Old New Player Opinions

As a very old spring rts player (capob7, https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/52394) that probably made some of the lua unit behavior code that went into zero k, here are my thoughts from playing this recently:

- The campaign is great. It really does well at showcasing the various units. However,
-- either I'm bad at reading or it doesn't do a good enough job at explaining the various key combos for operations, like rectangular terraforming. I had to watch the frog tutorials on youtube to understand various things. I don't think ordinary new players will do this.
-- it doesn't, to my knowledge, showcase commander morphing
-- I was disappointed I didn't get more points or a trophy for beating campaign levels with brutal ai
- the emergence of BAR will probably take audience from Zk. One thing I've always thought was a problem with zk is there is no exclusive tech based on faction choice, or tech progression. Having factions adds an interesting dynamic. Starcraft does this well, and BA does this decently.
- why is there no "wait" command
- why do the missile trucks not have skirmish behavior and just sit to be killed by swarm units?
- why is the big fat ball unit so useless. When I group them and jump on a walker, they injure themselves. They need to have better collision damage resistance and better grav guns. Particularly because the microing needed for the unit and chance of jump failure/miss makes the expense of the unit not worth it.
- I see pathing is still a bit of an issue. I built a big ditch across a level for a tower defense mini game against the ai, and it just sat on the edge because the path was too long. I couldn't even get my own units to traverse it without giving waypoints. The AI should be upgraded to unmorph terrain in certain conditions.

Commander morphing work differently in campaign compare to Multiplayer

- "The campaign opts for a persisted morphed commander rather than commander morphing. This reduces the UI people need to learn and gives them another sense of progression. I think it works well." Perhaps, but then they are clueless in multiplayer. Going from campaign to single player skirmish, I was confused.
- "The terraform UI is sounds more like a terraform UI problem. I recall there being a tooltip that appears whenever you terraform, not just in the campaign." On second thought, I'm not sure how I didn't notice the tooltip boxes at first.
- "If you're talking about experience points, then we can't give out more of those because then the campaign would get easier as you play it, due to a higher level commander. Brutal is supposed to be a challenge level people set for themselves, not a way to get more bonuses." Yeah, I figured as much. Though, apart from the early missions, I didn't find having an excessively upgraded commander all that important to how I played, and figured the reward for the effort would be fitting.
- "There is a setting ingame to show the Wait command. Its button was removed by default to cut down on clutter." I see. Frankly, I don't think there are enough buttons. :).
- "I think ZK does factions better than BAR. ZK effectively has more factions than BAR" Yes, I acknowledge that the free initial factory is sort of like a faction, but it is not the same thing, because a player has the option to build one of the other factories as the game progresses and the cost becomes inconsequential, whereas, in BA (BAR is essentially BA-remake), the factions represent exclusive tech, and I brought up starcraft to make this more apparent, since with BA, much of the tech is mirrored between the factions with slight differences. But there are difference, for instance, in BA, I know if my opponent chose core, they can't build a tachyon, only doomsday (unless they manage to resurrect a con). Starcraft does a better job of distinguishing factions, with zerg being swarmers. But, I bring this up just as something to think about, and I realize it is pretty much out of the question for zero k.
- "Fencer doesn't fire while moving (since maybe 2008), so it doesn't automatically pack up and move when facing raiders." Yeah, it is a gimped slasher.
- "Don't jump a group of Jugglenaut to the same location as they damage everything around them when they land. It's a useful yet specialised unit." Well, yeah. Though, I was recommending changes. I don't know if they are actually used in multiplayer by anyone, but it seemed to me like it would hardly ever be worth the cost owing to the aforementioned. I thought it would be amusing to have a swarm of jugglenauts jump on a walker as a tactic for killing walkers, but they'd have to be immune to each other's landing damage.
- "Pathing seems fine to me. Can you link the replay where it messes up?" This was against the AI. It doesn't look like there's a replay online for that. But, what I did was, on LLTAComplexV2, I dug a ditch in front of the road that went the length of the road, and had a ramp on one end for one side and a ramp for the other side at the other end. And I also cut off the top path with terraforming. I had to use two waypoints within the ditch to get units to cross it.

quote: most of the times they are used by themselves

On a campaign missions showing off the jugglenaut, the AI sends a bunch of the inferno walkers. In the spirit of the level, I attempted to kill them with just jugglenauts. Perhaps the level should be revamped for the AI to use shield bots.

quote: Would disabling some factories for a team be an improvement to the current state for you?

This would not be the same as factions seen in BA or starcraft. In BA, both factions have shipyards, just different units. Both factions have vehicle factories, just different units. The factories in zero-k solve unique problems. To deny one faction jumpers would make the other faction preferable on some levels. Instead, what I was thinking was having variants on units. IE, one faction would have weak fast jumpers, the other faction would have stronger slow jumpers. But it's actually a bit more complicated than that in balancing factions. For instance, in BA, the ARM can build the Annihilator tachyon, which out-ranges most units. But then, CORE can build tactical nukes.

I suppose something more complicated, like tech selection, allowing the choice of multiple but not all factories, on a map, would work. But, I don't see how that would be reasonably built in the lobby, except, perhaps if there were factions that had pre-selected tech selections, which might even include selections of units within factories.

Only because other games do something in a certain way, you don't have to copy that. To my taste, having dynamic factions in the form of factories is actually an advantage because it increases unit variety and gives you more interesting choices. With multiple static factions, you are limited in your unit choice in the end game. It makes the faction choice more interesting, though. If you had immediate access to all units on the other hand, the faction choice would be removed. The more factions you have and the more static they are, the more you can give them differently powerful versions of the same unit type. But this does not make the unit choice more interesting. It only makes the faction choice more interesting. It is probably more interesting to focus on unit choice rather than faction choice because it depends on your enemy's actions and is therefore different between different matches.

Fencer = Slasher

If you have multiple Jugglenauts selected and press the jump key, you can draw a line of jump positions and they will split up to those positions and thereby avoid area damage. If you set the gravity gun direction to attract, it's actually a very powerful unit.

quote: The jugglenauts should be combinable, and result in a larger jugglenaut of additive volume and health

We should have this for every unit! My 10000x flea will kill your 2x detriment (I hope)!

quote: So BA-style faction diversity is only mechanically relevant in FFA and the rare 1v1 that goes late

This is mostly true, and I did have FFA in mind, but, even in team games on BA with Delta Siege, getting a shared other-faction con was unusual. And, as such, the limitations of the various fronts were largely faction dependent.

quote: mindless/tedious things involved in "optimal play" and tried to remove them.

T2 mexes? T2 cons? I would be interested in know what you tried to remove. There are often unseen consequences to game and team dynamics.

quote: breaking the game in unfun ways as they improved

From what I've seen on team battle videos, it seems you've done a good job with the balance.

quote: since sharing constructors around to make the best version of each unit seems tedious.

Sure, it is a bit tedious. But, the tedious things often determine the best team/player. Back when I played BA, I had become perhaps one of the top players to the extent that the top player then had to expose himself cheating to beat me. And I did this with my unit behavior code that issued perhaps 1000's of commands per minute to cons, nanos, skirmishers, swarmers, etc. For example, the tedious micro involved in kiting with slashers made or broke their efficacy. Where to draw the line on what to automate is a question.

BTW, I sent you that lua code over a decade ago, and I no longer have it. Might you still have something from it - there were a lot of base helper functions I built into it which I might want if I start to make another widget. One thing I found useful was enabling toggling of behavior. I could turn off skirmisher behavior, and I could turn on encircling behavior, such that rocket bots would encircle an enemy and walk around in a circle it while attacking it, and I could toggle that off for the normal skirmisher behavior to resume.

quote: A competitive 1v1 effectively has factions because an extra factory is almost always expensive

Yep

quote: unique factory plop at the start of the game gives people the momentum to maintain their niche within a team, much like a faction would

Yep

quote: I suspect that giving each constructor its own build list (with some variations or missing options) would enhance the ZK faction feel, possibly to the level of BA outside of FFA. That would be an insane number of structures though.

Perhaps it would be enough to remove one "basic" building from each con?
For example, spider loses picket, tank loses stinger, shield loses stardust, cloak loses llt, hover loses gauss, amphs loses torpedo, etc..
That would certainly affect 1v1s, and balance of course.
Removing more "advanced" structures like fusion or cerb might just be an annoyance in team games.

I think quite a few of these suggestions would result in a different game. Ie., Zero k has made a number of design choices to simplify (1:1:1 build, metal, and energy ratio, for example), no t2 metal constructors, no advanced factories (apart from striders I guess), smart units that roughly do what they should. A lot of these choices simplify the game in some areas, allowing the player to focus on countering their opponent, but it is certainly correct that you do lose something from that.

They aren't bad suggestions, but I think with some of them would end up with a game that has a very different feel and would cut against what Zero K is trying to achieve.

If you're one that likes micro, I'd suggest getting good a jump bots. They are the most micro intensive factory from my perspective and if a player is microing them well (Pyros, juggles, firewalkers, jacks, scuttles, they are incredibly annoying to deal with).

• Reclaim is as fast as it is so that reclaim fields can be fought over rather than slurped up as soon as someone gets a constructor there. People make 5-10 constructors to take reclaim quite rapidly, but doing so is an investment.
• I might add such an option. Nobody has really thought to do so since options are rarely used. One of the barriers is that we would have to solve a family of differential equations rather than the special case we use at the moment. That said, we have some pretty massive ZK games too, and I prefer them to massive BAR games as more unique things happen within them. I suspect making the economy ramp up more would increase the number of striders and superweapons in ZK but reduce the diversity of what happens in those games.
• Jugglenaut is weird like that.
• What sort of success where you expecting? I think we're where we are due to the near-complete lack of marketing. That and a lack of spare time to move things along at a decent pace, especially when it comes to the web site.