Mace

From the http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/703297 match, all I saw was the downside of magic metal from nowhere.

In http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/703868 the underdog won.

Mace fails to be a riot. It is not better against raiders than vs other unit classes. It's best against lesser riots. Fortunately for Rover, Rover has a Capture!Mace, and no riot worth speaking of. Unfortunately for Tank, Tank is not Rover :P

Mace cannot be simply nerfed in order to fix Hover. Because the moment you nerf Mace to be weaker than Scalpel, Scalpel becomes the de facto generalist that beats raiders very well while calling itself "skirmisher". You can't take a bunch of Scalpels with a bunch of Scorchers cost-efficiently.

If anything, Mace and Scalpel both need their riot capacities moved further away from the shared center. Scalpel could lose some; Mace could gain some. AoE or accuracy vs mobiles could be things to touch on Scalpel; lack of AoE, on Mace (give it gauss?).

That said, buff ravager so that it can beat mace for cost. Ravager's strengths are speed, health, and damage against statics - and i feel you can buff the latter without any adverse effects like it suddenly starting to beat raiders.

Mace used to be op once upon a time already. I recommend reading some of the older balance discussion threads about it.

http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/9677
http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/10007

The solution was to nerf its acceleration, break and turn rates. However these values got slowly increased in the newer patches until the current day where Mace suddenly became relevant again. It might as well be whacked with same kind of nerfs again then if there isn't enough developer mana to finally rework the unit into something more interesting and appropriate for the riot role.

patch where the mace was nerfed:

http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/10099?Search=&User=&grorder=&grdesc=False&grpage=1

I personally find Mace to be an extremely boring unit to use. Its slow and there is next to no micro involved when using it. Its just a pure dps dispenser with pretty much no room to outplay it (even thunderbirds die to its lasers).

Also Anarchid a part of this issue is that the Mace monospam also beats... the rest of the hover factory. So its not only the case of rovers and tanks not being able to compete against hovers. Its also about the mirror balance as well.

Scalpel takes 440 metal to not kill (100 hp remaining) a 400 metal mace. Add a cloaker to this and u need to swap to spider to even detect him. Lance + flea is easier to counter and harder to use compared to brute mace monospam.

can mace outrun scalpel's rockets? i think not. you can get enough of them close enough with cloaker, bu then again, at what price.

Reducing Mace to 1300 HP would make Scalpel much more useful against Mace without massively affecting other matchups. I don't feel like Scalpel dominates while Halberd exists.

To fix the rovers, have you considered giving ripper a leveler sidearm?

...Or you can do something sane like decrease its reload time to 1.5s and increasing its impulse up to the point where it can stun it's weight in riots. I don't understand how impulse damage works exactly though.