so why dont player shockley sham shockleys at the starlight? it's pretty easy to triangulate it's location.

You can't Eos efficiently through Funnelweb. You can Shockley.

My point was that, given the current state of Funnelweb, Missile Silo does not really counter any superweapon even if you have the luxury of having it in range and stocked, because you end up paying pretty hefty amounts of metal without the possibility of securing a kill, because while Shockley can penetrate, Eos can't.

And that getting your own superweapon is comparable in cost while superior in every way.

Funnels don't link, and stop charging for 10 seconds after taking damage. Starlight does its damage 30 times a second and thus can damage 300 funnelweb shields per 10 seconds and prevent them from charging ind3lefinitely, while also draining them. After that limit is reached, some Funnelwebs will be able to start charging, but Starlight will still be able to outDPS that charging. 300 funnelwebs cost 900 000 metal though. Aspis is better at this.

Funnelweb can be really hard to counter in FFA. Offensive or defensive funnel just feels bad.

My feel is that the problem with Funnelweb in FFA is that it does all of this:

- Protects you from artillery, which is extremely common in FFA given much higher aversion to casualties
- Madly power up ultimata
- Reclaim and colonize at warp speed
- Directly assault enemy positions with flash porc
- Directly thwart many types of enemy assaults with flash porc
- Provide information hiding via stockpile
- Protect your superweapon

Sure, a ball of normal builders does some of these. A bunch of paladins does some of this better. But a ball of funnels does all of this, so when you take out your big thing, your assaults and your builders instantly become a bunch of shockley-busting shields.

Kind of like if you could morph glaives into locusts in 1v1.

quote: Watching the replay, it looks like Jasper won because he defected while izirayd cooperated.

Yes - but given izirayd's investment into Shockleys (multiple quad-packa and a stream of smaller launches) and Ravens (one bombing run having 80 of those!) ended up costing more than the Starlight, perhaps cooperating on his own SL would have been a better choice?

quote: You can't tac missile a faraday-aegis-walled superweapon either

This is true, but the defender would have to pay for their wall separately, while a funnelball defense works as a conversion from your standing army.

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Of course, provided that it survives. Perhaps FFA is going to become about killing the funnelball before it has a superweapon to protect. But it seems to me, aside from gross failures by defender, the list of things that work is really short - tremor, shockley, paladin.

ulti with transport or lob
bertha
superweapon
gnat and eos