Viability of SCRAMBLERs?

Questions
1

Of all of the high ELO matches that I have seen, very few (if not any) using scramblers. I know that they can be used great defensively, but it is very hard to predict opponent’s attack’s placement and timing. Also, they take away from your own ability to break down opponents defenses due to them not being able to attack. I read 8’s match of the week on the algorithm that only used scramblers to outlast the opponent to round 100, which was a fun idea that works well on some EMP attacks, but doesn’t work great all around and thus had a low ELO. Does anyone else have ideas on how scramblers can be used to consistently beat most opponents, or is there a general reasoning why they are unused other than reasons I have already mentioned?

2

  1. Scramblers can be better than pings for scoring if the units need to past near a destructor: pings, since they have lower health, would die but a group of scrambler can survive, and so reduce the opponent health, which can be better than the small damage the pings or EMPs would do to the enemy defenses.

  2. When they self-destruct, scramblers can deal a lot of damage.

  3. They can be used in synergy with EMPs: with their high health the scramblers can shield a group of EMPs following them

3

Scramblers are very powerful when used correctly and imo the largest source of untapped potential. They require a bit of extra work to get going though. The scrambler is one of the driving forces behind my gamma_14 algorithm, which I made several weeks ago and still has a 1995 rating. This replay shows the potential of scramblers in an EMP line strat against a 1836 ranked algo.

https://terminal.c1games.com/watch/693316

Good luck with coding!

4

When I first started playing I tried to do the scrambler EMP strategy but couldn’t get it to work because they would stack, and since destructors destroy things with the least health first, it would kill the EMP and then the scrambler, voiding the use of using the scrambler to block. That is a cool use of filters to get them staggered kkroep, I will have to try that sometime. Thanks guys