@xivarmy I personally think there's very strategic gameplay involved in all the interactions between OF units. And it's not very unreasonable to expect that if something is performing beyond intention, that the solution is to bring it back in line. This happens all the time in other games. Balance at the top is what developers tend to focus on in games with progressive content. Anywhere else, the focus is on fixing bugs that may pop up and, yes, preventing lower-level abilities/items/whatever from being too prevalent at the top. For instance, look at a game like World of Warcraft. If you received a special quest item at level 40 or so that ended up having some significant effect in max-level instanced content, you can bet that Blizzard would take steps to disable that item's effects rather than simply tuning everything else to account for it, even if they wanted to expect that every player has access to and is using said item. Why should it be any different here?
It's not like one item being at full power is key to your WoW levelling experience - you still have your full regular character kit of skills which form the core of your toolkit. Unit types ARE the toolkit though. Hover tanks as it stands do have a key role in FE GE, albeit a somewhat limited niche one. It's also a very fragile one as they have poor stats, just good abilities for countering one common unit (Spotters). Take away the abilities and FE is down to Railguns and Exoskeletals and TE Combat Drones with the other 3 age appropriate units being useless 90% of the time. Drone Swarms are bad. Spotters are weak on offense usually due to poor stats and only annoying to exoskeletals on defense. And now you want to turn hover tanks into another spotter because inno can't design compelling top end units to save their life. This would make FE perhaps the least interesting, most attrition-oriented age of all by far.
My current summary of OF units (without using hovers)
Crabs : Only good as reliable eel counters - scimitars replaced this duty. Free turturret kills on defense.
Octopods : Free turturret kills on defense. Can't think of an offensive role they're ideal for.
Mantas : Easy kills for subs or turturrets that outrange them. Never found a use for them on offense where they're actually better than subs. Unable to counter eels properly, and Crabs/Octopods are already countered better by artillery.
Scimitars : One of the options to mix with turturrets if your primary concern is killing off a few eels. Range 1 limits their use though because they have to move into danger to do their job often. Vulnerable to ranged units of the age. On defense they charge forward too far on the first turn allowing the attacker to engage in mini-waves in the battle.
Subs : Staple Unit on offense that is also good at attrition on defense. Only weakness on offense as the artillery partner is stealth (eels) - and that's not necessarily that bad as they at least reliably retaliate against the eels, unlike the manta that's supposed to be good against them but isn't.
Nautilus : Subs useless cousin that merely dilutes their pool on defense. Technically survives better against low attack units but stupid AI causes them to often do nothing in many fights as they just keep hanging back. Against high boost OF enemies the force field is worthless and you may as well run subs.
Eels : All or none. Does not mix well with others for the most part. They have to get in range of the crabs, eat retaliation from subs, initial blows from medusas which makes the number of fights they're ideal for low. But they have high stats and 8 eels can beat most things messily. One of my mainstays for attacking the hood and DAs in AA GvG.
Gliders : Useful in extreme artillery waves but those aren't terribly common. Not strong enough to cope with most unit types. Special 'Swarm' defense ability is worthless. Messes up eel AI when they're mixed on defense and makes 8 Fast waves easier to kill (eels won't charge forward and hit because there's another unit type).
Turturrets : Staple Unit with a couple glaring weaknesses. Sheer magnitude of offensive output is usually worth finding ways to make it work. Most likely to be the unit from the age we're talking about still using 3 ages from now.
Medusas : fragile unit that plunks itself down in the front line. On defense you only need to send a matching number of rogues to counter it. On offense I can't think of a use.
Summary: Without touching a single hover tank, i would use lots of turturrets and subs. occasionally scimitars and eels. 4 units out of 10. Furthermore most of the units i don't use also sabotage enemy defenses when they show up by reducing the number of good units they run.
Useful Additives from lower ages :
1) Hover Tanks - tedious but works against everything due to the units that counter stealth having other glaring issues (crab range and low defense, scimitar and medusa vulnerable round 1 placement) and not being present in high enough quantities.
2) Plasma Artillery - as long as there's no fliers in the battle often a better partner for turturrets than scimitars or crabs as they don't have to go into the danger zone to kill eels.
3) Railguns - Yup, they're still there. If there's just one flyer, and otherwise a 'hang back and snipe' group would be ideal, a couple railguns is occasionally a good option. Turturrets have enough offense to burn to tolerate the loss of offense from every-other-turn.
4) Dragon Drones - Stats are so low that it can be hard to make work, but the flying tag allows 8 dragon drones to occasionally be better than 8 scimitars. And they offer more potential offense than gliders due to dragon breath.
