[63475] A Guide to Every Unit in PA

Forward

So, you've bought PA, and you want to know which units are good at what and which ones are censorred-awful at everything? You've played for a while, you're expanding fine, but somehow you keep losing every game? You're a guy who just loves experimenting with odd strats but needs a reference for which units are good and which are plain aweful? Well then, this guide is for you. Updated every patch and covering every mobile unit in PA along with all static defenses and several miscellaneous buildings, this guide should provide you with everything you need aside from the actual unit stats themselves to come up with good build orders, strats, and generally knowledge of what you're doing wrong and what you could do to make what you're doing right.

About Me

I've played PA for about 6 months. Unlike many players, I started playing PA at the same time as I started playing TA and SupCom, the former of which I haven't figured out how to play online ( ) and the latter of which I'm just plain bad at due to the upgrade mechanic in that game. I consider myself to be on the high end of the skill chart in PA, better than most and able to cream most in a 1v1, though far from being as capable as Clopse or Matiz. Regardless, I've had decent returns from tournaments and am currently ranked 36th on the Planetary Annihilation tournament rankings chart by Neptunio.

While I hope that my analysis is top notch without any mistakes, this is unlikely to be achieved and I could easily miss a balance change in one patch that messes up the way you use a certain unit. If you notice any inaccuracy in this guide and it's been 3 days after the last patch that changed balance shoot me a P.M. and I'll take care of it.

What this Guide Is/Is Not

This guide is a way for Planetary Annihilation players to easily look at the uses of a unit without having to look through a ton of stats to determine everything. It is thus more useful to the casual player than the pro player. This is not a stat database; that merely confuses the newbies. If you came for a stat database, try PA-DB.

Now, with all of that out of the way, let's dive in!

Stuart98

This guide uses abbreviations. If you are unfamiliar with any of the terms listed here, please see TrailQ's Planetary Annihilation Terminology Glossary.

**** An excellent unit. Useful in many situations without micro that should be used as your bread and butter force for everything else to be built with. It's difficult to overstate the usefulness of these units.
*** A decent, fairly specialized unit. Use it right, everything will be blown to bits. Use it wrong, and the only thing that will be blown up other than the unit is your chances of winning. These may require some micro and aren't good in many situations, but they make up for their deficiencies through their great effectiveness at their niche.
** A niche unit. While it has its uses, they are generally fairly limited and are countered easily.
* This unit is bad. It is countered very easily, is very expensive for what it will do for you, and there are other units that can do the job quicker and more efficiently. Don't build them.

Note that the structure of this guide was based around that of Beeky's excellent TA Unit Guide. I am not intending to reinvent the wheel here, but I sshould also give credit to the inventor of the original one.


The Commander

The commander is the nexus of your opperations. Everything starts with one, and one way or another everything will end with one. All commanders have identical stats. The commander's metal usage requires three metal extractors to be cancelled out with a surplus of one metal, and its energy usage needs one energy plant to be cancelled out with a surplus of 100 energy. The commander can tank a massive amount of damage in this game and his uber cannon can take out quite a few units quickly and easily, but if you don't keep energy production up the uber cannon becomes useless and you'll fall easily. The commander's high metal cost means that any damage done to it is more or less permanent. While it can be repaired eventually, this is a slow and expensive process that takes massive amounts of production in order to happen in a manner that is anything remotely becoming of speedy. For this reason you should use your com in aggressive situations rarely and mainly use his uber cannon when you're getting rushed early game (before the six minute mark). Later than that and your com may end up dieing. Note that the com will survive a nuclear missile in this game. However, if he dies in a transport, there will be no explosion and you will have lost the game without doing any damage to the enemy.

Note that while the commander in this game is the most efficient construction unit, he equally fast to standard T2 fabbers minus air fabbers and more slowly than advanced combat fabrication bots. Don't count on the com being a big boost to your production power late game; use advanced combat fabrication bots instead.

A Note About the Economy

In Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander every unit had separate build time, energy cost, and metal cost stats. The power of an engineer or constructor and the build time determined the rate at which the energy and and metal were applied to something. In Planetary Annihilation, these have been streamlined. Metal is the only thing units and structures cost. Each fabricator and each factory have a rate at which they apply metal to what they build. Fabricating uses energy. Metal extraction and energy production are completely separate economies in the short term, meaning that a shortage in either won't have an immediate affect on the production of the other, but it will of course result in delayed increase in either resource as the rate at which metal is applied to units being built is reduced. Another note is that if you've got a massive debt in one or the other resource in PA, rather than have many fabbers build structures it is often more effective to have most of the fabbers idle with only a few building structures in order to reduce stalling, contrary to how this worked in SupCom.

A Note About Factories vs Fabricators

While in Total Annihilation and Supreme commander it was a good idea to surround factories with engineers or F.A.R.K.s instead of making more fabbers, in PA doing so will result in heavy energy stalling due to the way the economy works. Fabricators simply consume more energy than factories while building slower. One simply has to look at a few stats to see this.

T1 Power Generator: Makes 600 Energy/Second
T1 Bot Factory: Uses 675 Energy; Builds at 12 Metal/Second
T1 Bot Fabricator: Uses 1000 Energy; Builds at 10 Metal/Second

It is therefore a much better idea to build additional factories rather than assist existing ones in order to increase production unless you are overflowing in energy production and pelters won't be an effective thing to build in your situation at present. Keep this in mind as you plan your strategies.

Fabrication Units

Note that all fabrication units except for fabrication aircraft have 100 energy consumption/metal; fabrication aircraft have 122 energy consumption/metal.

T1 Fabrication Vehicle: Your basic fabrication vehicle. Taking 13 seconds to build from an unassisted vehicle factory at peak production, these are vulnerable to bombing runs early in the game but are quick to replace. You will probably make more of these than any other fabrication unit in the game. Note that these can reclaim some combat units, such as the skitter T1 land scout, faster than they can be destroyed. The can also make walls fast enough to defend themselves against raiding units if micro'd well. Do not spend too much time microing a particular fabber to make sure that the mexes it build stay alive though; your time will be better spent macroing and getting additional factories up. ****

T1 Fabrication Bot: Equal to vehicle fabbers in every way except for unassisted build time, these take 3 seconds longer to make and as such I generally only use these if I go bot first or want to get an advanced bot factory up. While these are good units and not bad compared to vehicles, the fact that vehicle fabbers can be made in 3 seconds less time means that you don't have too much reason to build these. ***

T1 Fabrication Aircraft: While it is 22% more inefficient compared to their land and sea based equivalents, these fabbers make up for it with their mobility and are often used for expansions due to the much reduced travel time between mexes. Just make sure to guard them with hummingbirds though; even if you have a missile defense tower near them, a raiding hummingbird is usually able to take it out regardless. If you're on a planet controlled exclusively by you, their vulnerability is for the most part invalidated and I would recommend that you use little but these as you expand over the planet to claim all of the mexes. ***

T1 Fabrication Ship: While these units can be used to expand, they are very slow. If you need to claim mexes in the water, use air. If you want to build torpedo launchers, use a commander. These are too slow to be of much use unless you're building or assisting an advanced naval factory. **

T2 Advanced Fabrication Bot: While I panned its basic brother, the advanced fabrication bot costs less metal than its vehicular counterpart and thus can be made for a lower metal cost, although the build time will take longer from an unassisted factory. These give access to the superior T2 eco and game ending nukes and are therefore a necessity for any game which doesn't end in a dox attack after 10 minutes. Defend these well; While they are more survivable than their T1 counterparts, they are still fragile and if one dies, you lose quite a bit more than you lose if a T1 fabber gets destroyed. Guard them well and keep them inside your base. It is recommended to have them start on several projects then abandon them to be built by T1 units to move onto another project. This allows you to get several T2 buildings up in less time assuming that you're floating eco and have extra T1 fabbers. ****

T2 Advanced Fabrication Vehicle: Costing more metal than the Advanced Fabrication Bot but being built quicker, the Advanced Fabrication Vehicle is the equal to the Advanced Fabrication Bot in every way but metal cost and build speed. Use them as I prescribed using their bot equivalents. ****

T2 Advanced Fabrication Aircraft: More easily destroyed by raiding air units than land based advanced fabbers, I would generally hold off on making advanced fabrication aircraft until you have a decent sized force of peregrines to guard them to compensate for how frail they are. In large numbers, they can easily set up firebases consisting of Advanced Laser Turrets surrounded by walls along with advanced radar towers and holkins quickly if guarded by a sufficient amount of peregrines. Superb economy is required for this to work, however. Generally these are only useful for building T2 mexes/power on water due to how bad the naval fabbers are or for building mexes across the planet on planets controlled exclusively by you. ***

T2 Advanced Fabrication Ship: Useless. Not only is it slower than its bot and vehicle counterparts, it is just as vulnerable to bombs if not more vulnerable due to the inadequacy of T1 naval anti air for its cost. Why, when you can build leviathens and stingrays, ships than can turn the tide of the battle and invalidate gunships completely, would you build this? *

T1 Bots

Dox: A cheap little raiding unit, able to dodge Pounder shells and put in some decent damage with good speed. These are primarily used early game and can be used to win games. They are generally used in two phases: In the first you send them in all directions in small groups of 1-2 units to take out any expanding fabricators your opponents may have. After that, you send in larger groups of roughly 20 doxes on the side of their base where their commander is not located to take out any infrastructure there. Do avoid the commander however, as doxes have no way to deal with the uber cannon of a com that still has power running through its heavy weapon systems. After about 6 minutes in, you should switch to building Stingers as turrets will clean them up too easily. Overall an excellent unit, just don't expect them to work in an assault against an organized defense. ***

Fabrication Bot Combat: T1 units have too little HP for this to be useful with them, mines are absolutely useless in this game, and if you were going to make them to assist things you'd get more value for your metal from regular fabrication units. The only use I've found for this unit is in automatically repairing walls, which can be a very useful tactic, particularly if you have long ranged T2 units like Levelers, Gil-Es, and Shellers behind the walls. Other than that, it's as bad as its name is. **

Stinger: Providing better anti air for its cost than a missile tower, any player wishing to avoid a gunship snipe should spam these things like no tomorrow after the six minute mark. Useful as escorts for assaults and as defenses in your base, nothing shuts down gunships like stingers. Two guarding fabrication units are also useful early game for shutting down bomber raids. They are completely useless in a ground battle, however. ****

Boom: An excellent idea for a bot, the boom is a cheap, high damage scout bot capable of destroying many units in the game with only a couple of booms. However, against anything that can shoot they're abhorrent . They are best used by being built by a factory set to infinite loop them patrolling across the planet, which results in them killing a surprising amount of mexes. If it shoots, they're shut down. **

T1 Vehicles

Skitter: While land scouts are excellent ideas for units, this iteration is mostly useless. Dieing to a couple of shots from a dox and not fast enough to be significantly better than a dox at scouting and raiding, these are so bad that they'll get reclaimed by fabrication units faster than they'll kill the fabbers. Their only use is as a spotter for Gil-Es, Levelers, or Shellers, which they do okay at and can even absorb some leveler shells to increase the life span of your units. Not very useful overall. **

Ant/Pounder (Unit Cannon): Although this unit has had many names over the months, its role has remained the same: Counter early game raiding bots, and assault heavily organized defenses. It performs the first role okay. While it will kill a dox in two shots, it often misses in small numbers and requires about 8 to get decent results. The second role it will fail completely at if the base defenses have walls protecting them, especially if combat fabrication bots are repairing them. It is however useful for taking shots intended for levelers or shellers in a mixed force of T1 and T2 vehicles though. Overall an okay unit, but not useful at its intended role and too slow compared to doxes to compete in the early game. **

Spinner: Exactly the same as the Stinger except for costing more, being slower, and taking 3 seconds longer to make. While there isn't a whole lot else worth making at a T1 vehicle factory, it's still a waste of one. If you want mobile AA, make a bot factory instead and set it to infinite loop stingers. *

Inferno: This unit provides an excellent amount of HP for its cost and can be used to tank fire in tank battles. However, unless your opponent isn't microing their forces at all, don't expect them do to any damage themselves. Too slow and short ranged to be useful for doing damage, these are relegated to tanking it and allowing other units to kill things. **

T1 Aircraft

Firefly: An excellent scout armed with a laser able to inflict minimal damage on fabbers along with the capability to land to avoid anti air. When massed they can pose a semi powerful force to terrorize land armies with, but a single peregrine can take out hundreds of them. They are the fastest scouts, and generally the only ones worth building, although fighters may be a more useful scout due to their ability to destroy air fabbers. ***

Hummingbird: The T1 fighter can easily destroy most T1 air units in a couple shots and in small numbers can quickly destroy larger numbers of bumblebees. In larger numbers they can defeat unescorted hornets and kestrels as well, but are completely shut down by a small number of peregrines. They function well in T1, but are near useless in T2. ***

Bumblebee: The T1 bomber, these can one shot fabricators and will always succeed at destroying them as long as there are less than 2 ground based anti air defenses and less than 1 air based anti air defenses in the vicinity of the target unit. Later in the game they become nigh on useless due to the prevalence of ground based anti air and are overshadowed by the kestrel. Use these to kill expanding fabbers early game, but you're better off not making them as soon as they start making hummingbirds. After that, they become near useless. **


T1 Naval

Sunfish: Too slow to scout effectively, too weak to offer much in the way of value to your fleets, the sunfish is an overpriced spotter that has no use other than increasing the range of your navy slightly and forcing leviathens to waste their volleys. **

Orca: The T1 destroyer is a powerful unit armed with some heavy cannons that do a ton of damage against anything in range. However, it's hard for anything to be in range of them considering that their range is little more than that of a sniper bot's. Vs other naval units they're ok... but their shells get caught on wreckage, greatly reducing the potential DPS. You can invalidate them with T2 air, T2 naval, or simply by building your base away from the sea. Their range is too weak to hit anything not next to water.**

Narwhal: The T1 cruiser may be a more practical unit than the orca. Although its uses are limited for off shore bombardment, its main gun is decent against other sea vessels and it becomes frightning once you add on the torpedo launcher. However, although it suffers to a lesser extent than orcas, it still gets caught on wreckage. Its missiles are ok, but for its cost you'd expect something better. ***


T2 Bots

Slammer: The T2 assault bot has more range than the dox, more HP, does much more damage, and costs very little for all of these benefits. However, it still fails in the same situation that doxes do, e.g. killing anything after 6-8 minutes into the game and is overshadowed by the more useful Gil-E. *

Advanced Fabrication Bot Combat: Now here we go. Cheaper than two advanced fabrication bots, but nanolathing at twice the range and power, these are useful for increasing the survivability of your units and assisting in the construction of just about anything along with allowing walls to survive for ungodly amounts of time. The mines they build are still useless, but 4 of them can build a teleporter in 6 second. The amount they drain your economy is crazy however, and their uses are fairly limited in combat aside from reclaiming walls and vanguards. Their value is situational and unless you're overflowing in eco these are an inferior investment compared to Gil-Es. **

Gil-E: The Sniper Bot has excellent range and can destroy most things in very few hits along with having its shots go through terrain and having instant hits (or misses, as the case may be). Keep an eye on these though, unless you want them to be made into mince meat: their rate of fire is low, and they cannot deal with getting swarmed. They can retreat quickly, but if no one is there to give the retreat order they'll be wasted. These are excellent for kiting vanguards and, when escorted themselves by vanguards, will greatly benefit from the added radar coverage. They are also particularly potent for com sniping as they outrange the com and can outrun them if need be. Watch them, and they'll kill. Let them run straight into a vanguard, and your investment will fail. Always keep this in mind when using them.

It should be noted that Shellers can shut these down completely and are therefor generally an inferior investment in general when compared to them unless there's a vulnerable com. ***


T2 Vehicles

Leveler: The leveler is essentially an ant given a more powerful gun that's duplicated onto its other side with a higher range, a chassis that takes more damage, and is given a cost increase. Against anything else that's T2, levelers will annihilate. However, against massed swarms of T1 bots, levelers just can't shoot fast enough to kill the doxes, with too much overkill on each dox and not enough damage going around the whole group. Use in conjunction with other T2 vehicles for best results. ***

Sheller: Take a pelter. Strap it onto a tank. It's slow, but it works, and it's what the sheller is. It costs less, has less health, but has the same range and does more damage than a pelter with greater accuracy. Excellent against Gil-Es only if you have radar so that the full range of them can be used against them. Inferior at com sniping when compared to Gil-Es, but the shells can bypass walls, a very useful ability, and have an absolutely insane damage. If you have enough of them escorted by sufficient stingers, even if your opponent has a mixed army the full sheller army will annihilate them and the shellers will become virtually invincible. In smaller numbers it can be wiser to mix them with other T2 vehicles. ****

Vanguard: Vanguards provide mobile radar coverage for shellers, levelers, and gil-es that greatly increases their effective range. This is not, however, their primary function; that would be to tank damage during a heavy assault and snipe important structure. Nothing other than a commander can last 2 seconds being fired upon by a Vanguard. These things have enough health to survive a comsplosion. An excellent tactic is to load them up into pelicans, send in some peregrines with the pelicans behind them, drop the pelicans next to the other guy's com, nuck, or T2 factory, and watch with glee as everything they ever wanted, everything they had worked to achieve the whole game, gets burned to ashes. More info on this in the pelican section. Another, even more cheap tactic, involves putting one in an astreus and using the astreus to drop it next to their com. Due to a bug, it will be dropped from a very high altitude that cannot be prevented with anti air. If successful, unless they have gunships guarding their com, they'll lose the com. An excellent unit, you'd be severely handicapping yourself not to use these, although they will be annihilated by shellers typically long before they can shoot if you don't drop them next to them. ***

T2 Air


Peregrine: The T2 fighter, when combo'd with gunships, is one of the number one reasons for people rage quitting Planetary Annihilation. If you have more of these than your opponent, then you control the air layer. If you control the air layer, you can use gunships to attack any of their mexes. If they turtle up enough that you can't touch them, you'll be able to out eco them with the superior map control given by gunships and get up many more nukes than they will, effectively allowing you to win the game.


Always keep the peregrine facing what it's fighting. Prioritize stacked air targets; peregrine missiles have AoE. If you can hit an air unit newly off the factory, the missiles might even take out some ground units he has nearby.


Prioritize peregrines over kestrels and pelicans when you first build your T2 air. Those gunships are useless if the enemy has more peregrines than you do.


An excellent unit without weaknesses other than an inability to attack ground targets directly. ****


Kestrel: The kestrel is a somewhat overrated unit that rarely wins the games by itself but that should rather be used to give you the advantage which you use to crush your enemy. While they can be used to snipe coms, T2 air factories, and other valuable things, they are countered by stingers. However, stingers can only move so fast, and if you can destroy most of their mexes and expand onto them then you'll force the enemy to turtle. While they're doing that, you can use your superior metal production to get up a nuke and destroy all of their defenses, opening a hole for a gunship snipe. Just don't send the kestrel into a wall of stingers unless you want to lose everything. ***


Pelican: The pelican is a transport, useful for evacuating coms when a nuke is about to hit and to increase the mobility of various units. However, their real use is a far more deadly one. Build 10 or so peregrines along with 2 or 3 pelicans. Load them up with vanguards. Fly over the enemy base onto a valuable building. Drop the vanguards. Observe as they destroy everything. This drop is not easily prevented and is one of the best winning tactics in the game. Use it if you want to win. ****


Hornet: The hornet is an excellent idea for a unit. A carpet bomber great at devastating armies. However, it has issues. For one, it is completely shut down by stingers. For another, it is useless against structures. For a third, kestrels will offer far more control concerning what you destroy and give more continuous firepower. For this reason the Hornet is inferior in its role compared to other units and should not be used in a majority of situations. They are amazing against large T1 armies, however. **



T2 Naval


Leviathan: The Leviathan T2 battleship possesses a frightening AoE attack that fires at long range. Everything gets shredded by this behemoth if its in range. A must have for naval battles. Vulnerable to gunships, but hey, that's what stingrays are for. For best results, use radar ****


Stingray: The stingray long range missile ship fires explosive missiles that do a moderate amount of damage with the same range as a Leviathan. Rather mediocre; However, its true value comes from its insanely high anti air DPS. A couple of stingrays will invalidate kestrels almost as well as a few dozen stingers. They are very vulnerable to water attacks, however, and have no more range than their battleship cousins. ***



Orbital


Avenger: The orbital fighter shoots at a decent enough rate, and has good damage and speed for its cost. However, it is near useless if you're playing against a half intelligent player because it is completely invalidated by anchors. **


Radar Satellite: While it's very cheap , it's still more expensive than a radar... and provides half as much radar coverage. I have very rarely seen these used by a good player in a competitive match... Why? Because it's useless! *


Astraeus: The astreus is slow and vulnerable. Don't expect it to get halfway across a planet today, tomorrow, or by next friday. It's complete and total crap, only useful for emergency com evacuations against people that don't scout and therefor won't kill it with fighters the second it picks your com up. It should be noted that it drops it's payload before entering the air layer. If launched from another planet it can appear instantly over the target and drop its payload, which may cause some damage before being destroyed. **


Orbital Fabber: The orbital fabber is bad, but has decent build options. It can build a teleporter, which allows you to quickly establish yourself on a world. It has several other build options, two of which are good, one of which is awful. It's a decent unit, but is bugged. Assist with land fabbers if you want stuff to get build quickly: You cannot assist projects it's making with other orbital fabbers nor can you pause construction and resume it later. **


Anchor: The Anchor is an excellent unit. It provides vision, tanks a massive amount of damage, and has awesome firepower. Not building this in a multi planet game is suicide. ****


Solar Array: This unit isn't exactly bad, in fact it's equally good to a T1 pgen not taking into account that it's easier to defend the orbital layer. However, they pale in comparison to T2 pgens in every way except for survivability. Generally anchors and advanced radar satellites are better uses of your orbital fabbers. **


Advanced Radar Satellite: The advanced radar satellite allows you to spy on a large region of the planet for a cost a bit over that of a grounded advanced radar facility. Needed if you want accuracy to be achieved while using interplanetary nukes. Vulnerable to avengers.***


SXX: The SXX is a massive investment used to waste metal via attempting to rain death down upon your enemy, who are able to instantly stop the storm for much less metal than you invest in the SXX in the first place. 4 SXXs cost 100,000 metal. 5 umbrellas, which shut these down, cost 8750 metal. Only useful against someone who's not paying attention. If 5 are ordered to attack an enemy com however while orbiting another planet, you will have an instantaneous snipe. **

Defenses


Single Laser Defense Tower: These are quite cheap and can destroy an adequate amount of units before dieing. Fiendish if surrounded by walls for 200 metal. Won't hold up against a dedicated assault though. ***


Double Laser Defense Tower: Bots raiding you? Build one of these. Tanks causing issues? Build one of these and surround it with 200 metal in walls. Any land attack in the first 6 minutes can be countered by these. Completely vulnerable to air though. ****


Missile Defense Tower: This unit is *OK* for dealing with bumblebees and kestrels, but stingers are plain better. **


Wall: 25 metal for 6000 HP! Ain't that sweet?
These are ridiculous. Spam these everywhere. They're ridiculous. ****


Pelter: A decent defensive tower, used to destroy small groups of land units from long range. Needs radar to function. Pelter creeping is a tactic involving building these, letting them annihilate, building more closer to the enemy, letting them annihilate, rinse and repeat. They are easily destroyed by anything that gets close though, and their high metal cost means that for every one of these, you could have built a fourth of a t2 vehicle factory or 3 shellers, and are completely outclassed by shellers once T2 is up. **


Torpedo Launcher: These units can put out moderate damage against naval units, but generally bombers and/or kestrels (If you have them) are more effective vs a T1 navy and Leviathens rip them to shreds at t2 anyway. If you do make them, build walls to invalidate orca fire and use radar to allow them to attack from longer range. Typically however, if you're on a planet where navy is worth building you'll want to put your metal into a T2 naval factory and some leviathans and stingrays instead of into a set of torpedo defenses that are useless against the other guys' T2 naval and are easily bombed to bits. **


Umbrella: The counter to SXXs, it's ludicrously cost effective... but not useful against anything else. **


Advanced Laser Defense Tower: Dissolves any and all T1 units like holleywood acid dissolves paper. However, its effectiveness is much reduced against levelers and against shellers or Gil-Es they'll get taken out from a distance. Double laser defense towers generally provide just as good of a defense without wasting the time of a T2 fabber. **


Flak Cannon: T2 gunships if massed can still take these out with impunity, as can vanguards that are dropped. They are thus only useful against the Hornet, a unit which is useless anyway and is taken out by stingers as quickly as you'll ever need, and Peregrines, a unit which can't even fight back. These can be used to create no fly zones to prevent peregrines sniping your advanced fabrication aircraft, but don't expect them to hold out against an organized assualt by kestrels. **


Holkins: The T2 artillery, if you can get one up you should, in theory, be able to annihilate you have radar range on. However, its rate of fire is simply abhorrent and on smaller planets they're unusable. Put your metal into nukes or gunships instead. *


Advanced Torpedo Launcher: Sure, it can completely invalidate T1 naval, but it costs 2,200 metal that could have been pumped into more eco or more T2 air. They are also useless against leviathans that lack radar, which are primarily what you need to defend against at T2. If the opponent lacks radar coverage, however, they are untouchable. However, seeing as how most will have radar coverage on you assuming that they're good, these make for a rather useless unit. **


Catapult: A holkins without splash damage, these can be built close to someone's base to take out they're buildings. It requires some micro to use effectively and is useless against land armies. It is also vulnerable to gunships. These can be useful in niche situations, but these situations are, well... niche. **


Nuclear Missile Launcher: One of the best units in the game. Once you get T2 air is up, assuming that you get repelled from attacking them with it directly, you want to use gunships to take out all of their map control and air fabbers to take it for you. Once you've started doing that, make these. 1 will take out every unit in the game other than a com at full health and will leave the com at 1500 HP. Two will insta kill a com. Generally if you see a nuke it's a better idea to make a nuke of your own and finish it first by taking out their eco than it is to make an anti nuke. Once you get about 20 minutes in, nearly all of your production power should be put onto these. Nothing else can do as much damage. ****


Anti-Nuke Launcher: If the enemy is making a nuke, make one faster and take out theirs before it's ready. If they aren't, why would you not make a nuke instead? In most games nukes are far more practical than anti nukes. If you lack the money to make a nuck and must make an anti-nuck, you've probably already lost. A nuke can strike anywhere. An anti nuke can only cover a small area. Generally not worth it. There is one situation where these are useful however, when your com is on a planet that's uncontested and is vulnerable to nukes from another planet. As they'll only aim for the com, you're essentially golden. Generally however they won't be useful.

It should be noted that due to the higher number of nukes flying in FFAs and team games, these do become more important in those modes. ***


Mines (Land/Sea): I have only ever seen these once in a competitive game, and in that game they were shot at due to being detected by radar long before anything was in range. Even skitters would be a better investment of your metal. Completely useless. *



Intel


Radar: The basic radar unit has a really good radar range equal to the firing range of a holkins. For a tiny metal cost and small energy upkeep cost you can get a massive amount of intelligence. There's no reason not to build this when you're not power stalling. It simply is that good. ****


Advanced Radar: While these are fine units, their energy cost simply isn't as efficient as T1 radars and are often unnecessary when you can build a couple T1 radars more cheaply that do the same thing. These do allow for automatic scouting of the enemy base. If you see a lot of signatures around a structure in that base, assume it's a nuke. Scouts can do the same thing though, and give better intelligence. If scouts die too quickly, peregrines can be used. These do have their uses, but T1 units can do the same things better, if not as conveniently and easily. ***


Orbital and Deepspace Radar: Only slightly more expensive metal wise than T1 radar and draining just as much little energy, these units are excellent. They're cheap and will give you excellent amounts of intel. There's no reason not to build one, no matter how many planets in the system. ****



Economy


Metal Extractor: Cheap to build, expand all over the place and make these everywhere. The more metal you have, the more units you can make and you want a solid eco before you get T2 up. After T2 is up however, T2 mexes are generally better units. ***


Energy Plant: You need these, but they're awful. Providing a small amount of energy for a medium metal cost, you just try to endure as long as you can with these until you get T2 up, at which point you make the far superior T2 Advanced Energy Plant. Until then, endure. **


Metal Storage: A useful unit to build to prevent nano stalling while units are built, but keep in mind that ideally you're floating little more than 20 metal at any given point. If this is not the case and you are floating power as well, build more factories. Use these in moderation, they shouldn't be needed in large numbers unless you are floating enormous amounts of metal, in which case the metal should be spent instead of stored. ***


Energy Storage: These on the other hand, are. Energy fluctuates more than metal and is used for more; therefor, you need a constant energy surpluss. These allow you to allow for a little less surplus by making you less likely to run out during periods of energy loss. Don't spam these though; they're only as good as your energy production itself is. ***


Advanced Metal Extractor: While stat wise they may seem slightly worse than Metal Extractors, don't be fooled. These allow you to increase your metal income without requiring large expansion efforts and allow you to use metal that would normally be used to defend now unneeded expansions to be used to build nukes or T2 air. Either the first or second thing you should build as soon as you have a T2 fabber out typically. ****


Advanced Energy Plant: Much better than energy planets, any energy stalling you have should go away once you have a few of these up. Spread them out though; the last thing you want is a nuke sending you back to square one by taking out all of your advanced energy and crashing your eco. Depending on your eco situation, these should either be the first or second things your first or second advanced fabber makes. ****


Miscellaneous

Teleporter: These units can be used to great advantage on unoccupied planets to gain a superior start compared to someone using an astreus, however when used against anyone paying attention the teleporter will probably get taken out before it's done on an occupied world. If they are built out of radar range, they can be used to initiate an attack from an angle that your opponent isn't expecting; However, pelicans can be used to do the same thing. Overall only useful for claiming a planet or evacuating units from planets that will be halleyed; useless against someone who's established themselves on a planet and is paying attention. ***

Reserved.

Reserved.

Feel free to post now.

This is quite the useful list! +1

I apologize for any typos in the text, most of this was made between 1:00 and 6:00 a.m. last night!

Pretty nifty.

I disagree with a few of your unit summaries (example, the Boom is 100% useless and the Advanced Radar is extremely useful due to it's insane range and orbital coverage), but all in all, it's pretty good.

Yeah agree with brian, t2 radar is a must in my eyes. Metal storages too, one of them save me so much metal throughout a game since the recent buff. But other than that super nice summary. Great work. May the like gods of the forums shine down on thee.

This is excellent Stuart. I wonder if we could put this in a Wiki somewhere so others could add their perspectives?

I'm not so sure that the boom is useless at early game raids before the 4 minute mark. No one's really tried them...

I'm actually going to go do that on a size 400 moon. I'll update the summary for that unit after I've done more testing with them.

Advanced radar was a bit underrated here, but in all honesty if you can built T1 radar closer you will get better value from it than an advanced radar.

Booms are completely and utterly useless, all the time, in any situation.

T2 radar gives better coverage from a more defensible position, plus some orbital coverage.

Other than those two things picked up by brian this a great list, thanks

Boom was indeed useless in early game raiding. However, they seemed to be effective vs sniper bots. I'll replace some incorrect info.

Thank you very much for writing this guild. But I started play PA since beta and I have never(maybe once or twice not sure) played a multilayer game.

agree with brian about the boom. hope Uber fixes it, bc i REALLY want to use this unit for harrassment.

love the endeavor....but it feels... biased. i don't roll that way...

Biased in what way?

Nuke defence is critical in multi-way games you may be able to build a nuke faster than one player and scout them well enough to find there nukes and deal with time, but against 2+ players? Nuke 1 and there is a good chance the second player will nuke you, little chance you'll get up a nuke per player before at least one of them does.
Also if there base is well defended and you don't have sufficient intel you really need these.

Secondly sunfish have some use especially with formations (if they're working with ships). Expanding your vision out so your bigger ships can use there full range is critical, especially before you gain full radar coverage.

Holkins are a pretty effective they can seriously weaken large enemy land assaults before they get close enough to do damage and they work even if your focused elsewhere and don't see an assault right away.