Kiting in ZCOM

I have been playing games, on cardboard and on various computer platforms, for many decades. When I play a new game, and have to come up with tactics, I can fall back on my experience and use tactics that worked in older games, even if those games were not in the same genre. Now one of the first MMORPGs I played was Everquest. And because I liked being able to play solo sometimes, which the game wasn’t really designed for, I ended up playing a particular character with a particular tactic: The quad-kiting druid. Basically that was a tactic in which you aggroed up to 4 enemies, and by being faster than them managed to constantly run away from them. As long as you at least slowly damaged them, and they never damaged you, you would eventually win.

Kiting is not a universally useful tactic. Lots of games have built-in game mechanics that stop kiting from working: Enemies that don’t chase you forever, but run back to their point of origin and regenerate, or, in games with several characters, enemies that change their target if their first target is out of range. Kiting is also often thought of as a tool for real-time games, and plays less of a role in turn-based games.

Having said that, kiting does work in Star Wars Zero Company. Well, taunts only last for one round, so you need to refresh the taunt every round. But enemies do comply strictly with a taunt effect, and will run past another of your characters without attacking, even if they can’t reach the character that taunted them. So I was a bit surprised when watching various tactical and build tips for Star Wars Zero Company (maybe I should call it ZCOM for short), that kiting is not a commonly used tactic in this game.

ZCOM is about 40 cycles (days, battles) long, and around cycle 18 you unlock the ability to add a second specialization to all of your characters. By that time, Cly the Mandalorian already joined your team. So if you add the soldier specialization with the taunt ability to her, you get the perfect kiting character. She can taunt a bunch of characters with the bulwark ability and pistol shots, and then fly out of range with her jet pack. While the enemies fruitlessly pursue her, the other three squad members can shoot the enemies without even needing cover.