Reef

Most sea games end with reef spam. Some players start spam reef at start or just made defense and start spam it after.
Reef have radar, heavy cruise missile, drones and antinuke. And it costs only 3500 metal/energy. Its hardy to counter because when player start building anti air turrets, reef missile just kill them and mostly player even cant complete them. Its very friendly to protect and there is only some counter for it. In masses reefs are more powerful even then funnels because they can not only swarm enemy with fast, long range drones with rapid fire but also kill other units/structures with its cruise missile.
Yes submerged units can attack it without retaliation but its not option when reef is under protection of defenses or other friendly units. Even sniper subs suck because LoS.
Yes its water unit but there is still option as terraform.
Also reef can repair aircraft but mostly its very annoying feature. Because if reef is in enemy anti air turrets range then it continue shooting at aircraft. Or half of my bombers is one map side and half just fly in other side. Its possible to make aircraft pad repaid/rearm priority? So my aircraft fly at my rearm pad not on reef. I think that reef rearm pad is useless.
What do you think about reef? Is it OP or not?

what? reef still exists?

LIES!!! i haven't seen a reef in any of the games i've played this year

Reef is a solid way to capitalise on water dominance, but it's not unbeatable. There are many factors that make it a great units:

- cheap for a strider, but has strider level attrition.
- free units!
- can affect land-bound opponents but does not fear them.
- drones have effectively twice their normal range (give or take), due to attack ground exploit.
- similar to funnelweb, very safe and reliable attrition.
- free small anti-nuke, has smaller range, but usually any threat of reef is enough to dissuade nuke, and it's a massive win if you intercept.
- multiple means of attack (free more resilient impaler).
- wrecks even razors by baiting them open then hitting them with artillery
- very few weaknesses.
- rearming wyverns and thunderbirds close to the front line, and wyvern has a tendency to absolutely wreck opposing hovers (until flail) and especially ships (until forever).
- is pretty mobile and therefore resilient to artillery.
- is cloakable and therefore resilient to bombers and tac nukes.
- has own radar for good measure.
- one of the few things that kills DDM without enormous casualties.
- safe from many traditional anti-heavy units such as infiltrator.

It really has very few weaknesses while being difficult to stop, especially for the average player in big teams.

Firstly, they are unable to affect anything underwater, so they have a persistent vulnerability wherever they happen to be. A reef cannot survive alone in duck infested waters. Thus, the reef player must invest fairly heavily in controlling the thin ice on which they skate. Assuming an even battlefield, this means they must be able to protect themselves from 4100 metal in scallops (roughly 14) before they can field a single reef.

Secondly, while they're really good at grinding away at things from a distance, they need to be able to protect themselves against air. Particularly gunships. Banshees, rapiers, blastwings, black dawn, brawler, krow... these will all kill reef for cost if it's not well supported.

Thirdly, Big Bertha will kill reefs all day, and can be inland enough to be safe from their drones. Reef-users can combat this with eraser, or terraform (but gives up mobility).

Fourthly, has anybody seen typhoon lately?! It's a stardust that moves! Fast! With 2200 HP! Shiiiiiiiiiit. Typhoon busts are pretty difficult to stop. They're powerful and fast, and will hunt you down - tearing through your defenses like paper. The standard porc logic doesn't work for sea, you can't just put up skydusts or DDMs and be safe. You need urchins to hit subs, and while reasonably effective you can't afford enough urchins to stop a typhoon swarm and a reef.

There're other counters too - halberd bust, silo, superweapons, raven stack, but I haven't used these so can't speak as to their effectiveness.

The basic principle is that even though all of the weaknesses of the reef can be mitigated, they cannot negate every single weakness simultaneously or for cost. If you produce the threat that forces the reaction, you can the use that threat elsewhere (hit their base with the big bertha for example). Many players aren't good at having several plans going at once, which means in big teams if someone makes reefs they're going to chew through unprepared noobs until a carry shows their face. This is a very powerful thing to do for a unit that is accessible to anyone.

"Fourthly, has anybody seen typhoon lately?! It's a stardust that moves! Fast! With 2200 HP!"
Yea i see them. Moving stardust who cant attack subs and other underwater units.
And you forgot one important thing who work in practice - even if you kill reef with other unit spam, mostly reclaim fields is still at enemy territory so you lost your units but enemy gets reclaim. And i see it many times failing. Or more better - enemy just secure zone and rezz them again to send. I see many times killing reef and making phyrric victory on that moment who is just nail in coffin.
BB costs 5000 metal no 3500. While you build it reef player just go and kill it or just buy erasier. We lost games even with BB. One BB isn't so effective. Even more is not effective when radar jammer is present.
I can too write sheet of theory but practice is different. And in practice reef with support units win most battles if player didn't make something stupid.
Reef is superior vs impaler - dps 150 while implaer 80. Range too is larger. In my opinion reef breaking mid game power is its cruise missile not drones. It's cruise missiles is outstanding artillery.
Also Shredder is poor for it cost vs fast targets. Ship and hover factories have problems with anti air units vs reef drone spam.

Here is some huge sea battle with competent players on both sides:
http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/377743

Ends with mostly Reefs and subs spam.
(posting in case someone wanted to examine the sea balance)

I'd go the other way, giving it a full anti, and buffs in other areas, while increasing the price.

To an even greater extent than rapier, reef is a generalist unit. Quant's law dictates that we buff its strengths, and its strength is to be a bit good at everything.

By increasing weight, and the power of its utility, it becomes unspammable. People like spamming reef because the drones and artillery stack well for cost, but if these elements stayed the same while other non-stackable elements did not, reef would still act as intended without remaining ever-present or permaspammed.

So it has radar? Why not make that sonar too, and advance radar on top of that? It has an airpad, make it repair as if it had much higher BP. It stops nukes? Make that range larger. Add 2000 metal to pricetag. Now it's really general, and will serve you in many different ways, but will not be spammable. It will well and truly be a flagship that you want in your composition often, but won't render alternatives redundant once the first one hits the field.

quote: Yea i see them. Moving stardust who cant attack subs and other underwater units. And you forgot one important thing who work in practice - even if you kill reef with other unit spam, mostly reclaim fields is still at enemy territory so you lost your units but enemy gets reclaim. And i see it many times failing. Or more better - enemy just secure zone and rezz them again to send. I see many times killing reef and making phyrric victory on that moment who is just nail in coffin. BB costs 5000 metal no 3500. While you build it reef player just go and kill it or just buy erasier. We lost games even with BB. One BB isn't so effective. Even more is not effective when radar jammer is present. I can too write sheet of theory but practice is different. And in practice reef with support units win most battles if player didn't make something stupid. Reef is superior vs impaler - dps 150 while implaer 80. Range too is larger. In my opinion reef breaking mid game power is its cruise missile not drones. It's cruise missiles is outstanding artillery. Also Shredder is poor for it cost vs fast targets. Ship and hover factories have problems with anti air units vs reef drone spam.

It feels like you're theorycrafting up a storm.

Give me your reef composition and I will give you an equal cost of something else that will counter it. ATM you're just assuming every supporting unit and structure is available in sufficient quantity to answer any threat, when I'm telling you in an even game this will not be the case when you take into account that you have spent money on reefs. Give me a map you're talking about too, so we can stop favourably assuming the reach of the units in play.

So far as I can see, the difference between Reef and Funnel is that "the biggest porc slog" happens a lot more at sea.

Why not make funnelweb drones be little baby spiders that are landbound?

Why not make Reef drones be little baby boats that are sea bound?

Let the drones keep their unit clipping trait.