Dominatrix

[1v0ry_k1ng]

During a game last night I witnessed considerable madness coming from mass abuse of the Dominatrix.. at 400m, with a swift reload time and an effectiveness against all types of unit and structure, once enough of them are amassed under a commander area shield a black hole is opened and all sembalance of game balance goes flying in. Highlights include walking through a bristling fort wall of defences (all swiftly captured), an attack by a large group of brawlers (all swiftly captured), fights VS various enemy commanders (swiftly captured...)

Not that I'm saying they are overpowered at high level play, I'm not really good enough at zero-K to know, but in low ELO games they make for pretty ridiculous cheese if used correctly.

[knorke]

and there is no video of this with the trololo song why?

[Pxtl]

High rate of fire, doesn't their beam have like a 10 second recharge?

[1v0ry_k1ng]

High rate of fire, doesn't their beam have like a 10 second recharge?

that seems pretty low considering that in game terms their attack instakills any unit it then gives you a copy!

your dominatrixcaptures eg. a 250m raider.
The victim loses a 250m unit
you gain a 250m unit
your new 250m unit then joins the fight on your side.
net profit from this one attack = 500m + damage dealt by captured raider?

In effect, if the target unit costs 200m+ they have paid for themselves instantly by landing an attack (if the captured unit then dies). If the captured unit inflicts damage on the enemy before dieing, you are profiting.

They can also focus on the most powerful units, which means using anything with a cost of over eg. 200m to fight them becomes a huge liability, and provide anti-air which defeats gunships faster than the anti-air units of other factories, plus captures them. the aforementioned brawler attack involved 2800m of brawlers changing hands!

[luckywaldo7]

It's always been a funky unit balance-wise, and it seems to keep bouncing back and forth between OP and UP. A key point in it's balance is that the capture only holds for as long as it stays alive. So if you kill the Dominatrix, you get your unit back and it was pretty much worthless.

Mostly its hard to balance though because no one ever uses it. Is this the replay of the battle: http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/42648 ? It's probably worth taking a look at.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

It's always been a funky unit balance-wise, and it seems to keep bouncing back and forth between OP and UP. A key point in it's balance is that the capture only holds for as long as it stays alive. So if you kill the Dominatrix, you get your unit back and it was pretty much worthless.

Mostly its hard to balance though because no one ever uses it. Is this the replay of the battle: http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/42648 ? It's probably worth taking a look at.

thats the one, although as means to decide balance it wont be much help as it was a FFA and the guy was left to tech his com upto level 4 and produce a few before getting into a fight

to get around the uncapture on death issue, I noticed he ran dominatrix that had 2+ units captured miles away to the back of his base. A distance limit on control might be a solution to that

[luckywaldo7]

A distance limit on control might be a solution to that

I can +1 to that.

[Google_Frog]

It's to be expected because KingRaptor is in the process of buffing the unit. For 0.9.2 he made it 10% faster and a current test change is faster capturing of damaged units. A bit earlier than that he reduced cost 420 -> 400 and the rate of capture decay when the unit is not under fire. That guy is some kind of inverse balance weathervane.

Limited puppet range was an idea I considered when implementing it although I'm not sure if it is interesting enough to justify the added UI complexity. There is also the issue of displaying this range.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

a big range ring drawn when the dominatrix is selected?

have the control lines range in colour from green to red, where green is happily in range and red is dangerously close to being out of range?

[knorke]

Range rings are so "virtual" why not have something like an arced data link thing?

[Pxtl]

Imho, the biggest thing it needs is a range nerf. With its current range it's too easy to keep it out of harm's way and never risk breaking the "tether" by losing the unit. If you had to be aggressive with them, even if they sported tougher armour, you'd see the risk of breaking the tether being more important to its gameplay.

[luckywaldo7]

Balance aside, I don't like it with vehicles at all, it just doesn't have any role it fits into nicely. It really needs to be matched with emp units because it would synergize so nicely -> disable the enemy units and then capture them.

I think a capture unit would work well in spider fac actually. Something to complement spy and venom (rather than re-role-ing flea).

[Saktoth]

Current Dom has no synergy. It does its own kind of damage, so the only way to use it is to spam doms. The fact that if you die you lose the units is even worse, as even if you capture a unit or two before it gets killed, the effect is 0, encouraging you even more to have extra doms to complete any captures and spread the captures out a bit. The only way to counter it is the handful of units which can kite it, cloggers/fleas, or shadows.

It should be in the spider factory and be much weaker, a way to take advantage of an already disabled foe, not a way to capture an army in the field. Possibly it could even help fill the gaps left by flea and venom, able to capture early raiders/scouts and send them back. If about the venoms speed, they could be used as a heavier raider pair to stun + capture LLTs and defending enemy units. If we think the factory needs that (not sure it does). It should be able to easily be overwhelmed on its own though, and have to rely on the venoms EMP to get anything done.

[varikonniemi]

Balance aside, I don't like it with vehicles at all, it just doesn't have any role it fits into nicely. It really needs to be matched with emp units because it would synergize so nicely -> disable the enemy units and then capture them.

I think a capture unit would work well in spider fac actually. Something to complement spy and venom (rather than re-role-ing flea).

I think this is the best suggestion this far in this thread.

Then on the other hand, i don't think this unit type fits in a game like zero-k at all. All constructors should be able to capture, and the capture should take comparable amount of time to building it (you only gain the metal cost while capturing instead of building).

[luckywaldo7]

Was already tried way back in CA, when all arm cons could capture. The problem was that it basically gave cons a weapon to defend themselves against light raiding.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

The dominatrix is at its most powerful when protected by shields, allowing it to approach defences and giving it time to capture them without takng damage. Hiding amoungst thugs & aspis also makes sniping the dominatrix much harder

[malric]

What about then disabling capture for static defenses? This would encourage pork, still, you could have time to come up with an alternative solution.

[Pxtl]

The tank lab has a stunner too, and then you wouldn't need a new model for it.