Factory Match-ups

This discussion seems to be taking place in a disorganised fashion, I thought it might be good to centralise it.

Which factories counter which, and why? Is there anything that the bullied factory can be doing to stay viable? Is this match-up conditional on map, and if so, is that against designer intention.

For example:

Hover > Cloak on maps on which hover can move unrestricted.

Hover wins the raider game since daggers burst down glaives before receiving return fire. Transitions for cloaky are limited in that the hover midgame (mainly scalpel, but also halberd) tends to crap on cloaky midgame (warrior, rocko). So you start off behind and have limited options for reversing the gamestate.

But what could be done better? Well, ticks are rarely used, but I think they offer a real chance of allowing cloaky to win the raider game. Killing even one dagger in your territory with a tick makes cost (80 - 120=-40, +40 to 80 reclaim). Daggers path predictably, have low hp totals (and thus require little cleanup), and ball up constantly.

But even then, how viable should cloaky be on flat maps vs hover? IMO they should not be favoured, but should have some chance of winning assuming equal player skill.

Compare to:

Hover > LV

It's much the same formula of early and mid-game domination, except this time:
- scalpels are twice as effective vs. scorchers compared to against glaives.
- LV don't have the equivalent of tick, though Aquanim suggests a combination of slasher (to beat up daggers and scalpels) backed by scorchers (to protect against halberd sniping).
- LV should not be unfavoured on flat maps, since hover has exactly the same domain specificity plus they get to move at top speed over water.
- it'd probably be okay if hover had an advantage over LV if LV had a better match-up against the rest of the field, but this is far from the case.

I've probably BAWWed a little too hard over balance of recent, without exhaustively testing out the options available to me. Often shifts in the meta come as a result of representation, not balance fixes (for example, hover's domination took a long time for people to bandwagon), so before demanding changes be made we should try our hardest to progress the match-up.

Since I play mostly cloaky I'll talk about my feelings about the factory's matchups.

Cloaky vs shields(shields early, cloaky late)
Cloaky loses raiding phase 100% of the time. Bandits are just so much better in raider combat that unless you make a big mistake and position horribly you will beat glaives easily. I work around this by just going warriors quickly. Each warrior can hold off like 10 bandits easily. Warrior expanding is quite good. They make for good raiding/pressure exerting units too.
Once raiding stops, is where things get ugly. Any combination of rocko/warrior/zeus beats shieldballs cost for cost. You can add snipers to further add insult to injury (especially if they have felons). Snipers with mixed with a ball of units are extremely difficult to kill(if not impossible). Rouges are complete garbage and you can enjoy having all your expansions being overrun if you build them. Early thuglaw pushes can be fended off quite easily with warriors and a bit of retreat micro. Thuglaw balls don't really do much dps at all. Thugs are only really a threat to defenders.

Cloaky vs spider(cloaky early, sniper wars late)
The raiding phase here is quite interesting, because if you send one glaive with your cons you are immune to raids. Venoms make it very hard to raid the spider player assuming they have good radar coverage. Glaives aren't really something that you want to be your core unit in this matchup, a quick switch to rockos is ideal. They let you put on alot of pressure and hardcounter everything that isn't recluse or crabber(no, fleas are not a counter, as it only takes 1 glaive to stop all that). I think fleas are massively overrated. Unless you place them early they don't really work as a "maphack" because random defences will kill them before they get to a good lookout spot later in the game. Their effectiveness is inversely proportional to how careful your opponent is. Vs good players they don't ever do much.
Once early rocko things get old, cloaky totally screwed. Mass recluse counters everything in cloaky. Add crabbes for extra pain. The one unit that can somewhat turn things is the sniper. The whole game as cloaky revolves around sniper. Despite people saying "flea counters sniper", they really don't at all. Again it only takes like 2 glaives to end all that. I think people who assume cloak is enough to protect sniper are nubs. Treating them like they are uncloaked is much more effective. People are really bad at using snipers and protecting them. Main way snipers are countered in most games I see is that the cloak player runs them into raiders or use them as melee units. Scythes can be a bit problematic for spider players because they have no raider to kill them with, but if a venom is near they get countered easily.
Cloaky's early game advantages(easy expansion and effective rocko pressure) is often enough to put them far enough ahead to secure a win. Defender spamming is effective too vs spiders. Defender number is positively correlated with winrate in this matchup. Defender pushes can swing things in your favor.
Overall, I don't really like this matchup as I feel that the early/late stages of it are too favored towards one side or another and sniper micro battles aren't fun for either side. As spider player you can sometimes try to kill snipers by blind firing crabbe or recluse swarms, which sometimes works if snipers walk into range for some reason.

Cloaky vs amphib(heavily cloaky favored)
If cloaky survives early duck spam and builds up enough rockos/snipers to kill everything its a pretty easy win. Completely ignoring glaives and spamming warriors and cons(making llts everywhere) is the optimal way to play imo. You can walk over to your enemy and cause some mayham with warriors if you want as well. Raiding is not super necessary as long as you are putting on pressure to make sure amphib player cannot W the whole map with cons.

Cloak vs hover(hover win)
Ouch. Glaives are useless mostly, but ok vs undefended scalpels(A few daggers for protection makes them 100% useless). I suppose they are ok vs halberds too. Building too many is a mistake. Warriors and zeus get too countered by scalpels to be worth building as your army core, although you need a warrior or two vs daggers. I think a cloaky players best bet is early a few warriors to expand with, and then a rocko heavy ball with sniper support(warrior or two for daggers). Ticks are good, but after one or two good hits people learn to spread out a bit more and they become much less effective. Most of their power is defensive too, you will never win an attack with ticks. Since hovers are faster than most cloaky units this matchup is unwinnable. They can stall for a bit with rocko, but a tech switch is the path to victory.

I think cloaky is the best MM factory right now, as on most maps you can either win, or stall long enough to techswitch. Flat and non-choke-pointy maps vs hover is insta loss though.
Even though these matchups are a bit heavily favored towards one way or another, I still think that the better player can win most of the time with smart techswitching and unit usage, with the exception of really small and stupid maps in which a 600 metal factory investment will probably kill you.

Cloaky < Tanks
On narrow maps, cloakies can do Tick+Glaives. Otherwise there's nothing they can really do vs tanks. If you are cloaky vs tanks, the best thing is Tick+Glaives and then fast hover switch and Scalpel spam.

Tanks < Hover
Scalpel spam.

spam > coherent arguments

quote: Actually read what I write

No, thanks. Because what you write is mostly nonsensical and completely unfounded. And at that you also constantly spam the forum with new posts creating a buzz of information but nothing really coherent.

quote: I only ask you tell me if I'm doing something wrong instead of randomly posting over the place.

One way you could make people stop ignoring you (because many are ignoring you at this point if you haven't realized), would be discussing things in a live chat with other people instead of making a huge number of forum posts even if they indeed have some legitemate content within them.

Besides you have been told about spamming the forums before by hokomoko if memory serves right. But its actually almost impossible to find on the forums because you still spam the forum.

Btw this is a response to your earlier question of "why are people downvoting me".
Well you have the answer now and I'm going to go into a state of trying to mentaly fliter out your posts just as I personally know a lot of other people do.

quote: On narrow maps, cloakies can do Tick+Glaives. Otherwise there's nothing they can really do vs tanks.

I don't think this is quite so. My perception of this matchup is that while it is quite asymmetric, there's a lot for both sides to do.

- Kodachi wrecks Glaives. Panther too, to an extent. Cloakies cannot really raid as much they do in the "conventional" matchups. This is similar to their Hover and Amph matchup.

- Tanks lack a scout unit. While their raiders can respond to Glaives, they cannot screen for Scythes and rarely can respond in time to catch a Scythe before it slips away. This makes even a threat of Scythe use necessitate a lot of static defense on their parts. And by "a lot" i mean that one Lotus per mex cluster does nothing vs Scythe, you need at least two.

- This is slightly compensated by Welders being awesome and very hard to kill. A single Scythe may not be sufficient.

- Cloaky has no good antiheavy option. This makes Reaper stronger and stronger as the game progresses because Cloaky doesn't have reliable means to kill it before it goes back to base, having done its damage. Spectres barely scratch the Reaper.

- Spectres, however, do scratch the lesser tanks so hard that they are cut in half. Sometimes this creates situations when Reapers are left uncovered and can be Glaived, but in practice see the part about Kodachi wrecking Glaives. A Kodachi sitting behind the Reaper wall and waiting for the Glaives to come completely negates the "shoot banisher, then raid reapers" scenario if the tank player is competent.

- A single Tick makes cost against a single Kodachi. Kodachis are arrogant and like to singlehandedly attack mexes, which makes for some nice trap opportunities.

- Banishers seem terrifying against Warriors, Glaives and Zeus, but actually are vulnerable to Rocko like a proper riot should be. And Spectre scratches them off in almost one shot.

By the time Tank really can leverage its strength - the Cloaky player should be able to either build up a fair advantage as long as they don't spend all their military budget on feeding Kodachis with Glaives; or at least to facswitch into something that can deal with Reaper. Like Scalpel.

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Or you could just start Hover and spam Scalpel from the get-go. Because Scalpel counters Kodachi, Panther, Banisher and Reaper all by itself, as well as coming from a factory that squarely roflstomps anything else you would expect to encounter on a map which allows Tanks.

Ah well, I leave this discussion to the "pros" then