Let's discuss spider raider unit

Upvoted for the cutest spider gif. Dunno about the proposal though.

Don't pick Spider on flat maps then. You won't place shipyard in a puddle either.

ZK is balanced for 1v1 and Spider is one of the facs where it shows the most.

• Fleas prevent naked expansion. In teams there is no naked expansion anyway, since there is a wavefront of comms walking toward mid. This is why Flea is underwhelming.
• Spiders themselves are hardly raidable due to Venom and Weaver radar. But in teams that doesn't mean anything because there is next to no raiding.
• Fleas are maphack. But in teams you usually already have coverage over your entire side and the unit density is too high for them to survive on the opposite side.

Okay so you propose a "raider". What exactly is interesting about this "raider". How does it benefit gameplay?
I cannot think of it otherwise than "bigger flea" just by reading the concept and it is not a good sign.

Units usually have some sort of a gimmick, specialisation or they enable some interesting strategies to be employed. As I see the only interesting combo it would give would be "raider" - Venom very early game combo but that applies to any raider that could be added to spider factory.

Orfelius I just compare spider fac with cloakies. Cloakies are one of the best fac because of versatility of units it provides. Spiders maybe have vision from fleas but hardly can capitalise on it because they are so slow. I propose something based on glavie. I imagine it being interesting to use having shorter range, but more dps. It would still inherit spider fac theme aka being easily outmanuvered if not used in better terrain.

How would it benefit gameplay? I think early game of spiders would be much more tense and interesting. No number of fleas can outrun llt tower. Many people moan about games often turning into porcfests.

@edit: I know porc >> raiders, but introducing more possibilities to deal with expansions before porcing happens. Right now everything goes down to porc->crabe at spider fac.

quote: I propose something based on glavie.

Glaive is more interesting. Glaive has rapid regen which allows for hit and run tactics and it is already too simmilar to Bandit. A 3rd unit of simmilar design would just not be good from the overall design standpoint.

quote: Cloakies are one of the best fac because of versatility of units it provides.

Making a factory more like another factory doesn't make the target factory anymore unique or interesting. I would say that the biggest thing going for spider factory is that they are either extremely specialist (flea, venom, redback) or extremely generalist (reculse, crabe, hermit) and they ofc scale hills without any issues.

quote: It would still inherit spider fac theme aka being easily outmanuvered if not used in better terrain.

Raiders are about manouverability. By cutting its speed you would basically make a weaker but slightly faster Redback.

quote: Many people moan about games often turning into porcfests.

Well there are other factories as well so changing spiders would not be a way to change that. Besides I would say that spider factory is the 2nd best at dealing with light porc spam (after shieldbots ofc) due to Hermits being a thing.

quote: How would it benefit gameplay? I think early game of spiders would be much more tense and interesting.

Heres the deal: imo your whole proposition is way too generic. Like I said: its a "raider" without any interesting feature or sub role while ZK is full of those and for a good reason. They just make a game that much more interesting.

quote: Many people moan about games often turning into porcfests.

Then finally get rid of or nerf porc. Increase Defender's reload time by 1-2s. It'll still be spammed and useful, but games will feel slightly less porcy.

quote: No number of fleas can outrun llt tower

Same was said for Glaives and Stardust. Sponge proved them wrong.

quote: You won't place shipyard in a puddle either.

u sure???

I didn't come here to argue. I was curious what is your stance about where do you want this game to go and how to make it evolve.

Personally I think that as many unit/factory diversity to choose from while still making game balanced and every feel unique/with a niche is awesome.

Everytime I was playing spiders I was missing something, and had to eventually switch fac. After a while it was clear that I was missing raider unit or something a bit faster than hermit. Also to be honest, spiders in real life have pretty fast movements at their scale. Spiders in game are super slow and I was missing something faster to play with other than flea.

My proposition was generic, because I don't have good idea for it yet, if u want to make it unique we can brainstorm. Rather I wanted a discussion whether spider fac could use a raider or not.

Also regarding venom, it would be quite difficult to use raiders with venom because of their splash and stunning both allies with short range and enemies.

If you don't introduce new stuff/changes every project eventually dies off.

I have few other points to discuss, started with raider spider first.

quote: Also to be honest, spiders in real life have pretty fast movements at their scale.

That's because they're < 10cm and < 1kg. Now imagine a > 1m spider at > 1000kg. I'm pretty sure the heavier something gets the less efficient legs become and that on a flat surface a modern robot with wheels outruns a robot with legs of equal size.