Dominatrix

The Dominatrix is a capture rover from the Rover Assembly.

Dominatrix (vehcapture)
Capture Rover
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Stats
Cost	420
Hit Points	820
Movement Speed (elmo/s)	59
Turn Rate (deg/s)	111
Vision Radius (elmo)	550
Transportable	Light
Weapons
Capture Ray Damage 11.1 Reload Time (s) 0.03 Damage per Second 333 Range (elmo) 450 Instantly hits Ignores shields Water capable

Description

The Dominatrix captures enemies, turning them against their former allies. Multiple Dominatrix can capture a single target faster, although only one becomes the controller. After taking control of a unit the Dominatrix cannot fire for 12 seconds. If a Dominatrix is destroyed all units it controls are freed.

There is a limit

Tactics and Strategy

The Dominatrix's capture dps is pitted against the higher of 1000 or the target's HP. Capturing any unit with 1000 HP or less will take a flat 3 seconds. For heavier targets, a single Dominatrix (which has a capture dps of 333) takes about 20.5 seconds to capture an enemy Minotaur (which has 6800 HP). Also note that damaged units will be captured faster and that capture damage does not ignore unit armor. Capture damage decays quickly if the target escapes range, so partial damage will most likely go to waste.

To prolong the life span of your frail Dominatrices, try escorting them with at least 1 Aspis, along with an Iris to help keep enemy artillery from skirmishing your Dominatrices to death. Be warned that, like with other shield balls, such a combination is asking to be countered with Firewalkers, Imps, Snitches, Thunderbirds, or Likhos to name a few.

Best uses for Dominatrix

1) Countering rushes of nasty heavyweight riots: Mace, Ogre, Redback. For an equal price to the rush unit, you get the Dominatrix which stops the rush unit - and you also get the rush unit. Typically, the rushing player resigns after realising that they've spent most of their economy on giving you one of these units.

2) Defeating medium-heavy assault units. Minotaur and Jack in particular are very difficult for Rover to counter without a Domi, but this will require a critical mass of Domis to have sufficient DPS to actually complete the capture.

3) Killing enemy commanders. Now, Rover doesn't lack in commander-killing options, with Scorchers and Ravagers also being quite good at the job. But a Dominatrix outruns and outranges non-trollcom commanders, so an unassisted com caught in the wild against a Domi will soon encounter a fate worse than death, creating a massive 8 metal per second differential for the capturer.

If your enemy is inattentive, you may even get this almost for free, because the dominatrix capture ray does not trigger the "commander under attack" alarm.

Countering Dominatrix

Countering Dominatrix as hover, your two choice units are Halberd and Lance. Ideally, both!

1) Halberd costs less than the dominatrix and takes little capture damage while armored. You will need at least 3 halberd per enemy 2 dominatrix, but halberds are fast enough to catch up with the domis, and more importantly, they are very hard to stop and they are *very bad at killing each other*. So when they get turned, Dominatrices don't get any bonus kills from the freshly acquired slaves; instead, once the remaining Halberds kill one of the slave-owning Domis, you get your slightly dented Halberds back.

2) Lance has the range and alpha to kill dominatrices with impunity. It might not be effective if shooting by radar though, but that's where Halberds come in handy.

3) Scalpel if you want to fight dirty. A Scalpel/Mace force fights very favorably with almost every Rover composition, barring things like heavy Badger - at least, until Thunderbirds come out. The Scalpel/Mace build also trades equally with Dominatrix - remember that you get two Scalpel for one Domi, and while a Domi outranges the Scalpel slightly, it's not a big enough margin to prevent return fire. It takes two scalpel salvos to kill a domi, and if you succeed, you more or less erase all the damage the Domi did. A good trick here is to manually target them, otherwise the first captures will waste shots for most of your army.

Other counters

Once the enemy has fielded five or more dominatrix, you may consider further asymmetric options:

Aggressive porcing - Dominatrix is quite bad against Stinger. Extra good if your artillery is an anti-mobile kind, which is literally any artillery unit except Sling and Impaler - then you can also bombard the enemy units from your porc forest!

Air bombing - but start with a Thunderbird because unassisted Ravens will probably be captured. A Dominatrix takes two Raven bombs to die, too.

Cloaked snitches - remember, 5 dominatrix is over 2k metal. You get to facswitch to shield (800m), an area cloaker (500-ish), and four-five Snitches for this price.

Phantoms - just bring something to keep the Darts away.

Emissary. Outruns, outranges, and outguns Dominatrix. Kind of mandatory late game.