athena vs. upgrading your comm to resurrect

speaking of lazarus...

some quick math i did to compare comm resurrect vs. athena resurrect prices

athena: 15bp/600metal = 0.025bp/metal, somewhat worse since strider fac also needs to be paid for.

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comm (pricing spawn as 0 metal), with initially 12 bp

nanolathe upgrade is 4bp/150metal = 0.0267, so cheaper than athena -> getting it always gives more bp for cost!

2nd level = no resurrect, but adding nanolathe + upgrade gives 6bp for 225 metal

3rd level = resurrect unlocked, now with 6 more bp for 650 metal

so we get a 3rd level comm with resurrect + 24 bp for spending 875 metal, which is 0.274bp/metal. now to be fair if you spent 875 metal into athenas you just have a strider fac at this point, so it might be still good

let's try 4th level - no manual wep to make this as efficient as possible.
10 bp for 950 metal

we get a 4th level comm with 34 bp for spending 1825 metal, which is 0.0186bp/metal, NO LONGER AS CHEAP AS SPAMMING ATHENA IN TERMS OF BP PER METAL... but there is still only 1.9 athenas and a strider hub (counting as 2), which is basically 30bp, so we get more bp per metal at this point with comm

now for 5th level - 15 bp for 650 metal to get a 5th level comm with 49bp for spending 2475 metal, which is 0.198bp/metal and there are now basically 3 athenas, so 45 bp

at 6th level it breaks because you run out of carrepairer slots. now athenas are better just because they can actually be made

of course this doesnt take into account the mobility of athenas which allows them to be used across the map where they are actually required, the fact they are air units and thus more vulnerable to aa + they have less hp, the comm being a JUICIER target and SLOWER target, the athena getting free cloak and a larger unit place pool, etc. these reasons make athena the better choice imo

in summary/TLDR: athena > comm for resurrection. upgrading your comm instead of making strider hub then athenas will give you more bp able to resurrect units for spending the same amount of metal up until you hit level 5 where you can't upgrade much more for value. but athena has other factors that are more valuable, which allow it to actually use that resurrect better than your comm can besides its other uses. of course if your teammate who has athenas is not really being a team player, then maybe do use comm?

Speaking of athenas dying to anti-air. I'd appreciate an upgrade that allows athena to turn into a spider.

I didn't know comms can copy from strider hub. That is really good to know and changes the math on this a good amount. Anti-air isn't your biggest problem in my opinion, just get some shields to hide the athenas under. It's both statistically better if you're just copying a strider hub to use athena, less risky and the athenas move much faster.

shields generally stop anti air yes and the Athena is well low enough to be covered by the shield. That's why I think the comm with lazarus is a bad idea, comms are already juicy targets with 4 metal per sec value or 2400 metal per minute value - no need to make them even juicer by giving them bp that can be offloaded to other units