I am not liking the current state of this factory. I like the art. I like the effects. There are a lot of cool ideas here... There is also too much in this factory that is too good at too many things, and most of the answers I have been given for counterplay mostly boil down to "you're playing the wrong factory" (and you need to spam dedicated anti-heavy and assume your opponent doesn't know how to screen).
All comments are regarding team games, not 1v1.
Ranger - Constructor - I am morally opposed to having a constructor with a gun on a factory already basically immune to raiders.
Ares - Raider - Barely built or fought these. They're a slightly less cost efficient glaive, so probably a solid A tier.
Cougar - Heavy Raider/Riot - These don't have much role in the fac due to the entire fac being basically immune to raiders.
Catapult - Shelling Artillery - 380m (Shoots 4 high arc shots in 2 bursts 280dmg each, has mobile radar.) I like this unit, but I don't think it should have radar. Very strong overall stats held back by absolutely abysmal application on the projectiles that make it something of a liability to allies. Really, really, really needs to have Ignore Bad Targets though. Right now I'm having to set them all on hold fire so a single flea doesn't make them kill my own army. It's also very hard to tell where they're going to land.
Suggested Fix: Ignore Bad Targets, remove radar, reduce projectile speed but lower the arc so it's possible to tell where the shots are going to land.
Apollo - Assault Bot - These things are cracked. Like, if you want to win games, just monobuild apollo. They've got the speed of a skirm, the durability of an assault, and the DPS of a riot. Assaults not named knight just die to them, raiders can't chase, skirmishers can't even hit them consistently. I don't like the terraform gun on this because it adds a ton of anti-terraform on a unit you're already going to spamming the hell out of. I would personally move the anti-terraform missile to the Boreas. Some people claim lance counters these, those people are wrong- 2 of these can run down and kill a lance easily losing
maybe one apollo. Kills raiders easily. Very easily dodges skirmisher shots. Monospammable.
Suggested Fix: These need their speed reduced
considerably and also their damage application slashed, or their health slashed. Even with a speed reduction they'd be a pain to hit with skirms but at least it'd be possible to run them down with raiders. I'd also like to see their DPS cut so they don't counter minotaurs quite so hard.
Boreas - Anti Air - Last I played these they were garbage. They've been buffed but I don't know why you'd build these when you can build Shiva. Sustained DPS AA is just not a strong role generally.
Shiva - Bunker Buster - Some people are claiming this is bad because it has poor DPS. I can only assume those people haven't actually built the unit. It's direct target DPS is indeed mediocre, however this is the single most flexible unit in the factory (which is saying a lot). It outranges stinger, it massacres groups of raiders, it's highly effective at AA (including at killing likhos from maximum range). The long reload ends up being something of a benefit in some ways because it means these can poke and then pull back to safety, minimizing your time to actually do something to do them. They're also highly resistant to artillery because their
own range is long enough that if you want the artillery to have any sort of screens whatsoever, it's getting shot by the Shiva (which then falls back). The DPS is too low to monospam, but you could probably make half your army these and just delete entire chunks of heavy units at a time because of the AOE. Kills raiders easily.
Suggested fix: Murder the projectile speed and possibly cut the AOE. I
know the projectile speed is part of what makes these so damned cool, but it's also what makes them good against everything. Limit the gun angle to prevent it from shooting air. Also, the projectile impact feels really rough and not in a good way.
Atlas - Siege Mech - This is another problem. It's a cool unit, probably my favorite design, but it's good against *everything*. The missiles have good tracking and have splash, allowing the Atlas to defend itself effectively against both air and raider threats. The gauss weapons are low slung to the ground meaning they actually have better damage application than on the detriment (where the penetration only goes through a few units before hitting the ground), it gets full enfilading fire at almost anything that tries to engage it.
Suggested Fix: Honestly I have no idea here. I like the unit design as a baby detriment, and very few units in ZK have secondary weapons so for a demistrider I think that's okay. The problem is that getting AOE and good application on literally all its weapons means there isn't really an answer to them. At minimum, the missiles should probably get a tracking nerf to make them less effective against planes? Remove them entirely and remove the gauss ability to split fire? I have no idea.
Thor - Dual Lightning Bot - The range and stun ability on these are ridiculous. Reasonably durable, reasonably fast, kills raiders easily. Not really sure what their role is supposed to be. Apollo already counters every other assault easily and the entire fac is highly resistant to most skirms and all raiders. Monospammable. They have way too easy a time of locking down targets, in my opinion. Normally this level of lockdown is on a relatively fragile target, and I think it being relatively difficult to hard-stun units is good for the game.
Suggested Fix: These could prooobably be brought in line just by slashing their EMP damage? That said I'm not sure it's possible to make a good evaluation of the unit because of how overtuned Apollos are, they sort of crowd out everything else in the fac.
Ragnarok - Nuclear Bomb Carrier - I hate this. There's no counterplay. Not giving it manual detonation does nothing when you can just force-kill it. Stick it on a herc or under a cloak and delete an opponents entire army. Fly it into their base and they do... what? exactly? You can't even get clever and lobster it away or placeholder it effectively because it's
armed for some godforsaken reason and it will slaughter any units you use to try to kill it while being fast enough that you don't have the option of just pulling your stuff out of range when it gets low. Everything else in this factory I think can proooobably be made reasonable (atlas being a possible exception), but I don't even know what you'd do with this.
Suggested Fix: I have no idea. The interactions with other mechanics (herc, lobster, iris) make this a cheap way to destroy armies of almost any value. The closest idea I have would be to actually increase the radius, but convert it to disarm damage so any army that engages it is *crippled*, but can potentially sacrifice ground to stall until the guns come back online. Alternatively, I think it would be cool to remove the Apollo D gun, slash the price on this, and make this an
absurdly powerful terraform bomb and drop the price to like 1k and the health to like 9k.
Responding to commentary I've recieved earlier on this:
"It's weak to air": Weak to air is not an acceptable answer, and it's not even true. Yes, it has bad breakpoints against raven, but the fac has Shiva and asking your air player to bail you out in TAW is not an acceptable response.
"Just plate anti-heavy": Also a bad answer. They plate badgers, your anti-heavy is now worthless.
"[Insert Unit (usually griz)] is better": I can't think of another factory that has so much ability to monospam units. Griz spam dies to glaive. Siegebots are basically immune.
Overall, this factory is too resistant to too many things, denies opponents counterplay too much, has too many monospammable units (apollo, thor, atlas) without clear weaknesses. It is too durable for how fast it is, it is too fast for how durable it is, and everything in this factory hits way too many things too effectively. Worst of all, it's just not fun to fight.
