Editing User:Knightshade/TierList

Current to v1.14.2.0, 6 Feb 2026. Basic structure follows [https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/index.php?title=User:Aquanim/UnitTierList Aquanim's List] with some modifications. Some units may be listed multiple times if they fill multiple roles.


= Assumptions =

* Game takes place on Teams All Welcome (A.k.a. Lobsterpot)
* ~8-10 Players per team
* Typically "standard" lobpot land maps (LimeQuat, Otago, Red Comet, etc.), but consideration made for occasional maps with some water (Alphabet Siege Dry, TheRockFinal) or large maps (e.g. Flats And Forests).

Given that my emotional state about making various units is only ''loosely'' correlated with their actual quality, I've tried to be a bit more explicit with my thought process.

= Rankings =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>: This unit is incredibly strong to the point of defining engagements, tactics, or army compositions in a way that could not be replicated by just dropping in a different unit of same role. These units are without par. Alternatively, these may break the rules of matchups in some way.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>: This unit is fully capable of executing its role and has, at most, drawbacks typically associated with the role (e.g. raiders do not typically beat riots).

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>: Does the job a bit better than average or brings useful utility, this is also where any unit that is highly capable but with significant drawbacks goes.

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>: The lowest possible passing grade, for when the best thing I can say is it "does the job".

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>: This is a unit that isn't even necessarily good at what it's supposed to do. 

<span style="color:brown">'''F Tier'''</span>: Building this unit is either actively throwing or just trolling.

<span style="color:#666">'''Unclassifiable'''</span>: Too weird or specialized to give a sensible grade

= Constructors =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Welder''': A bit pricey, but brings a ton of utility. Good build power, great health-per-cost, it's ''armed''. Welderspam is a thing for a reason, and a con that can fight off a glaive makes raiding tanks considerably trickier. Hilariously, an effective answer for tanks against phantoms.

'''Convict''': Can fulfill a similar role as a thug in the early game, protecting coms, raiders, and turrets, plus they can make a decent battery when added to a shield ball so it doesn't hurt to add utility to your shields.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>:

'''Conjurer''': Not a good constructor, but being able to grab one and cloak reavers, imps, etc. can be literally game making. Terrible as soon as iris start coming out. <span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span> early game, but <span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span> after that.

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>:

'''Weaver''': Decent build power, the radar can be surprisingly useful for covering blind spots or keeping radar up in the face of impalers. 

'''Conch''': Slow but decent build power and very hard to kill. Niche role as a spotter.

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Constable''': The number of situations where either the jump or the slow beam come up are pretty rare in TAW.

'''Quill''': Good speed but bad buildpower limit the utility of this, but at least this is amphibious I guess?

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Mason''': Quill but worse.

'''Crane''': <span style="color:brown">'''F Tier'''</span> if it's your first unit. <span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span> on large maps. Niche uses expanding in front of lines on very large maps and performing spot maintenence on mexes keep this from being completely unbuildable.

<span style="color:brown">'''F Tier'''</span>:

'''Wasp''': Too slow to expand effectively, flies so it dies anywhere near the front lines, expensive as hell. Engicom means you have no excuse to build this.

== Strider Constructors ==

'''Funnelweb''': <span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>. Shield makes for good protection of armies. Only a decent paladin escort, because most of the things that kill paladins don't care about the shield. Competes in the construction role with all the cons you've had time to build throughout the match until that point, as well as the possibility of building a demistrider instead. Can be useful if the enemy gets a zenith, but overall just sort of an expensive pile of utility.

'''Athena''': <span style="color:#666">'''Unclassifiable'''</span>. This does a ''lot'' of different things nothing else can really do. It's value is determined entirely by if you need those things.

== Commanders ==

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Strike''': Decently durable, reasonably fast, has jammer, decent weapon options. Makes for a decent riot before getting retired to the backline.

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Recon''': If you need this because if your starting location, then it's the only choice. If you ''don't'' need this, you're either hedging on using the jump pack to make a couple early picks on riots or you're planning on losing your com early (or both). Terrible buildpower, and low overall speed make this not great at most com related jobs.

'''Engineer''': Blueprint tool is very strong for immobile units (e.g. reavers, bulkheads) or if you're playing an air fac to get ground cons (part of what makes Wasp terrible), plus can help level out metal spending. Good at forward repairs, rez tool is usually a gimmick. The lack of health is usually less of a problem than the lack of speed, but utility can make up for it.

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Guardian''': Slow. Generally used to walk forward until it or the target dies. Usually, it dies. Drone keeps this from being completely awful. Commonly used for trollcoms that accomplish nothing.

= Raiders =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Glaive''': Cheap, amazing DPS, agile, amazing regen. This is the gold standard against which every other raider is compared.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Dagger''': Trades continuous DPS and durability for frontloaded burst damage. It's ability to control fights and one-hit riots before taking meaningful losses make well controlled daggers a menace. Also capable of bullying phoenix. <span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span> on large maps. 

'''Bandit''': Range and durability just aren't particularly necessary traits for a raider, especially not at extra cost, but "Glaive but slightly worse" is still a damn good unit.

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Kodachi''': An absolute early game menace. Very good at map control and raiding. Slaughters other raiders. Held back by poor scaling and a tendency to set allies on fire. <span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span> at low player density.

'''Duck''': What bandit is to glaive, duck is to bandit. 

'''Scorcher''': Good speed (slower than glaive) and paper DPS it can't normally utilize. Damage falloff means it tends to just get kited to death early game and too expensive and short ranged to dive-trade the riots that come out early in TAW. Frankly this feels generous.

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Pyro''': This is an amazing unit but it's just too damned expensive for a typical dense TAW game and how easily it dies to commanders, riots, magpies and lotuses. Capable of winning games, but usually just a metal donation to the enemy.

'''Scythe''': Usually only good if you're already winning. Odin threat means most of the good targets for these tend to be guarded, and usually starts being relevant about the same time the air player is looking for something to do with their early game magpies.


== Heavy Raiders ==

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Ravager''': In it's role as a heavy raider, Ravagers have an unparalleled ability to third party on fights they aren't supposed to be in from angles no other army could possibly get to. When diving, almost completely immune to the normal static defenses applied to raiders. Surprisingly capable of defending itself from raiders by sheer dint of it's speed reducing enemy evasion. ''Diving to a Djinn lamp actually causes them to deal bonus emotional damage.''

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Bolas''': Pretty decent and versatile, but it's range is just a bit too short, it's speed just a hair slow, and it's damage just not quite high enough to avoid needing either critical mass or a lot of repair. Nevertheless very good at bullying heavy units.

'''Archer''': Somewhere between a raider and a pseudo riot, with all the strengths and weaknesses that entails.

'''Blitz''': Very sensitive to maneuver room. Absurdly good at controlling fights, well controlled blitzes are capable of punching up against a wide variety of targets and the stun finds use helping minotaurs land shots on certain mobile targets as the game goes on. Held back by terrible cost efficiency paid as a tax for the emp. <span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span> on large maps, <span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span> on small maps. 

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Venom''': The stun is good at deterring a push, but venoms are very bad at actually killing things and combined with their low speed for the role makes a unit that is slow to get to where it wants to go, and then slow to do what it wants to. 

== Scouts ==

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Flea''': "Nothing else can do what this does." - Aquanim. I can't really add anything to this.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Gremlin''': Relatively cheap and relatively sneaky. 

'''Widow''': Basically the perfect scout, held out of S Tier only by it's cost. 

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Scythe''': Gremlin but worse.

= Skirmishers and Fire Support =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Scalpel''': A very strong skirmisher with capable anti-raider abilities. Hovers typically focus on killing their way through the enemy army and Scalpels are the bread and butter of doing that.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Grizzly''': Basically an alpha skirmisher- decent against assaults, good against riots, but the griz is also uniquely effective against enemy skirmishers. A bit expensive and slow, and vulnerable to the usual collection of weaknesses heavy units suffer from, but so good at the skirmish job it doesn't matter.

'''Bulkhead''': Good early game against a variety of skirmishers and porc, though it dies to stinger if it's not aiming at the ground beneath it. Gets outscaled late game but can put out good damage early game and midgame. 

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Dante''': Expensive, but extremely effective as a skirmisher/riot. Gets bullied by units like cyclops but clears chaff well and hard to kill with the usual anti-strider measures (skuttles, widows, ultimatums, etc.)

'''Buoy''': Durable and good at standoff, especially with lobster. Can struggle against other skirmishers due to slow projectile, but can usually retreat from the fight.

'''Felon''': Solves certain problems for shieldbots, but can make shieldbots vulnerable to assault pushes draining their shields and makes shields ''particularly'' easy to dive at low shields.  <span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span> if they're your primary form of dealing damage.

'''Ronin''': Terrible against porc, but as with reaver cost efficiency is strong. Degrades quickly in value once AOE weapons and proper artillery start coming out. 

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Moderator''': Very strong defensively but let down by absolutely terrible damage, making them something of an enabler (awkward for a factory that also has placeholder). Absolutely terrible offensively, tends to die to pickets.

'''Rogue''': Very nice damage let down by accuracy issues. (In combination with a unit like placeholders, <span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>.) Held back by a need for mass and difficulties hitting its target.

'''Recluse''': Good damage, some accuracy issues, made out of tissue paper. Some people consider this artyskirm, but if so the tendency to die in droves to actual artillery makes artyskirm a dumb role. 

'''Crab''': Strong in theory, in practice condition clear for it to be good is just too hard to achieve. Positioning dependent, but struggles to maneuver; good damage but can be juked even by a jugglenaut; often justifies deployment of a tremor that will neutralize not just the crab but maul the entire factory.

'''Fencer''': Tends to get outmassed very quickly, tends to take bad fights versus other skirmishers. Dies horribly to phoenix. <span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span> for the first 5 minutes of a game.

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Dominatrix''': Generally only good if you're already winning. Domis suffer from having an extremely wide range of weaknesses (air, artillery, raiders, halberds, bombs, better skirmishers, silo missiles) that demand a huge variety of different defenses, all of which cut into getting critical mass on the domi ball. 

= Riots =

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Ogre''': Ogre's a funny unit. Any other factory would kill to get Ogre, but for tanks it's actually squishy enough to be kind of a liability for the game plan. Despite this because of the high speed, high damage, large splash, and tracking missile, Ogres tend to counter just about anything they can stay in range of. Potentially <span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span> but held back by cost inefficiency and being just a smidge too squishy for tanks.

'''Mace''': The other argument for best riot in the game, high damage and perfect application on a reasonably tanky frame goes a long way. Also potentially <span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span> due to it's ability to bully assaults and skirms, but held back by poor scaling limited by line-of-sight damage and being just a tad flimsy.

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Claymore''': Fast, durable for it's cost, and heavily frontloaded damage. These don't work as a replacement for Mace, but since they don't need LOS to fire they scale a bit better and can make initial engagements ''extremely'' punishing. Much better now that it can fire while retreating.

'''Reaver''': Efficient for the task. Very slow and rather short ranged, but fast to make and disposable. Not held back as much by the speed as it might be because of easy access to cloak.

'''Redback''': Very high DPS with good application held back 

'''Outlaw''': Kind of hard to rate. Not particularly effective as anti-bomb for shieldbots, low damage, and yet because it hits ''everything'' in it's area can vaporize a truly ridiculous number of units very quickly. Makes for decent support as well due to attacking units rapidly accumulating slow. Better in shieldballs with lobster.

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Ripper''': Overall a very boring unit. No real downsides, but no real upsides either.

'''Venom''': When used as a riot venoms just aren't that impressive, they lack the killing power and generally die to anything they can't stunlock. You need a decent number to be an effective deterrent, but they die to ''everything'' in the midgame. Essentially: Blitz but slow and squishy.

'''Dante''': There are a lot of good riots out there and building an entire Dante for riot purposes is questionable. Good against cloak, good against unit spam, but for pure-riot tasks there are better options available. (See: Skirmisher)

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Scallop''': Low effective range due to shot spread, not particularly fast. Likes shooting big targets but struggles to close on them. Absolutely abysmal in water, which for an amphibious riot is unforgivable.

'''Crab''': Literally dies to raiders if they get on it due to the slow-as-heck projectile and terrible leading.

= Assaults =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Cyclops''': Nothing inspires fear like "OH SHIT CYCLOPS". One of the only units in any factory that can survive the insanity of lategame. Facetanks lances, paladins, nukes; outranges moderators, out skirms domis, kills porc with almost contemptuous ease.

'''Minotaur''': Absurdly durable, faster than most people think. Kills all early and midgame porc, runs down skirmishers, can often kite anything it can't kill, very difficult to actually punish unless you can crowd control it somehow.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Jugglenaut''': Wildly varying levels of effectiveness, reasonably high skill floor. ''Potentially'' <span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span> in the right situation but getting brutally hardcountered by Racketeer, Lotus, and Widow keeps it out of S Tier. ''(I've seen these wipe out 10k metal worth of spiders before and it wasn't even close.)''

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Halberd''': Ridiculously strong statline limited by the worst damage application in the game. Very good with autoretreat, and an effective screen for hovers.

'''Thug''': Felon battery and area protector. Effective at protecting units near it from direct fire (though not so much against air). Limited to B Tier because it can't do much without friends. Arguably <span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span> rush support though.

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Knight''': Extremely reliant on iris. Lack of speed lacks the kinetic effect assaults need, saved from D Tier by the combination of cost efficiency and being able to fight most things well if it can get the fight.

'''Ravager''': Too light to be effective in a traditional assault role, gets bullied by too many things assaults shouldn't get bullied by (phoenix, ogre, likho, etc.) and gets onehit by Lance.

'''Jack''': Very expensive for something that gets hardcountered by faradays, newtons, and slows. Can be very good, but usually just donates metal to the enemy.  Strong if it gets the fight it wants. Normally doesn't.

'''Scallop''': Does assault-like tasks by killing the types of targets assault would usually tank and getting thrown in range by lobsters. Not great at it, but not terrible either honestly.

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Grizzly''': Grizzlies used in the assault role usually end up dying. (See Skirmisher Section)

'''Hermit''': Regen almost bumps this up to C, but the vulnerability to phoenix and firewalker is just too severe. Can be decent in small numbers, otherwise only good if you're already winning.

= Artillery =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Lance''': Brutally effective against anything it can see, Lances can and will kill enemy artillery, skirmishers, bombers; maul heavies and assaults; and kick over defenses. Damage per metal isn't actually that good so consider bulking out with scalpels for damage and using lances as an army anchor.

'''Emissary''': A good rate of fire with massive range, a high damage AOE shot, and arcing fire allows Emissaries to effectively counterbattery enemy artillery of all types (except Impaler, which isn't combat artillery) from safety. Less good against heavies and assaults than lance, but will absolutely slaughter lighter units and force enemies to either leave the guns range or commit to trying to charge the guns into tanks.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Firewalker''': Cleans up light units, cloakers, light porc, and pressuring shields. Held back by having a ''really'' hard time against Lances and Emissaries and typically being the first thing shot by a phantom. 

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Impaler''': Good against structures, tremors without terraform, annoying shieldballs, and basically nothing else. Normally needs a lot of micromanagement to avoid continuously firing at a single glaive. Absolutely amazing at the task in question, but absolutely terrible scaling. Alternative ranking: <span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>, but '''minus one tier per impaler built'''.

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Sling''': Cheap enough that you can push out 1-2 early game and make people's life ''very'' difficult trying to porc. Very ineffective against mobile targets and dies to anything with splash or that can run it down. <span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span> in the first 5 minutes.

'''Phantom''': Short ranged, slow, expensive, and brittle is a ''bad'' combination that usually results in these getting spotted by Sparrows and promptly killed. Make your first shot count. You might not get a second. 

'''Merlin''': Amazing damage output limited by a general inability to hit things.

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Racketeer''': Tends to shoot the wrong things, doesn't kill what it shoots, outranged by most actual artillery options. Trying to get in range tends to result in either lot of shield damage or getting your shieldball layout messed up.

'''Badger''': Mostly effective as a screening and spotting unit. Bad at actually killing things and needs a lot of time to do anything. Artillery's job is to remove threats from the field, and this can't do that.

<span style="color:#666">'''Unclassifiable'''</span>

'''Tremor''': Removes terraform, creates new avenues of attack, bullies shields, and discourages people from fighting within its area, to the point that raiders often won't chase tanks into tremor fire. Requires terraform to block silos and impaler fire or else it's <span style="color:brown">'''F Tier'''</span>. Spider players ''wish'' this was only as bad for them as razors are for gunships.

= Anti-Heavy and Bombs =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Snitch''': The single most cost effective answer to a ''lot'' of problems lategame, limited by some issues with chain detonation. 

'''Imp''': Amazing at undermining enemy confidence. Effective against a wide variety of targets and able to come from weird angles due to spider movement. Chain detonates will stun, but not kill.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Widow''': High impact but quite expensive to move. An absolute menace to anything big. Mostly held back by the fact that no one below <img src="{{SERVER}}/img/ranks/6_5.png"> Silver seems to know they exist. 

'''Limpet''': This can turn the tide of a midgame fight. Suffers from being in a slow factory which can struggle to take advantage before the slow wears off.

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Racketeer''': Range is only okay, tends to be low risk and lets the rest of the shields work well. Also effective against likho if you're on the ball. If you know shenanigans are coming but aren't sure what, building a few of these is almost never the wrong choice.

'''Skuttle''': Extremely cheap source of single target damage, while the jump is good for initiation, it's also fantastic at taking odd paths to hit striders at their repair points where they are usually less well guarded. Held back by a ridiculously large decloak area. 

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Ultimatum''': Better in theory than in practice. Tends to get randomly spotted by a firewalker, flea, glaive, badger, etc. before it gets to where it wants to go. Can be quite powerful if it actually connects, but usually just dies. Better against Detriment, but Detriment isn't great.

'''Scorpion''': Relies on cloak and surprise too much to be generally effective, and not as cost effective as other options. Slow, dies surprisingly easily to screening units, gets hit easily with shockleys, and gets bullied by artillery. Usually spends most of it's time invisible not doing much.

= Support and Utility =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Charon''': Ridiculously cheap for how much offensive power it gives you. Riot drops, bomb drops, relocating forces, getting raiders into places they shouldn't be. Even when it's not the strongest unit, the cost is so low there's no real comparison. 

'''Iris''': For most uses this doesn't deserve anything better than <span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span> due to the relative ease of countering it, killing it, and the overconfidence it leads to. That said: the amount you can get away with with cloaking riots, snitch drops, avoiding counterbattery, etc. is absurd. Cloaked snitch drops are one of the strongest tools in the game and they don't work enarly as well without this.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Lobster''': I find the tactical utility of this significantly reduced since the launch speed nerf, but it's still good at bailing out heavy units that you didn't screen properly, good at repositioning enemies. The penalty to the soft factors makes it considerably less mandatory for amphs though, I think. 

'''Djinn''': Incredibly strong. Allows cross map rotations, allows full-send dives you can extract from, improves reinforcement times.  <span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span> On any large map. 

'''Puppy''': Denies opponents reclaim and trades well against almost anything it can get in range of.

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Aspis''': Expensive. This is often more of a time-buying measure than anything else. The large area means you get easily bullied by anything that can hit the edge of the shield.

'''Placeholder''': Very good defensively, basically mandatory vs tanks, great if you have AOE. Limited to B Tier because of how easily it dies, uselessness against shields, and a tendency to screw your own units when attacking. Good at causing psychological damage to people who like runbys though.

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Dirtbag''': An okay screen for shield balls. Terraform is of only medium value against vehicle facs because they have tools to work around it. <span style="color:#666">'''Unclassifiable'''</span> if spammed because I literally cannot classify it because it lags my PC to the point of disconnection from the game.

<span style="color:#666">'''Unclassifiable'''</span>

'''Hercules''': Most of the mileage I get out of these is in kidnapping detriments. Broadly, if you need one of these, then you need one, otherwise, you shouldn't be building one. 

= Screens =

Screens are raiders and raider-likes used to protect high value units, typically paladins. They have a few key tasks:

* Spot cloaked units attempting to approach the VIP

* Elimintate said units if possible

* Deter pushes against the VIP

* Threaten detach and dive given openings

Note: '''Any''' screen is almost always better than no screen. These are simply units I find particularly noteworthy for the discussion.

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Glaive''': Obviously.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Bandit''': Slightly worse than glaive is still amazing. The cost inefficiency hurts a bit more here, but the extra range makes up for it.

'''Puppy''': Cheap and fast, puppies provide massive kill threat to anything attempting to dive the VIP and can sustain themselves off reclaim, denying it to the enemy in the event that the escortee is forced back.

'''Bolas''': Slow beams and good speed mean these can often disrupt pushes on the escortee by the usual cloaked threats, and can absolutely slaughter various spam raiders used to overwhelm a paladin. Normally this is a B Tier capability due to cost, but Bolas have the added ability to detach, rush down an enemy paladin, and basically guarantee a win in a strider duel. The combined offense/defense role earns them a spot in A tier.

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Sparrow''': Extremely expensive to continuously throw these over a paladin, but doing so is functionally impossible to stop and it completely shuts out a variety of cloak-focused answers to heavies. Limited to B Tier by the sheer cost and singlemindedness. Makes it to B Tier by sheer effectiveness.

'''Flea''': The most dangerous things to paladins are usually cloaked. Fleas tend to reveal those things unexpectedly. Absurdly good at this, but held back by their low health, lack of meaningful DPS, and immobility. 

'''Dart''': Basically a mobile version of flea. Takes significantly higher casualties as a result, but gets better capability against heavies in exchange.

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Duck''': Duck's strengths become weaknesses here.

'''Welders/Convicts''': Combat reclaim, some protective utility. These aren't usually enough on their own but they add disproportionate value to an existing screen.

'''Archer''': A good unit that's too expensive for a task with high expected losses. Compared to the Bolas, lacks the versatility and speed.

'''Venom''': Fine. Stun is handy but the binary nature of it can make it swingy, damage isn't great. Too slow for a detatched threat. If you're spiders you're usually better off using other tools.

'''Halberd''': Durable but terrible damage application. Saved from D Tier by the fact that these can continue to accumulate if you set auto-retreat and they're good at diving. 

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Dirtbag''': The only real benefit here is cost. Slower to deploy and reinforce than raider screens and with no meaningful damage. Often end up taking a lot of losses from things shooting at their escortee which then ruins the terrain for their own team in the process. This tends to isolate the paladin and mess with it's pathing, both of which get it killed.

= Planes =

Planes are somewhat difficult to rank because they all have their place and there isn't really a basis for comparison. 

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Owl''': Planes fundamental job is to create openings for, clean up after, and support ground forces. Owls make everything ground forces do better. Set them to yellow autoretreat and forget about them while they win the game on the ground for you.

'''Sparrow''': Ground facs morphing this get an airborne spotter (For when your planes are busy spamming magpies), a jammer to protect key units, and a decloaker. For planes, sparrows can hide your strikes from enemy advanced radar which is absolutely ''ridiculous'' against raptors and forward AA.

'''Thunderbird''': The only bad thing I can think of to say about thunderbirds is that sometimes you need to make more than one. A well timed thunderbird can either ensure an enemy dies or save an ally. Held back from S+++ tier only by the fact that most allies won't take advantage of the opportunities you create. ''(I keep a list of who will.)''

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Likho''': Versatile. Good at hitting both expensive units and clumps of cheaper units, Likhos are extremely versatile but are held back by their sheer cost. Losing a Likho can be quite crippling.

'''Phoenix''': Area damage. Relatively versatile, Phoenix can serve a complimentary role to Likho, punishing forces that spread out with linemove to avoid getting Likho'd. Also works very well in combination with thunderbird against shieldballs. Struggles against well micro'd raiders (actually loses against daggers and occasionally puppies).

'''Raven''': Very strong stats for the cost. Can augment likhos or be supported by Odins (which tank for them) for significant damage. In some cases, they can actually strike targets too risky for Likhos to hit and too durable for magpies to hit cost effectively. Held back by the need to do attrition math that would make the RAF in 1940 balk.

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Raptor''': Strong AA even in relatively small numbers, combined with advanced radar this can shut out a lot of planefac players. Limited by the comparative efficiency of ground based AA, but good as supplemental AA, anti-odin, or to punish a player spamming swifts and trying to kill your bombers.

'''Odin''': Best known for diving the singu just completed by your team's Bronze. Actually somewhat risky in that role, as anti-Odin defenses tend to turn Odins into a generous donation to the enemy Paladin fund. The threat, however, forces spending and so still achieves value, plus it can kill structures like cerberus, desolator, and lucifer. In the meantime, Odins can work very well to tank damage for less durable bombers (especially thunderbirds) from Artemis, shieldballs, etc. Shields don't usually matter much but they're neat to have and can have some funny interactions with enemy missile AA. Protip: Odins still turn slightly while landing, making orienting them and timing them a bit easier. 

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Swift''': This should almost always be the first unit you build. Best thought of as an anti-bomber bomber. Late game scouting is a job nothing else can do. Supplanted in the anti-raider role by Magpie. Mostly useful in the anti-air role if you lack advanced radar or enemy air is using jamming (i.e., if raptor can't do it). Also makes a good disposable plane to draw missile fire before sending in bombers.

'''Magpie''': Very bad en masse, but useful early game as an anti-raider to clean up leaks. Midgame this transitions into a suicide plane for taking out artillery. Better the more likely the map is to have leaks. <span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span> for the first five minutes.


= Gunships =

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Gnat''': Arguably the most effective anti-heavy in the game. Also effective at disabling AA long enough to kill. It's also highly resistant against razor due to the weird bobbing motion it has while flying making most razor fire miss. Lategame it slaps people around who don't put enough AA on their striders or, very occasionally, their zeniths.

'''Blastwing''': The fact that the explosion hits after the blastwing dies means that missile AA is surprisingly bad against this. With a good spread to avoid chain frags, these can make the lives of artillery, raiders, and even air defense absolute hell. 

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Trident''': Pros: Good against air. Cons: Gets zoned out by enemy anti-air. Mostly exists to allow Krows to not get bullied too hard by planes. Amusingly, despite how good these are against planes, they actually often lose against a swift and a raven.

'''Revenant''': Very capable of going in and deleting something important. Gunships are on a timer to make value before they get shut out of the skies, and this is probably the best "conventional combatant" option for gunships to accomplish as much as possible before that happens. These also probably have the longest timer before uselessnesss.

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Harpy''': It's... fine. like all gunships it tends to get zoned out pretty easily. Has some decent utility with the slow to secure kills. Low durability and low maneuverability means this is on the clock even more than most gunships.

'''Krow''': Generally only good if you're winning. Expensive, gets bullied by razors, and is expensive enough that the enemy team can build a ''lot'' of razors and still be positive. Razors which shut down your entire factory. (Nice job smart guy). The dive-and-retreat approach tends to result in these getting killed by anyone who can slow their retreat slightly. Also, gets bullied by ravens.

<span style="color:brown">'''F Tier'''</span>

'''Nimbus''': Expensive, slow, easily bullied by Likho, can't run away from ground based AA, projectiles too slow to defend itself. Tends to teamkill allies when faced with raider runbys. Worst of all, most people respond by building razors, which shut down your entire factory (nice job smart guy). 

'''Locust''': Terrible damage, terrible durability, good speed but terrible acceleration. You could literally drop a glaive for better results. 

= Anti-Air (mobile and static) =

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Angler''': Amazing burst damage for cost. Slow speed is a downside. The ability to hide in water and appear to murder something is one of several factors that makes flying units hate oceans.

'''Tarantula''': A bit pricey but incredibly versatile. The reload speed is fast enough and the range long enough that these can often get a second volley off. Worse against planes than Anglers, but much better against gunships.

'''Razor''': I literally can't improve on what Aquanim said here: "Single-handedly makes Gunship a bad factory."

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Hacksaw''': Chronically underestimated. Pretty much always makes cost. Kills one medium bomber without question. <span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span> after the first ten minutes.

'''Ettin''': Fantastic sustained DPS, good AOE. Makes gunship players want to uninstall. Fast enough to keep up with just about anything or chase Krows even over less-than-ideal terrain. 

'''Flail''': It's fine. Not much to say about it.

'''Toad''': A bit expensive, but ''very'' hard to kill and incredibly annoying from the perspective of air. Makes for a reasonably good Paladin escort due to being almost impossible to remove.

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Vandal''': Fine, but the sheer number you need can be kind of a pain to manage.

'''Gremlin''': Overall mediocre anti-air made good by the air player never being entirely certain where these are. 

'''Artemis''': Very strong against heavy enemy air but expensive and squishy and tends to die to silos or impalers. Vulnerable to burning missiles on swifts if you don't set it to ignore bad targets. If you do, it won't shoot magpies. If you don't, air clayers can spend swifts or tank with odins as the cost of doing business. Build mobile AA instead.

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Chainsaw''': For AA to be effective, you need either enough burst to prevent planes from being able to disengage, or you need durability and sustained damage to zone out gunships. Chainsaws do both jobs, meaning they don't do anything well. Range is too short for the cost, damage is too low for the cost and range, just build mobile AA instead. Tends to die to silo.

'''Thresher''': Expensive, short ranged, competes with Razor for the anti-gunship role but lacks armor. 

'''Crasher''': Rovers as a factory are quite resistant to air because of speed. The theory is that these can always be in position against enemy air. Movement speed and reload speed just aren't usually useful traits on burst AA when you're giving up range for it, shooting targets it will only get time to fire a single volley at. Giving up range and damage on missile AA is terrible.

= Other Static Defences =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Stinger''': Singlehandedly holds back skirmisher-heavy armies and forces them to escelate or take absolutely horrific losses.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Lotus''': It's a lotus.

'''Newton''': Primarily limited by creativity. Keeps bombers from escaping, prevents riots from approaching, kills raiders by throwing them into terrain, pulls your own units to safety from raven bombs or out of slows, reverse slope newtons will enroll enemy spiders in a brief but educational space program.

'''Faraday''': Good anti-dive against a wide variety of targets. Work well slightly buried, bonus points if you terra a blast shield in front of it to block direct fire from the front

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Picket''': Very strong in pairs against skirmishers early game. 

'''Cerberus''': A good tempo play if you have an edge, can lock down significant parts of the map and force specific counters. Terraformed and with a shield bubble over it, it can be almost impossible *not* to make cost due to the comparative cost of the silo and missiles to remove it. 

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Gauss''': This is a lot to invest in something that doesn't move. You get what you pay for, which is a good hardened turret that doesn't move. The risk you run with building these is that your opponet will take their army and rotate on you. Generally needs to be supported by lighter defenses and units or a bait halberd is going to get this lanced.

'''Desolator''': Very beefy for it's cost. It's not good, precisely, but it can be incredibly hard to actually kill and it's durable enough it's extremely unappealing to kill with Eos.

'''Lucifer''': This is actually incredibly strong ''if'' it's in the right position. This can be the hill side of theta crystals, it can be slightly behind the front to create a deadzone for your army to use. Similar to Cerberus, this can make cost back very quickly and force specific counters out of the opponent. Unlike Cerberus, this is usually on a stricter timer, but one good shot on a shield ball can make this worth it.

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Stardust''': In most cases this is probably just worse than plating imps if you can do that instead, but in the midgame this can make a good insurance policy against runbys, especially ''with'' imps.

= Tactical Missiles =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Shockley''': This solves a ''lot'' of problems if you can avoid getting sucked into gambling.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Eos''': Able to penetrate shields and hit key targets. Makes a lot of otherwise good tools (static AA, tremor, enemy silos built by nerds less on the ball, etc.) a lot more questionable. 

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Inferno''': Pairs well with Shockley to clear shield nets, stunned artillery, and shieldballs. Has zero shield penetration and barely annoys anything with meaningful health.

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Zeno''': These missiles are incredibly slow to deploy, meaning that even with the tracking sometimes you're better off with shockleys. It's a lot to spend on what is normally a nuisance, but they can be strong at messing up retreat timings for units and getting them killed. Usually they just don't do much.

<span style="color:#666">'''Unclassifiable'''</span>

'''Quake''': If you need it, you need it.

= Endgame =

<span style="color:#90f">'''S Tier'''</span>

'''Trinity''': Barring maps I do not play like Ditched, A trinity will almost always make cost by forcing Antinukes. The bigger the map is, the stronger this gets. Not getting ''enough'' antinukes is a good way to get them stunned and then nuked anyway.

<span style="color:#44f">'''A Tier'''</span>

'''Paladin''': Skirmish anchor. Generally effective, given screening. <span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span> without screens, as it's very easy to make cost killing a Paladin.

<span style="color:lightblue">'''B Tier'''</span>

'''Zenith''': Mostly useful as a game finisher on medium sized maps. Expensive, vulnerable to Odin, getting stunned will drop all the meteors on your own head. 

<span style="color:gold">'''C Tier'''</span>

'''Detriment''': Mostly effective for suicide diving enemy superweapons, as the jump otherwise mostly results in leaving its own escorts behind. Gets skirmished to death by two Paladins if it can't D-gun them. 

<span style="color:orange">'''D Tier'''</span>

'''Bertha''': You're giving up a tempo investing huge amounts of metal in a structure that can't get either the tempo nor the metal back in any reasonable amount of time. 

'''Starlight''': Most expensive superweapon, good against enemy heavy armies and striders but actually loses to Disco Rave Party.

'''Disco Rave Party''': Worse than Starlight against most targets, the scatter on the shots combined with the AOE allows a DRP to shoot a Starlight from a safe range. This usually only matters on either Ditched or Supcom Strait after both sides have built a Zenith each and no one's one, but there you go.