for the record:
not complaining about losing to thrice the value of army...

but you see how many things cloaky is not able to handle at all!

recluses, badgers, crabe, firewalker

you simply have no answer to that. it`s ok not to be able to kill everything, but to be completely chanceless against so many things is annoying.

quote: IIRC Crab-cost in Knight defeats Crab if it can shoot at it.

Might be, did you watch the replay?

I killed the crab, by usin a cloaker and i think 5 knights, but it required such an efford that my other front broke because of recluses...

Cloak as a fac suffers from high attrition due to having low weight units. It is literally the fac least suited to 1v3. That is no reflection on its ability in 1v1.

If you want to play 1v3 effectively, use a fac that has play around attrition like shields + tanks.

quote: There is nothing cloaky can do in these losing scenarios, not even run away due to their slow speed.

Cloaky being called slow kind of raises an eyebrow.

quote: Cloaky simply has zero answer for many threats.

Yes.

I would, however, claim that the list of threats that Cloaky has absolutely no answer to is considerably smaller than the analogous list for (most) other factories.

It's one of the most versatile factories available.

quote: recluses

A Phantom makes 300 metal per shot when fighting Recluse from absolute safety. The other spiders except Flea, Hermit and Crab are also all in the perfect cost and health range to be oneshot for significant profit. Not making Phantom because "expensive" or because "fleas" is an excuse for a mistake.

quote: crabe

These are a lot more difficult, yes. Crab is a heavy, and Cloaky doesn't have a real antiheavy (something it shares with quite a few other factories!).

However, Crab also costs more than a facswitch to any factory or tech that does have the answer in a symmetric scenario. In an asymmetric scenario where you are required to make 3x cost to even stay afloat, the most you can spend on defeating a crab is 500.

Frankly, what can do that? Jugg comes closest, but it alone costs more than the Crab. Herc, perhaps? My argument here is that you can't blame it on Cloaky being sux because this is a significant problem for everyone.

quote: firewalker

Firewalker is problematic because of its anti-cloak properties and greater range than Ronin. Phantom oneshots it though, if you can approach despite the flames. 2 Scythe will usually kill the Firewalker before being stopped, but that is only 2x cost.

As with the Crab, what would you counter Firewalker with from other factories? Lance and Emissary have the same issue of being no hardcounter. Ravens suffer from the attrition constraint. Merlin totally works but you're in no position to afford one unless you won the raider phase super hard.

quote: badgers

If you cannot raid (because presumably the opponent has 3x your army size and screens them with riots), you'll have to facswitch to a Firewalker.

quote: pretty much any skirmisher which has good range.

Phantom.

---

I'll have to properly watch this game at some point, but from what i remember of this challenge being played on CCR is that if you've gotten to a point where they have Badger and Firewalker and you just can't raidswarm that, you've already lost no matter what factory you are, unless you cheat with terraform and Cerberus.

quote: Do Slings and racketeers work vs crabs?

Against a human opponent, the Slings work very slowly if at all, given that human-wielded Crabs are usually deployed on spires with a dedicated squad of repairer flunkies.

The spire alone tends to destroy what little there is of Sling's range advantage on Crab, but if by some virtue the Slings manage to do damage to crab it can always hide on the spire's other side and get repaired.

Racketeers can disable a spire crab since they don't have ballistics issues, but they cannot secure the kill.

Both are kind of okay vs flatlander crabs tho.