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Why Bertha uses no power?

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5 years ago
?
+5 / -0
why do the others use power?

well, tower pushing with desolators and squads of welders would probably be broken otherwise.

and bertha is built behind defense lines, so it would barely have any effect.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
It could cost more power to be operational than cerberus and desolator, giving you an additional way of stopping it from fireing
+7 / -0

5 years ago
Bertha was designed way earlier than grids were.
+2 / -0

5 years ago
I feel like none of the superweapons using power is because they're designed as game-enders, not things that should be countered. It might be interesting to add some large power requirement though to add some more gameplay value to these weapons.
+2 / -0

5 years ago
This idea never got much steam before..
+0 / -0

5 years ago
I would hardly call Bertha a "superweapon" much less a "game-ender".
+2 / -0


5 years ago
quote:
Bertha was designed way earlier than grids were.
None of the turrets that require energy were designed after grids.

Bertha and the superweapons don't require grids because they are not something you are likely to see on the frontline. I suppose they could have an energy requirement, but most of the time I feel like it would be a hassle rather than something significant.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
Sounds like it could generate interesting game moments to me.
+6 / -0
I'd rather have super weapons cost energy for firing like in TA, rather than requiring energy grid, so energy would have some uses in late game other than overdrive.
+2 / -0

5 years ago
Don't know for TA, but in BA the equivalent of DRP would consume a huge amount of energy on each shot, so that players were frequently unable to fire it continuously for more than tens of seconds. But it would then undermine their status as game enders.
+1 / -0
Firepluk
If I were designing something like bertha right now I would make each shot directly cost energy and draw it from player's storage and of course grid requirement...
Wanna make pew? Please have 100E stockpiled in storage... no E - no pew


this both puts a requirement on a steady E supply and enough storage and creates additional game depth if u want to scale your bertha spam
Right now Bertha is HILARIOUSLY overpowered for cost - shots are free, AOE is huge, range is insane, rate of fire is decent... Accuracy may be not the best but it works way better if u have target in LOS and insane AOE compensates for low accuracy
+6 / -0

5 years ago
or in other words, bertha is the most unfun unit. ever.
+2 / -0
5 years ago
It felt like a missed opportunity to me from the beginning that super-weapons didn't cost power from the beginning. I thought it would be a great mechanic - for both the attacker and the defender.

And actually use energy: like 50 E/s continuously for 6 seconds after each shot, and if you stop firing, it just loads the next shot and now you have an extra 50 E/s in the bank. Also, naturally you'd discount bertha's price by the equivalent cost in power plants. It would look cool, feel cool, be fun to set up the grid, and be fun to disable it. Also, this would give me a reason to use fusion/geo.


Regarding Bertha, I absolutely adore the weapon. I love big arcing projectiles. To me, it's more enjoyable to use than every other superweapon. It might be the physics that makes it feel real.

However in terms of power, I was unimpressed with it. The extreme shallow angle at which it fires gives it irritatingly awful inaccuracy along the radial axis, even when I terraform it 300 elmo high. And the splash was disappointing too. I would like to increase the splash by maybe 10% or the accuracy by raising its angle of fire. (if it's at 15 degrees, I'd like to test 30 degrees, even if that means enemies have to build their defensive terra a bit higher).

If people think that would make it too strong, I'm highly in favor of nerfing its reload speed to make it a far punchier and more impressive shot. I'd be ecstatic if it had a 30-second reload (with buffed accuracy and splash to compensate) with a "bertha shot ready" tone when it recharged. And consequently most shots would be manually fired, and you'd want to watch them like you do a nuke.
+0 / -0
Firepluk
quote:
If people think that would make it too strong, I'm highly in favor of nerfing its reload speed to make it a far punchier and more impressive shot. I'd be ecstatic if it had a 30-second reload (with buffed accuracy and splash to compensate) with a "bertha shot ready" tone when it recharged. And consequently most shots would be manually fired, and you'd want to watch them like you do a nuke.

It would be totally different weapon then
Just yesterday we had a game where moep made 3 berthas... I nuked him, he remade and they continued to decimate our forces on all fronts - preventing us from pushing. This alone is golden. It took immense effort and scouting from me to land second nuke(had to disable 4 antis while having a steady 5-7 fps/sec)... But even after this by the time I nuked we were so far behind game was lost... And partly because of bertha-cluster suppressive fire.

You see, in huge cluster games low accuracy of bertha has NO significance - the longer the game goes the more units enemy has and the more efficient single bertha becomes. It definitely needs some balance changes and one way is to put an enormous E requirement like 100E+ per shot, hell even 100E per shot would be not enough to balance it out in huge cluster games...
+0 / -0
5 years ago
I've just noticed something:

Likho:
Damage: 2000
AoE: 96
Reload: 30s + flight time
Cost:2000
Killabilty: Yes

Bertha:
Damage: 2002
AoE: 96
Reload: 7s
Cost:5000
Killability: Hell no

They have the effectively the same projectile. From this, any reasonable person would deduce that bertha needs at least 30s reload.

This is what I'd do:
Range: 6200 -> 3800 (to actually make it killable, it doesn't even need so much range)
Proj. speed: 1100 -> 500 (I don't understand why all the long range projectiltes in ZK are so fast, they really don't need to be)
AoE: 96 -> 130
Complete removal of inaccuracy
Reload: 7s -> 49s (Same reason as for why Likho's reload speed was increased, every shot should count)

This moves Bertha from "Fire blindly into enemy radar dots and get CA" to "Fire shots at slow-moving, dangerous and medium weight units strategically".


+3 / -1
I feel the need to remind people that energy drain is equivalent to increased metal cost, and energy drain is mostly a buff compared to increased cost. For example, consider a Bertha that drains 100 energy per shot. This is 14.2 energy per second, which is about 400 metal in Fusions. A 5K metal Bertha which drains 100 energy per shot is effectively a 5.4k metal Bertha which generates 100 energy when not firing. Here are some advantages:
  • If you make the 400 metal of energy generation first, you get overdrive income while the Bertha is being built.
  • You get overdrive income while the Bertha is not firing (perhaps it is stunned or aiming).
  • If the Bertha is destroyed you don't need to make additional energy to rebuild the Bertha (energy income is a bit like supply/houses).
  • The Bertha can be set to hold fire if you really need the energy for something else.
  • Energy becomes cheaper as the game progresses, with larger, more efficient, energy sources.

The main downside of requiring energy to fire is that the Bertha cannot fire if the energy is destroyed. However, it is much easier to defend energy than it is to defend a Bertha. People can hide their energy in obscure corners of the map, and it requires scouting to uncover. A Bertha needs to be close enough to the enemy to be useful and reveal their approximate location when firing.

I am not particularly against things that require energy to fire, if there is a good reason to add the mechanic. My point is that the desire for a nerf is a pretty bad reason for wanting something to have energy upkeep. 100 energy to fire sounds like a big nerf, but in effect it is a small cost increase.
+9 / -0


5 years ago
If I were to nerf bertha, it would just be to increase the reload time slightly.

quote:
Range: 6200 -> 3800 (to actually make it killable, it doesn't even need so much range)
Proj. speed: 1100 -> 500 (I don't understand why all the long range projectiltes in ZK are so fast, they really don't need to be)
AoE: 96 -> 130
Complete removal of inaccuracy
Reload: 7s -> 49s (Same reason as for why Likho's reload speed was increased, every shot should count)


This is very extreme and would nerf bertha into uselessness. 49s is ridiculous for a reload time. Basically this would be objectively worse than a missile silo firing at a speed of 12.3m/s. This would put it in a similar spot as Detriment.
+2 / -0
5 years ago
Becuase, First. Bertha was designed way earlier than grids were. 2. Firing doesn't take energy just explosives
+0 / -0
Firepluk
quote:
Firing doesn't take energy just explosives


quote:
The Bertha is a massive cannon that fires high-energy plasmoids across the map.

http://zero-k.info/Static/UnitGuide#unit-Big%20Bertha

quote:
A plasmoid is a coherent structure of plasma and magnetic fields

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmoid

quote:
Plasma (from Ancient Greek πλάσμα​, meaning 'moldable substance'[1]) is one of the four fundamental states of matter, and was first described by chemist Irving Langmuir[2] in the 1920s.[3] Plasma can be artificially generated by heating or subjecting a neutral gas to a strong electromagnetic field to the point where an ionised gaseous substance becomes increasingly electrically conductive, and long-range electromagnetic fields dominate the behaviour of the matter.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)

No energy - no fun and explosives have nothing to do with bertha shooting ^^

For consistency reasons everything in zk universe should consume energy, one way or another... Not gonna be done tho :D
+0 / -0
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