Zero-K is a free, open source RTS game with gameplay similar to Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. You start out with a commander and use it to construct a base, expand across the map, and defeat your opponent. A game can have thousands units on the map at once, creating massive battles of epic proportion. There are over 100 unique units that can be made at 1 of 12 different factories. One defining characteristic of Zero-K is that it features a flat technology tree, so you can build any unit from an appropriate factory. There are also dozens of other structures that can be made to help defend, attack, scout, collect resources, and more.
The game's development has been quite active, with updates coming fairly frequently. Also, the player base is pretty active. There's always a 4v4 or 8v8 game beig played, as well as some 1v1s and 2v2s. Nothing like Starcraft, but pretty good nonetheless, considering it's open-source and not particularly well-known. It's never too hard to find a game to join and play, anyway.
If you've played Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander before and are looking for a game with a similar feel, this may be your best bet. If you've never played either of these games, you ought to give it a try, since it's really fun to control such huge armies. It is free after all.
Prominent Features
Epic Scale - Hundreds or thousands of units on the battlefield
Zero-k features both single-player missions as well as multiplayer games. Are are a wide variety of single-player missions:
A sandbox where you can play with the units without fear of being attacked
A couple of tutorials on how to play the game
1v1 against an AI opponent
1v2 against 2 AI opponents
2v1, similar to 1v1 except you have an AI ally
Chickens, which is a horde mode game type where alien "chicks" spawn frequently and try to kill you
Other missions with various victory conditions
Multiplayer games typically range from 1v1 to 8v8. You can also add AI players to balance out a team or if you like comp stomps. Furthermore, you can play the "Chickens" game type cooperatively with others.
Here's a 1v1 game featuring two prominent players in the Zero-K community.
If you decide you want to play Zero-k, you can download it at the website. After the game is installed, this video should guide you from there. It will explain some of the lobby's functions, how to start a new game, and the very basics of how to play.
On February 13 2012 15:46 decemberscalm wrote: Always fun to rock back into TA Spring every once in a while. What exactly does this have to offer comparatively?
Compared to Starcraft, it's very different. Here are a few points off the top of my head:
Resources are represented by rates of income vs spending, as opposed to fixed values. So instead of having 520 minerals to spend, you would have an energy income rate of +10 and energy expenditure rate of -8, resulting in a net of +2 energy, so your energy storage bar would slowly fill up.
The user interface is a lot more forgiving than in Starcraft. For example, - You can queue up hundreds of units for a factory to produce. - Resources are only spent on currently-producing entities, not on queued entities. - A factory can be set to repeat a certain unit production cycle indefinitely. - It's very easy and quick to give construction units dozens, even hundreds of queued orders to carry out. - You can zoom out to look over the entire map.
No unit cap, and no required structures to allow for more unit production (e.g. pylons).
Gameplay not as fast-paced
Only one faction, where the differences in gameplay come from the players' starting factory choice (1 of ~11).
Flat technology tree
Water units
Pretty much all units can attack while moving.
If you meant how Zero-K compares to other Spring games, I believe that Zero-K is the most polished game currently available using the Spring engine.
On February 13 2012 15:56 Golgotha wrote: wow will try it out. how in the world do they balance 100 different units?!
thanks!
I get the feeling that it's easier to have a perceived balanced game with a smaller player base. Fewer players means fewer strategies that get figured out that can abuse a certain unit. When a game has millions of players, imbalance can be found relatively quickly. With a player base of a few hundred or so, it can take a lot longer.
On February 13 2012 15:56 Golgotha wrote: wow will try it out. how in the world do they balance 100 different units?!
Balance certainly didn't happen overnight. It would be more accurate to say, rather than being inspired by TA, Zero-K is actually directly descended from TA through a series of mods and forks, and a move to the spring engine (some TA fans will probably recognize a few unit names that never got changed). So that means a legacy even older than Starcraft with a lot of testing and evolving balance over the years. Of course, it is pretty much just a hobbyist project, so like beamer said it doesn't have the loads of good players that Starcraft has to pick out and abuse all the nuances and details. But the developers play actively with the rest of the playerbase and are very serious about listening to player feedback, and patches can be deployed quickly. So while it can't compare to BW/SC2, compared to many other commercial RTS out there the balance is pretty tight.
I decided to finally try this game. It is a bit hard to understand at first. I still don't know what I am supposed to build. But it is very micro lite so it's a nice break from starcraft. Also the multiplayer is very polished and its easy to find a game. The variety of units is nice too.
After spending hours and hours on zero k (mainly big team battles and lanning with my bros) to see what it brings to the table for TA style action, I have mostly good things to say. Really wish the op had TA somewhere so they would know its descended from it.
Like a lot of old rts's, TA was micro hell to play to the best of your ability. Zero K changes this by having units auto micro. I know this sounds terrible from an SC perspective, but believe me, its such a breathe of fresh air for TA. The focus is on strategy and tactics as opposed to apm. You will still need really high apm to play at the best of your ability and keep everything in motion, but its no longer hell like it was in BA (balanced annihilation).
Economy: No longer is there techning up. Instead the units are all spread out to different themed factories like jetpack/specialst bots or heavy vehicles. They feel like individual races as they all play completely different. They have an incredibly small amount of unit niche overlap for such a diverse range of factories. Of course you will be shoe horned into only playing viable factories in small games, but in big team games you've got a lot of options to pull out a lot of different strategies. Instead of getting moho's to expand your eco, you hook up more power via grid to "overdrive" your metal extractors. Of course this comes secondary to expanding your territory to hold more extractors and claim wreckage.
Because of the new unit system, its not ALWAYS flash's and pee wee's raiding every game. Its wonderful to see some unit diversity. Its hard to not fall in love with the units. The new Zeus looks sick.
The ui is a lot tighter, which was badly needed for ta spring.
The game is plays small 20 minute face games instead of giant epic slug fests so common in BA.
The bad is the constant irk of bugs every now and then. In its current state, you will be the victim of an annoying and sometimes deadly bug eventually. Not too terrible though, easily ignorable.
Mention the unlock system and I'll sad panda at you. While not a fan of unlocks systems, its required due to the free nature of the game so that banning disruptive players will actually hurt them.
Overall, its definently a new beast compared to TA and BA. Have to say I'm enjoying the heck out of it. Shame it has such a small community. No grand advertisement plan like Blizzard can easily do for its games.
On February 13 2012 12:51 beamer159 wrote: There are over 100 unique units that can be made at 1 of 12 different factories.
Oh dear, that doesn't sound like a healthy design at all.
Mirrors are always balanced.
Mirrors may always be technically balanced, but that doesn't necessarily mean the game is any fun. Rock, Paper, Scissors is balanced because both parties have access to the exact same tools, but most everyone probably agrees it is a game of luck with little to no replay value.
Having a balanced game in terms of winrates shouldn't be their primary goal.
On February 13 2012 12:51 beamer159 wrote: There are over 100 unique units that can be made at 1 of 12 different factories.
Oh dear, that doesn't sound like a healthy design at all.
Mirrors are always balanced.
Mirrors may always be technically balanced, but that doesn't necessarily mean the game is any fun. Rock, Paper, Scissors is balanced because both parties have access to the exact same tools, but most everyone probably agrees it is a game of luck with little to no replay value.
Having a balanced game in terms of winrates shouldn't be their primary goal.
The problem i normally have with games with entire big tech trees and more than 30+ units a race with long focus is when you devote to some army comps or odd timings where you mass something and all-in and it beats most of everything unless you were prepared. Then games to counteract that they make nearly all early game timings impossible to pull off with some constraints then the game is focused entirely on endgame rock/paper/siscors. Idk, ill give it a go later this week
On February 13 2012 12:51 beamer159 wrote: There are over 100 unique units that can be made at 1 of 12 different factories.
Oh dear, that doesn't sound like a healthy design at all.
Mirrors are always balanced.
That's not really true. Mirrors only means one player will not have an advantage over the other from the get go due to imbalance, but it does not necessarily mean there won't be over-dominant strategies even if they are available to both players (for example, SC2 PvP was not balanced several months ago).
It's not balance that I'm concerned with at all really. It's more the fact that with that many units, you're bound to have redundant units as there is only a limited amount of roles and mechanics that needs to be filled in an RTS game and, asymmetrical factions aside, you can fill all of them with like 20 units. The classic titles that focused on a huge number of units usually did so more for the flavor of it for the sake of adding more content to the game (at that time most RTS games were focused on single player campaigns as well).
Anyways, sorry for hijacking the thread for random game design remarks. I haven't yet gotten around to trying the game, I hope to be able to do so over the weekend.
On February 13 2012 12:51 beamer159 wrote: There are over 100 unique units that can be made at 1 of 12 different factories.
Oh dear, that doesn't sound like a healthy design at all.
Mirrors are always balanced.
Mirrors may always be technically balanced, but that doesn't necessarily mean the game is any fun. Rock, Paper, Scissors is balanced because both parties have access to the exact same tools, but most everyone probably agrees it is a game of luck with little to no replay value.
Players of RPS who know each other tie >80% of the time on average. It's poker not chess.
Those calling imbalance should give the game a go. Of course it's not perfect, but it's admirably good.
The different facs, as stated, sort of play out like different races, or at least different openings - you generally pick a fac to start and stick with it through to mid-game at least. This actually works well with the relative overlap between unit roles; different facs have units that fill similar roles, but your strategic choices are often to do with the strengths/weaknesses of the whole factory rather than individual units, and the factories are quite well differentiated.
I created a chat lobby for this game. On the chat screen, enter chat/channel/teamliquid at the top to open the channel. Hopefully we can congregate here and operate some IH as well as help those of us that are very new to the game and need help (like me )
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hR2Ix.png)
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