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.

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.

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 hitscan weapons makes these units really good.
• Artillery weapons have significant reload times.
  • Counterexample: Sling, sort of? Six seconds is not negligible.

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

Many assaults are most usefully understood in the context of their secondary role, as discussed in the Hybrid section below.

(TODO: Commment on higher-weight units being automatically a bit assault-y.)

Anti-Air

Primary characteristic

• Their weapons only target air units.

Secondary characteristics

• Their weapons have very long range.

Constructor

Primary characteristic

• They have buildpower.

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 . 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?

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...

<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>

All gunship units go in the category "Beaten by Razor", which also has obvious properties.