I wonder if it is more "difficult to play" than underrated.

Casted on YouTube

I think Slashers might also be underrated.

quote: I think Hovercraft is underrated.

By who? Scalpel spam is/was very common ever since the overpowered missile buff. Halberd spam has been a common counter to many things for years. Just like light vehicles, hovers have always been really good provided pathing doesn't fail on you, which is something that's very likely unless you focus on preventing it or play on maps where it's not an issue.

Shadowfury333 I've noticed you called Daggers Glaives twice! :D

Capricis Darts!

GoogleFrog

quote: Pathing hasn't failed on terrain for years.

Or maybe you just always forget because you've grown used to it being awful over the years and adjusted your playstyle/input to it. I guess it's something like muscle memory or however you call it.

Here's one occasion from SF's linked cast. There's probably some more but I'm not sure about them because not all move commands are visible all the time.

Would darts really work you think? I have a hugely poor impression of them. They seem to miss a lot, possibly inconsistent fire rate while moving... More speed but less range, 6 shots to kill daggers. And twice as cheap but the higher the numbers the more effective gauss is. Haven't used them much tho.

quote: * Darts would never work against daggers. It's single worst counter from LV fac.

lel, obvious lobster is obvious

Capricis Darts can be super efficient against Daggers. Darts have 120 HP against Dagger's 110 damage per shot, so for 40m a Dart can eat 220 dmg worth of shots, for comparison, a 130m Scorcher can only eat 440 dmg. This can become more extreme as Dagger numbers (and hence their potential overkill) increases. The reason this is so efficient is the tactic Daggers heavily rely on: go in, burst down a target or two and retreat. To clarify, you don't need to go pure Darts, you can mix them with Scorchers.

On top of that Darts have more movement speed and sight distance than Daggers. Without Darts your enemy will always have more sight distance than your LV raider army. [?] This completely turns around the vision advantage, especially considering Darts cost half as much as a Dagger and can be spread out all over the map. In other words you should be dominating the vision game and get to choose which battles to take.

If you still get in a bad situation, then like I said just use a Dart or two as cannon fodder to force Daggers to retreat or engage in a battle without their powerful first burst bonus. You can also use Darts to scout and potentially harass an enemy's expansion (eg. while their army is busy). Darts can survive one Defender missile and occasionally escape, two Darts can kill a lone Defender and their DPS/cost is alright. In theory a Dart never needs to die, provided you have enough APM.

Skasi hasn't expressed it very clearly (it is buried in the post a bit) but the idea is not to use pure Dart, or indeed even mostly Dart as your army.

The purpose behind mixing in some Darts is:

- Cheap scouting
- Raiding mex
- Ablative shield for your other units

In most matchups Scorcher fills those roles well enough (though especially for scouting Dart is always useful early), but against Daggers (and Scalpels) the Scorcher has a poor matchup and does not do so well.

(Incidentally pure Dart does beat a reasonable number of Scalpels and is hard for Halberds to kill, IIRC. If you can kill your opponents' Maces, or if they neglected to make any, Hover is left without a way to kill many Darts quickly.)

You should not build no Scorchers (it is your best answer to Halberds I think, and if you can get them past the Daggers they are still your best raider) but in comparison to most other matchups they are far less useful.

If I made Darts in the matchup it would be with no intention of them ever actually shooting at a Dagger. They're for shooting at mex, shooting at Scalpels, and baiting Scalpel missiles into the enemy army. Also vision, and maybe baiting Dagger shots in a small scale engagement.

quote: The critical mistake from Capricis side was that he tried to deal with antiraider unit with raiders, instead of making 3-4 scorchers blob and raid naked enemy mexes.

Daggers out-speed and out-vision Scorchers so I doubt he would get close to mexes. My plan when using Daggers is to build no defenses because Dagger can always move to intercept a raid.

Skasi
I'm not saying Daggers don't have uses in the matchup.

However, a claim like this

quote: Darts can be super efficient against Daggers.

followed by an analysis of Dagger vs Dart overkill mechanics does imply you are suggesting players could use Darts to fight Daggers.

Even with the disclaimer

quote: To clarify, you don't need to go pure Darts

it still seems like you are suggesting going pure Darts vs Daggers is an option. Even if it wasn't your intention it is pretty simple to interpret your statements this way.

quote: Even Shadowfury333 figures it out on stream

I watched the VOD earlier and wanted to point out Darts don't really work. However, you came up with a similar and even stronger statement yourself so I just responded to you.