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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Also, late game teleport is still good despite being not quite as overpowering as originally believed.

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.

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.