It's me again. So I have been trying to figure this out for a while. I personally think "Capitalist" In the chat, everyone says "Fascist" I wanna know what you think. (I hope this does not result in a flame war...)
I agree firetail, that's why I use capitalist for Outpost, as Hovers build fast regardless and are drain resources fast. However, as forge on the other hand, all the units build slow and are cheap, so I opt for fascist for the faster build speed. As capitalist, you can endlessly make glads if you want, but they build so slow without the build speed boost that they're useless unless your making an army of only gladiators (which would be destroyed by hovers easy).
However, groditz are killed very easily - whereas the only surefire way to take out phantoms is with sakatas. Also, phantoms are more damaging than groditz. AND, groditz have more units that trump them - chronite tanks, hover tanks, gladiators, massed romans, sakata spiders, and black queens kill groditz very easily, whereas phantoms are only weak against queens, aa, and to a certain extent scouts.
Phantoms cost more because they're a better unit overall. More damage, less danger of killage.
. . .however, phantoms do a lot of damage to ground & base. Groditz are only really useful as an anti-air unit, because they can only really kill marines and romans on the ground, and they have much less endurance. They're close in cost to phantoms, but in the end just can't match up for quality.
Last I checked, 5 phantoms vs. 5 groditz... 5 phantoms win.
Groditz are sub-par at anti-ground and sub-par at anti-air. They are a jack of all trades, master of none.
If I was playing outpost, I wouldn't waste resources on groditz, it's quite unfortunate but true, the only useful unit late game for outpost is the hover tank.
I mean, the fact that missiles exist prevents all units besides the hover and queen from being useful (missiles will one shot all outpost units save for hover+queen). And of course, queens are also weak against sakatas and hovers, so they in turn, are made useless as well.
Late game is pretty much a combo of hovers, phantoms, and sakatas. Sakatas are bar none the best anti-air unit in the game. Phantoms are air-based and anti-ground, Hovers are ground-based and anti-ground.
Still though, I'd much rather have phantoms than groditz, even if they less. Also, Groditz do cost 16 manpower, manpower is more important to an outpost player than money is to a forge player. Forge is always a balance between money and energy, if you have excess money, phantoms, if you have excess energy, sakatas. Meanwhile, Hovers eat up manpower for breakfast, so I wouldn't waste manpower on groditz.
Just to make my point on why Groditz aren't as valuable as phantoms in my opinion, I'll list the units that each unit is weak to.
Groditz: Chronite Tanks Snipers Hover Tanks Black Queens Phantoms (pound for pound, Phantoms beat Groditz every time) Gladiators Sakata Spiders (not that you'd ever use them though) Missiles
They destroy scouts pretty easily. Phantoms, however, cannot be topped by groditz most of the time.
Groditz are only weak to snipers when there's a huge group, they're naturally good against infantry...
Snipers outrange groditz, AND their weapons are anti-chronite. If you put a few snipers in the hands of a skilled player against some groditz in the hands of a skilled player, the snipers would win every time.
Yeah . . . a glad can kill 1 phantom and die by a 2nd one with no meditecs, so glads win out very slightly.
Groditz really aren't very good overall. Like Eddy said, they're jack of all trades, master of none. They aren't really "good" against particularly anything.
Jerry, I, as capitalist, beat you in 1 vs 1 :P I use capitalist for both outpost and forge.
That's cause i suck in 1 on 1s. Also, if you make buildings faster you'll get the resources before anyone else does. If you make units and structures faster, same thing. You stop your units when you want to and go back to producing earlier than anyone else building at the same rate. (Yes i know you'd have less resources but if you have a sufficient amount it doesn't matter). I am very tired -_-. 11 pm over here.