Anyone else agree the puppies are slightly underpowered now?

They don't do enough damage to the heavy units, and ultra light units such like fleas are hard counter to them, and I don't think they are better at raiding than pyros. So it seems their major use currently is to snipe medium level raiders or exploit the wrecks quickly, which is a bit narrow.

You can only get puppies from puppies, I feel that reclaim or rez is better, unless the wrecks are in a dangerous zone.

Yes you only get puppies from it, but reclaim takes 2x bp(reclaim+build{Unless reclaim uses some other metric?})+ Fac time+E, and rez costs BP+E. Rez for sure is "good", but A)must have the fac for it or an upgraded com (which is terrible to do but w/e) and B) Who says you really want whatever unit or building that is?

Puppies are "free" in perhaps the truest form in the game. They double in numbers every generation, meaning you can get a lot of them in a short time if you have the wrecks.

Also a rocko is a bad example, it isn't even a raider nor good outside large numbers(if you think it is good at all, I think they are shit).

There are plenty of times when the enemy has managed to capture the wreck field and I'm like 'Ok, just need to build up enough of a force to retake it before he gets a big fleet of cons there or places down his nanos in the wrecks.' Suddenly, puppies. Puppies everywhere.

They're also good early at preventing naked expansion on really large maps where pyros are a bit too expensive to get good coverage (Their original intention). They will also make cost if the enemy tries to defend with bandits or glaives (but not fleas or darts. :/).

Puppies have a range of problems.
1. Reclaim maps. Any maps with a significant amount of rocks are totally ruined by puppies. This is their #1 problem. Honestly these maps have always been about spamming cons and sucking the metal fast, but at least every factory and unit is on even grounds there.
2. Always making cost vs glaive and never making cost vs flea is kinda clunky but I guess that's what you get for a single-target suicide unit (holdfire works vs cloggers, but fleas WILL kill the puppies).
3. They're actually pretty bad at taking wrecks in hostile territory because they die so fast. But I guess this just makes them balanced.
4. They're AWFUL when used with the firewalker (In the same factory).
5. A puppy with 90% reclaimed metal will suicide itself and do the same damage as one with 0%, it takes insane micro to select out the almost-full puppies.

Balance-wise I think they're pretty good, especially the way that retreating riot units and static defense just totally destroy them.

Oh, and don't forget that they work against air.

quote: 4. They're AWFUL when used with the firewalker (In the same factory).

Fleas are awful when used with venom without careful micro! NO PROBLEM

That is....... an idea. Hmmmmmmm........................

No, I'd hate to see ZK get too much emphasis on tech-switching and relcaiming unused defenses.

I could see a suite of units for the Athena with a special 100% self-reclaim self-D to encourage using the Athena agressively and constantly changing up strategies with it or something like that. But not part of the core ZK game.

Either way, though, getting 50% of a wreck-field rapidly might be worth the waste inherent in the "puppy-reclaim" strategy.

Puppy reprodeces at slightly more than it's base metal cost. Then you only get 50% of that. It's not really worth it.

Reclaim used to give 100% cost, and it lead to some really whacky things especially in FFA: Making a huge ravager army and rampaging across the landscape and once he has enough to defend it, you reclaim the whole army and go air. Then once he has AA, you reclaim all your bombers, etc. This was so high level and hard to use that basically only google frog did it.

Then there was detrino constant tech switching, where he would just switch factories over and over again on sea maps so that one moment he has amphs, the next ships, the next hovers, the next air, then back to ships. Given how hardcountery sea was this was incredibly hard to beat early on.

You're often trying to claim hostile wreck fields with puppies, because that's the only time they're effecient. This means you often have to use a half full puppy to attack, or that all your puppies are half full, so you have to pull them back and holdfire them or even pull them out of the wreckfield and let them consolidate their metal.

Yeah. ZK devs are all tree-huggers. We care lots about cleaning up the mess units make!