The Obelisk

[KDR_11k]

I haven't played KP much lately but from what I saw and remember wasn't the Obelisk kinda unpopular? Maybe some changes are in order? I could e.g.imagine allowing the thing to switch positions with other friendly geo-based buildings to let it move to the front line instead of being a waste of space when the battles aren't happening near it.

[zwzsg]

I dunno, warping buildings by the click of a button would hurt my sense of physic and reality. I know it all takes place in a fictional cyberspace, but still, I like to think of buildings as tangible, unmoveable, map-anchored constructs, and not relocatable symbols.

Especially since there would be simpler ways to increase Obelisk usefullness:






The obelisk takes very long to build. More than twice the buildtime of a window. That's so long you can't build them in the frontline, or the trojan will be likely be killed before finishing. So you have to build them on already well secured positions, where they're likely to be useless.

I suggest to reduce the buildtime. Not merely reduce a little, but change it from super slow to super fast to build. In such a way that people could hastily lay Obelisk on just liberated datavents on the frontline, and use them right away while the place is still contested.




The obelisk gaz indiscriminatly damage both allied and enemies. So, you have to pull out your forces before firing. But then of course the enemy has no reason to stay in the cloud, and will instead push forward. This make firing the obelisk a losing move.

I suggest we make the cloud only affect enemies. That way, you could fire the cloud over your own forces to aid them in battle. This would make firing the obelisk an offense strengthner.




The obelisk does little damage, especially to heavies. But we can't just up the damage or else it'll be too much like an instant nuke and not enough a damage-over-time weapon. Maybe damage could be made proportional to unit max health or unit size? Would be cool if units stayed ablaze after exiting the clouds, too.

[KDR_11k]

Another thought was to make the cloud more dispersed, much larger area, much lower damage so you drop it somewhere as support for your ground forces so anything they kill turns into a virus but then I remembered that teleporters worked pretty well for keeping high value buildings relevant in Fibre.

The long build time was intended to counteract the lack of a chargeup time once the thing is built but I suppose that's unnecessary.

[Google_Frog]

Does anything inside the cloud turn into a virus or just things killed by the cloud? Anything killed should turn into a virus.

I think the virus part of the cloud should be emphasised. More area and a little less BT could work.

[MidKnight]

I think the obelisk is already pretty deadly, but to each his own.

[KDR_11k]

The issue is that the Obelisk is the only superweapon with a limited range and often you need it in places it cannot reach.

Does anything inside the cloud turn into a virus or just things killed by the cloud? Anything killed should turn into a virus.

I think the virus part of the cloud should be emphasised. More area and a little less BT could work.

All infectors work by tagging the target as infected for a set period of time, if the target dies within that time it turns into a virus. I'm not sure the thing even knows about packets entering the buffer so infected packets may end up spawning viruses but I'm not sure that's a bad thing (infectors only tag enemies IIRC).