Spring RTS game Zero-K is going to release on Steam

[qwerty3w]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/334920

Hope it will go well.

For those who are unfamilar with the game, here is a introductory video from Saktoth, one of its former developer. It's directed at a different audience (the players of Istrolid, another game he developed), but you can notice some key differences to Supreme Commander:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6UO-IkIHLU

[AdmiralZeech]

Hope it goes well! Last time I looked at Spring, the GUI, main menu, etc (all the stuff surrounding the actual game) was really placeholder. Did they polish it up since then?

[qwerty3w]

Hope it goes well! Last time I looked at Spring, the GUI, main menu, etc (all the stuff surrounding the actual game) was really placeholder. Did they polish it up since then?

Unlike Balanced Annihilaton, Zero-K always have a graphically more polished in-game UI, it also got a new lua menu around late 2016.

[Brutus5000]

Soooo anyone already played this? Share some experience guys!

[Farmsletje]

blodir played it on stream and it looked pretty bad

[speed2]

I've tried it for couple of minutes and it didn't impress me

[Apofenas]

IMO it is very aggressive game. I could call it a compressed version of SC:FA or better version of SC2, but this game has a lot of awesome features of its own (sadly some of them aren't in this game):
-Working match maker (although sometimes it has matches with ~10% win chance...)
-Repair costs only energy
-Area reclaim/repair/attack/mex build
-Awesome unit formation(you drag a line and units create a formation on that line)
-At start you get to choose where exactly you spawn in your starting location
-You choose type of commander with their own abilities and upgrades
-Your first factory is built instantly
-Many kamikaze, melee and EMP units
-Terraformation
-Terrain decides a lot:
--Different units have different behaviour (spiders don't care, bots can climb some hills, tanks and vehicles need even terrain, hover dislike elevation ect)
--Radars get blocked by terrain so you always try to put them on mountains or use terraformation
--Wind generators produce more power the higher you put them (their outcome is also affected by some random number that changes every 20 seconds XD)
-Power overflow makes mass extractors that are connected to your power grid to produce more mass

The ACU is basicly less important there. The game is played in Supremancy format, so snipe is not very valiable strategy. It is much weaker and around 6-8 starting units can kill it. It can be stunned and my ACU got captured once by shit tonn of capture units.

Everybody have access to every tech(factory). Some factories are almost unexistant (air factories are bad as starting ones and i never saw navy there). I think sometimes you may instantly lose the game at the start if you chose one factory and opponent builds its hard counter (Faction diversity and stuff...) or if you missunderstand terrain. First minutes can also be very crucial: you may overestimate your commander and lose it, enemy can sneak into your base, hide behind your own buildings and wreck you and that is especially awfull when unit that kites gets range bonus (some weird mechanic).

I think it's pretty fun game, but it is not as good as SC. Also you should ask EcoNoob for detailes, he is top 40 or something in their ladder XD.

[moonbearonmeth]

The hotkey structure hurts my head but I guess that's something to learn

Biggest gripe is that the unit types are so mind numbingly generic from a lack of factions and the fact that every factory seems to produce it's own variant of a unit that none of them are interesting or fun.

All that being said my experience has been incredibly limited.

[qwerty3w]

Everybody have access to every tech(factory). Some factories are almost unexistant (air factories are bad as starting ones and i never saw navy there). I think sometimes you may instantly lose the game at the start if you chose one factory and opponent builds its hard counter (Faction diversity and stuff...) or if you missunderstand terrain. First minutes can also be very crucial: you may overestimate your commander and lose it, enemy can sneak into your base, hide behind your own buildings and wreck you and that is especially awfull when unit that kites gets range bonus (some weird mechanic).

Airs are the most common choices for the second factories. Ship factory is a must on sea maps. Balance is heavily map depend, but the general rules are relatively simple, the slow units are bad on the large open maps, the vehicles are bad on the hilly maps, and the units that can't move in water are bad on the water heavy maps, otherwise you won't lose the game just because of your factory choice. The maps with mixted features usually have more factories viable.
Some units get more range on highgrounds, and a projectile may move beyond the range if it missed the target, other than that there isn't anything resemble a range bonus mechanic.

Biggest gripe is that the unit types are so mind numbingly generic from a lack of factions and the fact that every factory seems to produce it's own variant of a unit that none of them are interesting or fun.

Eh...aren't the factions in SupCom mostly have the same set of unit types with subtle differences? Zero-K units within the same role have more striking differences, and the roles for a lot of units are muddy. I think the game is somewhere between TA and RA2 in terms of unit differences.

[moonbearonmeth]

Eh...aren't the factions in SupCom mostly have the same set of unit types with subtle differences? Zero-K units within the same role have more striking differences, and the roles for a lot of units are muddy. I think the game is somewhere between TA and RA2 in terms of unit differences.

And it is those subtle differences that make this game so much more enjoyable to me