T2 Bots, actually used?

Slammers do the job is doxes very well, but the role of a fast raiding unit is frequently (by no means always) less useful by the time you have appreciable t2 production.

T3 point defence, pelter and wall spam, holkins and catapults all make moving troops to raid close to an enemy base difficult to say the least. That's not to say there's no opportunity to raid, but given the choice between exploiting those opportunities and levellers...
I'd take the levellers 4/5.

But not necessarily efficiently. A nuke to take out a few metal extractors is not worth the investment. But using a few Doxes or Slammers to take out those metal spots is worth it.

Nukes are a much lower risk, you know if it'll work based on a single scout plane. You can keep the nuke in a safe place. The nuke can go wherever you want it until launch, defend your base, destroy their eco, etc.

Those slammers need to get into raiding position without being seen, and they need to destroy enough to justify their cost. A nuke will do this every time, will those slammers? Wouldn't you be better served just building a few vehicle factories out the back of their base and rolling in? And once you've used those slammers are you going to get away with another raid later?

I never see slammer raids in replays or streams or my limited games, and I think it's because there are always better things to do with your eco at that point, even if it's simply using that bot factory to procedure tier 2 fabbers.

Perhaps slammers are an undiscovered raiding powerhouse that people should be using more of, but I've yet to see it.

@Quitch - you do do serious damage.

Let's say a t1 mex is 100 distance units out of range of your slammers.

Your ants take 11 seconds to get into range. So that gives your opponent 77 more metal. Your slammers take 9 seconds to get into range, giving your opponent 63 more metal. The difference is 7 metal per second for two seconds.

It's more significant if they have multiple t2 mexes which are undefended.
Against concentrated bases, they probably aren't worth it (unless of course you just want to spam waves into your opponents base)

But if you find a breach in their defences then they are supremely worth it, because you can just keep spamming units through the hole.

I've also had lots of occasions where I have intercepted attacks by vehicles because of some awesome scouting.

You're forgetting the time and distance to target area factors. You're running calculations based on getting there and encountering ideal conditions, but that's one hell of an assumption. What happens if you're picked up on radar and tanks move your way? What happens if there's a pelter there?

Raids are risky and slammer raids are a really expensive risk at a time when raids are becoming even riskier.

But most of all, where are the replays where slammer raids make the difference?

No I'm not. Slammers and ants have the same range. They both have the same distance to cover to target an area, and slammers get there faster.

If you're picked up on radar, Slammers outrun tanks. They also cover more distance before they are noticed and give your opponent much less response time. Likewise, they cover more distance through the pelters range, and with appropriate micro, dodge more shots.

Probably nowhere, for the same reason that if you only built bombers before they got nerfed, nobody was ever intelligent enough to prioritise getting a small number of anti-air into their armies, but kept trying to move ant spam through your valley of death. People don't like using the whole unit roster, to the extent that they will only spam one unit.

How many people cast PA, how many people build the whole unit roster? Many people don't build "useful" units (like single laser defence towers) because they prefer to spam another unit (missile defence towers)

In that situation, a single ant can sit somewhere and snipe your missile defence towers with impunity. Your missile defence tower cost is just a waste of metal, until you back it up with pelters.

I would love to see the assault bots both T1 and T2 get jetpacks and maybe a dodge chance, would also like them to be more visiually different than tanks by giving them machine guns or lazers to make them look different.

The jetpacks could make them function more like the reapers in SC2 except they would use jetpacks in close combat in order to evade attacks for a moment giving them a better role as fast shock troops as opposed to the rolling tank swarm.

Bring back the old double barreled stomper from alpha and people will use bots a lot more. If you've played early alpha you will know what i mean

My take on t2 Bots. they aren't balanced (but then what is) and are underpowered. But where a group of levlers are a wall of death approaching your base, slammers should be like hard hitting team of commandos. They are quite fast already, their damage/dps should be increased 2-3 times and they should be given enough armor to effectively withstand T1 Tanks.