Oh so many.
Both Planets
- The humble Unloader (and its Erekir equivalent, the Unloader Duct) lets you pull resources from another block's storage and inputs instead of just the output. This lets you cut out a ton of infrastructure when setting up multiple factories that take the same inputs, and doesn't have the same issue with diminishing returns that routers have, making it easier to scale up.
- While only allowed by default on Serpulo (for good reason), core unloading lets you quickly set up factories around where all of your resources are supposed to go anyway, and in Campaign, you can take resources with you from your well-stocked sectors and start building units even when you haven't set up any mines or other field resources yet.
Serpulo
- The Nova. Cheap tier 1 unit? It's a ground unit which can 'boost' allowing it to fly, it has healing shots and auras that make groups of them very hard to kill as long as you can retreat somewhere safe, and it out ranges most turrets, allowing you to snipe them at your leisure. The unit is so obscenely powerful that the number one strategy for early game maps is 'abuse Novae to slip around turrets'.
- The Zenith. Made by upgrading a Flare twice via reconstructor, this is an air unit that can outrange nearly all anti-air turrets, allowing you to pick them off without fear of retribution. Add in a high hp pool and homing missiles, and you get a unit that, just like the Nova, is so powerful that it can carry you through the entire mid game.
- The entire naval branch is a gamebreaker on maps with abundant water. This is balanced out by the fact these maps are pretty rare.
- The Risso is a naval Zenith with slightly less health. Remember how obscenely powerful the Zenith was? Add in more damage but lesser health, and you have a unit which is near impossible to stop in large groups without very high level turrets. Just to remind you, this is a tier 1 unit you can make without any fancy tech.
- The Minke has two Rissos worth of damage, health and range, basically cancelling nearly all the issues the Risso actually had. Remember, two of these are still cheaper than one Zenith.
- The Bryde has even more range, now outranging all but three of the games turrets. And these turrets are all either incredibly late game (Foreshadow, Spectre) or near worthless at very long range (Ripple). It's also a floating artillery barrage with automatic guns stuck to it. This allows it to bombard critical infrastructure while staying a healthy distance away from anything that could scratch it, making defense a painful attempt to take down the unit before the damage becomes irreversible. Fun fact; if the unit is in deep water, ground units will not even be able to hit it. How fun.
- The Sei is said to be the weakest tier-4 naval unit. This is because it no longer has a massive range, preventing it from sniping important things from far away. To compensate, it is now a floating machine of pure death, with Swarmer missiles and massive guns instantly annihilating anything caught in its smaller radius. It is capable of beating out the Reign in raw firepower, which should give you a good idea of how painful it is. If you have literally any defensive lines near the sea, prepare for them to either be ground to dust or take heavy beatings. At this point, using surge Cyclones or Foreshadows plus a very strongly supported defense is the only way of preventing this thing from vaporizing the front line.
- And finally, the Omura. Have you ever wondered what having a naval Foreshadow would be like? Well, now you know. It barely outranges the Foreshadow, officially making it impossible to destroy the thing with turrets if the person controlling it is skilled, fires a massive piercing laser that, unlike the Foreshadow, hits multiple targets, allowing it to wipe the floor with any defense near it, and automatically generates Flares to go harass any units that try to actually hit it.
- If you know how to program in Assembly-like languages, logic processors allow a fine degree of control over the game's behavior that would be impossible to do by hand. Just as a start...:
- You can sync turrets to each other or to the player so that they all fire on the same target.
- You can rig fast-but-weak units like the Flare to act as cargo transports, flying resources to and from remote locations without having to build conveyors or expensive Mass Drivers to get to them. You can even go further and weaponize them by having them pick up Pyratite or Blast Compound and have them suicide-bomb the enemy's core, using the payload to blow it up or set it on fire, although this is harder to do in later versions as anti-air turrets can now destroy ships before they hit the ground.
- You can teach your support units to mine resources they normally wouldn't (i.e. sand or scrap for Monos, coal for Polys, etc.) and take them somewhere other than your core (like straight to a silicon smelter so you can use them to build more mining units).
- You can control power generators to shut off when your batteries are at capacity, conserving fuel resources that you can use for other things like silicon/graphite production or ammo. Likewise, Thorium and Impact Reactors can be made meltdown-resistant* by shutting them off and unloading their fuel when they're out of cryofluid, starting to overheat, or taking damage.
Erekir
- Sublimate turrets. While the game describes them as a flamethrower, in practice they're more like a chemical laser, firing a continuous beam of ozone or cyanogen that hits instantly and pierces both armor and multiple units, making it viable even against T5 units that can shrug off the damage from other 3x3 turrets. Basically, if you're familiar with Serpulo, picture the Fuse or Meltdown, but with continuous fire. It even has a quick enough turn radius (unlike the similar but single-target Lustre) to function as a point-defense against missiles. Anti-armor, anti-swarm, anti-air, anti-everything, and in a compact form with relatively low cost. What more could you want in a turret?
