The drama of shield bots

I feel like shield bots are in a weird spot currently and am curious regarding what the rest of the community thinks of them.

I have tried using the factory a lot, but it never clicks for me. It might be just personal preference, as I am not fond of the whole shield management shenanigan, but it also feels like the factory is in a very weird spot balance wise.

First, it seems to revolve entirely around Felons and dense shield balls. Trying to use shield fac units in other contexts should work in theory, in practice it doesn't because the units that would carry alternative playstyles are bad. Bandits suck, rogues usually suck, thugs suck except as cannon fodder, racketeer and vandals suck, etc.

Second, it seems to be very snowballey. A small shield ball sucks, a large shield ball steamrolls over everything.

I'm not a big felon fan. I found when I pushed them out early they were invariably phantomed or widowed. Yes, they become deadly once they stack, but then five felons is close to the value of a Dante, a strider whose whole point is to melt face so it's no surprise equal value of heavy riot would do the same.

I'd like rogues to be better shots (or at least have faster projectiles), but they are still the mirror match counter to felon ball, properly looked after (I don't think I've ever seen Jummy engage stacked rogues with much enthusiasm). Felons have big shields, so the fact a rogue can't hit a barn door is less of a problem. Don't forget rogues can also be forcefired inside the boundary of aspis/funnel to deplete them, usually quite safely. Seeing the safety blanket go red usually persuades the shield player to back off.

Racketeers aren't much more expensive than recluses, so serve as at least a partial counter in a factory match up that otherwise goes badly for shield (they at least buy time for fac swap or cloaked snitches). Even if you don't shut down all the recluses you can still thin out the bombardment. They'll also enable a shield ball to laugh in the face of jacks and juggles provided you see them coming and stack up.

The whole purpose of thug is meat shield (they're basically hermits which can share hitpoints with each other) but thuglaw still shouldn't be underestimated.

I agree Vandals are armpit AA however good the numbers look on paper, but you can't have everything, and good AA would mean the air options that are intended to counter them would be even less likely to succeed than they are now. As it stands, felonball (or just two felons for that matter) delete thunderbirds before they can do much harm and that's not healthy. I'd like to see thunderbirds spray their lightning in an arc like a phoenix when confronted with shields instead of flying straight over to die embarassingly, or at least throw the lightning further ahead of the plane so they hit felons before the felons can hit them.

I also agree bandits remain lacklustre even despite the crumbs of attention they've had lately.

I do find shield a factory where, if it goes wrong, it goes wrong quickly and decisively, but I don't think it's in a bad place overall.

I think Felon could use some kind of nerf to its accuracy, its too good as flex AA.

Rogue is situationally useful due to the strong alpha, but overall it feels like they struggle to kill anything without being killed in turn. The're sluggish, individually low on health, low fire rate, low accuracy... the're the dream target for raiders pretty much.

Racketeers just feel like they fail at the primary mission of artillery, which is attrition. Yeah they can disarm stuff to make assaults easier, which is good if you're on a roll, but if you're not, considering that shield fac is slow and short of range, racketeer drops the ball when it comes to protecting your face from kiting. Specially since a lot of skirms/artillery are cheaper than racketeer is, so racketeer can't do more than slow them down a little.

Off course, you can use a heavy shield ball to protect yourself, but that loops back to that "only viable in heavy shield balls" thing.

rouges are more of a "lets see you dance" unit

keep a few around and use either convict or thug outlaw to soak damage

if something dangerous comes along retreat and have the rouges rip the chasing units to pieces

I gotta remember to spam dirtbags at someone sometime, sounds like fun.

there is also the one true way to play shields, use convicts, dirt bags, and transform to blurry your enemy alive!

Shield factory doesn't revolve around felon. Thuglaw ball + rogues is usable vs mid game porc as well. You will be surprisingly astonished how effective it can be until late mid game. Building felon build is lubstering around mostly.
Shields sucks because they have no real dmg arty. Racketeer is very powerful vs strider and heavy unit especially crab. However they cant deal with enemy artillery. I don't also like they they are slow.
Shields are hard to learn but if you are good they can offer so much supportive strategy in game.
Of course i especially love to use roaches/snitches. And they are great unit for evil commanders. One of most terrifying unit in game.

Exactly my feeling @TheLovelyDecaftihs. You can dirtbag spam to mess up the terrain for hovers and to confuse targetting. You can bury Outlaw vs raider swarms. You can cloak+snitch mobs. You can go Racketball where its mostly Racketeers and support your team mates through disarms.

There's nothing like the feeling of having a fat, charged-up ball, rish with felons, when the enemy breaks the team's frontlines and you're the last hope. If I had a shotgun I'd rack the slide everytime before engaging :D