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Ships.

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25 days ago
I had the initial impressions that ships would dominate sea, then I tested matchups and realized that Amphbots are decent at beating Ships. Especially Scallops, which only lose a equal metal value match up against Seawolfs.

Ships are limited on where they can go unless you dig yourself a channel or use lobsters or transport.
Some maps straight up don't have water which makes them less than recommended.

That said I did a lot of matches with ships in maps with little or no water and found success in some way or fashion which just seems plain odd.

My silly ideas work more often than my sane ones.
I kinda want a way to play ships on any maps without blocking the minions of my team mates to get blocked by the channels I'm digging.

What's your take on ships?
+0 / -0
25 days ago
By the way if you don't believe me here a replay:
https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/2455585
+0 / -0


25 days ago
Ships are OverPowered by design as hovers and amphs are also able to traverse land and there would be little reason to make ships on maps with just a little bit of land if ships were not OverPowered.
However, they are not OP enough that it is worth it to make them on pure land maps.
+2 / -0
even the original had op ships



man i miss the black hydra flagship with its dual hlt and dual plasma heavy cannons.. although that came later with mods and BA
+1 / -0

24 days ago
quote:

I had the initial impressions that ships would dominate sea, then I tested matchups and realized that Amphbots are decent at beating Ships. Especially Scallops, which only lose a equal metal value match up against Seawolfs.

Amph seems decent against ships in a vacuum (and it's not hard to get a win on ships with amphs if the ship player doesn't really know what they're doing) but in practice ships easily beat amphs. Why? Speed.

Speed of hunter: 126
Speed of duck (which loses badly to hunter): 93
Speed of archer (fastest thing amph has that beats hunter): 70.5

From go, ship has a massive advantage in choosing when and where fights happen. Just don't engage as ships unless you'll have the advantage, and you'll come out on top. Amph is forced to play defensive, and they can succeed at this for a while, but Mistral and Siren are both massive problems:
• Amph units besides duck (and technically scallop, though their depth charges amount to little more than tickle pods) have to surface in order to fire. While surfaced, they're unable to dodge projectiles at all, which leaves them massively vulnerable to mistral rockets.
• Siren is an attrition monster vs amph, able to beat massive numbers of archers, scallops, and/or ducks, and then retreat for repairs when damaged while nothing in the amph factory can pursue. Responding to siren requires massive numbers of buoys in order to kill the sirens before they can retreat, and buoys are themselves vulnerable to mistrals and to seawolves. Ship can just keep switching it up between siren and seawolves to break through the amph player's defenses; they need to screw up badly for the amph player to win.
+1 / -0
In a team setting, throwing Scallops with Lobsters is still really good and hard to counter for the ship player if they fall behind.
Well in a team setting, it works quite differently in general.

Like ships can be worth building even if there are is not that much water on the map.
Ship units:
Cutter - it is decent AA against gunships but it lacks the DPS to kill anything effectively although it can theoretically kill most stuff if it is just allowed to disarm and slowly kill it afterwards. It is a good scout and distraction though.
Hunter - generally good against amphs and counters both Daggers and Ducks but struggles against massed units and is kinda fragile later in the game.
Corsair - Corsair is easily one of the most OP units in the game. It can be considered a riot, raider and assault unit. It basically counters the whole hover factory alone. Luckily it is hardcountered by subs and other underwater units so it doesn't dominate water maps completely.
Mistral - Mistral on land would easily be the strongest skirmisher in game. Luckily it is confined to the water and will often be at a height disadvantage against any land based skirmisher.
Seawolf - seawolfs are kinda fragile after all and they easily bunch up and die to splash damage, and lack the Line of Sight to really work on their own. Very finnicky unit to use. But at least they counter corsair and mistral.
Zephyr - ship AA is pretty strong in general but not really worth lobbing onto land.
Siren - Siren is really tanky but also kinda expensive and slowish. Consider making a few to protect your more fragile ship as it counters most underwater and surface ships that can't skirmish it.
Envoy - Envoy is arguably the best artillery in the game. It outranges most other mobile artillery and is relatively tanky and fast.
It is almost worth putting on land using transports or Lobsters.
However, if it remains completely stationary, it is an attractive target for Impalers, tactical nukes, air bombing or other anti-heavy measures. I'd argue that it is better to go straight for the stationary Cerberus artillery turret instead in most situations.

Striders:
Reef - is kind of a weird unit. It has 3 main abilities which don't synergize that well. The airrepair pad is likely to get your allied airplanes killed if you try to use it on the frontline and they take forever to repair if there is no nearby buildpower.
The disarm missile can potentially be strong, but the Reef can't really follow it up that well with just the capture drones as just a small amount of AA counters them.
The capture drones stack well but are easily denied by a bit of AA if you just have 1 or 2 Reefs. You generally need more Reefs to actually become threat.
Shogun - is basically 2 mobile Cerberus turrets on a mobile platform. Easily the strongest artillery the game. However, if just stationary, 2 Cerberus turrets still tend to do more damage as Cerberus has more splash damage, so it is not super worth it to put it on land.
Scylla - It has tactical nukes and having a mobile tactical nuke that you can cloak can be super useful in lategame teamgames and FFAs, even on land.
+1 / -0
i think its worth noting that i believe the reef disarm missile can penetrate heavy shields and even funnel-web Shields without impacting them.. maybe my memory is incorrect. but it may be possible to use it to disarm anti-nukes through shields. idk

capture drones and air repair pads also work if reef is in transport so you can use it as a flying domi / repair craft.. not that its that good

oops i did find a way to make reef move at light-speed out of the map boundary or under the map so im going to say that reef is stronger then it looks =D
+0 / -0
23 days ago
reef is extremely effective with dealing with those really annoying lategame out of control shieldballs, it pierces through shields and homes to specific units so theres little to no chance of missing. its also really good at disarming antis or detriments.
+0 / -0