User:Aquanim/UnitTaxonomy

Preface

See also Unit classes.

Often ZK players think about the unit roles in terms of the RPS triangle of raider > skirmisher > riot > raider, artillery beating porc, and assaults have several definitions including "also beating porc" or "being tanky". I think this schema misses some important stuff.

• Raiders semi-routinely beat riots for cost if they get a decent surround.
• Some skirmisher vs raider matchups are quite painful for the raiders (Scalpel jumps to mind).
• Skirmishers caught a little out of position will get chewed up by riots.
• Some artillery units (notably Firewalker) are pretty underwhelming against turrets.
• Assault units aren't always eager to push into defences. Ravager would much prefer to be doing runbys. Grizzly pokes from a distance.

Below I am going to lay out what I think are some reasonable definitions for each class, according to the following scheme:

Primary characteristic: The defining property of the unit class. If you don't have this, you don't belong in this class.

Secondary characteristic: A property which is shared (to some degree) by all units of the class, as a logical consequence of applying game design principles alongside the primary characteristic.

Tertiary characteristic: A property which is shared (to some degree) by most units of the class. The units without positive tertiary characteristics are typically pretty poor at doing some of the common "jobs" assigned to this unit class. The units without negative tertiary characteristics typically have some other weakness to compensate... but they're often still quite tricky to deal with.

Orthodox unit classes

Raiders

Primary characteristic

• Raiders are effective primarily by virtue of their movement speed.

Secondary characteristics

• Raiders have effective weapons. Having reached a position quickly they then need to do their business quickly, before whatever they were running from catches up.
• Raiders have poor range and HP. A cheap fast unit with poor damage but long range or lots of HP would be far more annoying than fun.

Tertiary characteristics

• Most raiders are cheap.
  • Counterexample: Kodachi and Blitz are relatively expensive, and Tank really feels the lack of a good chaff option in some matchups.
• Most raiders have good DPS/cost.
  • Counterexample: Dagger has poor DPS and so Hover doesn't have the same potential to inflict a lot of economic damage with one or two raiders that other factories do. Its weapon is still effective at dealing *quick* damage, though.

Sub-class: Scouts

Scouts sacrifice the effective weapon of Raiders in favour of being cheap, disposable, and having good vision range.

Hybrid: Raider/Riot

Corsair combines quite high speed with a very strong weapon system. Only really balanced by its special weakness to underwater stuff. You could stick Archer/Venom/Bolas here but I prefer to think of them as anti-raiders.

Riots

Primary characteristics

• Riots are effective primarily by virtue of their weapon damage.

Secondary characteristics

• Riots' weapons have characteristics which are at least reasonable against raiders (low reload time, high projectile speed).
• Riots are outranged by skirmishers.
• Riots are generally outrun by skirmishers (and hence also by raiders).
• Riots have decent but less than excellent HP.

Tertiary characteristics

• Most riots have strong single-target DPS.
  • Counterexample: Outlaw, obviously. You are still building it for its weapon (more than its speed, HP or range). Shield covers this weakness with Felon.
• Most riots have area-of-effect weapons so as to be more effective against raiders.
  • Counterexample: Mace, which therefore is a bit more vulnerable to being swarmed than other riots. To compensate, many of Hover's other units can help out against raiders better than their equivalents in other factories.

Hybrid: Riot/Skirmisher

Felon combines skirmisher-ish range with very quick hit-scan DPS, as long as it has shield strength (which is its balancing weakness). Dante is also best understood as a riot/skirmisher, balanced by its dubious HP/cost and its DPS and range not being that exceptional.

Skirmishers

Primary characteristic

• Skirmishers are effective primarily by virtue of their weapon range.

Secondary characteristics

• Under ordinary circumstances Skirmishers do not outrange Stinger. Having this much range requires them to have significant additional weaknesses, and we cover these separately in the Artillery category.
• Skirmishers' weapons have characteristics which leave them vulnerable to being swarmed by raiders. To accentuate this their HP is typically poor.
• Skirmishers are fast enough to run away from most riots, but too slow to run away from raiders.

Tertiary characteristics

• Most skirmishers' weapons are inaccurate against fast-moving targets.
  • Counterexample: Moderator has a hit-scan weapon but it has a long cooldown, during which it can be swarmed.
  • Counterexample: Scalpel's missiles home but they don't always hit, and Scalpel also has a long cooldown.
  • Counterexample: Fencer's missiles home but Fencer has to stand still to fire and can't kite raiders effectively.

Sub-class: Fire Support

On account of strongly violating the tertiary characteristic of skirmishers, Moderator and Fencer are alternatively styled as "Fire Support" units. Bulkhead also gets this designation; its violation of Skirmisher characteristics is that it situationally outranges Stinger and has quite a bit of health. One could argue that Scalpel also fits in this category, but it does miss some raiders and Lance has the fire support symbol in the factory for aesthetic reasons.

Artillery

Primary characteristic

• Artillery units are effective primarily by virtue of extreme weapon range (generally defined as outranging Stinger).

Secondary characteristics

• Artillery units have poor HP and movement speed, so that if they can be caught they can be killed.

Tertiary characteristics

• Most artillery weapons are inaccurate against fast-moving targets.
  • Counterexample: Lance and Phantom. The long reload time compensates for this a bit, but fundamentally long-range near-hitscan weapons makes these units really good.
• Artillery weapons have significant reload times.
  • Counterexample: Tremor, and sort of Sling. Firing arc and slow projectile speed prevents them from quickly picking off light-weight units.

Sub-class: Anti-unit vs Anti-static Artillery

These are not so much two distinct sub-classes as a spectrum of preferred unit targets for artillery, with Firewalker/Badger at one end and Impaler at the other. Sling, Lance, Emissary, and Envoy lie somewhere in between. Tremor is off on its own knocking over sandcastles.

Assaults

Primary characteristic

• Assault units are effective primarily by virtue of their effective hitpoints.

Secondary characteristics

• Assault units' weapons do not have outstanding characteristics against raiders (though some are not too bad).

Tertiary characteristics

• Most assault units have a secondary strength which helps them to leverage their HP. The nature of this strength varies. In effect this means there are a lot of Assault/??? hybrids.

Health as a function of unit weight

More expensive units generally have more health per unit, which regardless of their role they can use to their benefit. A Merlin (3140 HP) can stand places, for example in an Inferno, that a group of Slings (350 HP) cannot - but nobody would call Merlin (0.9 HP/cost) an assault.

Having a large amount of HP is not sufficient for a unit to be an `assault'. The distinguishing property is that the unit works because it has above average HP.

Hybrid: Assault/???

• Ravager, Halberd and perhaps Minotaur are Assault/Raider hybrids. With okay DPS but poor range and projectile speed, their fast movement and HP are both required to put them in the right position to use their weapons effectively.
• Grizzly is the archetypal Assault/Skirmisher. It sits at moderate range, kills some stuff, then retreats and repairs.
• Jack, Siren and Knight are not fast nor particularly long ranged, but have decent weapon characteristics (I suppose you could argue this for Siren).

Bombs / Suicide Units

Primary characteristic

• Bombs blow up.

Secondary characteristics

• Bombs have low HP so the defender has a chance to intercept them.

Tertiary characteristics

• Most bombs have some form of stealth, to give them a better chance of reaching their target.
  • Counterexamples: Limpet instead reaches its target with a bit more HP and not really minding if it blows up near friendlies. Puppy reaches its target through there being a lot of Puppies.

Support

Primary characteristic

• Little to no direct damage, but has other important effects on the battlefield.

Anti-Air

Primary characteristic

• Their weapons only target air units.

Secondary characteristics

• Their weapons have very long range.

Constructor

Primary characteristic

• They have buildpower.

Heterodox unit classes

These unit classes are not strongly reflected by unit text or icons, but I think they are potentially a useful way to think about the game.

Anti-Raiders

Example units: Bolas, Archer, Venom

This could be argued to be a sub-class of Raiders or Riots.

Ambush

Example units: Imp, Scythe, Snitch, Ultimatum, Scorpion

So what the hell is a...

Dirtbag

Assault/Scout

Thug

Assault/Support

Crab

The secret "Terraform Abuser" unit class. Bulkhead is a hybrid Fire Support/Terraform Abuser.

Jugglenaut

Assault/Skirmisher, without any great enthusiasm for the designation.

Paladin

Assault/Artillery

<Insert plane unit>

Sort into constructor, scout, fighter and bomber. I haven't defined the latter two classes, but their properties are fairly obvious.

<Insert gunship unit>

Wasp is a constructor, Blastwing is a bomb. I guess Krow is an assault/riot? All other gunship units go in the category "Beaten by Razor", which has the properties you would expect.