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Lance cancer spreads! And it's horrific

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Firepluk
So, lance disproportionately ruins balance of almost each and every zk game it appears in
Artillery supposed to have weaknesses - like having a projectile that takes time to travel to it's target which makes kiting and prediction -a thing-
Lance has instant hit, huge range, can sit behind heavy closed range defences and be cloaked...

[Spoiler]

and it gets really scary in big battles because of defences and big unit diversity - fleas everywhere, porc everywhere, erasers everywhere and lances just chill behind all this and shred u into pieces

Imo if we want a balanced game lance weapon should be replaced with something that has a slow projectile, like heavy tank artillery
Yes lance can't fire through hills, but in 99% cases it's not needed and when it's needed u just make a pilanger...
+2 / -0


5 years ago
Can you spam a bit of trash before your main attack to bait the lances into firing? Some fleas or flying bombs?
+0 / -0
Silo. The answer is always silo.

I keep forgetting though.

Also, Edit: Coming from Firepluk this is rich. Just yesterday I saw him pop up Cerberus to ward off an entire army of attackers. :) If the other guy has 3+ Lances, you can have Cerberus.
+0 / -0
Firepluk
quote:

Silo. The answer is always silo.
I keep forgetting though.

Lance is mobile and has instant hit, silo is static and has 3+ seconds flying time and each missile costs you a ton.
So nope... Going this way u rather soon end up with ur silo dead to lances lol

quote:

Also, Edit: Coming from Firepluk this is rich. Just yesterday I saw him pop up Cerberus to ward off an entire army of attackers. :) If the other guy has 3+ Lances, you can have Cerberus.

It worked because enemies were many but not very smart :D Cerberus has no problem of lance - it's static and u can actually kite its shots. Very easy to counter.
+2 / -0

5 years ago
Unlike Pillager, Lance needs active scouting. Is Vulture maybe too good at that, or is it Halberds?
+2 / -0
5 years ago
Simple solution: Make Snipers!
Snipers are exactly the same type of cancer as Lance, but they are permacloaked, so Lances can't kill them. They can also one-shot Lances. So problem solved!

quote:
something that has a slow projectile, like heavy tank artillery

You gotta be kidding me.
+3 / -0

5 years ago
quote:
Unlike Pillager, Lance needs active scouting.


This hits the nail on the head though all artillery including lances is scary in a large team game because you often don't need to actively scout. Your team almost always has eyes everywhere your artillery can shoot without putting themselves at risk.
+1 / -0
Firepluk
5 years ago
quote:
Unlike Pillager, Lance needs active scouting. Is Vulture maybe too good at that, or is it Halberds?

Or a sneaky scythe or how it's called that pesky cloaked AA bot...
+0 / -0

5 years ago
Fleas do deal with those pretty easily. There's also quite some micro involved in using Gremlins, Jethros, those pesky aa bots or Scythes. I haven't seen the matches you talk about though, so I can't do more than theorize.
+0 / -0
5 years ago
Multiplayer B608335 21 on Zed 2.3

+0 / -0
5 years ago
Just lost a game to hovercrafts too
+0 / -0
quote:
Multiplayer B608335 21 on Zed 2.3

Even outright removing Lance will not solve your problem if you play games like this.

If you choose to play a 10v10 clusterfuck on a single lane map, you are guaranteed to be in artillery hell as long as artillery class exists in ZK in its current form.

Hell, if you play those teams on most maps in general, you'll either end up in arty hell or in bertha/nuke hell.

Lance (and Emissary) is just one of the symptoms. And clusterfuck is just the ideal substrate for this dicease.
+7 / -0
I got a solution:

See a lance? /spectator cuz you know it will be bad.
See 5 lances? !resign cuz lobster team.
See cloaked lances? !resign cuz lance is a cancer on our community, driving new players away.

Either fight lance with lances, cancer with more cancer, or resign cuz wub team.
Alternatively spam storage walls to defeat the cancer. Tell your wubbernauts to spam storages up front to defeat the lance cancer. At least there they will be useful as lance bait.
+2 / -0

5 years ago
dirtbag spam should disable anything after some time. also, add some sneaky skythes!
+3 / -0


5 years ago
I totally agree, Lance has always sat outside of the counter structure.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
all arty is op in clusterfarts,your only choice is to rush catapult or bertha and aim for the best arty.or rush nuke.
+1 / -0


5 years ago
Or resign. How can you forget the best option? Resigning and spamming vote resigns are a key component of clusterfuck games. Managing resign is a skill.
+0 / -0
I like artillery duels and I think artillery spam is well within the metagame RPS and that it is largely map dependent.

I really like using Lance but their hardcounters and lack of suitable targets makes them mostly absent from 1v1.
I will usually not spend 1000 metal on a mobile artillery piece where there seldom are many suitable targets when it is easily overrun by raiders, bombers or gunships in coordinated strikes in 1v1.
That changes in large random team games when coordination diminishes, usability of raiders decrease as every commander can basically be considered a riot and the commanders themselves present a good target environment for Lances.

However Lance did have a pretty huge shadow buff:
Lance leading was fixed. It used to aim its' beam so that the target would be hit during the middle of the beam duration. Now Lance aims directly at the target which means it is even able to hit and usually kill Swifts if the Lance can just get the Swift in its' crosshair.
An annoying bug before the leading fix was that, if both the Lance and the target was moving in the same sideways velocity, the Lance would lead the target and the beam would miss completely as the beam would be in front of the target.

A Lance is very good at suppressing certain mid value targets and commanders.
This can really be felt on Comet Catcher Redux as a single early Lance threatens all front line commanders which makes it far too risky to use their riot and defense push capabilities.

However, even if games are dominated by artillery I find them fun.
There is lots of counterplay and lots of diversity in artillery duels.
Spotting is especially important for Lance as it will otherwise very likely miss its' target while you also need to preserve the shots for valuable targets and not just cheap spam.

Spotting can be done by Fleas, Owls, Scythes, Halberds, Spies/Widow and Gremlins, all with different quirks and counterplay.
Fleas are arguably the best spotters and counter-spotters and are especially good if the enemy are trying to use the relatively low range Sharpshooters as a counter to the Lances.
However, Scythes can still present a big threat to Lances even if there are moderate defenses around them and Scythes are much better against other units aswell.
Halberds on Hold Fire can be used and reused even against a Flea screen and moderate defenses behind. They are bad at shooting against moving targets though and enemy Emissaries and Lances have little trouble escaping their shots.
Owls are arguably the best option if the enemy have mobile cloakers protecting their own artillery units but the margins between being killed by AA or fighters are usually pretty small.

I still think that the counterplay between the different artillery pieces is interesting.
Snipers, is a counter typically in low density situations but gets countered the most by Flea screens and raider sweeps because they are slower and have less range than the other major artillery pieces.
Emissaries are the most ubiquitous artillery as they work just fine shooting at radar dots and then pulling them back when there are threats of breakthroughs. Emissaries, with their longer range, still pose a big threat to Lances as the Lances actually need LoS to the hit the Emissaries reliably and if the Emissaries sit way behind their Flea screen and AA range, it can be pretty hard to gain LoS to the Emissaries.
Tremors have even more range and make using spotters harder as they barrage the enemy front line and kills or decloaks spotters. Lances can still rush through the barrage fire of a Tremor and destroy it if they have reliable LoS on the Tremor but the Tremor can also just hide behind a terraformed wall.
Catapult is the trump all to artillery and once one side have 2-3 catapults, you can consider other types of artillery pretty much obsolete. However, the first Catapult to hit the field usually doesn't have large impact and other artillery can typically hide in cloak fields or under shields to stay safe.
The Catapult also needs to hit large densities of units to be effective and those are usually well behind Flea screens and other front line units. This gives cloaked Lances room to maneuver into range of the catapult and kill it if it is too exposed. The catapult in turn also risks being exposed to bombers, Scythes, Spies/Venoms and Skuttles as it goes for the money shot.
Big Bertha is too inaccurate at long ranges to really be a big threat to shielded or cloaked artillery. However, at medium range it is fairly accurate and a player that tracks the movements of the enemy shield balls and area cloaker fields can still provide very effective counter artillery by firing at opportune moments when the shields are drained or the artillery exposes themselves.

Edit:Impaler as counter artillery mostly forces the enemy artillery to move and waste their time. Also feels pretty luck based as the enemy might just move their units before getting hit or they might not.

TL:DR
Artillery duels are fun. Don't nerf Lance.
+9 / -0


5 years ago
I don't know whether I am more pleased by Lance meta or Flea meta. Who would have thought that Lance would start to be considered good. What a time to be alive.
+1 / -0

5 years ago
AUrankAdminGoogleFrog the game is almost balanced. You can tell when things are balanced when everyone hates everything.
+3 / -0
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