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I think there are three separate questions here which it is easy to muddle up.
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I think there are three separate questions here which it is easy to muddle up.
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===
(
1)
How,
as
a
Zero-K
player,
should
you
play
against
(
and
with)
Magpies
to
maximise
your
chances
of
victory?
===
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3 |
===
(
1)
How,
as
a
Zero-K
player,
should
you
play
against
Magpies
to
maximise
your
chances
of
victory?
===
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| 4 |
I think there are four main paths to success against Magpie. In loose order of preference:
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I think there are four main paths to success against Magpie. In loose order of preference:
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| 6 |
(a) Go kill them early with Swifts. If you kill their first bunch of Magpies they will have minimal game impact for a very long time, and you can transition to a more efficient bomber like Thunderbird or Phoenix and have game-winning impact while they pick up the pieces. Unfortunately not viable if their team provides them with a bunch of anti-air cover from the start. A representative replay: @B2456693
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(a) Go kill them early with Swifts. If you kill their first bunch of Magpies they will have minimal game impact for a very long time, and you can transition to a more efficient bomber like Thunderbird or Phoenix and have game-winning impact while they pick up the pieces. Unfortunately not viable if their team provides them with a bunch of anti-air cover from the start. A representative replay: @B2456693
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(b) A moderate number of Magpies can be beaten with the right kinds of mobile anti-air. Ettin is best in class, several others are serviceable, some are bad. However, if the Magpies get to make a direct attack run against your AA it may not go well for you. Try to hide your AA at least from radar so they don't know which radar dots are dangerous. Ideally use cloaks and shields. I don't have an immediate replay coming to mind for this one.
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(b) A moderate number of Magpies can be beaten with the right kinds of mobile anti-air. Ettin is best in class, several others are serviceable, some are bad. However, if the Magpies get to make a direct attack run against your AA it may not go well for you. Try to hide your AA at least from radar so they don't know which radar dots are dangerous. Ideally use cloaks and shields. I don't have an immediate replay coming to mind for this one.
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(c) If the Magpies reach critical mass, make and protect Artemises. Artemises are pretty annoying to protect, but if you do then this will solve your Magpie problem. Representative replay: @B2459631
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(c) If the Magpies reach critical mass, make and protect Artemises. Artemises are pretty annoying to protect, but if you do then this will solve your Magpie problem. Representative replay: @B2459631
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(d) Make an army that is fairly resistant to Magpies (lots of HP, shields, and/or cloak) and just go kill their land teammates. This is hard to make work against a truly overwhelming number of Magpies, but hopefully by that point you can revert to plan (c). Representative replay: @B2444093 (sort of, this example is not especially clean)
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(d) Make an army that is fairly resistant to Magpies (lots of HP, shields, and/or cloak) and just go kill their land teammates. This is hard to make work against a truly overwhelming number of Magpies, but hopefully by that point you can revert to plan (c). Representative replay: @B2444093 (sort of, this example is not especially clean)
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=== (2) Is Magpie overpowered? ===
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=== (2) Is Magpie overpowered? ===
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This is a more complicated question than it looks because it depends on context, but my answer is "mostly not". I think my personal winrate against them is fairly good, at any rate.
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This is a more complicated question than it looks because it depends on context, but my answer is "mostly not". I think my personal winrate against them is fairly good, at any rate.
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I think that a blue or purple rated player would struggle to maintain their rating if Magpie was a large part of their repertoire. More often than not, teams will build their army compositions around countering the opposing high-rated players, ESPECIALLY air players in my experience, and I don't think Magpie can cope with that.
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I think that a blue or purple rated player would struggle to maintain their rating if Magpie was a large part of their repertoire. More often than not, teams will build their army compositions around countering the opposing high-rated players, ESPECIALLY air players in my experience, and I don't think Magpie can cope with that.
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Magpie's early game tempo is generally pretty bad. [b]This matters much more the smaller the teams get and the more skillful the average player in the room is.[/b] I can certainly imagine that in a large low-rated team game played by a bunch of newbies Magpie could be super oppressive. I lack data to substantiate or reject that hypothesis. I don't recall Magpie ever looking at all viable in Palladium. I think that Magpie makes it harder to keep Zero-K fun across a wide range of team and map sizes.
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Magpie's early game tempo is generally pretty bad. [b]This matters much more the smaller the teams get and the more skillful the average player in the room is.[/b] I can certainly imagine that in a large low-rated team game played by a bunch of newbies Magpie could be super oppressive. I lack data to substantiate or reject that hypothesis. I don't recall Magpie ever looking at all viable in Palladium. I think that Magpie makes it harder to keep Zero-K fun across a wide range of team and map sizes.
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Like a few other things (cough Bertha) Magpie is probably stronger on maps which I choose to dodge.
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Like a few other things (cough Bertha) Magpie is probably stronger on maps which I choose to dodge.
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=== (3) Does Magpie make Zero-K a more fun game? ===
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=== (3) Does Magpie make Zero-K a more fun game? ===
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I suppose the answer to this is inherently personal. Personally I don't enjoy what the existence of Magpie does to Zero-K.
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I suppose the answer to this is inherently personal. Personally I don't enjoy what the existence of Magpie does to Zero-K.
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I think that fundamentally Magpie makes the "slippery slope" of getting ahead or falling behind unpleasantly slippery. If you are ahead, the losses you take from Magpie can often be absorbed by your greater metal income and you just go on winning without even bothering to directly contest against the Magpies. If you are behind, you can't keep Artemises alive and nothing else is efficient enough to fight against a metal deficit.
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I think that fundamentally Magpie makes the "slippery slope" of getting ahead or falling behind unpleasantly slippery. If you are ahead, the losses you take from Magpie can often be absorbed by your greater metal income and you just go on winning without even bothering to directly contest against the Magpies. If you are behind, you can't keep Artemises alive and nothing else is efficient enough to fight against a metal deficit.
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All sorts of clever things you used to be able to do by sneaking a few raiders into an undefended corner of the map are rendered outright infeasible by Magpie. Even the quick-response gunships like Harpy and Locust take more time to arrive on the scene and clean up.
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All sorts of clever things you used to be able to do by sneaking a few raiders into an undefended corner of the map are rendered outright infeasible by Magpie. Even the quick-response gunships like Harpy and Locust take more time to arrive on the scene and clean up.
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Most other units in Zero-K are hyper-countered by some stuff, and in turn hyper-counter some stuff themselves. With the exception of Artemis (which is, again, hard to keep alive) Magpie doesn't really have much in the way of hyper-counter matchups in either direction. In that sense I think it is discordant with the rest of Zero-K's design.
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Most other units in Zero-K are hyper-countered by some stuff, and in turn hyper-counter some stuff themselves. With the exception of Artemis (which is, again, hard to keep alive) Magpie doesn't really have much in the way of hyper-counter matchups in either direction. In that sense I think it is discordant with the rest of Zero-K's design.
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| 32 |
Several things which a new player would think OUGHT to be effective against Magpies actually aren't, or at any rate they need to be quite carefully controlled. Swifts need to avoid head-on engagements against armed Magpies. Mobile anti-air needs to hide. Most of the static AA doesn't have adequate DPS and/or range to compensate for the fact that it cannot be hidden. As I have said above, Magpie is quite beatable - but you need to know how and be in a position to do it. Being put under pressure by the opposing purple, and then getting blasted off the map by some random bronze spamming Magpies, is a very unpleasant way to lose a game.
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Several things which a new player would think OUGHT to be effective against Magpies actually aren't, or at any rate they need to be quite carefully controlled. Swifts need to avoid head-on engagements against armed Magpies. Mobile anti-air needs to hide. Most of the static AA doesn't have adequate DPS and/or range to compensate for the fact that it cannot be hidden. As I have said above, Magpie is quite beatable - but you need to know how and be in a position to do it. Being put under pressure by the opposing purple, and then getting blasted off the map by some random bronze spamming Magpies, is a very unpleasant way to lose a game.
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Besides playing against Magpies, I also don't enjoy having a Magpie player on MY team. It generally signals that I am about to suffer through an outnumbered frontline battle while the Magpie player sits at the back for ages building up. An air player opening with Phoenix, Thunderbird or even Raven will likely be much more helpful to me in the early game.
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Besides playing against Magpies, I also don't enjoy having a Magpie player on MY team. It generally signals that I am about to suffer through an outnumbered frontline battle while the Magpie player sits at the back for ages building up. An air player opening with Phoenix, Thunderbird or even Raven will likely be much more helpful to me in the early game.
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---------------------------------
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| 38 |
This all leads to the question
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This all leads to the question
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| 40 |
=== (4) What could be done with Magpie to make Zero-K a better game? ===
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=== (4) What could be done with Magpie to make Zero-K a better game? ===
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to which I personally have no better answers than "delete it". My feeling is that the fundamental concept of a cheap long-range bomber is unsalvageable, though I am willing to be proved wrong.
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to which I personally have no better answers than "delete it". My feeling is that the fundamental concept of a cheap long-range bomber is unsalvageable, though I am willing to be proved wrong.
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Magpie & AA & Air