Some feedback

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Or, after 4 days of playing the mod, 'some things I wish were different or need correcting on'


The spider factory lacks a decent all purpose raider type (eg glaive/bandit/scorcher etc) and that makes it a non-viable starting factory in many forms of 1v1.. it sure would be nice to have one

The crabbe is a really awkward, niche unit that dosn't fill its niche well- slow, 1500m 'antiswarm' that is slightly too short ranged to be truly useful for porcbreaking. It dosnt make a good uber unit like the expensive toys of other labs. I would rather have any other artillery unit than this, and if it was balanced down to be half the price it would feature in way more games. Unless, I am using it terribly wrong..?

the shield bot factory has a skirmisher that fires rockets that move so very slowly they are bordering on the looking silly, similar to the 'blockade runner' hovercraft

sea game is a hectic, horrible rush to get the first corvette out.
how about arming the lab?

thx

[Licho]

Spiders have fleas and frankly I think its very strong lab - with spy, emp spiders and one of best assault units.

Crabe is likewise very good, it can outrange HLT (use AOE) and dont forget it takes 1/4 damage when not moving (curled up).

Sea - well yeah, I alwyas hated sea pushing we tried to stop it by allowing some defs to be floating (stardust) but thats too expensive.

[luckywaldo7]

About flea, mostly it gives spider lab a way to defend against naked expansion. I do wish it synergized worked better with venom, where you can stun raider packs and use the fleas to kill them. Instead the fleas just get stunned themselves. I suppose the best way to do that would be to give fleas more range than venoms have aoe. That may be great or really awkward; I mean to test it out sometime.

Crabe is awesome. It's not as good against a rush of raiders as other riot units, but it has range so it tears apart most skirmishers. It also is all-terrain and ballistic, so it gets a range bonus from height, and you can climb hills (or terraform a narrow hill) to get it. With height, range, and armor bonus, it becomes a ridiculously tough nut to crack.

On slow projectiles, there are even more units where it looks sillier. Reaper has a very slow plasma shot that lobs high in the air, and then comes lazily back down. It looks silly but it's so crucial for balance, to be bad against fast small units. I don't know if there is anything to be done.

Sea early game is awful. It's blind rps of vette rush, sub rush, or air rush. Needs a lot of talking and testing. We could probably trick Saktoth into fixing it by adding SoW into PW rotation.

[Google_Frog]

Spider is suppose to be like that. A fast, all purpose, raider that could ignore cliffs would be too good on many maps. Spiders are the slowest factory to offset their all terrain advantage. Only the 'support units' (Flea, Venom, Spy) have decent speed.

Crabe is great and has a role of it's own. So you're probably doing it wrong. It is anti-ranged-swarm (eg Rocko) and not so great vs raiders.

I agree with sea, Sak said he would fix it but hasn't.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

@sealab: intergrate a torp launcher into the model = fixed forever?

@crabbe: at 1500m its not somthing you can just casually add into a repeating buildque though. How is it supposed to be used/what situation can it be used in?

@flea; its the nicest cheap raider, but its no use against even the lightest defences. glaives/bandits/scorchers can over-run LLTS & missile towers pretty easily in groups, fleas cannot. venom is expensive and relatively fragile for being used to shut down defences for flea possies.

@spider fact in 1v1: the units are v. nice but nothing is appropriate to raiding into lightly defended expansion.. on an open map playing spider 1v1 is more or less an invitation for the enemy to keep you bottled up with raiders and expand rapidly. If someone proskills could direct me toward replays of competent spider play in 1v1 that would be super.

[luckywaldo7]

I think crabe is kind of like a budget mobile ddm. Use it to counter aggressive pushes of masses of cheap units. Especially try to keep it on hills where it won't get overrun by tanks. You're right in that it's not really something to add into a repeat queue. When I decide I want a crabe I alt+click in the build menu to place one in the front of the queue non-repeating.

Spider lab is supposed to be bad at open maps like red comet. If it was on par with cloakies or shields on flat maps, it would completely dominate hilly maps. Something like Brazilian Battlefield should be great for spiders. I wouldn't mind playing a few games to prove it or have it disproven for me. :D

[hoijui]

if i am not wrong, Godde uses spiders quite a lot, so...

[1v0ry_k1ng]

if i am not wrong, Godde uses spiders quite a lot, so...

I use spiders alot too, which is why most of my feedback concerns spiderlab

@waldo, thx

[Pxtl]

The spider lab is powerful enough. If fleas could work in tandem with stunners it would be horrifying.

Fleas are the most hardcore raiding mode of ZK. They're ZK's Instagib mode. They're cheap and fast and can come from *anywhere* but you'll lose them in a blink of an eye if you don't use them perfectly. I'd think BA players would love the Flea game. Of course, they all but vanish from play once LLTs start dotting the map until somebody notices a gap and then the flood comes again.

As for the Crabe, I'v seen some guys do neat tricks like a Starcraft-style siege-tank leapfrog with them along a hillside.

[Godde]

if i am not wrong, Godde uses spiders quite a lot, so...

In 1v1 I rarely go spiders unless the map favors them.

Spiders got no good counter to raiders in the early game. I agree with Ivory king about that so you have to make up for that by raiding better than the opponent which might be neigh impossible if they use their own raiders like glaives to counter your fleas.

How would you balance a an allterrain raider against other raiders? Sounds hard.

Not all labs can be used as starting labs on all maps. I don't agree that the spiderlab needs to be viable in a 1v1 on more maps than it is now.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

@spider raider, thats easy enough- just make it less effective compared to other raiders

[1v0ry_k1ng]

been talking to tand and playing lots of 1v1

cloaky bots seem to be the best factory and have the most options by a huge margin.

tick is the best crawling bomb & best EMP avaliable
zeus is the most efficient assault unit
glaive is the most efficient raider (bandit needs micro to compete)
rocko is a superior skirmisher

why does this factory have so many more options & love than the others? Thanks to the tick, it can win dominate straight fights with other factories as well as enjoying superior mobility and sneakiness..

[Google_Frog]

I feel a mixture of agreement and that you explore counters more as I don't think it is that extreme.

Cloaky is a generalist factory which should be taken into account when comparing it to specialist ones such as Jump or Spider. These need to use the terrain and I wouldn't expect them to have as many options on the flats.

I am still unsure about how Cloaky fares vs Veh, Hover and Tank because the turninplace fix is still very recent and vehicle type pathing has changed a lot. Cloaky may still be better than these, it definitely was before, although the newfound manoeuvrability of Ravager looks promising.

So I think the only clear issue at the moment is Cloaky's general superiority to Shieldbots. But I'm not even entirely sure here. Cloaky was far better when engine changes gave Glaive about 5% more DPS and Bandit 10% less but that has since been fixed.

In short I think I need to play more 1v1s to get a better idea. Although I do suspect Zeus and Glaive are still slightly too good.

[luckywaldo7]

I agree that Zeus is probably OP. In closed testing I find they beat any kind of raiders for cost, and they generally do pretty well against crawlies and gunships, so they are the most versatile assault unit in the game.

And tick is pretty awesome, although tbh I generally like roach better. Often I will actually chose shield bots over cloakies just for bandit and roach.

[Skasi]

When reading through this thread I get the feeling that not Zeus is too powerful, but that Thugs are too weak. I mean.. they are ASSAULT units in THE ASSAULT factory. Shields kinda still get hard countered by spiderlab (zeus/venom+recluse beat shields).

What about buffing shields? Not weapon, speed, cost, or cloaklab unit tweaks. Shields!

Or maybe it's just that players (including me, hi!) don't make enough use of Dirtbags to cut off enemy reinforcements, to wall off things you resurrect, and all the other funny things you can do with them? I need to add 1-2 Dirtbags to my shieldlabs default queue from now on, I suggest you try the same, 1v0ry_k1ng.

[Google_Frog]

I get the feeling Thug may need more weight (as in scaled up stats, HP, cost, everything).

[KingRaptor]

I kept buffing Thug guns but everyone kept reverting >:(

Tick is one of my hate units (along with Gnat) and I'd remove them if I could. They're the kind of unit that's basically either completely useless or massively OP (25 second stun wtf) depending on the situation.

Rocko is well-balanced I think, it has strengths relative to other light skirms (cheap and can defend itself against attacking mobiles) but also weaknesses (short range, insufficient to outrange LLT).

[Otherside]

Tick has been lol broke for ages but sak/google etc wouldn't nerf mega 20 secs good as dead EMP's because some people don't use them.

They take the fun out of the game.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Yes to clarify my post, I am primarily hating on the zeus & tick, and mostly on the tick. Tick gives cloakies better EMP than spiders, its very cheap and it stuns for SO long. It would be powerful stunning for half the current time at half the AoE. atm one well landed tick is GG, for 100m. personally I would like to see it in a different factory altogether, as cloaky already has the motherload of powerful options.

Zeus is killer, and there is no unit I can think of that I would feel comfortable sending in to fight it close up, assault unit to assault unit. Even jacks gonna get EMP'd. I think the main issue with the Zeus is it has EMP, DPS AND massive HP. its almost as good as the cudgel for being a HP sink (6.8hp/m for zeus, 8.75 cudgel) with the added bonus of having a very powerful weapon.

also, slightly unrelated, why are the spider cons and AA (more concerned about the AA) so expensive? 400m for the AA spider, that has only has 100dps. Makes it very hard for spider players to counter gunship rushes in teamgames.

[Licho]

Only reason why zeus feels better is that it has weapon that can hit small/fast targets and air easilly..

In cost effectivity stats we measure its crappier than say ravager..