Superweapons are all wrong- Discuss

drp cost 9000 less and its very much enough to kill your opponents (in teams). and yes i think we all know detri and zenith is trash, they require the same situation as drp/starlight (opponent not pushing/already losing) but dont end the game as fast, and/or as safely

--all above is in teams

whenever i see superweapons being used people almost always opt for a DRP, it's probably the only superweapon that's worth it

quote: Also make them non-resurrectable.

Learn to gib.

If you have two "superpowers" in FFA, the game may devolve into two Starlights out of range of each other, creating massive no build, no go zones. Even when one SL has been destroyed, it is not too time consuming the ressurect it, and in the meantime, inevitably much of value has already been lost to the enemy SL.

Starlight is not fun to use, but an exercise in constantly forcefiring in the correct spots in order to keep up with the amount of damage the enemy starlight is doing. It also seems to cause huge amounts of lag, making it very difficult to issue orders to any other units.

Starlight trivializes all other superweapons and the detriment.

As bloa said, Zenith just sucks. DRP seems to be the better game ender in the lob-pot, but this doesn't transfer to FFA, as it does not defend itself as well against threats as the SL does. DRP seems fairly balanced in FFA, but rarely gets played because it is so inferior to Starlight.

Super weapons need changes. The game would be a bit more enjoyable if Star light was just removed. In lieu of this, give it unlimited range so you don't end up with these laggy 2 hour games of who-gets-exhausted-first. Maybe buff Zenith instead, including giving it unlimited range, so that it can exist as a bit of a counter to other Super weapons, but at the same time is the most vulnerable to units.

My opinion:
* Zenith is bad. Takes a while to build up so it can start dealing the damage, is slow at killing spread singus and other high value targets, being stunned drops all the built up meteorites and it costs more than DRP.
* Starlight is powerful but annoying to use. Scouting is generally hard, if the enemy has a larger airforce then there will often be a lot of blind firing doing little damage. It also destroys makes a ditch which wrecks pathing (non-obvious roundabout routes, tanks thinking they can go through a place when they can't, etc.). It requires very annoying micro as by default its targetting is stupid and it won't move on to the next thing when the boom appears (unless you have radar coverage in the area, which is very unlikely given owls and area cloaking).
* DRP is about what you'd want in a superweapon from a fun perspective. It's reasonably priced, kills things in a reasonable pace, doesn't need direct LoS, doesn't completely obsolete striders (massed scorp, detri, pala) and is pretty. The shortish range is a bit of an issue.

All three have most of the damage and destruction out of sight and struggle to end high end FFA games on big maps. The range issue is particularly egregious for starlight, in that for the other superweapons you still have a chance at getting an area cloaker and smuggling in a detri or two to do the murdering, but the starlight trench blocks Iris on many maps (e.g. Violet Rampart Generator)! In theory this can result in endless stalemates.

For this reason, I'd actually like a proper expensive (60k+) game-ending unit. For when you have a huge eco lead but don't want to spend 20 more minutes digging people out of their foxholes. It should be satisfying to use, have the destruction take place in LoS and should not be annoyed by terrain (or the insane area denial weapon that is Artemis). It should be able to snipe enemy superweapons as part of breaking stalemates. It should be possible to kill it if used it's poorly or if the enemy has a great deal of skill and uses comparably large amounts of resources.
A Detri that has Desolator guns and can manoeuvrer around quickly would probably be a good choice. Probably with a slow AoE to block the cheap counters like glaive swarms or ultimatums. *hint hint* ;)

I had this crackpot idea for the Zenith that I'm gonna spitball here: what if, instead of collecting and firing a bunch of individual meteors, the Zenith condenses meteors into fewer projectiles of increasing damage and blast radius? As the blast radius increases, the Zenith's wobbly becomes less impactful; and as the damage increases, shields become less effective at blocking the meteors. At full capacity, the Zenith would basically be launching a giant, unblockable nuke.

It could be worth swapping the Zenith and Starlight's positions in the superweapon chain--make Starlight the cheap superweapon and Zenith the big game-ender--and tailoring their stats to suit. I always thought that dropping dinosaur-killing friggin' meteors on the planet's surface would be more devastating than pink lasers. The Zenith also has a built-in stockpile mechanic, which is something that's come up regarding the Starlight before.

Take that idea for a spin, I guess.

Steel_Blue, nice idea with the partial discharge of the Zenith. It would make it more versatile. For example, it would gather meteorites faster at the beginning, but slower as the number of increases. In current state, I think it should be cheaper. Once activated, it is immediately visible to anyone and become THE target, until it's ready to fire. Therefore, in balanced battles with massive forces, its life span is very low. In more dispersed battles across the map, its return on investment is way too low.

For myself, I just hate the DRP. Let's be honest. Its only purpose is to counter people, who like to build big bases. It is more limited against mobile units.
You can counter Trinity, nearly too easily. So why the only way of partially countering DRP is to mass dozens of FunnelWeb around/in your base.
Why, Aegis are not providing any shielding at all, against DRP, whatever the number of shields you would place. DRP could drain the shields down quickly; but currently, Aegis are completely permeable to its attack.
The only defense tactic for protecting your base, is to deeply scout in search for it proactively. It cannot be the only one.

To change this state, I would prefer to get rid of DRP "napalm" feature. I would replace it with a weaker explosive ammunition. It would still be able to stun and deplete shields efficiently. I would also increase its AoE, so the effect is more spread around the targeted area.

I have no hope that my ask, will be taken into consideration. I have the feeling the devs and the hard-core players, do not like big base-builders. For me, it is what gives me the strongest fun in RTS, instead of continuously multitasking many guerilla spots. I like that Zero-k is both fast, allows you to control your units very precisely, but also let you build big bases and armies.
I can understand the devs, as my kind of playing is leading to gather huge armies and deteriorate game experience on slower machine. Since I have upgraded to 32GB of RAM and 10th generation processor, not on mine :P

In general, I think it should be made much easier to tweak Super weapons, using for ex. dedicated battle options in the user interface.

Multiple people have said, that they think DRP is fine where it is.

I kinda could agree to that were it not for the SL. Just 25%more cost for: more range, much more ground defense (5 detris gone in a minute...) plus the ability to hardcounter other DRP/SL, why would you ever go for DRP then?

Maybe the simplest Solution would be to up SL price to 60-70k or so. Then the argument for DRP gets much stronger (also, if DRP is fine where it is, then clearly SL is underpriced). And this would also help(though not completly solve the problem) in FFA, as it would take that much longer / enemy gets that much bigger an army to fight back.

quote: Counterpoint: a complete DRP is much stronger than a 75% complete Starlight nanoframe. If both players/teams going for a superweapon are about even (a not unreasonable default assumption) then whoever goes for a DRP is going to have a fair bit of time whether they are the only one with a superweapon.

This is why DRP is better than SL in team games. This does not apply as much to FFA however, as you do not generally want to fire the SW as soon as it is built, but instead at the most opportune moment, lest you become a target for the remaining players.

Kingstad

quote: I like FFAs up until the point they reach lategame. You've porced your territories and if all you want is to win you are likely spamming funnels and getting a super weapon, which isnt that expensive in a FFA. The enemy has to jump through a lot of hoops to have a shot at killing it and even if they do (perhaps donating metal in the process) now you can and will rezz it for free safely, yay. The rez mechanic alone discourages making units and encourages sitting around making super weapons. Current funnel design made this situation a bit worse, it is a cool unit though.

The funny part is that this is at least half self inflicted. What would be the ask for the devs here? Whatever we suggest could be countered with be more aggressive or play less maps with choke points, the latter of which valorize porc a lot.

I would prefer to nerf late game stationary defenses and supers via making them more difficult to defend. I would suggest to nerf desolator and artemis, especially artemis, so that units aren't as sacrifical as the game progresses.

Even if they can be countered, the point is supported/shielded porc slows any assault down to a crawl to a degree that a few desolators are always worth their price even if they don't kill anything. If they bought you enough time to react, they were worth it.

Combine that with defensive nukes and it becomes a liability to have an army late game. You'll want to silo up, disable a fortified position and send the smallest force you can send to kill the defenses in time, or you'll just want to rush SL because it's much easier to point at something and vaporize it than it is to coordinate a multi step strike.

I just plain dislike artemis. It shuts down scouts, it shuts down fleets of bombers, it even shuts down crows. It has obsene range and it's generally built far enough inland that the edge of the controlled territory wards sneaky attempts at taking it from afar. Even a silo would likely be in range of perimeter defenses if it could reach the artemis. At least you have to build many desolators to protect your terriroty. Build one artemis somewhere near the center of your base and you're probably free of air strikes for the rest of the game.