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Hunter had been very weak for a while

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12 years ago
Hunter losses vs sub and scallops big time.

1: slow weapon
2: short range
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12 years ago
The turret turn speed is also really slow, which is awful on a unit where you just want to get the shot off then run away.

The only thing you can do as ships vs amphs is sub spam now.
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12 years ago
I dont know if it was changed but sub could out run hunters depth charge.
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12 years ago
Hunters are the most useless ship out there. Cost for cost they barely beat subs, they die to everything and are in general redundant. IMHO the best way is to make them:
* 0.75x model size (just scale)
* 2x-3x reload time, but allow a 2-4 torpedo salvo
* 1.5x range (to allow them to hit sub before dying)
* 1.5x sonar range (same reason)
* 1.3x speed
* 0.7x price
The idea is that it would be a proper torpedo boat - anti sub + anti heavy, torpedoes can be unguided to keep it balanced against raiders. Right now sea raids can not have any anti-sub stuff with them because hunters are way too clumsy. The new torp boats should match the speed of corvettes and work better against occasional bigger targets like underwater fusions and/or scallops. Also they will make for a decent alternative to the missile frigates, providing massive alpha-strike, but underwater.

Remark - this can break balance with amphs making amph raids much less effective.
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Hunter's also have a problem attacking subs that are directly below them.

Sub's can attack sideways now and out run hunters weapon. Sub attacking sideways is good but the out running is bad.
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12 years ago
Hunters can actually be effective offensively as long as you have room to get them up to full speed and them a large radius arcing turn that lets the turrets track. Defensively, they are a mess as they require way to much micro. I think cutting the buffing the acceleration, turn rate, and turret speed would be a big help. I also agree that the model size is out of wack vs. The cost.
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12 years ago
The ship lab needs someway of dealing with early duck raids (less than half the cost of a hunter) and some way of dealing with scallop swarms. If the sub is a skirmisher then there needs to be some sort of anti underwater riot. Maybe give the torps some AoE?
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12 years ago
yeah they are pretty worthless

I've heard they are only really meant to be used for things like countering amphibs but scallops beat them so cost effectively
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12 years ago
Ok Hunters have been buffed, probably not the way we wanted but still buffed. With respect to aoe against duckswarms my opinion is that the best candidate is destroyer. Okay it is 700 metal, but if it is given depthcharges with AOE it could beat duckswarms very nicely cuz it has enough hp to survive 1-2 salvos and get out for repairs.
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12 years ago
Raiders should not have so much HP.
Duck is good, Archer maybe, but Hunter was originally intended to deal with subs, not amphs.

Did anybody noticed that subs are almost as fast as Ravager and Scorcher?
And I fear if we make hunter faster, it will look silly vs hovers and amphs.
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12 years ago
In fact subs are somewhat too fast. They are supposed to be super-slow units, but IMHO sub should see TL turret before it starts shooting. Essentially subs are supposed to be ambush units, not raiders. But right now they are all-rounders against amph which kind of forces them to be OP. And if they are slow, a pack of destroyers/hunters can go on top and bomb the shit out of them, not the other way around.

Overall, sea has such nerf ranges on everything that balancing subs now makes zero sense. I'd first increase range of every single sea unit by about 20% and add extra 20% to that for destroyers so they actually outrange hammers sitting on the shore (they have height advantage which means destroyers can not hit them). And then we can talk. Right now the only real artillery for sea is warlord which is prohibitively expensive in smaller games.
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I agree with everything HeadHunter said in this thread.
- make hunters shoot salvo and make them more agile and cheaper
- subs should be primarily ambush units, right now they are too fast
- buff range of light and medium ships
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12 years ago
@[GBC]HeadHunter

The destroyer is fast and got a lot of HP. It can take 1 penetrator shoot and still keep going. Let the hammers walk down to the shore and then just drive up to them, kill them and retreat before you take too much damage.
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Godde, I know all that, yet as you remember from our last battle, you lost all your destroyers worth about 3k metal to 2 penes under a shield. BTW the only reason I use shields in naval battles is cuz ships have so little HP. I remember OTA games where naval battels used to be REALLY EPIC, like plasma balls flying all over the screen, and radar wobble actually affected those quite a lot (e.g. a range of destroyer was big enough that it could not hit shit on radar due to wobble, and it also allowed 3-4 destroyers to rape annihilator that would uselessly fire into nowhere). I understand that ZK is not so long-ranged game, but IMHO artillery is overall quite lame now. And that involves destroyers too. In OTA it was a decent range set
- plasma artillery
- MRLS like merls
- annihilators, mavericks (arty walkers) and other specialty units
- Lasers (HLT)
- rocket launchers (rocko etc)
- plasma cannons (short range, like on tanks)
- Lasers (LLT)
- HMG guns like on peewees

And that made some reasonable sense. In ZK AA has HUGE range compared to ground units using the same weapons. Artillery barely outranges skirmishers. And it is especially obvious in sea battles since units are bigger, so an arty unit that shoots like 5x own length away? You kidding right?
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12 years ago
If there had just been 2 penes and 1 shield the penes wouldn't have lasted for long.

I'd like that kind of gameplay with longer ranged units but I don't see why Zero-K should become that game.
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12 years ago
2 pene, 3 typhoon, 2 sub, 1-2 destroyers, com with TL and jammer, mariner + 2 aa ships + 2 aa hovers + shield. That was pretty much all the stuff out there.

Shield is needed to take occasional hits that land on you when you leave jammer range. Typhoons are antiswarm, com gives jammer (which is pretty decent compared to eraser as it has 4K hit points, TL and can repair), rest is obvious.
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12 years ago
Problem Arty vs skirms
1/2 damage on double range seems ok.
1/2 damage on 5/3 range is ok too.

[color=grey]We have about 1/2 damage on something like 4/3 range.
Shields provide enough recharge to stand against light arty, nanos repair - only porc breakers cause problems (then you need behe)[/color]

Back to topic: Hunter should be a fast assault ship which can retreat, because it should kill slow units from a rez fac.
The only problem is to avoid redundancy with corvette
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12 years ago
corv is antiswarm (not riot like cruiser) so it will never be redundant. Give it same range as stardust and it will be super-useful unit.
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12 years ago
What is the difference between riot and antiswarm?

Because in our model of unit classes, they're the same thing.
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Well imho riot units in ZK are mostly those with large AOE. And antiswarms are those that deal alot of DPS that can be spread out to smaller targets. For example, missile trucks are antiswarm (they do rape glavies nicely), but not riot units as they do not actually create this OMG MY HALF ARMY IS GONE effect typical to riots. A good example of riot unit is banisher which creates precisely this kind of effects, and dies to swarms easily. As you can clearly see, those are not the same things, even in ZK=)

Applied to the corv example - if you have 10-15 skeeters you can rape the frigate easily as it will never be able to kill them all in time. However 2-3 corvettes will kill those skeeters with ease. Frigate is a riot unit - designed to create panic and cause retreat. Capability to do AOE damage is nice, but not the most important part.
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