Nerf them all?

quote: And gets instantly vaporized by cost-equivalent amount of Phantom

I think this is a cop-out though. You are implicitly admitting that Ronin, put simply, sucks and that Phantom is better. I get that the cloaked 1500 damage artillery is superior and should be, but 900+ metal of Ronin shouldn't suck so badly the 750 metal artillery is simply better at removing a single target.

I see that Cloak has a good unit in the form of Phantom, but we should look at Ronin's performance. Its 90 metal makes it cheap, but its own attributes make it difficult to get massed and actually put its numbers advantage to good use.

Consider Sling - 100 Metal. What makes the sling so massable is the fact it can shoot over each other, meaning clumps of them form (and die to AOE) quickly. However, Ronin cannot do this because it is direct-fire, forcing it to be in a line. Put simply, it cannot use its cheapness to its advantage.

Since Ronin is inferior in similar numbers to other skirmishers, I hold that since Ronin cannot mass itself in large numbers, it is always going to be a fighting a losing battle against other skirmishers. Maybe Ronin is superior when compared to other skirms by same metal cost, but I hold that since Ronin cannot effectively mass itself, such an advantage is moot past early-game.

Another thing to note is Slasher, who is also direct-fire, yet does not seem to severely suffer sucking as bad. Maybe it is because Rover tends to fight other vehicle factories, or because it has powerful raiders to destroy enemy skirmishers with, but it could also be because its missiles never miss, in comparison to Ronin's, which tend to miss and thus need large amounts of Ronin to deal actual damage to an opponent, while a Slasher will always hit its 40 damage missile.

TLDR:
Ronin sucks 1v1 + Ronin cannot mass up + Ronin cannot hit unit = Ronin suck.

quote: since Ronin cannot effectively mass itself, such an advantage is moot past early-game.

Cloaky is an earlygame focused fac so this sounds fine.

quote: Cloaky is an earlygame focused fac so this sounds fine.

ahem, since Glaive is bad against almost all other raiders and ronins suck, i am not sure this holds anymore. Relying on Phantoms and Knights doesn`t seem very "early-game-focused"...

Anarchid

quote: Yes it sucks - so you shouldn't be using it when you want to not suck.

Do you actually want feedback about balance at all or not? The point you are making hints at no.

quote: AI games are not very good at providing balance feedback. I'm just saying what i would do as a player in your shoes.

Then i would disagree. I would recommend going for another factory.

My intention is to point out weird interactions of which I am not sure if they are intended like this. In this case the ronin vs. buoy because it doesn`t seem to matter if it`s an AI game or not. Both parties were at fight-command.

To go back to the last thread about this, you said it`s not about ronin, it`s about: knight, crab, lance, recluse, badger etc. and that other factories would also struggle with this. Correct. Then it still says a lot about those units.

quote: The generalist skirmisher hierarchy thing is something that i'm not personally very fond of - but it seems rather unavoidable given the design constraints of the game. It has also existed unchanging for more than a decade, which i think is a strong signal of its intendedness given how much everything else has been routinely turned off and on again.

At the risk of veering more off topic, do you think the skirmisher hierarchy factor could be significantly lessened in ZK? Skirmisher matchups seem pretty one sided even when both have similar range, and actually pushing into any group of skirmishers even with a much larger skirmisher force seems to be a Sisyphean problem.

quote: 1: Physical retreat advantage granted by the slow projectiles, which in turn are required for skirms to not beat raiders

I wonder if superfluid applied to all the units would be good, artificially gimp the effective range of all projectiles on the retreat... it's evil but maybe less so than the alternatives you've outlined in the rest of your post. (Though I imagine this too would have nasty side effects elsewhere)