User:Aquanim/UnitTierList

Preface

S Tier: I would happily make a new factory to make only this unit

A Tier: I feel good when I make this unit

B Tier: I feel OK about making this unit

C Tier: I am a bit unhappy if I have to make this unit, other factories have better options

D Tier: I am quite unhappy to make this unit

F Tier: I do not make this unit, and you should not make it either

Unclassifiable: Too weird or specialized to give a sensible grade

Ratings are for a mid-size teams game on a land map unless otherwise indicated. 1v1 ratings would be different.

Constructors

A Tier

Convict: Borderline S tier. Basically a combat unit in its own right, between supporting Felon and protecting its own turrets.

Welder: Also arguably S tier. Strong at all stages, although the cost is a little annoying early game.

Constable: Very good early game constructor. Fragile and inefficient in late game.

Conjurer: As a constructor it is B tier at best... but it enables some cloak shenanigans.

B Tier

Weaver: Sometimes you need to build things on a hill.

Mason, Quill: Meh.

C Tier

Conch: On land it is slow and expensive. When underwater it is absolutely goated, S+ tier, better than mex.

Wasp: Useless as a combat constructor, but decent at expanding if it doesn't die to Swift.

D Tier

Crane: I guess expand with this if you absolutely have to... but it's pretty ass.

Strider Constructors

Funnelweb: A Tier, although its construction is less important than its shield.

Athena: Unclassifiable. Practical efficacy lies anywhere from A to F tier, depending on the vanity of the person using it.

Commanders

A Tier

Recon: Does not die to Placeholder. Dies a lot to Lance though. S tier if it enables expansion for you (like on Quicksilver).

B Tier

Guardian: Dies to Placeholder, but at least it has HP so it's less likely to die to Lance. The free drone is quite handy, use set-target to tell it where to go and scout.

C Tier

Strike: Dies to Placeholder and Lance.

Engineer: Dies to Placeholder and Lance.

Raiders etc.

A Tier

Scorcher: When you need sheer DPS, accept no substitutes.

Glaive, Bandit: Throwing some of these into almost any army composition makes it better. Good screening, good DPS.

B Tier

Kodachi, Pyro: Very good early game, but they lose value a lot quicker than the A tier raiders. I have a serious skill issue with both of these units.

Scythe: I also have a skill issue with this unit. At its best this is maddening. At its worst you are just punting metal. YMMV.

C Tier

Dagger: Good flex-AA and has good matchups against other raiders... but this just does not have the DPS to do a lot of raider jobs, and Hover suffers for it sometimes.

Duck: Just less efficient than the other bot raiders, unless there is water involved.

Blitz: Pretty poor in low numbers outside the very early game. A big ball of these can be scary, but eventually they tend to run into something they can't stunlock and then they get mauled.

Anti-raider / Escort

Bolas: A Tier. Descending towards B tier for me recently, but it's not there yet. Of the units in this role, retains most value against non-raiders.

Venom, Archer: B Tier. Decent, but loses a lot of value when the other team is no longer making many raiders.

Scouts

Flea: S Tier. Has no competition at its job.

Dart: A Tier. Maybe a generous grade, but this is surprisingly versatile. Gives vision, baits shots, sets up for Scorcher.

Puppy: A Tier. Placed in this list for lack of a better classification. If you need to deny your opponents reclaim quickly, this is the tool for the job.

Dirtbag: B Tier. S tier at inflicting EMOTIONAL DAMAGE. But if you want to attack, the Dirtbag gets in your way as much as the opposition.

Skirmishers and Fire Support

A Tier

Fencer and Scalpel: Good cookie-cutter early game units.

Buoy: Beats a pretty big variety of things while taking minimal attrition.

Felon: Obviously this has the potential to be really good, but the style it fits into is pretty inflexible.

B Tier

Recluse: A tier on some maps. Good damage, but a little too flimsy for my taste.

Moderator: When you are ahead this is A tier. When you are behind this is terrible.

Crab: Extremely strong if it is not countered... but everybody knows its counters.

Rogue: Really, really bad at defending itself. Decent DPS if it gets to do its thing.

C Tier

Ronin: Occasionally good in the early game. Gets outscaled VERY quickly though.

D Tier

Dominatrix: Overrated. You have to have a lot or they don't pose a meaningful threat, and even if you do have a lot they tend to die all at once.

Bulkhead: Fills a hole in Amph, but if you have access to any other factory it probably has a better option than this.

Riots

A Tier

Reaver: Range is a bit of a liability here, but this chews up raiders quite nicely and has strong synergy with cloak/Lobster/Charon.

Mace, Ogre: Expensive, good at bullying in the early-midgame, tend to be a bit too flimsy late-game. A few of these go a long way.

B Tier

Redback: Gets kited by a few too many things, and not as explosive as Reaver if it gets mobility help, so this doesn't quite make A tier. Quite strong if it gets a good fight though.

Ripper: Unexciting, but it gets the job done.

Outlaw: Does the job it is supposed to do for a shieldball.

Dante: If you need a bunch of small (maybe cloaked) units fried at a moderate distance, Dante is your guy. A bit too fragile to be used as a generic unit.

C Tier

Scallop: This would probably be D tier if it wasn't in the same factory as Lobster.

Claymore: Occasionally solves problems for Hover on land. Remember that they can shoot over terraform for no particularly good reason.

Assaults

S Tier

Cyclops: Difficult to kill, effective against almost anything that costs more than 250 metal and enters its range. An absolute chad of a unit.

A Tier

Minotaur: Has enough HP that a commitment is always required to kill it. What more do you want?

Thug: Good at protecting other units that actually do something.

B Tier

Halberd: This is fine. Not amazing. But fine. Can spot for Lance if you don't have air.

Jack: In the right situation it's incredible. Otherwise it chases things and makes sad melee noises.

Grizzly: Good if you are fighting things it cleanly one-hits. Can be quite dubious otherwise.

C Tier

Knight: Strong if it gets a fight it actually wants. But being slow makes that difficult.

D Tier

Hermit: Decent range I guess, but 1500 HP is just not a lot.

Ravager: Reasonably fast, but that's really its only redeeming feature.

Artillery

S Tier

Lance: I don't think that Lance is game breaking, but it has almost no competition in the "delete one unit at a distance" category.

Impaler: Less versatile than Lance, but peerless at prying open defences from a safe distance.

A Tier

Phantom: Lance's only real competition in its role, and a very good unit in its own right.

Firewalker: Clunky, but unless you are willing to spend for Dante this is the best way to clean up small units and detect cloakers at a distance.

B Tier

Sling: Reasonable early game option. Some people like to make these in bulk in the midgame, but in my experience the blob gets punished eventually.

Badger: Occasionally somebody makes this look really good. Most of the time it is the better-at-decloaking but worse-at-killing cousin of Firewalker.

Merlin: Fragile and has an unfortunate tendency towards friendly fire. Sometimes the big old missile barrage is just what you need though.

C Tier

Emissary: I want to rate this higher, but it is a hard unit to make work in a Lance and Impaler world. Terraform helps a lot against Lance at least.

Unclassifiable

Tremor: Make this when faced with bad terrain (typically terraform) or sometimes against mass shields. Otherwise not worth the metal.

Anti-Air (mobile and static)

A Tier

Angler: The best anti-bomber AA at anything like its price point.

Razor: Single-handedly makes Gunship a bad factory.

B Tier

Ettin: A tier if you need its area of effect attack. C tier if you don't.

Crasher, Tarantula, Vandal: All quite serviceable missile-based AA. You need a really gigantic blob of Vandal which can be awkward.

Toad: In any other factory this would get built a lot more, but in Jumpfac it competes with Moderator and Jugglenaut.

Artemis: This shuts out enemy air in a way no other AA does... but it is an expensive, flimsy target.

Chainsaw: An unexciting compromise between cost and impact. It's okay.

C Tier

Thresher: Static, unarmoured and short range is a pretty bad combination. Ettin is almost always better.

Flail: Below average, but not awful.

D Tier

Gremlin: This disappoints me every time I build it. You get to scout and ambush with it, but its effective damage is just... really bad.

Hacksaw: Once in a blue moon you need this. You don't enjoy needing it. But you make one anyway. Even at this thing's one job it is often worse than Newton.

Anti-Heavy and Bombs

S Tier

Widow: Unmatched impact for cost.

Snitch: Combined with areacloak this solves an awful lot of difficult problems. Even without a cloak you can sometimes get these to connect for big damage, if you're wily enough.

A Tier

Imp: Arguably better than Snitch in the early game; the spider movetype is more useful and you can hide one under a commander. Late game you would prefer to be killing things though.

Limpet: Suffers from being in a slow and unpopular factory, but this can turn the tide of a midgame fight.

Racketeer: The safest but lowest-impact unit on the anti-heavy list.

Scorpion: This unit is NOT an assault. This unit is NOT a raider. Stop using it like one. Quite poor at defending itself if caught out of position, so don't let that happen.

B Tier

Ultimatum: I can't get this to connect reliably, but when it does...

D Tier

Skuttle: Incredibly unreliable. I would only build this in desperation.

Support and Utility

S Tier

Lobster: From rescuing stunned units to facilitating an assault to throwing enemies in lava, the utility is endless.

A Tier

Iris, Aspis: Maybe these should be S tier, but I do sometimes find that these give you a false sense of security.

Placeholder: Potentially completely broken, but its range and HP are poor enough that something generally manages to kill it.

Djinn: I get far more use out of this in a logistics role than its sneak attack applications, but either way this is quite useful once you can afford the price.

Charon:

B Tier

Hercules: Not a fan of most uses this gets put to, but occasionally you do need one.

Planes

S Tier

Swift: Intercepts bombers, holds its own against most other air, scouts, cleans up raiders in its spare time. Defines how the game of Zero-K is played.

Likho: There are very few things this is not good against.

Owl: Knowledge is power, and Owl both gives you a lot of information and denies it to the enemy.

A Tier

Thunderbird: I want to put this in S tier really badly, but it just doesn't connect as often as it used to. Of course, if the stars align this can still end a game in five seconds flat at a premium price.

Raven: Not the game-defining unit it once was, but there is nothing wrong with the Raven of today. Does the job it is designed to do.

B Tier

Raptor: I genuinely think this is OK, if your job is to fight Swifts and gunships with help rather than chasing down bombers. I would always have some Swifts though.

C Tier

Phoenix: Sometimes in the early game one or two of these are indicated against certain threats. Don't make these lategame, just find a way to get the job done with Raven or Likho instead.

Unclassifiable

Sparrow: If your team has an air factory, you're much better off begging for an Owl, but sometimes you have to make do.

Gunships

A Tier

Nimbus: I don't know that the meta is doing this any favours at present, but it's still decent at putting on pressure.

Revenant: I'm not terribly good with this, but it is getting popular as of late.

B Tier

Trident: Really quite good against planes, Swift in particular.

Harpy: The workhorse of Gunship factory.

Gnat: Niche, but if your opponent slacks on AA to protect their strider this is the punishment. Also has some early game uses.

C Tier

Locust: Doesn't seem very good at the moment, but maybe it's just unpopular. I could never get this to work even when it was objectively strong, so how should I know?

D Tier

Blastwing: Has an awful tendency to blow up before it does the job it is supposed to do.

F Tier

Krow: This flying metal donation is so bad that nothing else deserves to be in F tier alongside it.

Tactical Missiles

S Tier

Shockley, Eos: These solve problems that nothing else in the game, short of a superweapon, can solve.

B Tier

Inferno: Stop firing these at shields and other stuff it is useless against, I beg of you. Properly used this is fine.

Zeno: Throw these at armies in the late game if you have nothing better to do.

Unclassifiable

Quake: You'll know when you need this. Otherwise quite useless.

Endgame

S Tier

Trinity: At worst, forces single points of failure on your opponent. At best, ends the game on the spot.

A Tier

Paladin: For bullying your opponent around with the EMP missiles and safely getting attrition with the laser, Paladin is unmatched. Not the greatest unit in a pitched battle, though.

B Tier

Zenith: The standard superweapon at the moment, mostly on the basis of its cost. You don't have to be losing a game all that badly for Zenith to be unable to save you, in my experience.

Starlight: Obviously the best superweapon, if you can afford it. It would have to be a pretty weird game for this to be better than getting a Zenith 22K metal earlier, but stranger things have happened.

C Tier

Bertha: Does not end games. Can be okay on maps I do not choose to play.

Detriment: Giving this the benefit of the doubt. On the rare occasions a Detriment is in competent hands it can look pretty decent. Nevertheless, you are sinking an awful lot of metal into something that goes into enemy territory.

D Tier

Disco Rave Party: I am told this is terrible now. Not sure I 100 percent buy that, but I guess I will defer to the experience of people who actually make superweapons. If it's good anywhere it is when it won't have to traverse its turret much.