buff crab

Spiders suck because redback and crab are useless

Crab is far from useless, and Redback functions as a riot unit if you have nothing else to do that job. I have heard it called the worst of the riot units and I would like it to do more, but then you watch a game of people who are not as excellent at this game as either of the previous posters, and see Redbacks making 2-3x cost against glaives and bandits and scorchers and such.

So, yes underpowered maybe, not useless.

(I still think Spiders should get some form of cheaper / easier terraform to let them make the most of their biggest advantage)

Both of those units are explicitly supposed to be better against heavies and Crab is explicitly supposed to be better against light units, so I don't know that it's a useful comparison.

Crab might not be good in the current meta where Grizzly and Cyclops are common, but if things change such that that is not the case, I expect Crab to become decent again without any need for direct changes to it.

edit: Another point is that Crab is considerably stronger in the context of team games where more metal is concentrated in small areas.

Crab is so gimmicky with its armored mode crap. Lets leave grizzly and cyclops aside, what is the other fac that is popular on wonky terrain maps? Jump bots. Have you guys ever seen placeholder or jugglenaut vs crap? It's not a pretty sight.

Ive even saw crab vs rovers once and some ravagers just drove into it and uprooted it and killed it in seconds.

Whats its purpose? Killing skirmishers? Recluse is strongest skirmisher so why would it need a crab for that? I bet it doesnt even beat a rogue ball.

As for Redback, I've seen redbacks lose to glaives plenty of times. It's an extremely slow moving riot with no AoE that can be swarmed with ease. However redback is so slow that you can usually just ignore it.

Spider lab has always felt extremely niche and only existing on very specific maps. Ravagedv2 for example but now I wouldnt even consider making spiders here.

Spider strength = skirmishers. Stingers > skirmishers. Artillery > Stingers. Spider has no artillery. Crab doesnt beat stingers effectively either, trust me I've tried.

Crabe could have enough range to outrange Stinger without manual AoE targeting.

I mean, what's the worst that could happen which didn't already happen.

A gameplay/engine change that affects Crabe hugely is that units with ballistic weapons can fire up cliffs much more reliably now. A Crabe situated on a steep cliff used to be untargetable by short range ballistic weapons from below.

I forgot to buff Crab.

Couldn't crab get an indirect fire toggle that increases its max range, converting it to a semi-stationary artillery unit? The high arc would make it near useless against units that don't move in a straight line, but good for sieging stingers. If it got attacked, it could toggle back to its direct fire semi-riot role.
Alternatively you could let it toggle between its plasma cannon and a slightly lower ranged, faster fire, somewhat lower dps plasma pulser -> good against small units, as stated in description.
Or just add a particle cannon under its barrel (only able to move within 45° of the barrel and having lower range) for hitting faster moving units, and maybe buffing the plasma cannons range.

Spider fac would need either an artillery unit or cheap medium range terraform to have any chance against even a single DDM.
One suggestion: changing redback from bad riot to direct-fire particle artillery. 1/3 of its RoF, but avg artillery range. One could hide his structures/units behind walls, but that would render most unable to attack back as well. Counter with indirect fire artillery behind small cover.

Hm...more long ranged heavies.
I don't see what could possibly go wrong.

crab is an underpowered unit for its cost compared to the alternatives:
- cyclops and grizzly for heavy skirmishing/assault
- spamming rogues or recluses for skirmishing (the dps/cost difference is huge and crab is somewhat equivalently vulnerable when moving at the moment, considering its cost)


you could make it more assaultish instead, like the big fat hermit it appears to be:
cost 1600 -> 1400
range 600 -> 500
hp 4000 -> 6000 (reduce armored bonus to x1.5 or x2 instead of x3 or something)



there's lots of nonsense in zk. I think trying too hard to avoid making units generically useful while ignoring their models and animations is partly why that happened.

- plasma cannons with no AOE that consistently miss vs wobbly radar dots
- lookalike weapons which behave radically different (crab cannon vs cyclops cannon)
- fire damage over time duration varies wildly (firewalker/blastwing vs pyro vs dante)
- arbitrary rules like disarm damage which lead to designs that are often either useless or extremelly oppressive
- striders that are more easily be countered by half their cost in normal units than the cheaper heavies because they focused on extreme short range dps
- extreme burst that makes units waste most of their dps (moderator, battleship, merlin)
- wildly inaccurate artillery deciding games due to rng (bertha, tremor)
- nonsense crab armored pose
- units with models that are too short for their role so they often get their line of fire blocked. This affects some riots and fire support units like lance and fencer (fencers might be OP otherwise)


people will eventually learn to avoid the gimmicky units later in the game and cherry pick the effective ones.