Hey this was great stuff! The rabbit hole goes deep, here's a few(?) random additional notes: Campaign can be played in coop mode with shared control. There are heaps more maps that can be played just by clicking on them on the website. A lot of maps are used across games on the Spring engine (now renamed to Recoil) and haven't necessarily been specifically made for ZK. There are a few mods that radically change the game into something else like Zero Wars, Arena Wars, Future Wars, etc. There is a truly *staggering* amount of options and powerful commands in the game and I was still learning new stuff after years of having played the game, like you can effortlessly have structures built on a perfect terraformed spire or hole for instance. There occasionally are regular type tournaments while it's been a long time since we've had a round of Planet Wars. I've in the past played as the leader of one faction and it was a ton of fun! Doing diplomacy with another faction, agreeing to a temporary truce, planning strategy, planning who will take offensives where, etc. The resources gained are spent on various infrastructure on the planets (each planet representing a playable map) that show up in battles taking place there. One of the downsides with PW was that having bad players in your faction taking the slots for attacking/defending in a battle was a liability and you were better off having a handful of great players stay awake a long time hogging as many of the battles as possible. There's been design documents and whatnot for reworking it all to a better system it's just a ton of work that takes several ages, again it's been a long long time since the last round took place.
Thank you, sounds cool! Do you know any game like this, where you can have long battles, and save/load it for games where it plays out over several plays together? Also have you heard about From the Depths PC game?
@@Kaaxe I have very fitting turn based ones. An RTS with a multiplayer in-game save would be great. We played Supreme Commander 7 for hours, and it'd lasted longer if we had the ability to save. With huge maps, several paralel levels of attack/defense, and unlimited units, strategic battles become possibble - we just sit wholly thru them. --- Learning From the Depths could be extremely hard if you start from scratch. You must remember that vehicle parts, and whole vehicles can be downloaded, and examined together with all the enemy faction crafts in the designer world. You will be better off understanding the mechanics by modifying already working units first, otherwise you'll go mad from the myriad new parameters you have to juggle. Plus you must make peace and accept that you won't be an expert in all fields, and will use ready-made parts for your own units mostly. While I'm pretty good at armoring in different mediums (water/air/vacuum), can make decent weaponry, targeting and movement, serious balanced power and energy generation is not my field. I can switch on/off different kinds of production considering combat environment automatically, actually building a specified fuel engine/steam engine is a bit beyond me.
@Kaaxe Thanks for the comment and the info. Yes, I did miss a couple of points. I did try one of the alternative game mods, Spring 1944, which was pretty decent. I think it's a nice thing to have built in and a great nod to its heritage. Shame planetwars hasn't happened for a while. I appreciate its all a lot of work. I think it's a great idea, though, basically a community shared campaign. I think Zero-K has alot going for it and I've certainly had plenty of fun with it. Thanks
@@MBGamingReviews As far as I'm aware Spring 1944 in particular is the actual spring game made playable in the zk client instead of being a mod made for zk. I understand there is some jank involved with its AI though. Barely tried it myself.
@FroogleGog Thank you for watching the video and the comment. I really enjoyed doing the research, to be honest. The spring rts game development is quite interesting and something I'll do a video about later. Thanks
@@MBGamingReviews Did you come across the Cold Takes dev blog I started about a year ago? I noticed you mentioned some ways ZK does its own thing, and I'm working on documenting the design choices behind that. They'd be a great source for anyone wanting to go into more detail. Also if you're doing more history of Spring, then you will need to hear about the mess that occurred over the last decade, resulting in the Recoil fork. The old core developers filtered away, and the remaining ones were uncooperative (and inactive), so the new group of developers had to fork the engine.
Thanks for making this video. Never heard of Zero-K before. Downloading it now. Should tide me over until I can get a new PC and buy Sins of a Solar Empire 2 =D
Dame you! Having just watched both of this and your video on BAR, I now have two games I have to play; while having an ongoing Factorio run I don't even have enough time for, due to both thesis & tutoring work... Still, I this might be a great option as an RTS Co-op game for a LAN party I will be part of later this spring.
Thank you for the comment, and I'm sorry I've ruined your free time lol (what you had!) Glad you can enjoy both games; they are both pretty cool and very different. Thanks for seeing both videos, much appreciated!
I dont know.I like BAR , and zer-K , but at the end I would rather play Suprem Commander FA , or Total annihilations.I just love good looking units , animations , and feeling over all
@@jacksheldon8566 but they both fuuu**d up with proportion of sizes\movespeed\attitude\projectailespeed, and it kill sense of GIGANTITY\POWERFULLITY etc
Honestly, I'd say the biggest fundamental design differences between Zero-K and BAR are no metal makers and Unit AI. No Metal Makers is a deliberate choice to force expansion for efficient economic growth. Total Annihilation's style of exponential economy growth even without taking more ground was embraced by BAR, while Zero-K decided to force expansion to be better to keep turtling to a minimum. Both design decisions have value and I can't even say I think one is better than the other. Unit AI. This is where Zero-K utterly destroys BAR and I wish BAR would pick up the torch on this one. Units that micro themselves hyper efficiently (usually via the Fight command, some unit settings and having designated repair areas set up on the map) frees my attention to focus on the Macro game virtually in it's entirety. I'll outright say it: I'm sick of micro in RTS. The War/Starcraft style micro is ultimately king game design with idiot unit AI (Not that Total Annihilation's AI wasn't comedically stupid.) has driven me well away from a lot of RTS games over the decades. BAR isn't something I'll ever play competitively, simply because good micro can do so damn much there and I simply can't. But Zero-K's unit AI is so shockingly good it boggles my mind and outright discourages me from playing as much RTS game time as I'd be inclined to do, because I'm always annoyed with how insultingly stupid the units feel in any other game. BAR with Zero-K's unit AI features would be pretty much the perfect RTS game to me, and god help me I don't think I'll ever see it. We're just now starting to see click and drag formation move commands start to become almost standard in RTS games, and Zero-K's unit AI seems to be 20-30 years ahead of it's time in comparison. Edit: I'll admit, the energy grid does have a significant impact, I'm just so used to building around it in Zero-K that I didn't even think of it. Edit 2: Oh wow, that tells me how little I use air power in Zero-K, I forgot about rearming, which is a pretty significant difference from BAR.
Howy? I'm looking for some RTS along similar lines, but more worthy to build and keep up bases, and preferably with mod-manager, and being able to save and load in later an ongoing, slow, long battle. Looked at BAR and researched it to basic level, but matches seem to be geared towards "fast-paced" battles. Have you seen something like this around? As similar lines I mean Forged Alliance or Total Annihilation, with qouck zoom map, and resource flowthru. Something like we did to FA after the disastrous Supreme Commander 2, which robbed me of youthful yearning for new releases forever. So a lot of illegally lumped together and weeded out mods got us SC7 got 1.5 years. :) Accidentally I've wished for an RTS with infinite kinds of units, total physics based, and preferably traversable back then, when I wasn't this morose wreck of player. :D Strangely it was granted in a game called From the Depths, which has so tight and little community, I need to spread the word to expand them. New ones might be suscepible to my mad schemes in the campaign editor, also bring in new ideas. The game has a mod manager and maker (first game I don't need to mod), multiplayer, total 3D from seabottom to orbital space, several stock campaigns with community mantained nation-specific units, and darwinian tutorial which kills you till you get it right. Also you can use it as an FPS, boarding enemy units destroying their human brain in a jar, as a simulator commaning the unit, and play it from the overview strategic and tactical maps, letting the unit AIs do the fine work. Any units, components, and buildings can be freely shared via small txt files or steam workshop. Thank you for listening to my gospel. :)
@normal6969 I'm not sure, depends on the age of the rts you want. For example Warzone 2100, a game I'm currently 'working on' for a new video, has over 400 unit development options and an impressive modding community. But it's a 90s game, looks like it, but plays really well. I've added your suggestion to my wishlist, so I'll see if I can get this game soon and maybe review it, it looks quite interesting. Thanks
Hehe, ZeroK is a LOT older than BAR, but they share life blood. There's a great long history of this community building up these games all because they love them!
ZK is a great game but unfortunately the community has some real problems. There's basically only 1 or 2 active large player count servers and the developers also play the game literally daily. So if you say anything negative about balance, or your experience with more veteran players, you will 100% of the time get personal messages from the devs which can be pretty awkward-- and no, these messages are not as friendly as you'd expect them to be. To make matters worse the game has allowed the use of third party scripts (mostly forbidden now but some are allowed) which was defended by the devs. These were totally game-breaking (making units follow eachother in formations or instantly terraform predesigned shapes) and gave veteran players a huge additional advantage. I still play occasionally, but BAR is my go-to now.
@theorator9568 Thanks from the comment. If that's the case then it's a shame. Personally, I tend to celebrate these free games, trying to compete with bigger budget ones. Shame if the developers are doing that, let the game do the talking! Thanks
@@MBGamingReviews Honestly I think the situation has improved but for a while everyone knew it was happening and it left a lot of bad taste. The devs are extremely active in development at least.
The outrageous parts of this comment are basically wrong. I don't know about this commenter specifically, but free games are vulnerable to trolls, and some trolls that get bans end up with an axe to grind. The devs aren't sending people personal messages. I don't know where that comes from. I haven't been sending messages and I don't know of any active developer that would, and previous ones sending messages hasn't come up. People are more likely to directly contact moderators (which may result in a conversation), not the other way around. Unless you're talking about the moderator bot that notifies people about warnings for trolling/teamkilling etc? But even then, nobody gets messaged or shut down for complaining about balance. Excess public complaining about any player is likely to be discouraged (use the report system, don't feed drama), but it isn't like there is an experienced player protection racket, and there hasn't been a time when that would appear to be the case. Lua widgets (the third party scripts) exist, but I think we've kept an eye on them and put technical blocks in place for issues fairly quickly. Units following each other in formation is just a base feature of the game. I also don't know what sort of terraform shapes you'd commonly want that the base UI can't already do. My approach is to make the interface powerful enough that people won't get very much advantage from modding it further. Most of the veterans play with the base interface.
@@FroogleGog The player count of ZK has not broken 100 average, 200 peak for 7 years. The game is fun, it should have more players. Insinuating I'm a troll and calling the community liars for stating issues is exactly why that number hasn't changed. The experienced players and the devs' behavior drive out the new players.
@@theorator9568 The wider community and the feedback that comes from it doesn't factor into this. Your claim is that the ZK developers routinely respond to complaints (about balance or about a protected group of vets) by sending abusive private messages. I can say that this claim is flat out false without calling anyone but you a liar. But, while the claim is false, I don't have to go so far as to call you a liar. Your simply false remark about the developers playing "literally daily" makes me think you are prone to exaggeration. So a developer, or someone you thought was a developer (the line is blurry in open source projects), could have sent you an unwanted message in response to a complaint. I can't vouch for all interactions from everyone involved over the past two decade. What I can say is that such issues have not reached the threshold for me to hear about it, and I expect that the threshold to be quite low since there is a good number of reasonable people in the community who would report it. Plus I see plenty of new players around, the community is not just a closed pool of vets. So I have to conclude that if there is or has been an issue, then it has been at most very rare (a far cry from "100% of the time"). If you have any specific information relevant to the current community, then I'd like to make the issue even rarer, because this sort of stuff is pretty important.
@@MBGamingReviewsthere is some really high quality mods for rusted warfare. To name a few: Pride of nation AEA unlimited warfare Ad astra per aspera Legend of highpeak OAC War commander mod And lots of others mods about AVP, lotr, mechwarrior, AOE, and more...
Despite Zero-K looking and playing similar to Total Annihilation, I still can't get into it. Same goes to BAR. Units either die like ants unless you build them in swarms and some units are very fast and deal unexpectedly lots of damage to buildings. TA lacks some QoL mechanics, but somehow for me feels much better to play. And I'm talking about vanilla version.TA and SupCom managed to strike fine balance to have nice play session.
I'd show you our SC7 illegal modpack plays on my channel, but it could be played only the version on the CD and then a specific update, but I don't wanna tease you with jury rigged race-bonuses, like teleportation, resurrection, stealth-cloak with different endgame resource generators, city shields... Wait. Am I rambling again?
I wanted to like it, but when the enemy were perfectly kiting on the easier difficulties, I quit. Let me learn the game first before adding very high level stuff like that, that the AI can pull off perfectly. Plus, I hate that everything dies so fast.
You should use the fight command, that makes all your units auto kite too. Micro is fully automated for moment to moment juking from all sides - it's part of the unit balance.
@@WingedVictory Yeah. The reason the enemy has perfect kiting micro is that, unless you deliberately try to micro, so do all of your units at all times. It's actually an equalizer between you and the AI. Instead of the AI being deliberately hobbled on micro, your units get to micro themselves too.
I wouldn't call this the best rts ever. It's definitely the most convoluted one, though. It feels like the developers had no-one to tell them to stop adding more mechanics to the game. Supreme Commander works because it has that balance of macro knowledge, diverse units, and a fair bit of fantastical rules, like not having to worry about that damn connected power grid bullshit, or choosing the right vehicle for the right terrain, that one's a big turn-off for me. Interesting how you didn't mention that unit types have different capabilities when on different terrain. I'll repeat what I put on my steam review; It feels too competitive for it's own good. It's too much Red alert 3 micro, and not enough Supcom macro.
It's complicated in different ways. Supcom has more to manage in the economy, and the adjacency bonuses. Zero-K is more about building an army that works and outmaneuvering the opposition.
In terms of original mechanics and unit control this rts is second to none. Also this is the only rts in existante in which units know how to dodge and kite... on their own! Give an attack move order and all your units will always try to stay at max range. They will go back automatically if the enemy gets too close. You can even set them to go back to base at 33% hp to get repaired and then take back their last order to fight again on the he frontline without additional human input. So comparing zero-k micro to red alert is not fair at all. Another point to add is that the eco system in zero-k is not exponential. So you will never be able to vomit as many troops at once than with a BAR or supcom. And the eco is 100% redistributed to all players in a team. (With a few exception and some rules.). So there will be no player in one team getting all the eco while the others wait. The energy grid actually force you to take the map instead of playing tall on you map corner. It also allow you to deep strike an energy pylon to deactivate some really powerful defence turret. Each factory is a faction of its own. Some are better on some maps. What's great is the choices to can or have to make. Like playing on a big chess board with way too many different pieces to choose. But it's up to you to make the right choice for developing your own winning strategy.
@@jacksheldon8566 I've been playing for a while and have found none of that supposed intelligence in units, they behave incredibly stupid, prioritizing buildings rather than enemy units, dodging INTO oncoming fire, and constantly getting turned around when they even DO try to dodge. As for the diverse units, some are just straight up better than others, like the spiderbots that can crawl along walls. Also, the air units are some of the worst I've seen in any rts. Strike bombers with ONE bomb? I'm not going to constantly micromanage units with this pseudo rock-paper-scissors dynamic with raiders, skirmishers and rioters constantly. That reminds me too much of unit control in Starcraft, and this is NOT a good thing. Yeah, no, I'm not playing this game again.
Hey this was great stuff!
The rabbit hole goes deep, here's a few(?) random additional notes:
Campaign can be played in coop mode with shared control.
There are heaps more maps that can be played just by clicking on them on the website.
A lot of maps are used across games on the Spring engine (now renamed to Recoil) and haven't necessarily been specifically made for ZK.
There are a few mods that radically change the game into something else like Zero Wars, Arena Wars, Future Wars, etc.
There is a truly *staggering* amount of options and powerful commands in the game and I was still learning new stuff after years of having played the game, like you can effortlessly have structures built on a perfect terraformed spire or hole for instance.
There occasionally are regular type tournaments while it's been a long time since we've had a round of Planet Wars. I've in the past played as the leader of one faction and it was a ton of fun! Doing diplomacy with another faction, agreeing to a temporary truce, planning strategy, planning who will take offensives where, etc. The resources gained are spent on various infrastructure on the planets (each planet representing a playable map) that show up in battles taking place there. One of the downsides with PW was that having bad players in your faction taking the slots for attacking/defending in a battle was a liability and you were better off having a handful of great players stay awake a long time hogging as many of the battles as possible. There's been design documents and whatnot for reworking it all to a better system it's just a ton of work that takes several ages, again it's been a long long time since the last round took place.
Thank you, sounds cool!
Do you know any game like this, where you can have long battles, and save/load it for games where it plays out over several plays together? Also have you heard about From the Depths PC game?
@@normal6969 Perhaps a 4X game or a Total War game is what you're after?
I do own from the depths but have hardly tried it
@@Kaaxe I have very fitting turn based ones. An RTS with a multiplayer in-game save would be great.
We played Supreme Commander 7 for hours, and it'd lasted longer if we had the ability to save.
With huge maps, several paralel levels of attack/defense, and unlimited units, strategic battles become possibble - we just sit wholly thru them.
---
Learning From the Depths could be extremely hard if you start from scratch.
You must remember that vehicle parts, and whole vehicles can be downloaded, and examined together with all the enemy faction crafts in the designer world.
You will be better off understanding the mechanics by modifying already working units first, otherwise you'll go mad from the myriad new parameters you have to juggle.
Plus you must make peace and accept that you won't be an expert in all fields, and will use ready-made parts for your own units mostly.
While I'm pretty good at armoring in different mediums (water/air/vacuum), can make decent weaponry, targeting and movement, serious balanced power and energy generation is not my field.
I can switch on/off different kinds of production considering combat environment automatically, actually building a specified fuel engine/steam engine is a bit beyond me.
@Kaaxe Thanks for the comment and the info. Yes, I did miss a couple of points. I did try one of the alternative game mods, Spring 1944, which was pretty decent. I think it's a nice thing to have built in and a great nod to its heritage. Shame planetwars hasn't happened for a while. I appreciate its all a lot of work. I think it's a great idea, though, basically a community shared campaign. I think Zero-K has alot going for it and I've certainly had plenty of fun with it. Thanks
@@MBGamingReviews As far as I'm aware Spring 1944 in particular is the actual spring game made playable in the zk client instead of being a mod made for zk. I understand there is some jank involved with its AI though. Barely tried it myself.
Great video. The delve into the history of early Spring was impressive, I'd think it would be hard to find and get right.
@FroogleGog Thank you for watching the video and the comment. I really enjoyed doing the research, to be honest. The spring rts game development is quite interesting and something I'll do a video about later. Thanks
@@MBGamingReviews Did you come across the Cold Takes dev blog I started about a year ago? I noticed you mentioned some ways ZK does its own thing, and I'm working on documenting the design choices behind that. They'd be a great source for anyone wanting to go into more detail.
Also if you're doing more history of Spring, then you will need to hear about the mess that occurred over the last decade, resulting in the Recoil fork. The old core developers filtered away, and the remaining ones were uncooperative (and inactive), so the new group of developers had to fork the engine.
honestly watched this thinking i'd see someone with a much larger following had made it because the production quality is super impressive. subbed
Thank you @zachbell3613 much appreciated and thanks for watching and subscribing 👊 👍🏻
Thanks for making this video. Never heard of Zero-K before. Downloading it now. Should tide me over until I can get a new PC and buy Sins of a Solar Empire 2 =D
Yeah, I'm not really famous tbh
@Aethelhald you're welcome. I'm glad you've got another great game to play! Thanks
Damn right, commenting for engagement.
Dame you! Having just watched both of this and your video on BAR, I now have two games I have to play; while having an ongoing Factorio run I don't even have enough time for, due to both thesis & tutoring work...
Still, I this might be a great option as an RTS Co-op game for a LAN party I will be part of later this spring.
Thank you for the comment, and I'm sorry I've ruined your free time lol (what you had!) Glad you can enjoy both games; they are both pretty cool and very different. Thanks for seeing both videos, much appreciated!
I dont know.I like BAR , and zer-K , but at the end I would rather play Suprem Commander FA , or Total annihilations.I just love good looking units , animations , and feeling over all
sad that auditory of this game 10 times smaller then BAR(
Oh don't mention it. *sighs*
From the Depths with it's darwinian tutorial gets less.
Simple answer:
Graphics.
@@jacksheldon8566 but they both fuuu**d up with proportion of sizes\movespeed\attitude\projectailespeed, and it kill sense of GIGANTITY\POWERFULLITY etc
@djtot731 yes, I agree, but I'm happy with the music, it's very good and stays true to TA legacy. Thanks
@@normal6969FTD still has a massive active community at least
Honestly, I'd say the biggest fundamental design differences between Zero-K and BAR are no metal makers and Unit AI.
No Metal Makers is a deliberate choice to force expansion for efficient economic growth. Total Annihilation's style of exponential economy growth even without taking more ground was embraced by BAR, while Zero-K decided to force expansion to be better to keep turtling to a minimum. Both design decisions have value and I can't even say I think one is better than the other.
Unit AI. This is where Zero-K utterly destroys BAR and I wish BAR would pick up the torch on this one. Units that micro themselves hyper efficiently (usually via the Fight command, some unit settings and having designated repair areas set up on the map) frees my attention to focus on the Macro game virtually in it's entirety. I'll outright say it: I'm sick of micro in RTS. The War/Starcraft style micro is ultimately king game design with idiot unit AI (Not that Total Annihilation's AI wasn't comedically stupid.) has driven me well away from a lot of RTS games over the decades. BAR isn't something I'll ever play competitively, simply because good micro can do so damn much there and I simply can't. But Zero-K's unit AI is so shockingly good it boggles my mind and outright discourages me from playing as much RTS game time as I'd be inclined to do, because I'm always annoyed with how insultingly stupid the units feel in any other game.
BAR with Zero-K's unit AI features would be pretty much the perfect RTS game to me, and god help me I don't think I'll ever see it. We're just now starting to see click and drag formation move commands start to become almost standard in RTS games, and Zero-K's unit AI seems to be 20-30 years ahead of it's time in comparison.
Edit: I'll admit, the energy grid does have a significant impact, I'm just so used to building around it in Zero-K that I didn't even think of it.
Edit 2: Oh wow, that tells me how little I use air power in Zero-K, I forgot about rearming, which is a pretty significant difference from BAR.
Game's great
have you ever showcased Rusted Warfare?
@insockie4534 not yet, I recently bought the game in the rts sale on Steam, so will play it soon hopefully. Thanks
Howy?
I'm looking for some RTS along similar lines, but more worthy to build and keep up bases, and preferably with mod-manager, and being able to save and load in later an ongoing, slow, long battle.
Looked at BAR and researched it to basic level, but matches seem to be geared towards "fast-paced" battles.
Have you seen something like this around?
As similar lines I mean Forged Alliance or Total Annihilation, with qouck zoom map, and resource flowthru.
Something like we did to FA after the disastrous Supreme Commander 2, which robbed me of youthful yearning for new releases forever.
So a lot of illegally lumped together and weeded out mods got us SC7 got 1.5 years. :)
Accidentally I've wished for an RTS with infinite kinds of units, total physics based, and preferably traversable back then, when I wasn't this morose wreck of player. :D
Strangely it was granted in a game called From the Depths, which has so tight and little community, I need to spread the word to expand them.
New ones might be suscepible to my mad schemes in the campaign editor, also bring in new ideas.
The game has a mod manager and maker (first game I don't need to mod), multiplayer, total 3D from seabottom to orbital space, several stock campaigns with community mantained nation-specific units, and darwinian tutorial which kills you till you get it right.
Also you can use it as an FPS, boarding enemy units destroying their human brain in a jar, as a simulator commaning the unit, and play it from the overview strategic and tactical maps, letting the unit AIs do the fine work. Any units, components, and buildings can be freely shared via small txt files or steam workshop.
Thank you for listening to my gospel. :)
@normal6969 I'm not sure, depends on the age of the rts you want. For example Warzone 2100, a game I'm currently 'working on' for a new video, has over 400 unit development options and an impressive modding community. But it's a 90s game, looks like it, but plays really well.
I've added your suggestion to my wishlist, so I'll see if I can get this game soon and maybe review it, it looks quite interesting.
Thanks
this kind of look like beyond all reason.
They are forks of the development but yes they very similar BAR is more polished but Zero k is more customizable
@@nealreiersen6823 i would love zero-k to get work but i dont think there is enought space for both.
Hehe, ZeroK is a LOT older than BAR, but they share life blood. There's a great long history of this community building up these games all because they love them!
3:14
@@DerpyHoovesy so is rusted warfare
ZK is a great game but unfortunately the community has some real problems. There's basically only 1 or 2 active large player count servers and the developers also play the game literally daily. So if you say anything negative about balance, or your experience with more veteran players, you will 100% of the time get personal messages from the devs which can be pretty awkward-- and no, these messages are not as friendly as you'd expect them to be.
To make matters worse the game has allowed the use of third party scripts (mostly forbidden now but some are allowed) which was defended by the devs. These were totally game-breaking (making units follow eachother in formations or instantly terraform predesigned shapes) and gave veteran players a huge additional advantage. I still play occasionally, but BAR is my go-to now.
@theorator9568 Thanks from the comment. If that's the case then it's a shame. Personally, I tend to celebrate these free games, trying to compete with bigger budget ones. Shame if the developers are doing that, let the game do the talking! Thanks
@@MBGamingReviews Honestly I think the situation has improved but for a while everyone knew it was happening and it left a lot of bad taste. The devs are extremely active in development at least.
The outrageous parts of this comment are basically wrong. I don't know about this commenter specifically, but free games are vulnerable to trolls, and some trolls that get bans end up with an axe to grind.
The devs aren't sending people personal messages. I don't know where that comes from. I haven't been sending messages and I don't know of any active developer that would, and previous ones sending messages hasn't come up. People are more likely to directly contact moderators (which may result in a conversation), not the other way around. Unless you're talking about the moderator bot that notifies people about warnings for trolling/teamkilling etc? But even then, nobody gets messaged or shut down for complaining about balance. Excess public complaining about any player is likely to be discouraged (use the report system, don't feed drama), but it isn't like there is an experienced player protection racket, and there hasn't been a time when that would appear to be the case.
Lua widgets (the third party scripts) exist, but I think we've kept an eye on them and put technical blocks in place for issues fairly quickly. Units following each other in formation is just a base feature of the game. I also don't know what sort of terraform shapes you'd commonly want that the base UI can't already do. My approach is to make the interface powerful enough that people won't get very much advantage from modding it further. Most of the veterans play with the base interface.
@@FroogleGog The player count of ZK has not broken 100 average, 200 peak for 7 years. The game is fun, it should have more players. Insinuating I'm a troll and calling the community liars for stating issues is exactly why that number hasn't changed. The experienced players and the devs' behavior drive out the new players.
@@theorator9568 The wider community and the feedback that comes from it doesn't factor into this. Your claim is that the ZK developers routinely respond to complaints (about balance or about a protected group of vets) by sending abusive private messages. I can say that this claim is flat out false without calling anyone but you a liar. But, while the claim is false, I don't have to go so far as to call you a liar. Your simply false remark about the developers playing "literally daily" makes me think you are prone to exaggeration. So a developer, or someone you thought was a developer (the line is blurry in open source projects), could have sent you an unwanted message in response to a complaint. I can't vouch for all interactions from everyone involved over the past two decade. What I can say is that such issues have not reached the threshold for me to hear about it, and I expect that the threshold to be quite low since there is a good number of reasonable people in the community who would report it. Plus I see plenty of new players around, the community is not just a closed pool of vets. So I have to conclude that if there is or has been an issue, then it has been at most very rare (a far cry from "100% of the time"). If you have any specific information relevant to the current community, then I'd like to make the issue even rarer, because this sort of stuff is pretty important.
also rusted warfare is very similar
I've actually just got that on the sale! Thanks, looking forward to playing it.
@@MBGamingReviews just get some big update. so
@@MBGamingReviewsthere is some really high quality mods for rusted warfare.
To name a few:
Pride of nation
AEA unlimited warfare
Ad astra per aspera
Legend of highpeak
OAC
War commander mod
And lots of others mods about AVP, lotr, mechwarrior, AOE, and more...
Despite Zero-K looking and playing similar to Total Annihilation, I still can't get into it. Same goes to BAR. Units either die like ants unless you build them in swarms and some units are very fast and deal unexpectedly lots of damage to buildings. TA lacks some QoL mechanics, but somehow for me feels much better to play. And I'm talking about vanilla version.TA and SupCom managed to strike fine balance to have nice play session.
I'd show you our SC7 illegal modpack plays on my channel, but it could be played only the version on the CD and then a specific update, but I don't wanna tease you with jury rigged race-bonuses, like teleportation, resurrection, stealth-cloak with different endgame resource generators, city shields... Wait. Am I rambling again?
I wanted to like it, but when the enemy were perfectly kiting on the easier difficulties, I quit. Let me learn the game first before adding very high level stuff like that, that the AI can pull off perfectly. Plus, I hate that everything dies so fast.
Why aren't you a hardcore gamer with 20 years of constant PvP experience bro? Just get good at the game bro.
You should use the fight command, that makes all your units auto kite too. Micro is fully automated for moment to moment juking from all sides - it's part of the unit balance.
@@WingedVictory Yeah. The reason the enemy has perfect kiting micro is that, unless you deliberately try to micro, so do all of your units at all times. It's actually an equalizer between you and the AI. Instead of the AI being deliberately hobbled on micro, your units get to micro themselves too.
I wouldn't call this the best rts ever. It's definitely the most convoluted one, though. It feels like the developers had no-one to tell them to stop adding more mechanics to the game. Supreme Commander works because it has that balance of macro knowledge, diverse units, and a fair bit of fantastical rules, like not having to worry about that damn connected power grid bullshit, or choosing the right vehicle for the right terrain, that one's a big turn-off for me.
Interesting how you didn't mention that unit types have different capabilities when on different terrain.
I'll repeat what I put on my steam review;
It feels too competitive for it's own good.
It's too much Red alert 3 micro, and not enough Supcom macro.
It's complicated in different ways. Supcom has more to manage in the economy, and the adjacency bonuses. Zero-K is more about building an army that works and outmaneuvering the opposition.
In terms of original mechanics and unit control this rts is second to none.
Also this is the only rts in existante in which units know how to dodge and kite... on their own!
Give an attack move order and all your units will always try to stay at max range. They will go back automatically if the enemy gets too close.
You can even set them to go back to base at 33% hp to get repaired and then take back their last order to fight again on the he frontline without additional human input.
So comparing zero-k micro to red alert is not fair at all.
Another point to add is that the eco system in zero-k is not exponential. So you will never be able to vomit as many troops at once than with a BAR or supcom.
And the eco is 100% redistributed to all players in a team. (With a few exception and some rules.). So there will be no player in one team getting all the eco while the others wait.
The energy grid actually force you to take the map instead of playing tall on you map corner. It also allow you to deep strike an energy pylon to deactivate some really powerful defence turret.
Each factory is a faction of its own.
Some are better on some maps. What's great is the choices to can or have to make. Like playing on a big chess board with way too many different pieces to choose. But it's up to you to make the right choice for developing your own winning strategy.
@@jacksheldon8566 I've been playing for a while and have found none of that supposed intelligence in units, they behave incredibly stupid, prioritizing buildings rather than enemy units, dodging INTO oncoming fire, and constantly getting turned around when they even DO try to dodge.
As for the diverse units, some are just straight up better than others, like the spiderbots that can crawl along walls. Also, the air units are some of the worst I've seen in any rts. Strike bombers with ONE bomb?
I'm not going to constantly micromanage units with this pseudo rock-paper-scissors dynamic with raiders, skirmishers and rioters constantly. That reminds me too much of unit control in Starcraft, and this is NOT a good thing. Yeah, no, I'm not playing this game again.
@sir_justinius the fact you say units are imbalanced then mention spider just reinforces how clueless you are