Factional differences in combat SCUs
As almost everyone certainly knows, SCUs are prized in longer lasting SupCom games for their Resource Allocation System Upgrade (RAS). Building this upgrade on as many SCUs as possible is by the far the most effective way to develop a huge late game economy, which is required to build the most powerful units and structures in any reasonable amount of time. Besides the RAS though, each of the factions also has a selection of combat related upgrades, which, properly used, can turn SCUs into your most fearsome weapon on the late game battlefield.
We’ll start with the basics. Even unupgraded, SCUs are quite powerful weapons. The Cybran and UEF SCUs cost 3000 mass each, and both have 20000 (20k) hitpoints. The Cybran SCU has a default weapon that does 375 damage per second (dps), while the UEF SCU’s weapon does 400 dps. In contrast, the Aeon SCU costs 5200 mass, but has 25k hitpoints and does 750 dps unupgraded. With these stats, a group of 10 or 12 unupgraded SCUs will annihilate hordes of siege bots, and so they are excellent for base defense, especially in defending against air drops behind your front lines.
However, SCUs only really shine when they have a full set of combat upgrades. For most upgrades, mass costs are the only ones that are relevant. Some upgrades do have a substantial energy cost, however, which I will make note of.
First, lets look at the Aeon SCU. It has the very effective Stability Suppressant Upgrade, which is built in the right arm upgrade slot. This costs 2550 mass and 600k energy, but gives the SCU a damage radius of 4. What this means is that against a typical formation of siege bots, each shot will damage roughly 4 to 6 individual targets. Unassisted, this upgrade costs 5333 energy per second to build at full speed. This is the limiting cost, since the best way to upgrade SCUs is normally by assisting one SCU with 10 or more others. For this upgrade, this would cost just too much energy to be affordable in most situations. However, the Stability Suppressant is still well worth it, as it gives the SCU tremendous damage dealing capabilities. A group of about 6 SCUs with this upgrade can kill literally 5 or 6 siege bots per second.
The Aeon SCU is the only one which doesn’t have a combat upgrade available for the left arm upgrade slot. However, for the torso upgrade, you are given a choice. The System Integrity Compensator gives the SCU a regeneration of 350 hitpoints (hp) per second, which is significant. It costs 1500 mass. The alternative is to go through 2 levels of shield upgrades to end up with a 25k hp shield. The total cost for this 2650 mass and also a large energy cost of 600k for the second shield upgrade. In most practical situations, the shield is probably somewhat better, as the SCU would need to take 350 or more dps for over a minute for the regeneration upgrade to give as many hp as the shield upgrade. However, the regen upgrade is substantially cheaper, both in mass and energy, and is probably the better overall choice.
Next, we have the Cybran SCUs to look at. The combat abilities of these are quite weak compared to the other two. They have no shield upgrade, and no area of effect damage upgrade. This is particularly nasty, since the Cybran SCU suffers from severe firing inaccuracy while moving. Basically, you need your SCUs to stand still to be able to hit anything ACU sized or smaller with any reliability.
On its right arm, the Cybran SCU gets the Focus Converter Upgrade, which brings their dps up to 750 (Correction: 1625). The mass cost is only 1000, but the energy cost is 400k. A shorter build time means this upgrade costs 5333 energy per second, which is as bad as the Stability Suppressant. On its left arm, the SCU can build the EMP Charge upgrade. Unfortunately, the usefulness of this is limited, especially for 3000 mass and 600k energy. The only saving grace given to the Cybran SCU is their excellent Self Repair System upgrade. For the relatively mild cost of 2250 mass and only about 100k energy, the Cybran SCU gains a 600 hp per second regeneration. This may not sound like much, but it makes Cybran SCUs remarkably difficult to kill.
Finally, there are the UEF SCUs. On the right arm, they get the High Explosive Ordinance upgrade, which gives the SCUs weapon a damage radius of 4, the same as the Aeon Stability Suppressant. At 3400 mass and 800k energy, it is very expensive, but still well worth it. For 1000 mass and 200k energy, the UEF can get the Advanced Cooling Upgrade in its left arm slot. This effectively doubles the SCU’s dps to 800. Finally, for only 2000 mass and less than 100k energy, the Personal Shield upgrade can be built in the torso slot. This gives the the SCU an impressive 42k hp shield, at an energy cost much less than the Aeon 25k hp shield. The UEF SCU can also upgrade this to the Shield Generator Field, which can be used to protect additional targets near the SCU. However, this upgrade does not improve the shield health at all, and it costs 6000 mass and 600k energy. It is thus probably not useful in a group of combat SCUs.
Whew! That is a lot of information to digest. Read on, however, for some useful comparions between the 3 factions:
Using the recommendations for upgrades made above, we get the following costs for each fully loaded SCU. For the Aeon SCU with Stability Suppressant and System Integrity Compensator: 9250 mass. For the Cybran SCU with Self Repair System and Focus Converter: 6250 mass. For the UEF SCU with Personal Shield, Advanced Cooling, and High Explosive Ordinance: 9400 mass. For each of these configurations, there is one upgrade with a substantial (limiting) energy cost. Also, for an additonal 1750 mass and another energy expensive upgrade, the Aeon SCU could be given a 25k hp shield instead of the System Integrity Compensator.
From the costs and effectiveness of each upgrade, we can draw some conclusions about the combat effectiveness of each SCU. For one, the UEF’s seems to be clearly the best suited to heavy combat. Fully upgraded, it does 800 dps with an area of effect, and has a 42k hp shield on top of 20k standard hp. A more expensive Aeon SCU will do 750 dps with area of effect, and only have a 25k hp shield on top of 25k standard hp. The Aeon SCU with the System Integrity Compensator is slightly cheaper than the fully loaded UEF SCU, but 350 hp per second pales in comparison to an additional 37k total hp. Even in the most favorable circumstance, it would take the Aeon SCU almost 2 minutes to regenerate as many hitpoints as the shield gives to the UEF SCU. Of course, the Cybran SCu also does 750 dps, but with no area of effect and the inability to hit most targets while moving. Its 600 hp per second regeneration is nice, but the SCU just does not do enough damage to compete with the UEF or Aeon SCUs.
That about wraps up this monster article. It was long, but I hope you find it useful. I would definitely encourage everyone to try out some combat SCUs in their next game, if they haven’t already. I didn’t compare combat SCUs to other weapons here, but they can be very powerful assault troops.
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I disagree. I say Cybran SCUs are more usefull. With regen upgrade(which you can get really early) they just won’t die vs anything but t2 pd. If sabs are swarming them simply dance them for a few seconds and they are back at full health they make excellent firebase builders to.
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:29 pm
where do you find these damage and hitpoint values?
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
There is also AA upgrade for cybrans which can be quiet surprising for your opponent. I dont know if its dps is good but it worked for me a few times against groups of gunships. You should also mention teleport upgrade which cost is absurd be it won me a game at least twice.
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Laconic Youth: The SupCom Units Database. Learn it, live it, love it, worship it.
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
It seems like there are infinitely many topics to talk about when it comes to SCUs. Even confining myself to the main combat upgrades, I still ended up with a monster post.
Wuped: While it is true that Cybran SCUs have great survivability against siege bots, Aeon and UEF SCUs have literally about 5 times the damage potential against them, even if the Cybran SCU is standing still (which it needs to do to be able to actually hit siege bots).
June 22nd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
It was really interesting. That’s the kind of post I hope for on this blog.
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:18 pm
I play exclusively as Cybran and have found their SCU’s quite useful (not to imply that anyone was dismissing them entirely). There are a number of tactics that increase their usefulness when you have the Self Repair System upgrade.
As was mentioned above, a few seconds of dancing will effectively bring the SCU back to full health at which point he can stand still for accuracy and do damage- then repeat.
A similar tactic is very effective at attacking PDs: You move your SCU within range and let it do as much damage as possible until he is almost dead, then pull him back and soon enough he is ready to go back in. This chips away at defenses with no additional cost on your part (unlike your opponent, who will have to rebuild/repair). This expands well if you have more than one upgraded SCU; you can move one or more in to attack and then move in a second group of SCU’s to take their place as the first one(s) recharge
You also have an advantage if your opponent is not aware that you have upgraded (and SRS is far less obvious to your opponent than shields would be). So when your SCU kills 10 of his SABs he thinks “well he must be nearly dead by now” and sends in 10 more, which of course gets the same result as before because your SCU has already regenerated.
All this fits in nicely with Cybran’s focus on hit and run tactics.
On a final note, the EMP upgrade:
I do agree that it is not very useful in most situations. But consider this- with a single shot from an SCU with this upgrade, the target is stunned for about six seconds (perhaps more?). And with very heavy micro you can target one unit then the next keeping an entire wave of units constantly stunned. In Sandbox I managed to kill a group of 20+ SABs head-on with only a single SCU using this tactic. Additionally, with this one upgrade you will defeat or stalemate any other SCU in the game (upgraded or not) when faced one on one. I included “or stalemate” because without the damage enhancement upgrade you cannot kill the other SCU if they have Self Repair System, as the DPS is less than their repair rate. But that just goes to show how awesome Self Repair system is.
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Total_Inhalation: Thanks for the tips. I definitely agree that the Cybran SCU has its uses, especially when microed properly. I guess I didn’t make this explicit, but I was thinking more about the use of groups of SCUs for this post, where microing each SCU individually is out of the question.
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Curious: My Cybran SCUs are able to kill Fatboys in about three shots. I’m not sure exactly which upgrades I give them but I can tell you I don’t give them RAS and I do give them stealth and cloak. So there is SOME sort of weapon upgrade in effect or they just have a powerful weapon against experimentals. I’ll make a quick replay of this if you want.
June 23rd, 2007 at 6:15 am
Grokmoo: Unfortunately you are correct, en masse Cybran SCUs aren’t very devastating. I just tested if EMP works against experimentals or ACUs – it doesn’t. This narrows the window of time in which they are useful. However, getting one or more into the resource farm of your enemy would still be devastating at any point in the game if there are no strat bombers or spammed Soul Rippers nearby. But I imagine that is true for any factions upgraded SCU.
Off topic- I would like to mention that I have learned more from casual “matter of fact” statements made on Supcomtalk than i have from any of the many strategy guides I have read thus far. Keep up the good work!
June 23rd, 2007 at 8:55 am
Your dps note on the upgraded Cybran SCU is a little off though grokmoo. The Focus converter change’s the damage value of each shot to 750 wich in account with the high ROF the cybran scu has gives it a dps of 1250.
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:29 pm
The UEF SCU’s shield-field upgrade is very useful in groups. With a bunch of these SCU’s in formation they become this huge HP-monster.
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:05 pm
You are quite right, Cauldr0n. Thanks for the catch.
June 23rd, 2007 at 6:06 pm
SCU upgrades are expensive but being a UEF player I naturally have a liking towards their SCU and the shield upgrade in particular, i view it like this… SCU costs 3K mass 40K energy Shield costs 2K masss 93,750 for a total cost of 5K mass and 133,750 energy which gives it 62,000 HP’s(20K+42K SP’s) it regenerates quickly when out of combat.
Now this is the part I like…
Monkeylord 31,500 Mass 315000 energy HP’s 65,000
Now i know the Damage between SCU’s and Monkeylords is way different but SCU’s automatically take the target priority of enemy units, and with your SCU dancing/tanking 62K points of damage your SAB’s get do quite alot of damage unharmed
(even factoring the cost of the Quantum gate of 1,200 mass is 12,000 energy it’s cheaper deal) Anyway thats my take on the situation
June 24th, 2007 at 7:40 am
Actually, the DPS of the Cybran subcommander is 1625. The new damage is a new damage MOD, meaning it is added on. Hence we end up with 975 damage every 0.6 seconds, which results in 1625 DPS. Nowak’s website does not make its new DPS clear, the original 225 damage every 0.6 sec for 375 DPS turns into 975 damage, which is just over four times more, resulting in just over four times that DPS.
The EMP is area of effect and can be used to stun large groups of enemy subcommanders and units, this means that even if the subcommander misses when its moving, you still get a large stun effect. Against UEF subcommanders, once you get a hit on an actual unit through its shield, the whole of the rest of the group can be stunned at once, and same with Aeon subcommanders. This means that once you break a single subcoms shielding, youve won, even if most of your subcoms are dead. Infact, the EMP is possibly the most powerful combat subcommander upgrade, which allows a single Cybran subcommander to take on many counterparts and be victorious. Especially effective against SABs when you have Self Repair. I am not sure of its effectiveness against Experimentals, but I am not going to speculate without having done field tests.
June 24th, 2007 at 7:41 am
About the above: you can easily test the focus converters damage per projectile in a game and it is clearly about 1000, firing every 0.6 seconds as stated on Nowak’s website.
June 24th, 2007 at 9:54 am
I mentioned above that I tested EMP against experimentals and it does not work. (tested on ML Fatboy and GC).
And I cannot beilieve how i missed the fact that EMP has area of effect! Thanks for the info.
However you are incorrect in assuming that the Aeon shield needs to go down before EMP will effect them – it works even through the shielding. The UEF “Shield Generator Field” upgrade WILL stop EMP from working but only because the shield extends farther from the SCU than EMP’s AOE (kinda rhymes huh). But if a SAB is standing behind the shield while the Cybran SCU with EMP is hitting the shield – the SAB will still get frozen.
June 24th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Cybran EMP can defeat bubble shielded UEF SCU’s by simply walking the Cybran SCU through the shield. Once underneath, the UEF SCU has no additional shielding and will be stunned.
In an upgraded SCU v SCU battle, Cybran>>>>>>>All.
However, every SCU, even the Aeon, are useful. Cybrans are best vs mobile units because of the huge damage, regen, and EMP. UEF are incredible at assaulting fixed defenses. The bubble shield allows them to create firebases much more easily than the other races. They are also superb at base defense, creating shielding that is even resistant to Mavor shells. Aeon SCU’s are certainly the weakest, and are very inefficient for RAS because of the high cost of each SCU. But for combat purposes they are excellent, and a force of combat ready Aeon SCU’s will come on line much faster than for the other races because they require no damage upgrade. Fully upgraded, their cost and combat ability is similar to other SCU’s.
June 24th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Having not really done combat SCU vs combat SCU tests, I wasnt aware the effect triggers even off shields.
However, Aeon SCU’s take more time and mass and have least DPS, so their lack of a damage upgrade isnt a great feature.
June 24th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
The Aeon damage is essentially identical to UEF with damage upgrade. In any event, a vanilla Aeon SCU beats vanilla Cybran or UEF, and beats UEF with damage upgrade or Shield. If you add regen to the Aeon SCU it beats a Cybran with regen or damage upgrade. They do not take more time to make than other SCU’s, in fact they take less overall since Cybran and UEF need at least 1 upgrade to be as good.
Also, late game teleport is still good despite being not quite as overpowering as originally believed.
June 25th, 2007 at 3:53 am
I did still more tests and:
Aeon with regen will beat Cybran with regen. But Aeon with regen will lose to a Cybran with damage upgrade. Also the vanilla Aeon will beat the vanilla Cybran. If you look at the numbers In every case the SCU that costs the most money wins. Considering that, I would say that SCU’s are fairly well balanced according to these tests
June 25th, 2007 at 10:36 am
All of this talk of SCU v SCU combat is interesting, and probably warrants a post of its own. However, the purpose of this post was to talk about SCUs being used in a base assault role, and in my experience this very rarely involves much in the way of combat upgraded SCU v combat upgraded SCU combat.
Total_Inhalation: Since the Cybran SCU does significantly more damage per shot and has a much better regen, one would expect it to win. However, I should point out that this isn’t really a test of general effectiveness, because a 1v1 encounter does not factor in the area of effect damage that the Aeon and UEF SCUs can get.
I should point out that the Aeon SCUs really aren’t inefficient with respect to the RAS upgrade. The Aeon RAS is the best, since it gives +18 mass/second (+15 for UEF, +12 for Cybran). The amount of energy per second is rarely if ever an issue past the first few SCUs. (except perhaps for a Cybran player building Scathi). An RAS upgraded UEF or Cybran SCU costs 9k mass and about 600k energy. An RAS upgraded Aeon SCU costs 11.2k mass and about 600k energy. In fact, if you are only considering the amount of mass per second output compared to mass input, the UEF SCU is the most efficient, followed very closely by the Aeon one. The Cybran SCU is then the least efficient.
As for the EMP upgrade, an area of effect certainly makes them brutal in SCU v SCU battles. However, for base assaults, I stand by my statement that it just isn’t a useful upgrade.
June 25th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Grokmoo: All true. I use sandbox tests as basic indication of strength. And it is true that the results cannot be directly applied to real game situations. There are so many variables that actual experience versus other humans is the only way to know a unit or tactic’s actual strength. Even then you certainly don’t have a definitive “how to win” tactic because you never know what your next opponent is going to do differently than your last.
I agree that Cybran SCU’s are not good at base sieging unless you get them out and upgraded relatively early, before your opponent has spammed PD and PD2. They still make a good damage sponge in conjunction with SABs up until the point where the enemy has virtually impenetrable base defenses (read: Fields of Isis).
One upgrade that I have found to be truly useless is the Nanite Missile System (back) for the cybran. Even though the tool tip calls it the “standard cybran missile system” it fires 1/4 as many shots per second as a myrmidon and costs 100 more mass and about 10 times the amount of energy. You would be much better off building SAMs wherever your SCU is attacking instead of getting the upgrade. You can also build 10 T2 AA, which would do 150 dps (compared to the upgrade’s 34 dps) while saving yourself 75000 energy as well.
June 25th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
@Grokmoo: You are wrong about Aeons having the best RAS. They have the worst. Cybran has the best. Energy may be easier to get than mass, but +800e/s is way more valuable than +6m/s. 800e/s is worth about 12 m/s when you feed it through T3 mass fab, even with no adjacency.
Furthermore, that extra 2200 mass that the Aeon SCU costs is extremely significant. It takes an Aeon SCU with RAS two more minutes to pay for its mass cost than the other two, and that’s not even considering that the others produce more energy and can therefore support more T3 massfabs.
As far as base assaults go, you are right that Cybrans are the weakest for this, but they are still quite powerful. UEF are the best because of the bubble shield, and Aeon are good because you can pump out large numbers of combat ready units without having to upgrade.
SCU’s are easily the most powerful base-assaulting units, even better than experimentals, SAB’s, or Strat Bombers (well, possibly not bombers). In any event, the thing that really puts them over the top is the death nuke. There is just no way to stop SCU spam indefinitely. No amount of PD can kill the same mass in SCU’s before they get to the front line, and once they do they have enormous splash, and enough damage that 2 of them will take out entire rows of PD.
June 27th, 2007 at 8:45 am
“Total_Inhalation: Since the Cybran SCU does significantly more damage per shot and has a much better regen, one would expect it to win. However, I should point out that this isn’t really a test of general effectiveness, because a 1v1 encounter does not factor in the area of effect damage that the Aeon and UEF SCUs can get.”
Of course, the EMP splash just makes sure they arent shooting back while you rape them one by one. Its like paralysis! :D- but you are right it doesnt work on buildings.