please nerf Starlight

It only needs to be more expensive. And, it would be nice if it was "consuming" energy, so that the overdrive from that 600 e or so was lost. That way, it has sort of like a metal upkeep cost like Trinity does, but the metal upkeep is variable depending on how much energy or metal does the team produce.

Edit: to add, all the other SWs should be more expensive too. 9 times out of 10, 36k Zenith beats 3 30k paladins. I get it, if you make a paladin it finishes sooner, but very often players make 2 or 3 paladins simultaneously anyways - so rallying your team to help SW is the best play.

I disagree. As I wrote in another thread,

quote: SL is not always game-ender. In this battle: https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1621242 west had 3 SLs and east killed them one by one - the first with 5 krows, two others with sneaky detris. Generally, if a losing team managed to get SL, they will often lose nevertheless, because it is hard to prevent multiple attack directions - silos, cloaked units, nukes etc. So basically it is more or less the same thing as with other SWs, incl. nuke and detri: it can be game-ender in right circumstances, but quite often it is not.

Also, comparing to other SWs, SL is not as easy to operate.

I kind of dislike how 4 funnels seem able to stop an amount of shockleys that make attempting to stun the superweapon impractical even if the opposing team can't suppress the silo otherwise.

But that's a thing i dislike about Funnelweb.

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A thing i really want to try when i find more mana is to make superweapons hint at their progress state. EG:

20% starlight = strange earthquake
40% starlight = weird columns of geomagnetic aurorae
60% starlight = ion storm in the atmosphere, complete with random lightning strikes
80% starlight = air crackles with energy, pointing towards the spot where the superweapon is being built

last game : build SL after 27 min

zenith could also start gathering its meteors at that %, so that it can be fired immideatly upon completion, but also drops rocks onto you when sniped

Is starlight the problem or is it because the team is just bad?

A simple thought I have is if both teams are fighting tooth and nail with each other, where would either teams find the time and extra resources to build the super weapon?

If a player spent all his time building 10 BBs and on hindsight you calculated that 10 BBs could get you a super weapon to win the game, yet does that said hindsight consider that perhaps those BBs were what kept your front from being steam rolled? Without those BBs, instead building the super weapon, would your front able to keep the front?

The battlefield is dynamic, it is a place where every decision made by the members of either teams will affect the flow of the entire battle. The thing is if your enemy can build a starlight and yet you unable to move an inch forward, is it because your enemies are weaker than you or is it because your team is making bad decisions?

Last but not least, this is not starcraft or age of empires or warcraft where you have unique races or civilizations with perks on their own. ZK have every units and buildings available to you on a equal standing therefore equal opportunities.

PS: It is why I always roast my teammates because I always believe is a people issue.

I disagree that Starlight is OP. It's a risk to build and vulnerable to a lot of different threats, but effective at breaking a deadlock in the lategame if it does pay off. We had a game the other day where we killed 2 starlights, 1 with BB, 2nd with ulti.

quote: Is starlight the problem or is it because the team is just bad? A simple thought I have is if both teams are fighting tooth and nail with each other, where would either teams find the time and extra resources to build the super weapon?

Even if you had a team compromised of top 1 % players, making a SL would still be often the best play in a late game of a 16v16 game. Because, in a team game, the frontline is composed of units of a lot of players, and hardly ever are all players able to push all at once. The early game phase where players make raiders and try to raid enemy territory is farily short in team games compared to 1v1, because every segment of the opponent base has a bulky commander and a factory defending it, so very soon you see artillery and porc protecting the artillery. Due to the high density of units, shields, stingers, artillery and occasionally a cerb or a desolator, attacking is always more difficult than defending. My rule of thumb is that at on most team maps, once both teams reach around 200k total metal value, one team would need like 40k more metal value of units to make a successful front-wide push, and at this point, you simply start making a superweapon.

Now that I think about it, I would definitely force those superweapons to have an energy upkeep (of like 2 singus), and I would raise their cost to like 50k+ metal (or around 60k if they won't have an energy upkeep). They will still get built, but not so early.

quote: That's exactly why SWs are needed as they are (not nerfed), unless you are interested in very long (>> 1 hour) games with players lagging out, bored and tired.

That's why I am enjoying Shaman's Future Wars more than vanilla zk, recently. Late game in vanilla zk is always pretty similar - ton's of lances protected by shields, an ocassional strider, while the team rushes a game ending superweapon, but in Future Wars, the tree of possible things to built get's richer the longer the game is. Maybe it is because I didn't play it nearly as much, but it still seems that there are more possibilities.

If the opposing team had enough time and resources to rush an expensive starlight, maybe it's your problem. Additionally, starlight is very easily countered by cloaks going behind lines and hitting energy