sustained damage that would be required to kill high health things. The torp raider's land attack would be some sort of high damage, low ranged torpedo that it lobs at things.

Grizzly effectively does not have a weapon yet as I consider it's current weapon a placeholder. We are unsure what to do with it. It's role could be some kind of underwater fortress and heavy coastal assault while being very slow. It may be useful to make it the 3rd torpedo armed unit in the factory.

Lastly a high capacity amph transport would be nice but spring transports are quite finicky. The current idea is to add a mobile mass teleporter amph which can be used to use land units to attack from the coast. Of course teleporting would be useful on land and we have to be careful to not destroy the importance of unit placement. The teleporter would be fairly expensive and limited. Each teleporter would have to place a beacon and could only teleport units from near that beacon.

Again, I still worry that having a powerful raider (instead of a barely-functional one like the Scrubber) could break the early game on maps like The Hunters that use water as an anti-raiding barrier.

The teleporter is a neat concept, and has nice synergy with the fact that Amphs are slow... so is the idea that the teleporter drops a beacon, walks to the front, and then acts as a permanent gateway to transport unlimited size/cost of units?

I've actually proposed having some amphs able to inflate baloons to float on the surface (probably becoming immobile). This would help with the AA unit vs shadows, and potentially give a unit with only a land weapon some use in the sea (probably not the archert).

No jump though, because that gives Amph AT abilities (Cliff + water should = impassable) and it's much finickier to micro than a float toggle.

I would like to see some amph units with gravity gun like but invisible weapons that can secretly pull land units into water, it should only attack units on the land.

And how about some expensive terraforming crawling bombs that can create tiny lakes on low lands?

No, the ZK devs aren't going to play with grav guns more until they get a good MapGravity setting. Otherwise balancing the things is nigh-impossible.

I'd still love to see an antiswarm gunship armed with grav-guns and heat-rays.

But it seems to me that gravity guns aren't really different from archer's water cannons, maybe MapGravity doesn't effect the impulse effect of water cannons?

so duck is skrimsher?

Licho - I think that might also explain a lot of the rage that the Pyro gets too. It's not that a terrain-breaking lab can't have a raider, but that the raider needs to be a situational, specialized one. Assaults are a little thorny too. Which is why it makes sense that the Spider lab sports both the smallest raider and the smallest assault. Both useful units, but not the fearsome beasts their Cloaky or Shield counterparts are in a stand-up fight. Hovers fit too - the tricky scrubber and the bizarre Halberd are hardly typical raiders/assaults.

Which isn't to say that the amphib lab can't have a raider or an assault, just that it needs to be situational. For example, a kamikaze unit instead of a raider.