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.

Unrelated characteristic: A property which you might think is characteristic of a unit class, but in fact is not.

These classes are not necessarily going to cover all units. Air is probably left out.

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.

Skirmishers

Primary characteristic

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

Secondary characteristics

• Skirmishers' weapons have characteristics which leave them vulnerable to being swarmed by raiders.
• 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.

If you like, you may place Moderator and Fencer in their own "Fire Support" category, move "Inaccurate against fast-moving targets" to a secondary characteristic of skirmishers, and mumble a bit about Scalpel. But I think this is simpler.

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.

Hybrids

Many units combine a little bit of other roles with their primary role. This section is about units which go a bit further than that and blur the lines between roles.

Raider + Riot

Compared to a pure raider, a raider/riot has slightly less speed but exceptional weaponry. The best example of such a unit is Corsair, which pays for its strength by being helpless against underwater units.

I prefer to think of Bolas, Archer and Venom as anti-raiders. Their weapons are not spectacular for general use, but are tuned to be especially effective against raiders.

Raider + Skirmisher/Artillery

These don't really exist. High speed and high range would be a very unfun combination. Some skirmishers are relatively fast but that's as far as it goes.

Skirmisher + Riot

Felon, Dante, some nerfed trollcoms

Artillery + Skirmisher

Redundant

Artillery + Riot

Firewalker????

Assault + Raider

Ravager

Assault + Skirmisher

Grizzly

Assault + Riot

Siren

Assault + Artillery

Paladin

Assault + Scout

Dirtbag?