There's been a lot of discussion and complaints about hermit balance and as a monospammable unit especially with the recent test to give it regeneration, so I just wanted to put in my two cents about it and assaults in general.
Part of what makes ZK so strategically interesting is the plethora of rock-paper-scissors style counter triangles. Raiders, riots, skirmisher; air, AA, ground; units, defences, eco; etc. Any given class of unit is only good in a given situation, so you have to be flexible with unit composition and adapt to the situation, which keeps the game dynamic and prevents the relatively stale gameplay of monospam. Assaults as a unit class break this by being defined by their high HP for their cost and being otherwise center-of-the-road. This makes them too much of generalists and therefore monospammable unless they are given a specific niche and drawbacks outside of that niche. This has been done very well with most of the other assault units (clearly intentionally). Jack and Halberd can get around defenses to raid backlines, but are held back by low range/DPS respectively; knight is slow and great when it can stun targets but mediocre for cost otherwise; thug has bad DPS but is the defining unit of the shieldbot factory; ravager and minotaur are otherwise straightforward generalists but their status as vehicles and low maneuverability greatly limits where they can act and keeps them interesting and only usable in specific scenarios; grizzly being so expensive makes it more susceptible to anti-heavy strategies.
Hermit stands out by not having a well defined niche. It's primary feature as a spider is it's ability to ignore terrain, which just makes it usable in more situations without limiting it. It's too tough for anti-swarm tools or raiders and way too cheap for anti-heavy tools. A ball of hermits isn't hard countered by anything specific and without strong reasons against it people will spam because it's easier to manage, though much less fun to fight. The recent test of giving it regeneration was a good way of making it more interesting but didn't give much opportunity to give it interesting drawbacks and just made it straightforwardly better.
I propose making hermits more defensive, like smaller crabs to lean into that theme of the factory. Rather than an armored form (which would be too similar to crab) it could increase it's range while stationary. If hermit had a smaller range while moving that increases when stationary, it would decrease the utility of mobile hermit balls and encourage them to act defensively, playing like more armored and less accurate fencers/bulkheads in armies. If the maximum stationary range is slightly less than that of a lotus, it can encourage terraforming small ridges just outside the lotus range so hermits can sit on them and get just enough range to safely kill the lotus and also inhibits vehicles while not hurting the spiders at all, like mini crab spires. It would also be cool to lower the gun on the hermit model so it can't shoot past other adjacent hermits but have it raise and be able to shoot over others when stationary, further weakening mobile hermit balls and encouraging defensive use.
Let me know what you think. I'll probably try modding these changes in pretty soon, especially if anyone else wants to test it.
tl;dr: hermit needs a more defined niche. I suggest making it more defensive by giving it shorter range when moving and larger range when stationary.
