Super weapons \ nukes

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Forever

5 years ago
(edited 5 years ago)

Starlight:
Give the location where the laser hits line of sight (eye of Sauron as per

GoogleFrog 's expression)
Reduce the terraforming damage it does to 50-60%.
Don't change anything else to it because it's dedicated for tearing down strong units and shields

Zenith:
Increase the metal cost to build it since team game players with low ELO rush all game this structure and brakes the ELO balance.
Let it have the same damage it has right now but make it less effective against shields for example like 60-70% less damage against shields.

Disco:
Don't change anything to this structure right now, just the damage it gives to shields to 30-40%.

This combination of changes will make:
Starlight a dedicated anti-defense/shields and strong against heavy units but weak against terraform
Zenith a dedicated anti-base/expansion killer that works well on location without any kind of shield protection
Disco just a combination of both but in comparison to Zenith, it has constant attack and has bigger AOE.

+0 / -0

[GBC]1v0ry_k1ng

5 years ago
(edited 5 years ago)

I feel like the Starlight should slice through any amount of terraform. Mega Superweapons shouldn't really have any counter except the time they need to win the game

+2 / -1

Anarchid

5 years ago

If it cuts through non-reinforced walls too easily, well, that's a reason to get razor-reinforced walls backed by shields and nanos.

+0 / -1

GoogleFrog

5 years ago

izirayd multiple rotating lasers would be cool. A big manualfire mode could be quite cool too. Rotating lasers could perhaps be achieved with a fleet of smaller Glint models. Your video gives a sense of what it could look like, but not really a sense of how it would work.

In designing Zero-K I have this idea of layering on complexity through the use of physics/geometry. By 'physics' I don't mean trying to replicate the attributes of the real world. I mean 'physics' in the sense of a set of simple, universally applicable, underlying rules that govern the behaviour of objects in the world. The physics of a game are not going to be as universal as real world physics, approximations and exceptions will exist, however, the idea of physics can still be a guide for design. Of course, it is worthwhile making the game physics look like real world physics because it is intuitive and coherent. All games have some sort of physics in the sense that units have speeds and position, but few try to expand and use the physics as a generator of depth. More popular methods of fleshing out the systems of a game include things like armour types, activabable abilities, and complex economies or tech structures.

(Additionally, you can add detailed physics then owl it but setting the parameters such that the physics barely matters mechanically.)

The placement of a Starlight matters since it has different abilities depending on the distance to its target and the intervening terrain. Hills can be hidden behind, the laser can be outrun at low angles. This variation arises simply from the position of the reflecting mirror and the angular speed at which it can rotate. A Starlight that just caused a vertical laser to strike down from the sky is the antithesis of creating depth via geometry. I much preferred Starlight to the pre-rework Zenith because the old Zenith would shoot a stream of meteors from high in the sky. The position of the Zenith or its target did not really matter. The new Zenith is a much better because you can store the meteors relatively close to the ground and release them in a burst.

Mechanically, the weapon in the C&C 3 video appears to do the following:

Indicate to everyone that the weapon is going to hit a particular location.
After a fixed delay, deal a small amount of damage in an area.
After another delay, deal a much larger amount of damage in a larger area.

Most of the weapons in Zero-K have more moving parts than the circling skylaser superweapon. The circling lasers don't even appear to do anything.

+0 / -0

Forever

5 years ago

Anarchid you don't have time to make razors with shields and Nanos to counter starlight. Also, starlight kills the razors very fast and then it tears the wall easily. Giving it the ability to rip thru the ground and terraform faster will make it op and no building made underground will be saved. We already have Zenith that gives meteors from above to kill underground stuff.

I strongly agree to make counters to each unit in this game because right now everything has a counter except these three particular special buildings. Isn't this what RPS is about?

+0 / -0

Anarchid

5 years ago
(edited 5 years ago)

quote:
you don't have time to make razors with shields and Nanos to counter starlight

That's why my sentence had an "if" at the start. IF it is made powerful against terraform, you still have the razorform defense (which you have to also reinforce further with caretakers and shields, if you want to live longer).

quote:
I strongly agree to make counters to each unit in this game because right now everything has a counter except these three particular special buildings. Isn't this what RPS is about?

The role of game enders is to end games that cannot be ended by other means. The counter to them is to end games by other means.

+2 / -1

Forever

5 years ago

How many endgames did you play recently

Anarchid? Why should I listen to your advice since I barely see you having an endgame in Zero-K? You do mostly 1 vs 1 and Starlight, Disco and Zenith are especially for the late game.

+0 / -0

GoogleFrog

5 years ago

I was comparing the three superweapons until I discovered that Starlight suffered from basic issues. Every 20 seconds Starlight would fire a fat version of its basic cutting laser. This fat laser had the same AoE, damage, and cratering of the thin laser. As far as I can tell the size and sound were the only difference.

I differentiated the weapons with the following changes:

Cutter DPS 5400 -> 4500
Craterpuncher damage 5400 -> 18k

The Craterpuncher fires for 1 second every 20 seconds. This change makes the Craterpuncher do something, but it still only 17% the units overall DPS. The Cutter could lose more DPS, hover I don't want to go too low because destroying swathes of units with the 'targeting laser' is awesome. Starlight would suck if it could only kill one Dante every 20 seconds. There is a lot of room here still so if Starlight needs nerfing at any point I think nerfing the Cutter slightly is a decent option.

I also looked at boosting the Craterpuncher's ability to terraform. This terraform is like smooth except that it is trying to 'smooth' the terrain to a lower height than it actually is:

It might be a bit extreme.

Starlight has two big weaknesses - terrain and scouting. I am leaning more on the side of reducing its weakness to terrain than implementing an Eye of Sauron. That isn't to say that terrain should not cause it to waste valuable time during which opponents could try to snipe it. Being hard countered by terrain made Starlight a pretty bad option against well prepared opponents.

Making the Starlight scout for itself would just harden its hardcounter relationships. It would be able to kill most things without any requirement for scouting support. Things behind terrain would mostly be safe. I like how the Starlight requires some thought to use regarding scouting, and your opponents can somewhat counter it by killing the scouts. Perhaps my more general stance is that there should be soft-counters to superweapons that allow the defenders to buy some time to snipe it, but no hard counters that stave off defeat indefinitely.

+3 / -0

Forever

5 years ago
(edited 5 years ago)

Can you make "Craterpuncher" be a D gun for the starlight so we can manually micro it :D?
Omg starlight is strong now that it tears the ground like that :))

+1 / -0

CrazyEddie

5 years ago

On a tangent: using the Ultimatum Dgun sound for the craterpunch is kinda wimpy. The Lucifer/Lance sound would be much better.

Also the buzzing sound could use more bass, it sounds a little thin and weak as it is.

+2 / -0

Anarchid

5 years ago
(edited 5 years ago)

How about this for the Craterpuncher sound? https://freesound.org/people/BlueDelta/sounds/446753/

Additional aesthetic changes could include some dust and additional snow-like sparkles, like the aborted Disruptor Cyclops CEG had.

+0 / -0

GoogleFrog

5 years ago

Firstly,

Forever I'm not going to change the amount of damage that something deals against shields.

quote:
I strongly agree to make counters to each unit in this game because right now everything has a counter except these three particular special buildings. Isn't this what RPS is about?

If everything had an effective defensive counter then players could sit by themselves and constantly grow their economy. Offensive is expensive in FFA and gets you killed. In other words, for FFA to work there needs to be economic scale at which offense becomes much cheaper than defense. The superweapons are designed to be those offensive options.

There should be ways to mitigate the damage of a superweapon. You can spread out your base, use terraform, make a lot of shields, prevent scouting. In the end this should not be sustainable. If someone is left with a superweapon for an extended period of time then they should win. The counterplay is to kill the superweapon (perhaps requiring some alliances) or to exert too much pressure for them to make one.

Currently it costs you about 80k in Aegis and Singu to block a Starlight indefinitely. A mere 40k in shields will (if fully charged) buy you 70 seconds of time. Perhaps Starlight mitigating the damage of Starlight is currently too hard, but stopping one entirely should not be easy. I would not go lower than requiring 60k in shields.

Incidentally, 32k in shields easily hold back the DPS of a Zenith. The issue here is that at full charge they can only block 28% of the damage of a 300-meteor burst.

quote:
The role of game enders is to end games that cannot be ended by other means. The counter to them is to end games by other means.

The role is not to directly end games. Their role is to make offense so much more powerful than defense that it is worth making when you are a single player against seven opponents. If we just wanted to directly end games then they would simply be Wonders.

quote:
This combination of changes will make:
Starlight a dedicated anti-defense/shields and strong against heavy units but weak against terraform
Zenith a dedicated anti-base/expansion killer that works well on location without any kind of shield protection
Disco just a combination of both but in comparison to Zenith, it has constant attack and has bigger AOE.

I don't think superweapons should be as weak to anything as Starlight is against terraform. Neither of the other superweapons have that much of a weakness. Instead of differentiating them by explicit weaknesses, I'll try planning out a way to differentiate them by the pattern of destruction (in space and time) that they can dish out.

Starlight - Highly localised in space, delocalised in time.

Pros: Highest DPS, always active, ruins the map with trenches.
Cons: Expensive, can take a long time to switch targets, partially blocked by terrain, low AoE, requires scouting.

Zenith - Highly localised in time, delocalised in space.

Pros: Highest burst damage, can constant fire, instant reaction time due to lack of aiming.
Cons: Low DPS, long stockpile time.

Disco Rave Party - Lower range and moderate localisation in space and time.

Pros: Cheap, does not reveal its location, eventually wears down any defense, mostly ignores terrain.
Cons: Low range, relatively low damage, cannot snipe single targets.

To achieve this I would do the following:

Include the Starlight changes from my previous post.
Make the cost ordering DRP < Zenith < Starlight by swapping the cost of DRP and Zenith.
Reduce Zenith meteor damage slightly, say 2000 -> 1700 (still more than pre-buff). Note that 1700 damage requires 2 shots to penetrate a charged shield.

Zenith should cost more than DRP simply because summoning a huge cluster of meteors is just more awesome than a gun that shoots rainbows. If you want a few more reasons:

DRP has the lowest range at 7500, while both Zenith and Starlight have 9000.
DRP has a measly 890 point-blank DPS. My nerfed Zenith has 59% more.

The utility effects of DRP complicate matters (slow, EMP, terraform, DoT) but it is also highly inaccurate.

I've already gone through the Starlight changes. If Starlight becomes the best superweapon, even given its cost, then I would decrease its Cutter damage slightly or increase its cost.

Less damage for Zenith should make it quite a bit worse against shields. This should encourage people would be encouraged to be a bit more smart about stockpiling to break through. A full stockpile still deals 5.9x the damage required to kill a Detriment, which should easily kill it with spread taken into account.

It may also be the case that 32k is too cheap for a superweapon. Should all the superweapons be a little more expensive?

+0 / -0

CrazyEddie

5 years ago
(edited 5 years ago)

Anarchid - I wouldn't use that track as it is, because as it is it's very recognizable as a thunderclap. Bits and pieces of it sampled and remixed might work.

A better use for it might be using some samples from it as added rumble underneath the constant buzz of the cutting beam. ... although the buzz itself is basically fine, it just needs more bass in the buzz, and adding rumble probably wouldn't feel right. Just my speculation; hard to judge without actually sitting down and playing with the sounds in audacity.

+0 / -0

Anarchid

5 years ago
(edited 5 years ago)

Yes, the intention would be to mix it with something of course. It's longer than the one second worth of Craterpuncher's duration as well.

+0 / -0

Forever

5 years ago

GoogleFrog

I constantly see Zenith and Disco rushes on maps. Simple low to mediocre ELO players that do this all game without any consequences.
The cost they are having right now makes them an easy rush or a big fail in certain games. I suggest increasing all the costs of superweapons since they are braking the ELO balance if anybody can rush them in a 15 vs 15.

Since only Zenith and Disco are the most rushed superweapons increasing the cost of them will also require an increase in the cost of the Starlight.

So the suggestion is to increase the cost of these three superweapons with at least 10000 and even 20000 more metal. While doing this I also suggest adding small buffs to them so they would perform according to the metal investment. Since Starlight will be upgraded in the future as per your decision and the conversation we had here we also need some kind of buff for Zenith and Disco.
Maybe a range increase?

+1 / -0

[GBC]1v0ry_k1ng

5 years ago
(edited 5 years ago)

Maybe playing 15v15 on maps sized for much smaller games is the actual problem

+3 / -3

Forever

5 years ago

Why do I have to find people like you

[GBC]1v0ry_k1ng that likes to play poker and guess what happens? Watch the last commented replay I made and you will see it's actually a big map (Delta Siege Dry Deluxe)

+0 / -0

[GBC]1v0ry_k1ng

5 years ago

DSD is proportioned as a chokepoint map though (eg. the size of the frontline where breakthrough is efficient is very small relative to size of map, defending is thus super easy). 8v8 would be a lot on DSD, 15v15 is a huge oversaturation.

+0 / -0

swappan

5 years ago

GoogleFrog
"There should be ways to mitigate the damage of a superweapon. You can spread out your base, use terraform, make a lot of shields, prevent scouting. In the end this should not be sustainable. If someone is left with a superweapon for an extended period of time then they should win. The counterplay is to kill the superweapon (perhaps requiring some alliances) or to exert too much pressure for them to make one."

spread out your base to have to defend even more? or get killed 1-by-1, how do you use terraform with offense. How does one prevent scouting? How does one kill a superweapon?

GoogleFrog
"The role is not to directly end games. Their role is to make offense so much more powerful than defense that it is worth making when you are a single player against seven opponents. If we just wanted to directly end games then they would simply be Wonders."

Funny thing is they act like wonders already. The superweapons are invincible. the only counter is another superweapon or win early before superweapon is up. Also superweapons go hand-in-hand with powerful defense. They are for the team that has good defense. Why is it balanced for FFA anyway. That mode is even more random than teamgames.

some examples:

B755273 15 on Koom Gorge v1 hold front, nuke into zenith into resign

B755046 25 on Small Supreme Battlefield V2 2 meteors at around the same time. one side won by making quakes from silo and meteor strike killing enemy zenith. Game was over after that.

B755014 23 on Colorado_v1 both sides made zenith but game was over before that.

B754627 27 on Emain Macha v3 2 unkillable zeniths, one side tried to kill enemy zentih, other side destroyed everything else with meteors and won by that. zenith was that last thing to die btw.

B754501 23 on Verdant v4 unkillable zenith. tried with silo, but got scouted and killed over and over.

B754027 24 on Nuclear_Winter_v1 15-ish minute zenith rush. was over after that (unkillable zenith).

B755265 16 on Small Supreme Battlefield V2 nuke + zenith and detriment. Was over after that. Other side tried to make a zenith but detroyed by meteors before finished

B754674 29 on Icy Run v2 2 meteors, one killed the other, other got killed by 20-ish jacks One side ressurects faster and wins.

My problem with super weapons is the following:

- Extremely hard to kill, because deep in enemy territory, because of terraform and best AA is actually not even AA (faraday and stardust)
- They are free once build. So all attention can go to units and scouting.
- You can just ressurect and fun starts all over.
- Zenith does not require micro. Just kill a blob of units from time to time.
- I actually think it can be fun for one side to defend till superweapon is up and the other side to attack it before its up. But it is mostly unsuspected.

Solutions:

- Make zenith require metal upkeep (maybe even like 50 m/s since nuke is 20), increase meteor reclaim from 10 to like 50-100 or even more. It does give nett metal now also. So you need to target wisely to not just feed metal.
- Make starlight require energy upkeep with grid. A lot like 500 or even more. So you can kill energy or grid to disable it.
- Make them visible from start, or better like 10% so people cant place fake ones all over. That way you set the timer for some (fun) rush-and-defend gameplay. Like age of empires 2 wonders.
- Make them not able to ressurect.
- Make faraday less usefull against planes

+4 / -0

Anarchid

5 years ago
(edited 5 years ago)

quote:
- Make them not able to ressurect.

This road leads to resurrect being removed altogether, i think.

But even making it strictly commander-only would be great, few things irk me as much as killing some precious enemy asset only to see it pop back up in a few minutes because the enemy has 10 athenas.

(This is extra annoying with singus because once the athenas exist and enemy has at least one singu survive your deep strike, he'll just rez them all)

+2 / -0

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