Hovercraft Platform

The Hovercraft Platform is a factory that produces hovercraft.

Hovercraft Platform (factoryhover)
Produces Hovercraft, Builds at 10 m/s
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Stats
Cost	800
Hit Points	4000
Vision Radius (elmo)	273
Abilities
Construction Build Power 10
Weapons
None

Description

The Hovercraft Platform is fast and deadly, offering the ability to cross sea and plains alike and outmaneuver the enemy. Key units: Dagger, Halberd, Scalpel, Mace, Lance

The Hovercraft Platform builds:

• Quill   Construction Hovercraft
• Dagger   Fast Attack Hovercraft
• Scalpel   Skirmisher/Anti-Heavy Hovercraft
• Halberd   Blockade Runner Hover
• Claymore   Anti-Sub Hovercraft
• Mace   Riot Hover
• Lance   Anti-Heavy Artillery Hovercraft
• Flail   Anti-Air Hovercraft

Tactics and Strategy

The Hovercraft Platform produces units which can travel over both flat land and water at considerable speed. The Dagger, Halberd and Mace are effective in close-range combat. Should an opponent seek to engage you from afar instead, the Scalpel and Lance will deal with them quickly.

Most of the Hovercraft units are comparatively fragile and rely on high speed, long range, or a substantial alpha strike. The resilient Shield Bots or Amphibious Bots can protect the more fragile Hovercraft units until the Hovers' offensive strength can be brought to bear on the enemy.

Example Unit Combinations

Protect your Scalpels against large number of smaller opponents with a Mace or two.

Use Halberds to absorb shots and make holes in enemy defences, then rush in with raiders to take advantage. Daggers don't have a high rate of damage so this works better with the raiders of other factories, such as the Scorcher.

Use Daggers, Halberds or another scout like the Owl to observe the exact locations of enemy Commanders or heavy units, then annihilate them with your Lance(s).

Claymores are effective escorts for other units that can't hit underwater targets, such as the Mace. Daggers can also hit underwater units but are less effective against large number of underwater opponents than the Claymore.

Beating Hovercraft

The key to defeating Hovercraft is to understand the quirks of their units, and particularly their weaknesses which you can abuse. The Dagger has a favourable matchup against the raiders of many other factories thanks to its speed and high-damage single-shot attack, but its low damage-per-second makes it weak against most static defences, so emphasise these more than you ordinarily would. The Scalpel is weak against large numbers of small enemies, as long as they are spread out; you want to destroy as many Scalpels as possible during the ten-second reload duration.

An alternate method to defeat Scalpels is to outrange them, with static defences like the Stinger or artillery like the Firewalker. However, these units should be employed with caution, since most of them are weak to Lances and/or Halberds. Lances can be defeated by luring them out of position then engaging with fast units like planes, gunships or raiders. Halberds are not particularly strong in a direct fight, but you have to position your army such that they can't simply run past your army and target your critical infrastructure.