1v1 meta is broken

Dagger/scalpel combo counters too many things, especially as they are alpha damage units. Some factories like shields or lv have absolutely 0 counters to hover. Cloak has sniper...which I guess can work, but not super efficient as scalpels are 220(!!!) metal. Snipers are a cancer unit too, so I'm not sure balancing around them is a good idea either. I suppose rockos work somewhat. Raiders don't really work because people bunch them up, and scalpel has aoe(more of a mace/club than ascalpel). Daggers also make for great anti raider units; a problematic synergy. They require very short range to work too, which puts you a big disadvantage as those types of things are easy to defend against.

I would suggest changing them a bit like this:
Increase scalpel cost by 40 or so.
Decrease its AoE(40->20).
Increase its damage to 358, cool down to 10->11.5. Maintains DPS. Worse against small things.

Cost increase just generally reduces their power. Reduced AoE and increased cooldown focuses its heavy skirmisher role. Increasing damage is problematic in that it increases 1 or 2 shot potential, which could counteract all the other nerfs. However, I think this is a better approach than reducing damage/cd as that makes it more of a generalist.
I'd rather that the tracking of the missiles not be messed with, as this is part of the flavor/identity of the unit, and would dilute its identity.

Making the dagger less of an alpha unit would also be something to consider. Currently the mechanics of the alpha make dagger relationships with other raiders very polar(either big win or huge loss...rare to see an in between). This goes against quants rule, but I think in the raider phase excessive quantyness can be bad for the game because it makes things counter eachother quite hard. An alpha-less dagger would probably suck, and need stat buffs afterwords. It can still be an interesting unit even without alpha.

Mace should also probably be looked at. Its really bad at everything... Greatly increasing its turret turn rate would atleast make it less frustrating to use.

Also 2 bonus games of me vs llama playing hovers.
B449412 2 on Crubick Plains v1.2
B449106 2 on Eye of Horus v13

I won both of those, but not with my starting factory(cloaky), but by switching to things that dont die to hover in every way. Notice how I get behind every game in the begging due to not being hovers.

I would recommend to keep daggers untouched. Glaive is currently in a very strong position and on the edge of becoming the dominant raider, by nerfing daggers I fear we'd simply exchange one evil for another. Let hovers have their speed monopoly on flat ground, but make sure their midgame doesn't just completely destroy other factories. Imo the general theme for hovers should be speed, not strength.

I'd go for a more specialized scalpel with less aoe, maybe lower ROF and a mace with slightly(!) more speed. Current mace is something I never wanna build over daggers. I'd also recommend reducing penetrator beam time as it's being used as a long range riot already.

Please keep changes to reasonable (=very small) amounts, the latest glaive buff just felt like being experimented on in the live game.

I don't think a dagger nerf would "exchange one evil for another". The dagger is currently evil. Its strange. It has strange interactions. Glaive has very healthy/good interactions. It gets absolutely destroyed by everything that should destroy it, and probably is the worst in straight up combat, as you would expect for a very fast and cheap raider. I rate it as (chaotic) good. If they prove to be too much we just roll back one of its recent buffs.

B450740 2 on Eye of Horus v13 - Hover vs Hover.

B450764 2 on Onyx Cauldron 1.7 - Hover vs Shield game in which DeinFreund has an advantageous start but switches into Gunships, gets stuck in a rut and resigns. Some notes:

• The shield play focuses on small shieldballs fighting against large balls of Scalpel. Escalation to larger shield balls would have prevented the small balls being picked apart. Large balls suddenly win the attrition game against Scalpel. Penetrator is an issue though.
• No Racketeer usage. This is perhaps reasonable but is worth exploring.
• No Rogue usage. Rogue is pretty bad but may have fared well against the clumped Scalpels. A buffed rogue would fill a hole in Shields ability to deal with Scalpel.
• The Gunship switch focused on Rapier and Brawler, both bad choices against Scalpel, Penetrator and Flail (which can be expected in response). Try Blastwing spam to soften up and push the Scalpels out of position. Small Thuglaw drops would take advantage of poor Scalpel speed. Planes may have been better with Pheonix for Scalpel and Raven to get confirmed Penetrator kills.
• DeinFreund had a decent economy advantage resulting from their early small shieldball play and the poor raiding capabilities of Dagger. They could have switching into something that would surely have been better than their actual choice.

B450768 2 on Red Comet - Another Hover vs Hover. Unit usage looked pretty non-degenerate. Mace is unused which may indicate a minor issue but you can't expect every unit in every game.

B450781 2 on Isle of Grief 0.2 - More Hover vs Hover. Perhaps the interesting thing to see here is that Flail may be a little too good. Air is quite suppressed and Hover already has plenty of flex-AA.

B450776 2 on Fairyland v1.0 - More Hover vs Hover. Little defenses lead to an early death by Dagger.

The battles in the OP do not support the statements. Only one of the battles contains a non-hover land factory. All that can be said is:

• DeinFreund and Llamadeus played a bunch of Hover mirrors. You can't even say that it is widespread.
• The Hover mirror matchup looks reasonably interesting. All units are used except Mace.
• Perhaps Flail is a little too powerful. This is just from observing Hover vs heavy aircraft.

Imo there isn't a way to fix Scalpel. If you hit it too much with a nerf axe then it will just be useless overall. You can't make it more vunerable to certain units because it's missiles can attack every land unit and hit it while also having relatively big range and alpha. One of these things would have to go... except that these specific characteristics basically make up Scalpel itself:
If you increase rate of fire and lower damage you get something between Banisher and Slasher.
If you take away the tracking missiles you get a Rouge.
If you take away range you get a worse Leverer.

Oh and yeah Flail is just ridiculous. Not only it is a best AA in the game period because of its range and alpha but also because it is really tanky thus very hard to snipe early on (also fast and has hover pathing). I remember that once I attempted a relatively successful Banshee rush and then I made one Wasp and tried expanding. Then I wanted to go for a killing blow but there was a Flail and I couldn't do anything to it. ANYTHING. It even drove trough a 2 llts to kill my wasp and these llts did no damage to it at all.

B449412 2 on Crubick Plains v1.2 - Hover vs Cloak. Fealthas on cloak was never losing significantly on attrition or income.

B449106 2 on Eye of Horus v13 - Hover vs Cloak. Fealthas was a little behind on income but ahead on attrition.

quote: A buffed rogue

Rogue need buff or bit rework. I agree with this. One of most useless unit in game vs other units.

Indeed one of the main causes for this is probably the fact that I and Llama are the only active mm players, some more competition would definitely help show alternatives. Because of this "the meta" is just what we end up playing.

All we need is somebody to come in and stomp our hovers. As long as this doesn't happen I'm considering hovers to give me the highest win chances.

Examine the LV vs Hover matchup for further evidence of a problem - its a rough time for LV.

maybe an argument for slight scalp\halb nerf.
probable reasons for flail nerf, maybe just less hp.

Daggers are fine, Mace sucks and the hover con is rubbish.

I dont think there is massive drama here. Although it is one of the better facs for flat open maps.