Dominatrix

The Dominatrix is a capture rover from the Rover Assembly.

Dominatrix (vehcapture)
Capture Rover
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Stats
Cost	420
Hit Points	820
Movement Speed (elmo/s)	66
Turn Rate (deg/s)	69
Vision Radius (elmo)	550
Transportable	Light
Weapons
Capture Ray Damage 2.6 Reload Time (s) 0.03 Damage per Second 78 Range (elmo) 450 Instantly hits Ignores shields

Description

The Dominatrix captures enemies, turning them against their former allies. Multiple Dominatrix can capture a single target faster, although only one becomes the controller. After taking control of a unit the Dominatrix cannot fire for 12 seconds. If a Dominatrix is destroyed all units it controls are freed.

Tactics and Strategy

Note that the Dominatrix's capture dps is pitted against the target's metal cost instead of its HP. This means that, for example, a single Dominatrix (which has a capture dps of 78) takes about 10.9 seconds to capture an enemy Minotaur (which costs 850 metal). Also note that damaged units will be captured faster and that unit armor is ignored.

To prolong the life span of your frail Dominatrices, try escorting them with at least 1 Aspis, along with an Iris to help keep enemy artillery from skirmishing your Dominatrices to death. Be warned that, like with other shield balls, such a combination is asking to be countered with Firewalkers, Imps, Snitches, Thunderbirds, or Likhos to name a few.

Best uses for Dominatrix

1) Countering rushes of nasty heavyweight riots: Mace, Ogre, Redback. For an equal price to the rush unit, you get the Dominatrix which stops the rush unit - and you also get the rush unit. Typically, the rushing player resigns then after realising that they've spent most of their economy on giving you an e.g. Mace.

2) Defeating medium-heavy assault units. Minotaur, Jack in particular are very difficult for Rover to counter without a Domi.

3) Defeating armored objects - Halberds, Razors, Crabs. Domi will need some shielding to fight a Crab, but they're one of the fastest ways to get rid of annoying Halberds or Razors.

4) Killing enemy commanders. Now, Rover doesn't lack in commander-killing options, with Scorchers and Ravagers also being quite good at the job. But a Dominatrix outruns and outranges non-trollcom commanders, so an unassisted com caught in the wild against a Domi will soon encounter a fate worse than death, creating a massive 8 metal per second differential for the capturer.

If your enemy is unattentive, you may even get this almost for free, because the first thing a dominatrix capture ray does is subvert the "commander under attack" alarm.

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I don't think dominatrix balls are that practical outside of roflstomping Circuit or playing against players who won't counter them, which you should never rely upon. Domis are not very good as a late game unit, their rung on the bullshit skirmisher ladder is quite low.

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Countering Dominatrix as hover, your two choice units are Halberd and Lance. Ideally, both!

1) Halberd costs less than the dominatrix. You will need at least 3 halberd per enemy 2 dominatrix, but halberds are fast enough to catch up with the domis, and more importantly, they are very hard to stop and they are *very bad at killing each other*. So when they get turned, Dominatrices don't do any bonus kills with the freshly acquired slaves; instead, once the remaining Halberds kill one of the slave-owning Domis, you get your slightly dented Halberds back.

2) Lance has the range and alpha to kill dominatrices with impunity. It may not have that good effect if shooting by radar though, but that's where Halberds come in handy.

3) Scalpel if you want to fight dirty. A Scalpel/Mace force fights very favorable with almost every Rover composition, barring things like heavy Badger - at least, until Thunderbirds come out. The Scalpel/Mce build also trades equally with Dominatrix - remember that you get two Scalpel for one Domi, and while a Domi outranges the Scalpel slightly, it's not a big enough margin to prevent return fire. It takes two scalpel salvos to kill a domi, and if you succeed, you more or less erase all the damage the Domi did. A good trick here is to manually target them, otherwise the first captures will waste shots for most of your army.

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Once the enemy has fielded five or more dominatrix, you may consider further asymmetric options:

Aggressive porcing - Dominatrix is quite bad against Stinger. Extra good if your artilery is an anti-mobile kind, which is literally any artillery unit except Sling and Impaler - then you can also bombard the enemy units from your porc forest! Air bombing - but start with a Thunderbird because unassisted Ravens will probably be captured. A Dominatrix takes two Raven bombs to die, too. Cloaked snitches - remember, 5 dominatrix is over 2k metal. You get to facswitch to shield (800m), an area cloaker (500-ish), and four-five Snitches for this price. Phantoms - just bring something to keep the Darts away. Emissary. Outruns, outranges, and outguns Dominatrix. Kind of mandatory late game. Cyclops. Like, really, if you're tank and you see even one Domi, just make 1 emissary to annoy your enemy for the time being and fully switch to Cyclops production. If you're hover and you're having trouble dealing with Domi using halberd/lance method, also switch to Cyclops.