Dominatrix

The Dominatrix is a capture rover from the Rover Assembly.

Dominatrix (vehcapture)
Capture Rover
Stats
Cost	420
Hit Points	820
Mass	204
Movement Speed (elmo/s)	58
Turn Rate (deg/s)	110
Vision Radius (elmo)	550
Transportable	Light
Weapons
Capture Ray Damage 22 Damage per Second 660 Range (elmo) 450 Instantly hits Ignores shields

Description

The Dominatrix captures enemies, turning them against their former allies. Multiple Dominatrixes can capture a single target faster, although only one becomes the controller. After taking control of a unit, the Dominatrix cannot fire for 12 seconds. If a Dominatrix is destroyed, all units it controlled are freed.

Tactics and Strategy

The Dominatrix deals capture damage, effectively pitting its DPS against (1000 + the target's HP). This means that the Dominatrix (which has a capture DPS of 660) will take a minimum of 1.5 seconds to capture any unit. For heavier targets, it takes longer. A single Dominatrix takes about 12.4 seconds to capture an enemy Minotaur (which has 7200 HP). Damaged units will be captured faster and that capture damage does not ignore unit armor. Capture damage decays quickly if the target escapes range, so partial damage will most likely go to waste.

To prolong the lifespan of your frail Dominatrixes, try escorting them with at least one Aspis, along with an Iris to help keep enemy artillery from skirmishing your Dominatrixes to death. As with other shield balls, such a combination is asking to be countered with the likes of Firewalkers, Imps, Snitches, Thunderbirds, or Likhos.

Best uses for Dominatrix

1. Countering rushes of nasty heavyweight riots: Mace, Ogre, Redback. For an equal price to the rush unit, you get the Dominatrix which stops the rush unit—and you also get the rush unit. Typically, the rushing player resigns after realizing that they've spent most of their economy on giving you one of these units.
2. Defeating medium-heavy assault units. Minotaur and Jack in particular are very difficult for Rover to counter without a Dominatrix, but this will require a critical mass of Dominatrixes to have sufficient DPS to actually complete the capture.
3. Killing enemy Commanders. Rover doesn't lack in Commander-killing options, with Scorchers and Ravagers also being quite good at the job. But a Dominatrix outruns and outranges non-trollcom Commanders, so an unassisted Com caught in the wild against a Dominatrix will soon encounter a fate worse than death, creating a massive 8 Metal per second differential for the capturer. If your enemy is inattentive, you may even get this almost for free, because the Dominatrix capture ray does not trigger the "commander under attack" alarm.

Countering Dominatrix

Countering Dominatrix as hover, your two choice units are Halberd and Lance. Ideally, both!

1. Halberd costs less than the Dominatrix and takes little capture damage while armored. You will need at least three Halberds per two enemy Dominatrixes, but Halberds are fast enough to catch up with the Dominatrixes, and more importantly, they are very hard to stop, and they are very bad at killing each other. So, when they get turned, Dominatrixes don't get any bonus kills from the freshly acquired slaves; instead, once the remaining Halberds kill one of the slave-owning Dominatrixes, you get your slightly dented Halberds back.
2. Lance has the range and alpha to kill Dominatrixes with impunity. It might not be effective if shooting by radar though, but that's where Halberds come in handy.
3. Scalpel, if you want to fight dirty. A Scalpel and Mace force fights very favorably with almost every Rover composition, barring things like heavy Badger—at least, until Thunderbirds come out. The Scalpel/Mace build also trades equally with Dominatrix—you get two Scalpels for one Dominatrix, and while a Dominatrix outranges the Scalpel slightly, it's not a big enough margin to prevent return fire. It takes two Scalpel salvos to kill a Dominatrix, and if you succeed, you more or less erase all the damage the Dominatrix did. A good trick here is to manually target them, otherwise the first captures will waste shots for most of your army.

Other counters

Once the enemy has fielded five or more Dominatrixes, you may consider further asymmetric options:

• Aggressive porcing: Dominatrix is quite bad against Stinger. Extra good if your artillery is an anti-mobile kind, which is almost any artillery unit except Sling and Impaler—then you can also bombard the enemy units from your porc forest!
• Air bombing: Start with a Thunderbird because unassisted Ravens will probably be captured. A Dominatrix takes two Raven bombs to die, too.
• Cloaked Snitches: Five Dominatrixes cost 2100 Metal. You get to facswitch to Shield (700 Metal), an area cloaker (420), and 5 or 6 Snitches for this price.
• Phantoms: Just bring something to keep the Darts away.
• Emissary: Outruns, outranges, and outguns Dominatrix. Kind of mandatory in the late game.