In the balance thread, CrazyEddie said in response to cloakbots lack of lategame powerhouse:

quote: As a cloakyplayer I'm okay with that. It's kind of the cloaky "thing". It's a low-weight versatile mix-and-match spam-what-you-need factory; very noob friendly but very effective. The step up from low-weight cloaks, should you decide you need it, is a strider hub. Or an L5 commander. Adding a sumo-scale unit to the factory would just feel out of place. If you want to play with those units, learn to play those factories. It's a good encouragement for newbies to branch out once they've learned the basics from the cloakyfac.

I don't think cloakbot is good for new players though. The units are really fragile, so you can 'accidently' your whole army really easily, they require finesse and good positioning, and their most expensive unit is incredibly fragile and practically requires holdfire micro (noobs love to spam the most expensive unit in a factory). Contrast this with shield, where you can move them around as a giant deathball, they all synergize really well so you can basically spam one of each randomly, they scale really well and it's very hard to lose your whole army, they have great frontal attack power when just barreling into the enemy.

Noobs, especially playing vs other noobs, tend to favour this kind of direct, frontal deathball approach. They often porc a lot, so you need good porc breakers, and they favour expensive, hard to kill units. With it's requirement for good positioning and micro (Rocko, Zeus and Sniper all can't shoot over eachother, etc), I don't actually think the cloak factory is a very good factory for new players, both veh and shield are better.

I think the big problem is the Outlaw's function as a perfect decloaker. It effectively counters cloaked units the same way Gauss weapons used to counter shielded things.

I mean, with an Eraser used to get cloaky units under the shields it could be an interesting fight.

I'm wondering what the point of this thread is. Like, is there a question or something that needs to be discussed?

Scorchers have the problem that the default AI does the exact opposite of the right thing and has them daintily skirm around the edge of the target. There are a handful of cases where this is useful but most of the time it's just wasteful. That's quite a newbtrap.

Shields are undisputedly most noob-friendly factory ever.
1) Every unit can mind its own business and be left on fight.
2) No need for careful positioning. Just bunch all shields together and add felon for instant pwnage.
3) Every unit individually superior to cloaky counterpart, and in fight-mode, also in masses.
4) Naturally scales into midgame, capable of breaking non-superporc with ease.
5) Rogue can lay siege to Lotus.
6) No role-violating units except Felon.
7) Their bomb kills to death. No need to lay elaborate traps. Just boom.
8) No friendly fire.

LV comes second. Because ravager is infinitely spammable superior quality unit that has a role of busting everything short of Dante, including most of its supposed counters.

Please block planes and gunships factories until level 20 or 15...to many newcommers use them, make brawlers and spam shields+10 caretakers near the factory, meanwhile we are fighting in the front and losing.

Many newcommers are tempted to use these factories a lot, and i admint, when i started to play the game i just used heavy tanks and gunships only, nothing else.

This is a fork from the other thread, since I wanted to respond to CrazyEddie but didn't want to highjack the balance thread.

Cloakbot is the default factory though, the first in the list, the default chosen for the campaign, etc, but I think it's harder to play than Veh or shield, at least.

Unlocks used to be more robust to stop people using things they shouldn't, but now you basically start with everything you need to win a 1v1. You cannot possibly win a 1v1 reliably without air, you need an air threat. GoogleFrog basically owled the unlock system. I can see why.

quote: This is a fork from the other thread, since I wanted to respond to CrazyEddie but didn't want to highjack the balance thread.

Zomg, so the suggested possibility to fork threads was implemented! Nice!

Also:

Planes: Spam Lichos, then fly them into heavy AA, kill one defender, and die. Also licho lone enemies who are the the middle of allied armies.
Hover: Spam Pene and then watch them die vs. raiders.
Strider: Makes a strider hub and then tries to make a det 5 minutes in, or suiciding them into lots of def
Spider: Lots of spies with no E for them
Jumpy again: Skuttles with the same problem
Shields again: Roaches mixed in with armies
Cloaky again: Same as above, but with ticks
Ships: Dying slowly to subs and amphs as corvettes are spammed

What is the main characteristics of a newb-friendly factory?
I think they are:
1) Simple units, so they don't require a lot of micro-control and they are not noob-trap.
2) Relatively cheap units, so losing a few of them is not a fatal mistake.
3) Units with "broad" specialization, so it is easy to experimenter with them and don't fail.

A new player have no idea about zero-k units, so he will just build different units and see what they do. Here we go.

Cloaky
The main noob-traps in this factory are Scythe, Sharpshooter, Tick (which can do a lot of harm to its allies), Eraser and Rocko. It is not easy to manage them properly and they are pretty expensive (Not all of them! Scythe costs 250 and if it is not managed properly, it is just a silly low-range unit with low dps). Furthermore, some of these units have a pretty narrow specialization. I don't think this factory is good for noob.

1) A lot of units which require a lot of microcontrol.
2) There are expensive units which are very fragile.
3) There are units with narrow specialization.

Shields
Shields are much better for noobs. Almost all shields are pretty easy to use. Like Anarchid already said: "No need for careful positioning. Just bunch all shields together and add felon for instant pwnage." Isn't simple, noob can just make random units and after putting them together, he can kill another noob. The main noob-trap of this factory is Roach, because it is possible to accidentally blow up your entire army.

1) Just put units together and kill someone!
2) There are some expensive units which cannot be use alone.
3) There are nothing really special except Roach

Jumps
Nobody know how to play jumps. Seriously, I still have no idea, how to use them in a proper way.

1) You need a lot of microcontrol.
2) There are a lot of expensive stuff.
3) Jumps factory have only special units.

Spiders
It is, for sure, not a newb-friendly factory. It's main advantage is that spider can walk everywhere, but all spiders have low of hp. Even crab is fragile when it is moving (4 000 hp is less than two Zeuses have).

1) Yes, You need to control your Venoms carefully.
2) Spiders are very fragile, so it is easy to lose a lot of metal.
3) Again, this factory is special. Going spider on a flat map is 100% fail.

Light vehs
It is the most newb-friendly factory. Vehs are pretty cheap, fast and powerful. Ravager and Scorcher are as simple as brick. Just take bunch of them and kill something. Unlike other assaults, Ravagers can kill raiders, because of their high speed. Slasher and Leveler are not that simple, but it is not difficult to use them. The main noob-traps here is Dominatrix. It is difficult to use, expensive and fragile, but it should be unlocked.

1) Select your units and send them to opponent's base.
2) Except a few units, all units are cheap and strong.
3) Dominatrix Dominatrix Dominatrix Dominatrix

Heavy Tanks
It is simple. Heavy tanks are expensive, so lose of just a one Reaper or Banisher can be fatal.

1) It is not that difficult to control heavies, but
2) They are so expensive, so in the early game playing heavies is all about caring about a single tank.
3) Kodachi, Tremor