Let's discuss spider raider unit

quote: spider is fine and if it wasnt fine then crab still makes up for all shortcomings

Except is its disarmed by racketeers or thrown by sumo.


I would like only arthy unit for spiders.

I dont now about Quant's rule but seems it could be used ti balance sea game. :D :D

quote: I didn't come here to argue. I was curious what is your stance about where do you want this game to go and how to make it evolve.

I meant respond as in 'respond to thread', not to respond to an argument.

Spider doesn't have a real raider for a few reasons.

• Response and the ability to attack from any angle.
• Making many factories viable on each map.
• The reasonabe viability of Spiders in 1v1 regardless of their missing raider.
• Quant's rule (a conscious effort to maintain uniqueness).

There is a persistent idea that a spider raider would be too hard to defend against on cliffy maps due to its ability to take shortcuts and attack from otherwise impassible areas. Usually, you are able to intercept approaching raiders or chase them away with your own raiders. A spider raiding force could sit on a cliff close to your base and force some sort of static defense (either with turrets or idle units). Defending units can't run out to engage the raiders as they usually would in other situations o the spider raiders would tie up their opponent without any active way to respond. This is why I don't want to give spiders a versatile raider which is also able to fight other raiders and not-lose. Of course, this persistent idea has been around for years and it might be wrong.

Pyro has less of an ability to use cliffs as a haven because jump reload time forces it to commit to an attack. It is also a bit of a glass cannon. Dagger and Duck can use water as a haven but maps tend not to be designed this way. Glaive and Bandit can use hills against the Tank, Hover and Vehicle raiders and there are maps with hills that make the low slope tolerance factories nonviable. However, this is seen as fine because there are enough factories within each of low and high slope tolerance to make interesting matchups. In addition to this the low slope tolerance factories have advantages that make them more viable on large maps and there are many maps where both types of factories are viable. We only have about 1.5 all terrain factories so a map that required all terrain would probably just see the spider vs spider matchup. There are many maps (eg. Wanderlust, Hide and Seek, Ilse of Grief, and Ravaged) where ignoring cliffs is a significant advantage. One reason to keep Spiders down would be to preserve diversity on those maps.

The single biggest reason that Spiders do not have a raider is that they have been shown to be powerful on the right map. Their lack of raider makes for quite a different style of game and, if this style is viable, it should be preserved for the sake of diversity. It is also a warning: if they are strong now then a raider will just make them stronger. There have been other changed since then so perhaps they are worse off now. I would still want to see some examples from games before doing anything.


It is interesting to consider how a spider raider would work. Venom already destroys other raiders so the raider would not need to be great against other raiders. It would also need to be reasonably expensive or risk sitting too close to flea. Hermit only costs 140 so you might end up with a fast, weak Hermit which is somewhat better against raiders.

If spiders needed more raiding power I would first look to buffing flea. Fleas are surprisingly powerful. They can have up to 2.5x their current healh and still die in one shot to a Defender. They could have more range with which to avoid Venom AoE. The worry with range is whether they gain the ability to kill infinite Glaives.

If you manage your Fleas well then 11 Fleas can kill a LLT. That is 220 metal of Fleas which is only a little more than the 195 metal in Glaives required to kill an LLT. This perfect situation is rare but it does show that Fleas are not as far off an ordinary raider as they appear (at least, to me they appear to be really far from a raider). A 50% buff in health could make them one of the most cost effective ways to take down a single LLT with raiders (in terms of investment, not losses).

Gunship is pretty poor on sea. Pretty much no unit can reliably hit underwater. Why is that? Helicopters are well known for their role in anti-sub duties in the real life.

quote: If you manage your Fleas well then 11 Fleas can kill a LLT. That is 220 metal of Fleas which is only a little more than the 195 metal in Glaives required to kill an LLT. This perfect situation is rare but it does show that Fleas are not as far off an ordinary raider as they appear (at least, to me they appear to be really far from a raider). A 50% buff in health could make them one of the most cost effective ways to take down a single LLT with raiders (in terms of investment, not losses).

Idea about gs who drops torpedos or deepcharges is interesting. There once was disscusion about that rapiers could have such deepcharge. However as underwater units from underwater cant hit gs then it would be bit unfair upgrade.