User:Buckymancer/UnitTierList

This is an incomplete draft for a tier list for v1.14.2.0, updated March 2026

Formatting based on Aquanim's Tier List

Rating Scale

S Tier: Clear best in class, sometimes worth making an extra Plate for or otherwise warping the lane around its presence.

A Tier: Strongly preferred units within class, the typical unit here will be a solid generalist and also have some notable strength within its role.

B Tier: They do the class's basic job well, and have situations where they're better than the alternatives

C Tier: They do the class's basic job poorly, or only within a niche

D Tier: I don't think it's worth making; attempts to use it have repeatedly failed, or it's too expensive for what it is to the extent that I'd be better off making a new factory for a higher tier option.

F Tier: Using this unit is actively detrimental to the team. It's best used as a reservoir of reclaim for projects that are actually viable.

Unclassified: I do not understand this unit well enough to rate it

Ratings are for a mid-size to large teams game unless otherwise indicated. 1v1 or small teams ratings would be different. Some hybrid units go in multiple categories.

Constructors

A Tier

Conjurer: The innate cloaking and jamming lets it get away with an awful lot, and the active area cloak lets it make plays as a budget support unit. Worse than the other A tier options at actually building stuff.

B Tier Convict: Boring but reasonably effective. Its main perk is that gangs of them are difficult to kill, to the extent that you can attack move them with your army to benefit from incidental tanking, but you can also stick Bandits up one's sleeve for an improvised riot.

C Tier Mason: It does construction jobs just fine, its above average speed means it's above average at expanding on flat ground. But it's overshadowed by Quill on flat terrain and the bot cons on rough terrain.

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified:

Athena: Doesn't build most of the things I'd want cons to build, but makes units instead.

Raiders

S Tier Glaive: The gold standard of raiders as an army component

A Tier Scorcher The best raider at quickly demolishing helpless targets, but requires a lot of micro against other raiders.

B Tier Bandit: A slow and expensive Glaive is still a functioning raider. It's got a comparative advantage as an anti-assault from its range and dodging ability. It tends to lose to heavier raiders.

C Tier

Scythe: A specialist at deep raids with a side order of suicidal assassin. They're too expensive for general use.

D Tier Dirtbag]: They do some of the screening functions of raiders, and they're a cheap thing that can bash down Wind Generators and Metal Extractors unless something more than twice their cost contests the move. They can even die on the metal spot afterwards to delay rebuilding. They do not function as a general purpose raider.

F Tier

Unclassified

Skirmishers/Fire Support

S Tier

A Tier Rogue: They comfortably outrange typical skirms and light porc, and pack a lot of alpha. Their accuracy against mobile units suffers, but they still win a lot of unit matchups by kiting. They benefit disproportionately from being able to hide behind Thug shields.

B Tier

Ronin: Cheap and spammable, but also the most mobile skirmisher. They pay for it by having short enough range and vision that they take return hits from almost all porc and blunder into Gausses and Stingers without seeing them. They also tend to lose head-to-head to other Skirmishers.

Fencer: Unmatched range lets them batter down even Gauss turrets from safety, they can zone out the more fragile enemy skirmishers, and they're accurate enough to get partial riot credit. But they can't dodge and shoot at the same time, so they're trumped by any unit with longer range. They're a strong and forcing early tempo play, though, because they prey on Lotuses.

Badger: Good range for this category, so easy to keep alive, but very poor DPS. They miss a lot while kiting, but the lingering mines give partial credit for misses in a back-and-forth. Best used in a skirm stack behind another Skirmisher.

C Tier Dominatrix: High risk high reward, but it gets bullied harder than anything else in the skirm mirror. If properly protected, though, a group of Dominatrixes can win a fight at negative cost. Notably the worst unit in the game for your attrition graphs, which don't count captures.

D Tier

F Tier Felon: The shieldbot factory has several very powerful shield units. Attach this to them to make them worse at their jobs. In exchange, you get a few random pickoffs at the start of each fight. This suggests it should work as an attrition tool, but the damage it does to your ability to fight pitched battles usually means it won't survive.

Unclassified

Riots

S Tier

A Tier

Reaver: The budget riot. Being slow and short-ranged are major downside, but they're cheap and punch well above their weight when they do get in range. Putting one on patrol is a good substitute for medium porc.

B Tier Ripper: A defensively oriented riot that specializes in large AoE, which makes it good support to keep Fencers or Commanders from getting swarmed. Gets bullied by other riots in small numbers and relies on AoE to fight larger groups of them. It's usually a good idea to bring at least two to avoid its reload time becoming a liability.

C Tier Outlaw: Effectively a support-riot. It does not function on its own in small numbers. Larger groups are decent at defending from raider swarms without help, but do want help to finish anything even remotely heavy. They have a niche as minesweepers/decloakers.

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified:

Assault

S Tier Thug: The game's top meatshield by virtue of shielding with shields rather than meat. They perform best with a secondary DPS source but any old riot will do.

A Tier

Convict: Thug variant that trades its built-in weapon for the ability to build Lotuses.

B Tier Ravager: Generic fast assault, specializing in run-bys and hit-and-runs. It's not particularly good as the line-holder unit Rovers desperately need in midgame teams, but it does its duty there regardless. It's borderline at pitched fights with riots.

Aspis: As an Aegis morph, it's a universally available if expensive solution to the problem of your units dying on contact. Just remember to charge it before fighting, and to pull it back early.

C Tier

D Tier

Knight: Has trouble actually assaulting because it's so slow, and it's not particularly tough either. Use it in a different role

F Tier

Unclassified

Dirtbag]: People attack move 'em with autoretreat into enemy porc. They don't seem very good at it but I haven't tried myself.

Artillery

S Tier Impaler: A group of Impalers is a delete button for buildings on a 10 second cooldown. Their payoff is limited mainly by your attention and scouting. They're worse against units but can often do a drive-by at 1500 range against parked ones.

A Tier

Phantom: Attrition machine best used as assassins. Very difficult to remove. Energy requirements limit its early mass deployment. It's fortunate to share a factory with Gremlin.

B Tier

Sling: The best artillery you can buy for 100 metal. Highly threatening to medium porc in numbers, but easy to trump and hard to deal with when spread widely.

C Tier

D Tier Badger: Has a niche identifying targets for other artillery, and pulls its weight battering area shields, but very slow at actually killing buildings.

F Tier

Unclassified

Anti-Heavy

S Tier

A Tier

Racketeer: Doesn't kill the heaviest heavies, but can make 'em go away for a fraction of their price and leaves 'em vulnerable for assassination attempts.

B Tier

Dart: Turns the tables on the anti-heavy heavies. They typically won't win by themselves, but they can render the heavy ineffective and keep it from escaping.

C Tier

Knight: Has a second life locking down even slower units, particularly ones large enough that it won't randomly miss them, although it needs help or enemy carelessness to close the gap.

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified

Support

S Tier

A Tier Aspis: Once the game hits the artillery phase, these are very good at keeping your other stuff from randomly dying to late game hazards. The flexibility to move them around can frustrate the opponents' silo and artillery play. Just be aware that the bubble makes them look like a target and some shorter ranged options (and AA) will happily poke them just to make them recharge.

B Tier

C Tier Iris: Meta as a luxury support unit, and a headache to deal with, but they're far more expensive than the alternatives. Attentive opponents should generally be able to figure out where it is and Sparrow is a universal countermeasure.

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified

Scouting/Intel

S Tier

Gremlin: Unparalleled as an advance scout for a ground army, and cheap enough to be disposable. The likelihood that the enemy can't tell they've been seen is a major draw.

A Tier

B Tier

C Tier

Dart: An expensive Flea in this role that can't climb nor cloak. Impalers make spotting valuable enough to use them as scouts anyway, as they're not so expensive to force a fac switch.

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified

Single-Use/Bombs

A Tier

Snitch: The archetypal walking bomb. A sneaky Snitch can destroy entire armies. An insufficiently sneaky Snitch does nothing.

B Tier

Imp: Powerful as a threat, but they take lots of support to actually function.

Bombers

S Tier

A Tier

B Tier

C Tier

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified

Air

S Tier

A Tier

B Tier

C Tier

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified

Anti-Air

S Tier

A Tier

Vandal: One Vandal is cheap anti-loiter. A swarm is a well-rounded air defense that can move under its own power. The small individual shots means they don't suffer much from breakpoints, but the weight of numbers gives them good anti-bomber alpha anyway.

B Tier

C Tier

Gremlin: Handicapped against bombers by their short range that falls off further with altitude, they can make up for it with ambush tactics. Their DPS per cost is excellent, which means they do fine for their cost against most gunships and they are notably effective at stuffing Blastwings. It's often worth using a small number of Gremlin specialists to spot for longer ranged AA.

Crasher: Short enough range to almost be overshadowed by Fencer, and a reload long enough to ruin their DPS without giving them notably good burst. Their main benefit is speed - outrunning most raiders being able to keep up with targets even Flail cannot. They're saved from D tier by chasing tactics and the Roam move state, as well as the occasional situation that requires mobile AA so urgently that you can't plate.

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified

Static Defense

S Tier

A Tier

B Tier

C Tier

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified

Scouting/Intel

S Tier

A Tier

B Tier

C Tier

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified

Strider/Endgame

S Tier

A Tier

B Tier

C Tier

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified

Sea Control

S Tier

A Tier

B Tier

C Tier

D Tier

F Tier

Unclassified

Commanders

A Tier Strike Commander: The best frontline Commander. Speed plus regen plus radar jamming helps it stick around. Engineer Commander: The best backline Commander. It's slow and vulnerable, but the extra build power more than compensates if you aren't risking it, and blueprinting has a ton of niche applications.

B Tier Recon Commander: It can jump plop and take metal spots in unfriendly terrain. Later it trades some of its build power for the ability to jump on raider leaks. A big team generally wants one or two, but it's map dependant.

C Tier Guardian Commander: Needs upgrades to match Strike Commander's forward presence. The drone intel is a nice perk but lets the other team know it's present.