Any ideas how to fight Shields as Hover?

Scalpels seemed to work best, but they need constant attention to avoid wandering into a shieldball and to avoid Rogue fire, and you really can't spare that level of attention for the time needed to wear the ball down in 1v1. Particularly as Scalpel DPS for cost is poor and it's only barely faster than a Thug, meaning if a shieldball runs away you're screwed (you HAVE to dodge the Rogue shots or you die) as you can't catch and kill, so it'll just come back later.

Sandbox testing has Mace, Halberd and Claymore losing horribly (Bolas, oddly enough, worked better than those three, though still die).

Lance might work, but the low DPS, no shield penetration and shieldball shield layering makes it way less effective than against most other factories. A single lance can't do much to a shieldball (a Lance will take about a minute to start inflicting casualties on its cost worth of thugs, that's a long time for the shieldball to run or push, and the constant micro makes it tricky to keep the Lances alive)

Felon settarget widget is fun, especially when you're the one with halberds.

quote: Early = bolas

Bolas seem to trade slightly poorly vs Bandits in my experience due to their slightly lower range. I take it you've found them cost-effective?

I used to use them vs shields, might give them another shot.

> Any ideas how to fight Shields as Hover?

I suppose hover has to be de facto slightly worse then dedicated land facs because of the mobility advantage on water. It seems like the only way out of that is to offer a specialized high-micro strategy that gives you options; amph gets a slow bomb for example.

How about: buff Halberd HP, remove armor bonus, give jugglenaut weapon. If the power/range were balanced right it could act in a pack to pull units out of a shieldball.