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
Contents
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. These ratings are inevitably based on my experiences using, supporting, and opposing the units, and may not generalize to situations I never experience.
Constructors
A Tier
Quill: Fast and cheap makes it the best con at second-line tasks and particularly explosive expansion and microgridding. But being able to show up earlier after a fight in another lane is itself a significant perk, as is the strategic flexibility to quickly Plate off a distant teammate. It's not even particularly fragile.
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.
Conch: The best buildpower per cost of the mobile constructors and thus the preferred one for large projects or repair points. Has similar stealth at sea to a Conjurer's on land.
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.
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.
Mariner: Sea Mason. Overshadowed in any one task by either Conch or Quill, but a reasonable compromise between them if you don't want to build on land.
C Tier
Weaver: Slow and expensive, but in sufficiently nasty terrain all the other ground options are worse. Bringing one of them with your army to get radar coverage with your repair team isn't a bad idea, though. For big projects it's a bit more cost-effective than the cheapest cons.
Constable: The most expensive light ground con, with perks that don't compensate. It's also fragile against anything but Fleas or a single raider. It can compete with the other cons if you have the spare apm to micro a lot of jumps into its queue, but it only pulls ahead with rare midair-construction micro that can't be queued. Its main niche is being the cheapest way to grab metal spots surrounded by spider-only terrain.
Crane: Mobility specialist. On a big enough map every team eventually wants one or two to rebuild Metal Extractors and patch grids with Wind Generators - the time saved getting to the problem first will more than make up for the high sticker price. Front-heavy teams appreciate having an early one to fill in the gaps between their expansion paths. But it's very very expensive for a unit with the build power of a Mason and less survivability than a Gnat.
Welder: Almost works as an assault. But this class is about building stuff, and it pays a premium for a weapon that's irrelevant to most of its tasks but that lets it fight off scouts or maybe one raider during the early game. It's very difficult for a ground con to hit D tier on this scale because the factory as a whole needs mobile build power.
D Tier
Wasp: Overpriced. It's actually faster than most of the ground cons, and it has a few tiny niches where Crane and maybe Athena are the only competition, but if you can use a ground con you generally should.
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.
Kodachi: Does not play well with others. But it does function as an aggressive space-taking raider that's very difficult for other raiders to engage into. Kodachi groups need to be handled with some care to avoid driving into their own fireballs.
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.
Dagger: Speed specialist, flat ground only. They're good at pulling the opponent around and picking off lone raiders or skirms, but in a dense map that doesn't count for much. They can flex-AA and have the speed to try to intercept planes.
Pyro: Backstab specialist. Hybrid riot-power lets it prey on other raiders, although imperfectly, but its real justification as a raiding tool is the ability to bypass choke points or break contact by jumping over cliffs. It takes particular advantage of the cover provided by enemy factories since it can shoot other targets through them.
Duck: Slow and individually vulnerable, but they ball well.
C Tier
Scythe: A specialist at deep raids with a side order of suicidal assassin. They're too expensive for general use.
Flea: Cheap annoyances. Use 'em to convince the opponents to build Lotuses or patrol raiders everywhere. Don't use 'em where there are Lotuses or raider patrols. They can swarm skirms and some assaults as long as they have no escort whatsoever. In today's meta that's not much of a niche despite having the highest practical DPS per cost in the game... but see the scouting section.
Venom: Has the opposite problem from Flea, where they can easily stun out light defenses but can't quickly turn the resulting opening into real damage. They need extra micro against groups of skirmishers because they have a tendency to stun their main target and stop dodging, or to step in other Venoms' AoE zones. This hybrid does better as a riot.
Blitz: You need a lot of metal in Blitz by raider standards before they can raid properly. Blitz is an oddball that doesn't fit cleanly into any of my class roles but dips its toes into enough of the anti-heavy and even assault applications that it's a bit better as a flexible package than its C tier in any one category would suggest.
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
Locust: Can get kills on things that literally can't shoot back, but its DPS is far too low to properly raid rather than merely annoy.
Unclassified
Skirmishers/Fire Support
S Tier
Recluse: The longest ranged conventional skirmisher, which lets them beat up the other skirmishers. Groups of Recluses can even devastate incoming raiders with spray-and-splash tactics. Their main downside is being fragile for their cost, and thus preferred pickoff targets. Move speed is a secondary drawback, as any army they're pressuring can easily disengage for repairs. While common wisdom says they're countered by AoE fire, their range lets them spread more than their competitors.
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.
Scalpel: They trade away DPS and range for speed and reliability. The result is a skirmisher that scales well in the early-to-mid game and falls off hard once everything important outranges them.
Crab: Worth the premium cost if you can spare the tempo. Shreds other skirms. Gets much better with some sort of mobility support, like Lobster, or with bespoke terraform; in a favorable terrain it needs specific counters, but it's vulnerable trying to get to said positions so you want to either move it externally or manufacture the terrain where it already is.
Moderator: Hit-and-run specialist. Its accurate weapon lets it trump other skirms at its chosen range, and the massive slow makes it particularly effective against assaults. Even raiders need a numerical advantage, which the heavier raiders struggle to achieve. But it's fragile and particularly suffers clearing light porc.
Buoy]: High value as a defensive skirmisher vs. assaults. In exchange, they tend to lose slowly to other skirmishers. They're best as a fire support bolstering a complex army, rather than as a standalone harassment tool.
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.
Grizzly: Often the last skirm standing in the late game, but it's prohibitively expensive early - trying to build one in an even or worse lane will likely cost the team your lane.
C Tier
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.
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.
Hermit: They're just long enough range to skirmish most riots, and agile enough to dodge slow projectiles, and tough enough to make autoretreat useful. These strengths let them act as a very effective pseudo-skirm in the factory mirror, although Recluses generally overshadow them in the role.
Bulkhead: Good pressure tool. Bad under pressure. The best number to have is one - use it to pull their army into yours on pain of losing their light porc. If you're pushed ahead of the next lane over, and on the high ground, Bulkhead's a nice tool for cross-lane harassment.
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
Ogre: The endgame riot. It combines the advantages of Mace and Claymore - range, speed and AoE - but at a premium price for its health pool or DPS. Mace can compete for assault applications where its DPS-efficiency matters, and some other riots show up for terrain Ogre can't cross, but otherwise it tends to push the other options off the table once it becomes readily affordable.
A Tier
Mace: The riot that bullies other riots. Good speed, good DPS and excellent range. Unfortunately, it's expensive enough to be a premium target for enemy fire support without the health to match, and lack of AoE impairs it against assault swarms.
Venom: Extreme mobility for a riot and generous AoE make groups of Venoms very difficult to raid through. Other riots will outrange them but the AoE lockdown can turn the tables on a careless riot ball.
B 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.
Ripper: A defensively oriented archetypal 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.
CLAYMORE: HUGE EXPLOSIONS for armies that want to bring INSTANT DESTRUCTION to their enemies! It'd see a lot more play on land maps if it weren't in the same factory as Mace, but it's got a different target profile - it wants to use its superior speed to get into position to make cost in one HUGE EXPLOSION, and to avoid bad fights with other riot-skirm armies in the meantime. And it can pull retreat advantage on some of those other riots if they chase. The biggest downside as a riot is that it can't shoot across domains - it does nothing to air units and its shots get blocked by two elmos of water.
Pyro: Mobility justifies this tier placement. It can force fights with raids that could disengage cheaply against any other riot. It also has the option to jump away early and let the raiders burn to death. The downside is that you'll lose more Pyros to raiders than any other riot.
Scallop]: The most generic of riots. Its DPS maxes out near the raiders' preferred range, so it wants to be that close when bashing statics, but it gets significant retreat advantages on other riots.
C Tier
Redback: Does solidly against other riots, but lacks the speed to close with pretty much anything and thus ends up as a strictly defensive tool unless it can use ridges to set up ambushes.
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.
Archer: Fast and cheap. That makes it serviceable against light raiders. Its actual damage output is somewhat lacking, though, and it's fragile for an Amphbot or riot.
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.
Halberd: The queen of the fast assaults. The combination of cheap dps, speed and health lets a Halberd gang go for aggressive pickoffs despite low raw health. She needs to disengage earlier in her health bar than the other assaults, but her armor lets her do more before hitting that point anyway and her speed lets her break contact very quickly. She excels at composure under fire - repairs are cheap and she gets the full benefit of armor. Just don't trade hits with raiders, her ballistics are poor enough that she rarely hits them.
Jugglenaut: Broken. Not imbalanced, it has counters, but it gets to just ignore the usual combat math and trade health, and occasionally snipe your artillery with your own riots.
Cyclops: A battering ram for blowing holes in the front. A Cyclops has the health pool of a strider at a discount and its slow beam further mitigates incoming damage while also giving it an easy way to disengage. It can pick off light army units from skirm range. It demolishes porc. And it usually survives the process. Just don't overextend it through the gap it made.
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.
Revenant: It would be an S tier assault if the opponents didn't make AA. Instead, it's a role-player to exploit holes in their AA cover.
Grizzly: Doesn't get the inflated health pool of the other assaults, nor the speed of a fast assault, but its first strike from a generous standoff range mitigates some of those problems and it has Lobster in-fac if you really want a quick engage or disengage.
C Tier
Mace: Can just drive at porc and beat it down through sheer DPS. It takes expensive losses in return, however.
Jack: Don't dodge the attack, dodge the unit! It's a strategic hazard as Newton cannon ammo, but on offense it tends to be a reclaim donation even when it succeeds.
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.
Hermit: Has trouble actually assaulting because it's so slow. At least it's cheap, so losing a few on the way in isn't the biggest cost.
Minotaur: This one can actually assault, it just refuses to shoot at things when it does. It's notably difficult to finish off, though by no means impossible, but it takes the big teams late game's low inflation for a badly damaged Minotaur to be worth repairing instead of recycling it into two thirds of a Fusion Reactor.
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. Played well, they're extremely difficult for the other team to engage.
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.
Lance: Premium problem deleter with a long cooldown. Lance is the specialist among big artillery at dealing with mobile targets. The main tradeoff is that they cannot quickly deal with Lotus spam. A large group of well-supported Lances is among the easiest endgame compositions to reach although not an unstoppable one. Having a wide body and poor turning means you need to control them carefully in battle because allied units can easily embarrass their pathing.
Emissary: The generalist of the heavy artillery. It outranges Lance and Firewalker (but not Impaler), it has enough splash to harass moving armies (but not as much as Firewalker or as accurately as Lance), its DPS in bulk is more cost effective than its direct competitors (but not Envoy), and it's quite fast when it's not shooting.
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.
Firewalker: I am rarely happy to see this, regardless of whose team it's on. It's good at racking up damage but not so much at scoring kills, and although it's a valuable enough target to require screening it also tends to set its screening units on fire. Use in support of an advance requires specific planning to not block the advance with lingering fire pools. While it remains a premium artillery unit in principle, these drawbacks put it a tier below the other premium artillery in practice.
C Tier
Tremor: The only things it can reliably hit are area shields and massive terrain features. Don't get it against other stuff. Although after you're done deleting terrain features it might as well point its shots in the general direction of their economy.
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
Lance: A warning shot may make them back off, but multiple Lances are better used to either kill a heavy outright or catch it overcommitted. Getting there is expensive, however.
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.
Gnat: OP on paper, not quite so much in practice, it's the key component of the traditional commnap combo. Even without stealing the target, a Gnat swarm is dirt cheap for the effect it has on fights between heavies. However, they drop like flies in the face of accurate riot escorts.
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.
Bolas: One Bolas on a target keeps its slow from decaying. A gang of them fills the slow meter very quickly. And they're an inconvenient weight for a lot of the heavies to engage.
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
Widow: Bait. The cost is prohibitive. It's expensive even to move it. You need several to stun the true high end units. And when it does hit, not only is it usually dead in retaliation, but the opponents know what you're trying to kill and can punish you for the attempt. It sometimes works, but without exceptional judgment it's firmly negative expected value.
Unclassified
Support
S Tier
Charon: Dirt cheap logistical assistant. As a base, it moves slow units where they need to go - factory guarding or ferrying armies between lanes. But with the right cargo it's arguably out-competing other planes and gunships at their own strengths - carrying workers instead of using an air con, carrying Reavers instead of attacking the same vulnerability with Locusts, or dropping Snitches as a heavily discounted Likho.
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.
Lobster: Tactical mobility assistant. Equally good at getting units into and out of trouble. Also the reason I don't play most lava maps.
B Tier
Placeholder: Skirmisher to riot converter. It's more powerful on defense than offense because you usually don't want to walk forward into the held enemies, but it's even a decent tool when you're applying pressure to break up the enemy response to that pressure.
Hercules: Slow Charon with extra lift capacity. Most of the Striders could use the lift. But it has a secondary application kidnapping immobilized heavies, which Charon tends to be too fragile for, as well as a bunch of rare niches.
Aegis: Temporary artillery shelter. It lends your hardpoint the time to respond to artillery fire before your defenses crumble or your parked army takes losses. It has a secondary role making Missile Silo attacks more expensive, a role for which you generally only want one per protected target.
Cornea: Protection for your assembly point. Keeps the opponents from knowing how much you've assembled, and keeps artillery from accurately targeting them. Even if you turn the cloakfield off to save energy, the jammer remains a useful artillery defense - it even obscures which uncloakable statics are still alive.
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.
Storage: Get an extra one to deal with intermittent energy problems if you're relying on transfers to sustain your cloaking and shielding, particularly if you have a lot of cloaked units that cost extra energy to move.
D Tier
Djinn: Theoretical value only. By the time I can afford a 750 metal luxury unit my team's winning anyway.
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.
Owl: Ultimate intel asset. It spots units and keeps a radar lock on them, all from a safe distance. It's the best way to get eyes on high plateaus. It lets your artillery get consistent direct hits on their artillery. The presence of a single Owl frequently turns around otherwise losing lanes and it's well worth the price of a plate, or even a factory later in the game, for just one Owl.
Radar Tower: Spammable intel source. Mandatory during the early game. It's a good idea to add one of these to any defensive position that doesn't share an Advanced Radar blanket, and it's cheap enough to erect a disposable one to look around terrain that blocks the Advanced Radar with the full expectation that it will die in the ensuing fight.
A Tier
Flea: They work either as a pre-positioned mole or a disposable spotter. A comparatively cheap group of Fleas can quickly comb a large area for cloaked units, and fight a lot of the things they might find, or lurk as a tripwire that reveals cloaked units crossing it. Their one major drawback is that attentive foes will notice you placing them and deliberately clean them up.
Sparrow: It gets trumped by Owl but otherwise provides similar advantages. The jammer passively messes with enemy decision making. And it can be expended as an affordable, Cornea-trumping scouting missile for medium depth probes, or to get counterbattery hits on Phantoms. The morph means every factory has easy access, which means it sets the standard.
Cutter: Sonar specialist. It's useful as a simple sonar picket, but it's also a cheap and speedy deep scout at sea. Airlifted or beached Cutters are underrated as torpedo-immune sonar stations. Cutters have the vision advantage over land units in coastal fights, giving allied Lances and Envoys the edge in artillery duels.
Advanced Radar: Deep radar. Helps keep dots identified and spots army movements well before they hit the front. On most maps, they're prone to large blind spots and benefit from a small spire to reduce them. An Advanced Radar is a complement to, rather than a substitute for, direct vision scouting.
B Tier
Swift: The canonical deep scout in both the opening and the late game. You really need to be attentive when your teammate sends them in, because the vision they grant is very brief.
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
Widow: In theory, its tiny decloak radius lets it slip through gaps Gremlins or Scythes couldn't to get valuable backline intel. In practice, it's prohibitively expensive. The only thing keeping it out of F tier is that _maybe_ you can zap an Antinuke at a critical moment, in which case the intel is incidental.
F Tier
Unclassified
Single-Use/Bombs
S Tier
Eos: Static problem remover. Very difficult to stop, particularly if the silo user spends other missiles to set it up. With a spotter, it also threatens Commanders, Tremors, and other slow and predictable targets.
A Tier
Snitch: The archetypal walking bomb. A sneaky Snitch can destroy entire armies. An insufficiently sneaky Snitch does nothing.
Limpet: A big AoE that doesn't hit your own units. Where other bombs must be handled with care, Limpet can run around inside your army and sacrifice itself for major advantages once battle has been joined.
Shockley: Gamba. Use to let Infernos and multi-Eos combos have their full effect on mobile targets. Use multiples on defensive hardpoints to let your team's armies in for free. Maybe stun part of an army to leave the rest of it in a choice between staying overextended and allowing a free cleanup - a shot at a large enough army is very likely to hit something important. And it enables Trinity by stunning Antinukes in the endgame in a way that can only really be stopped by storming the silo.
Inferno: Pure area denial. Most mobile units can just leave and seek repairs. A hit opens up cloaked armies to immediate punishment from artillery. The combo with Shockley can burn out entire fragile armies, however - keep in mind that it does less damage than Eos, and its benefit in the combo is its wider area. Smart users will use tactics like dropping an Inferno on the back ranks of a target army to punish it further if it retreats.
B Tier
Imp: Powerful as a threat, but they take lots of support to actually function.
Blastwing: Underwhelming to use, but that's because you don't see what retreats and then burns to death. A lot of things that seem like they should zone out Blastwings only convert them into projectiles that still deal the damage albeit less accurately. The tradeoff is much smaller jackpots compared to any of the other bombs.
C Tier
Puppy: A roleplayer during the early game to fill gaps between Pyros. They're very efficient later if you get them for free in the field via gray goo, to the point where having one in your army should be standard in case the opportunity comes up, but you shouldn't spend much factory production on Puppies.
Zeno: A minor nuisance in its design niche of hampering armies. Its main niche is to hit area shields to let the more expensive Eoses through. Its secondary niche is to buy time against the heavy striders that people shouldn't be building anyway, though with extra credit for the mass decloak if someone has Scorpions.
Quake: Lowers walls to let artillery over, curbs pit and spire abuse , and makes basic terra obstacles bot-pathable. Sadly, its smoothing isn't strong enough to reliably make rough terrain vehicle pathable even with multiple shots. It also has some broken interactions with floating buildings that nobody who knows the details of is enough of a jerk to use in a real game.
D Tier
Skuttle: Reliable downside, unreliable upside. The meta use is to snipe Commanders but even attempting it in the early game when Commanders are exposed will cripple your own early game. It has a potential use as a late game lockpick to remove poorly screened heavies that happen to be standing still, or aggressively placed Cerberuses.
Bombers
A Tier
Phoenix: The staple early game bomber. As long as they can linger over an enemy army for a bit, they can make that army regret not bringing serious AA. They're pad hogs, though.
Likho: The staple late game bomber. They often make cost in one hit, and it's extremely difficult to keep them from getting that hit. With more cautious play they pick units off on the enemy's fringe and are just as difficult to kill in response.
B Tier
Odin: Kills expensive buildings. Can be game-winning if it gets a Singularity Reactor or similar project, but requires a lot of planning or enemy carelessness to reach that point. Its general utility, though, comes from its Pavise drops, which feel underused in the current meta largely because Odin steers so poorly that putting both the shields and the Odin where you want them takes practice.
C Tier
Raven: Early game anti-heavy specialist. While they typically pay off faster than any of the other options, they're the easiest bomber to stuff with mobile AA units. The potential of rushing a swarm of them to snipe Commanders in the opening is enticing, but it's high commitment, wastes their quick turnaround time, and you're probably losing a Raven in the process - still a playable opening but usually not the huge win it seems like.
Magpie: Harder to stuff than everything but Likho, but by far the worst pad hogs. They're saved from D tier by the occasional target so valuable and fragile that you don't mind losing multiple Magpies to kill it, but not so valuable to risk a Likho on. Call it C-minus.
D Tier
Thunderbird: Very strong in theory or the highlight reel, but I rarely see one do more harm to the opposing team than its own. Affected enemies can usually just back off.
Air
S Tier
A Tier
Revenant: A bomber that doesn't need airpads, or an assault with air movement, take your pick. While it's vulnerable to flex-AA, it can soak some AA fire in exchange for a pickoff, and if they don't respond appropriately the same Revenants can make another run in ten seconds
B Tier
Nimbus: Punishes the opponents' front for having their AA too far back. Always inefficient at damage output due to accuracy problems, but make up for it with the range to easily retreat. Successful use typically involves abusing vision mechanics or the opponents simply not adjusting.
C Tier
Harpy: Has a narrow window of utility at the start of the game, where it can mess with raider fights and skirm duels with impunity. But they get run out of town pretty quickly by the likes of a single Razor or a trio of Vandals.
Swift: Basically can't exist for more than three seconds in contested airspace. Its boost helps it get out of contested airspace in less than three seconds. That leaves it incompetent around the frontline, but it can at least plink deep-raiding enemies to death. Despite the low rating it's the best first unit from Airplane Plant to take advantage of the small window where the only thing contesting its airspace is another Swift.
D Tier
Locust: Gunships' DPS-per-cost champion, but its DPS is too low to actually take fights. Blunders into Hacksaws. Borderline unusable in contested areas, but sometimes one or two is the best way to remove a specific annoyance.
Unclassified
Anti-Air
A Tier
Ettin: Swarm-shredder. It performs respectably even against single targets, where the airbursts compensate somewhat for radar wobble when firing without vision, but it's exceptional at dealing with all manner of aerial attackers that clump to minimize their exposure to flex AA. But, as DPS specialists, they have some difficulty hitting critical mass to stuff an incoming bomber before it hits - they're particularly poor against single Likhos and need to spread out in case it targets them.
Flail: The assassin of AA. By the time the opponents hear the launch, their plane is already doomed. But they won't know where the Flails are for a couple of seconds and they're already moving. Against the tougher gunships, although their DPS is lacking, their move speed makes up for it by giving them extended chase time. Needs radar support, though.
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.
Tarantula: Swift slayer. Long range and high DPS make up for its high unit cost - you get the same output with the same area coverage with fewer units. Its low speed for the class is a significant problem, but it generally doesn't have trouble keeping up with a push and the range compensates if it's lagging a bit. It also has AoE, as if Swifts weren't afraid enough of its one-shot potential.
Angler: The champion at stuffing bombers on a budget. Their baitability and low long-term DPS are issues, and they struggle to keep up with most armies, but if you want quick and cheap shootdowns they're your best mobile option.
Artemis: Tends to be at once overtaxed and a single point of failure, so you don't want it as your only AA coverage. But a stocked Artemis makes a very good backstop for your entire rear zone, and a well protected forward one can zone most air units out entirely including the Owls. Some firestate management may be necessary - for example you don't want to let Swifts or a Krow empty it for an Odin follow-up, nor to spend the last missile on an Odin or Krow that isn't committed to a dive.
B Tier
Trident: Slower than the other air-to-air options, but with much less difficulty dealing its full damage. It has trouble stuffing incoming bombers because of the long interval between launches, but that air mobility helps it get into position to deal its full burst. And a group of Tridents is generally favored against Swifts.
Toad: Saved by its excellent vision range. Its far-reaching peashooter has severe accuracy problems outside laser range, but it at least has very good DPS when both weapons are hitting. With no burst it struggles to shoot down incoming bombers; it does fine against other air targets. Its health pool and vision mean there's merit in buying one Toad to spot targets for bursty missile AA behind it.
Raptor: Sky Gremlin. Speed is its best asset. Unlike practically every other unit in the game it does better against retreating enemies, but that's because its forced movement cripples it against advancing or stationary ones.
Zephyr: Hard target for air. Its total DPS output is very cost efficient, similar to a Razor's, and the radar guided missiles are effective out to the edge of its considerable range. Add that to a tough enough chassis to survive a Likho hit and a mass of Zephyrs is disproportionately difficult for an air player to challenge head-on. Unfortunately, it's seabound and vulnerable to subs, and it's not quite good enough as a landship to compete with the statics - but many maps have enough sea frontage to make Zephyr a viable component of a zone defense.
Thresher: A pair represents a premium static point defense. They have enough burst to take down an incoming bomber, but badly punish an air player for trying to swarm them. The individual Threshers are light enough that they don't justify spending an Eos on, but chunky enough not to casually die to other threats. I usually use them where I already have an Aegis up.
Razor: A hardy anti-gunship defense for a contested frontline. Razors are not self-sufficient because they're inaccurate outside vision, nor does a single one quite have the DPS to kill bombers, so they're best combined with flex AA that double as spotters, or else line-built as a mutually supporting barrier.
Chainsaw: Integrated air defense keystone. Chainsaws can assist the main air defenses of multiple lanes while their rear arcs pick off deep-scouting Swifts and rack up damage against Odin run-bys. In other words, as an area defense they complement Artemis's comparative weaknesses. Late game AA schemes typically include an array of Chainsaws with overlapping coverage.
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.
Hacksaw]: Are they really dumb enough to fly into it? Sometimes, yeah. And sometimes them not flying into it is exactly what you need right now.
Static Defense
S Tier Stinger: Skirmisher slayer. The definitive medium option and a potent anchor for a defense. Its range sets the minimum standard for a functioning artillery unit.
A Tier
Lotus: The budget option. Lotus spam sets the standard for the other turrets.
Cerberus: The definitive heavy porc option, because it hits back at the longest-ranged artillery that counters other porc. Although it's among the highest priority Eos targets, if the Missile Silo didn't already exist, the Cerberus often makes cost before the silo completes. I recommend hardening it with an Aegis because it's otherwise somewhat vulnerable to being overwhelmed by the artillery and to delay the silo salvo by one missile.
B Tier
Picket: Complement to Lotus for light porc arrays. There's a lot of depth to the comparative arrangements of Lotuses and Pickets. On their own, Pickets represent a way to milk value of of an extremely protracted skirmisher dance, or to slowly kill unattended buildings from a safe distance. A Stinger is almost always better than a group of 4+ Pickets in one place.
Faraday: Anti-assault superstar. It needs to be backed up by serious DPS or maybe a mobile army, but it punches way above its weight to keep a complex defense from being overrun.
C Tier
Lucifer: It takes an odd situation to build it instead of Cerberus, and I've been disappointed by the results even when the enemy doesn't have artillery that can kill it for free. When someone else makes it and it works, it generally feels like a win-more measure.
Newton: Clifftop yeeter. It tends to die for free if the attack can come straight at it. It's got a ton of niche applications but they're all narrow.
D Tier
Stardust: Faraday generally does its job better in a complex defense. It does have the best DPS per cost of any static, but its inaccuracy undercuts that.
Desolator: While it can counter entire armies if they don't include artillery, it's worth bringing over all the artillery to kill for free.
Strider/Endgame
S Tier
Missile Silo: The entry point into endgame play. Shockley and Quake take down common countermeasures and enable the other superweapons, Inferno and Eos punish very densely concentrated value, and Shockley and Zeno are cheap countermeasures against various endgame threats. Being static is a drawback, but there's no shame in reclaiming a silo that's done its job to fund another elsewhere.
A Tier
Athena: The most buildable Strider Hub unit. Once the team's maxed on overdrive, rezzing every useful wreck within reach becomes an alternate economy - rezzing sniped generators is particularly profitable, since it feeds into more rez. But they also get sneaky plays as unit printers in the enemy backline or your own second line, and at worst are slightly inefficient build-assisters.
Singularity Reactor: MORE POWER is a superweapon all its own. Efficient even if you need to spend on extra measures to protect it, so the main downside is tempo. These have sharply diminishing returns, however, which sharing defensive measures only partly offsets.
Newton ramp: Acts like a baby superweapon at a much lower tempo cost. While it's more counterable than the bug superweapons, it's still the preferred option.
B Tier
Reef: Massive disarms are a strong entry into the late-game gridlock, and capture drones are a strong punishment for holes in their AA coverage. Hercules gives it mobility over land, and its drones can even defend it in transit.
Trinity: The nanoframe is arguably more powerful than the complete structure. However, defensive nukes are a powerful stalemate enforcer, since any coordinated push that gets too far out of its Antinuke umbrella is a target.
Big Bertha: It needs to be very late in the game - and after Singularity Reactors have diminished the marginal returns on overdrive into the gutter - before Big Bertha becomes a reasonable investment. Once up, its main role is to force the opponents to protect or disperse all their armies across the entire front. And it does that while forcing scattered eco faults throughout the opponent's second line and middleground, and slowly but steadily racking up value killed.
Krow: Has two useful modes. In one, it finds an area with weak air defense and assassinates a few key targets before backing off to repair, possibly opening the door for the team's ground armies. In the other, the enemy has insufficient mobile AA so it gets to rampage through the back lines smashing infrastructure until they've built enough to corner and kill it. In both cases, it's key that the other team isn't already prepared to deal with a different aggressive air attack. Its advantage over striders is its mobility - it can't really take on full armies even with its D-gun, not with only one Krow, but it can pick off some strays and outrun the rest.
C Tier
Scorpion: The generalist of the cheap striders, Scorpion isn't a substitute for a real army but it can act as a surprise force multiplier for one. It's also good for clearing isolated patches of high ground for vehicle armies.
[[[Merlin]]: Dedicated counterbattery. Though inefficient against individual targets that lack a strider-sized hitbox, it shines against big artillery balls, Cornea shadows, and particularly big artillery balls hiding in Cornea shadows. It can also break through a single Aspis or Aegis in one salvo with enough shots left over to punish units for sheltering under it. Its cost, helplessness while reloading and comparative squishiness make it an attractive assassination target.
Funnelweb: Big shield. The build power is worth only a tiny fraction of its price, and mass Aspises are cheaper for the same shield power, so you're really getting it to frustrate silo-type threats. It has a secondary use providing an umbrella for pushes against the likes of Cerberus and Big Bertha, backing away on contact with the short-ranged defenses that can quickly deplete it.
Ultimatum: A lockpick for a few very specific locks. Too expensive for what most users make it for, but it can occasionally assassinate something like a Funnelweb or Antinuke from an unexpected angle and then force them to spend more units tracking it down afterwards. Free pickoffs on demistriders can happen but aren't nearly common enough to build it for.
Zenith: The desperation option for pathological stalemates. You need buy-in from most of your team to make it worthwhile. Don't start one if the team already has one under construction.
Disco Rave Party: The second desperation option after dueling Zeniths on a large map cause an even bigger stalemate. Its range advantage over the enemy Zenith is what breaks the stalemate. The most fringe of fringe options that rates a C tier placement.
D Tier Shogun, Paladin, Detriment: The tempo cost of building these is so high that you shouldn't, even if they could eventually get stuff done.
Dante: Tries to fill every role but constructor, and is at best mediocre at all of them. That can make it tricky to deal with once it hits the field since it can switch role-behaviors against a one-dimensional response. It would actually be worth making if it cost more like 2500, but as is you're better off making a conventional army.
Shogun, Paladin, Detriment, Starlight: The tempo cost of building these is so high that you shouldn't, even if they could eventually get stuff done.
F Tier
Scylla: Good thing you can pause its missile expenditure or else it'd neutralize your whole economy! But you get enough from reclaiming an empty Scylla to make a Missile Silo and a pair of Eos. Do that instead.
Unclassified
Sea Control
S Tier
Envoy: The practical top end for sea. Once a couple of Envoys are in play, they threaten any of the light ships with random death if they park for a few seconds. They also spell the end for Urchins, and are the main tool for threatening opponents on the beach.
A Tier
Hunter: Dominates the raider phase, and acts as an anti-sub rapid response force afterwards. Hunters have trouble fighting Urchins.
Claymore: The premium anti-sub option, and can fend off surface raiders as well, but it needs support against both air and artillery, and it loses head-to-head to Corsairs.
Corsair: Raider speed, riot brawling power, assault health. Corsairs are natural escalation from Hunters, to counter other Hunters and break through Urchins. A Corsair gang is the main counter to a Siren rush, too.
Seawolf: Cheese option. Surprise Seawolves are so strong that they're a victim of game theory - sea players prepare to counter them even if they don't show up, so they're often not worth making. But when the rest of the army can clear the enemy anti-sub, or they show up in much greater numbers than expected, they can outright win the lane with little opportunity to counter them.
B Tier
Bolas: Competes with Corsair as a heavy raider, and Seawolf as an anti-heavy army component in an environment with lots of heavy to go around. Not necessary, but playable.
Siren: A late game generalist to bodyguard your Envoys and Reefs with. They have some AI problems with rangekeeping thanks to their dual weapons, so set target and move instead of using attack-move. One Siren doesn't have the DPS to handle all the midgame threats, though, so these already expensive units need to operate in packs.
Scallop: Switch hitter. Scallop gets to be a weak submarine threat against formations with no anti-sub, an aerial threat (with Lobster) against things with torpedoes, and a potent low mobility brawler against mixed groups.
Duck: Sea Scythe. Hard-countered by Hunter unless they can get out of the water. A nasty surprise against most other things.
C Tier
Dagger: Its pure speed gives it a niche giving the enemy army the runaround, and it can punish them for spreading too much in response. It also hits air units, but it's otherwise worse than Hunter.
Lance: Its main perk is being able to go onto islands to avoid torpedoes, which it needs to do frequently because it can't snipe underwater stuff. Envoy also raises the bar for artillery stats, although Envoy is itself a premium Lance target if you manage to get a clean shot.
Mistral: One-hit wonders. Mistrals get to be overpowered in a shallow-water fight with land units, and a few carefully protected Mistrals are a strategic advantage in Corsair or Siren fights. But they have many counters - subs, air and Envoys - which will eventually force them off the field.
D Tier
Mace, Halberd: Lose to almost everything afloat, and can't hit anything _not_ afloat either.
Scalpel: Badly outclassed by Mistral.
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.
