The ultimate IFV and scavenger guide.
Greetings.
I am writing this guide as a tribute to one of the most iconic units in RTS history (according to me), the IFV and my favorite stolen tech unit, the scavenger. This unit adapts to any garrisoned infantry inside and essentially becomes a completely different unit altogether. In the vanilla game every infantry had the same dome like model on the IFV, but in mental omega each version got its own voxel. However, due to limitations many different kinds of infantry shared the same IFV versions because the developers encountered a limitation on IFV variations. Now that 3.3.3 is out that limit is no more and now every infantry has its own IFV... BEHOLD:
First row from left to right
GI
The basic machinegun that everyone knows. It is quite effective against infantry and has reasonable damage against light vehicles, notice how I said 'quite effective' instead of 'makes all T1 infantry useless'. It now kills a knightframe in 8 seconds flat, making it still stronger than halftracks and tigrs but the gattling out DPS's it now but is weaker.
GGI
With a new model in 3.3.3 and two extra rockets this thing has become a lot more effective than it used to be. Shooting four stronger rockets per burst this thing now has 2.5 times the anti air power then a regular IFV against wolfhounds, it also fares much better against vehicles but regular tanks and numbers of GGI's are still the better option for that. Just think of this as a regular IFV with double damage for an extra 250.
Conscript
It has the same weapon as the GI IFV which is understandable, it would be quite... odd if this was intentionally weaker then the GI.
Flak trooper
Now this thing is just glorious. The simple act of putting a 120$ flak trooper inside an IFV turns this into an anti air beast that could easily rival the dedicated T3 anti air units. A single flak IFV has better AA abilities then 3 tigr's combined, almost 4. It also trounces rocketeers and such. The only drawback is that it can't shoot at ground units, but this is still the most powerful T1 combination you can find. It almost out DPS's an aeroblaze, killing a thor gunship in 8 seconds while aeroblaze does it in 6.
Initiate
Now shoots little flames instead of bullets, it is slightly stronger then the GI version with around 15% more damage but the difference isn't that huge.
Archer
After the glorious victory of the flak trooper, the archer absolutely pales in comparison. The ifv shoots 2 archer projectiles in burst but they are weaker than normal archer projectiles. Not only are 2 regular 220$ archers stronger then this it also gets beaten by the GGI IFV in all aspects. The archer is not worth it, it just bounces of the enemies.
Engineer
A repair vehicle, everyone knows this. It has some odd behaviour though.
Medic
A ranged healing beam, it has the exact HPS as a normal medic though. The range is decent, the same as the engineer version.
Dogs&spook
No effect on IFV.
Clairvoyant
A clairvoyant gives the IFV a ranged stun beam much like how it used to work in the jackal before that got removed. It has the same range so this essentially makes this a 3.3.2 pseudo jackal.
Desperate driver
Putting a desperate driver inside an IFV makes a miniature bomb truck. It has around half the damage of a regular bomb truck but much lower splash radius. Two of these will take out war factories and refineries and such so giving desperate drivers to your ally isn't the worst of ideas considering it is still much stronger then what a regular desperate driver will do.
Second row
Seal
Now this thing has become quite the powerful weapon of infantry destruction, not only does it trounce the GI IFV it also does 80% more damage than a regular seal on foot with the same range.
Siege Cadre
It has more range then normal cadres and does a bit more damage. It can make for a decent makeshift artillery but other than that it has little uses.
Pyro
Essentially a borillo that can shoot while moving. I compared the DPS and a pyro IFV has only slightly less damage than a borillo with around a 10% difference. They make for decent building harassers.
Tesla trooper
Tesla IFV are essentially T2 tesla cruisers, they have around 75% the damage of normal tesla cruisers and have the emp effect aswell. Their range is just a tiny bit less though, a one tile difference. Still pretty good.
Crazy Ivan
Both awesome and disappointing at the same time. Crazy ivans make IFV's shoot ivan bombs at enemies with an arcing mortar like projectile. They shoot every 3 seconds and with their high speed can make for some excellent mayhem. They leave war factories and radar spires with just 10% of health left, so combining them with 2 pyro IFV's can make for some excellent mayhem. The disappointing part? Even though it uses an arcing projectile, it can't shoot over walls... If only they could...
Mortar Quad
Launches bombs just like the quad itself, they do 33% more damage and have the same range. They aren't that amazing since quads have rather lackluster dps anyway. They can shoot over walls though, unlike the crazy Ivan.
Brute
Creates a cannon with quite a punch, doesn't create a drill like what I hoped for. Still, it does more damage than a rhino tank but slightly less than a qilin and is ineffective against infantry. All in all, you have better options for dealing with tanks.
Dunerider
Launches toxic grenades in large arcs, much like mortar quads. They have twice as much damage as normal duneriders but it has a drawback, the large arc makes moving targets harder to hit and just like the crazy ivan, it can't shoot over walls despite having large arcs.
Bloatick
Makes for a suicide unit, unfortunately the damage of the bloatick IFV is equal to a regular bloatick and it also has the same splash. It is faster then bloaticks but all in all it's not worth the money in IFV's.
Sniper
A sniper vehicle which can shoot while moving, it shoots 33% faster than a deployed sniper but it has a drawback. It uses the same almost useless bullets as a sniper, they can't even 1 shot initiates and archers... You are much better of with seal IFV's unless you are fighting morales or something
Virus
It makes a mobile virus. It shoots the same darts and has the same range, but it is a lot faster and has more health which makes this pretty powerful against large numbers of infantry.
Suppressor
It just shoots the suppressor projectiles. It has the same range and rate of fire so using this is only useful when the enemy has tons of anti infantry.
Duplicator
A suicide unit much like the bloatick, although instead of toxic it creates the nano explosion similar to the devourer ability. It does have a bonus that devourer doesn't have. All infantry killed are turned into more duplicators. Unfortunately they don't turn into IFV's with duplicators inside which is disappointing but it can still destroy large quantities of soldiers with a single detonation. This is basically what the bloatick should have been.
Third row
Chrono Legionnaire
Don't bother with this one, it creates exactly the same weapon that the legionnaires have except they can't even teleport. It takes 10 seconds to erase a brute or tigr so they won't really make a difference considering these IFVs cost 2000 to make. At least they don't get killed by 100$ spooks though...
Riot Trooper
Shoots the riot grenades over a long distance, more than regular riot troopers. It only shoots the grenade though and as a result it has less than 50% of the single target dps that riot troopers on foot have. All in all, you're much better having riot troopers on foot, they are durable as hell with those shields lasting much longer then the IFV's will.
Desolator/Eradicator
Now these make for some good IFV's. One of the big downsides of desolators is their low speed and IFV's solve this. The weapon that this creates also shoots 40% faster they eradicators with the same damage so they make for scary damage. Desolators and Eradicators make the same IFV even though eradicators deal more damage than desolators.
Stalker
Creates a powerful siege weapon much stronger than what the siege cadre does. The projectiles have the same range and do the same amount of damage as regular stalkers but the IFV does shoot them 20% faster. A drawback is that the IFV doesn't have the anti infantry weapon that normal stalkers have. Stalker IFV's are much faster though and make for excellent quick base harassment being able to kill a pandora hub in 7 shots. They are expensive to make though, but stalkers are only 1500$ because of cloning vats anyway.
Epsilon Adept/Elite
Creates a fast ramming anti infantry vehicle with the adepts psychic storm as weapon. It has more anti infantry potential then the bloatick and is reuseable to boot. More reasons why the bloatick makes a bad IFV. It's potential is not as great as the duplicator though, but there is an adept inside in case something expensive is chasing you.
Hijacker/spy/saboteur/infiltrator
These all create the standard GI IFV with the same appearance. I kind of wished there would be some variety with this but at the same time you can trick people with unexpected infiltrators, if the IFV's aren't killed in the battle...
Arsonist
Shoots arsonist charges much like the crazy ivan does (also, doesn't shoot over walls despite having an arcing projectile) but with a slower rate of fire, around 33% slower which is still much faster than the normal arsonists, around twice as fast. I have also noticed these IFV's attacks don't trigger any EVA warnings so if the IFV's with their high speed can go across a base unchecked, it could be quite bad if the enemy doesn't realize these are arsonist charges... Except... can't shoot over walls, so not everything will go down.
Libra clone
Creates a weapon that shoots the weak projectiles in very fast burst of 3, also looks completely identical to libra's to keep up with the theme. The burst doesn't allow you to spread across infantry as nicely since all 3 shots are fired so fast but to make up for this the total rate of fire compared to a libra clone is at least 50% higher, so 50% more dps. For a weak libra clone this doesn't make that much difference but for a certain other unit this makes quite the big difference. And that one isn't the only one.
Fourth row/heroes
Tanya
Once a broken tool of endless kiting, the mercury IFV was used to strike fear in the heart of entire infantry armies. Those who dared chase could not, since the IFV is fast but those who did come close were met with a loyal army of defending abrams and fucking nothing else because USA. These days are no more. Tanya inside an IFV now creates a duplicate of tanya's weapon with the exact same stats. It can serve as a fast armed transport into the base of the enemy.
Volkov
Despite literally stun locking up to 4 units in its current state while being the most durable infantry in the world Volkov's IFV isn't that good in comparison. Much like Tanya, it creates a duplicate of Volkov's weapon but this time without the anti structure tesla bombs. Overall Volkov is much better off on foot then in an IFV.
Chitzkoi
It's just a seal IFV!!
WHERE IS THE DEATH DRILL?
Morales
There is a reason why Morales is not allowed to shoot from catastrophes. And that reason is this. Not only does an IFV give Morales extra speed, durability and the ability to shoot while moving , it also gives double rate of fire. You read that right, i tested it. It went from 7 to 3.5 seconds. The only drawback is that the IFV can't call airstrikes making it useless against buildings, but you just evacuate to do that anyway.
Yunru
Yunru inside an IFV creates a fast mobile emp weapon. It does not shoot earthquakes like I hoped it would but it can still serve as a good replacement for those who rather want 3 eradicators inside a centurion. Oh, and yunru has also gotten the Morales treatment as far as IFV's are concerned having received a certain multiplier regarding fire rate. DOUBLE RATE OF FIRE IS A BIG DEAL.
Malver
The morales treatment has once more been administrated except this time it's actually balanced. Malver's IFV is not invisible like I hoped, nor does it give crippling debuffs to all nearby. But double rate of fire and speed on a unit that already has very nasty damage can be very usefull... maybe. There are alot of drawbacks here. But this thing is terrifying when iron curtained.
Rhan
Remember that special Rhan that gets used in the campaign? You know, the one with like triple the rate of fire then normal Rhan? Remember him? Do you also remember a certain theme that's happening with IFV's and heroes? Because this is not one of them thank goodness. Rahn IFV is a duplicate, much like Volkov and tanya.
It's fast I guess...
Libra
Putting Libra inside an IFV gives her 50% more dps as already said with the clones. What I didn't say is that the high speed of the burst makes hit and run easier as well as more effective. Vehicle turning is the only reason not to put libra in an IFV, that and mind control, chaos, morales, hijackers and two fast planes of any kind. Those are the drawbacks for all of these hero IFV's I guess.
Chumps
Alas, these are the ones who could not create IFV's. 90% of foehn infantry was inept and could not fit inside, and then there is siegfried. I shed no tears over siegfried, if siegfried actually had an IFV any problems with the mercury IFV would be nothing in comparison...
scavengers
Now that the IFV's are all seen it is now time for my favorite stolen tech unit. The scavenger is an incredibly durable vehicle capable of crushing vehicles with insane speed for its health but its weapon is what makes it really special. It first fires a moderately effective anti tank/building beam until an enemy vehicle gets killed by it. Then it transforms and gets a completely new weapon loosely based on the vehicle. This unit is very inspired by the hammer tank from red alert 3 which had a very similar feature but what makes the scavenger unique and better is that all the stolen weapons are upgraded in order to fit a 2000$ stolen tech unit whereas the hammer tank just copied the weapons.
An interesting extra (and annoying) fact is that you can't force fire your own units to get specific weapons, the beam does no damage and force firing with other units doesn't help either. Mind controlled units do count which is how I managed to find all of this. With the help of a trapped mastermind and a chrono prison I managed to test every single vehicle in the game and found all of the following variants:
Basic cannon
Source: all main battle tanks, minermite, driller and hazequad.
This one is actually not that great but it wasn't always the case. The scavenger has a basic cannon and shoots at the same speed as a rhino tank. It only has 40% more damage than a rhino tank which really isn't good for a stolen tech unit. This unit appears to be nerfed in 3.3.3 because I vividly remember that the basic cannon used to shoot much faster than it does now. Overall I would advise against taking this scavenger, it's not great.
Chaingun
Source: all supportive T1 units, terror drones, fury drones, repair drones and humvees.
This weapon turns the scavenger into an incredibly powerful anti infantry unit. It has a large splash radius and can shoot at aircraft to boot with moderately good damage. This chaingun has my seal of approval as it absolutely trounces the anti infantry capabilities of any of its sources by a factor of at least 4.
Double cannon
Source: non foehn miners, mirage tanks, zephyrs, shadow tanks, marauders, speeder, roadrunner, raccoon, sodar array and sweeper.
A powerful dual anti tank weapon. It fares good against armor and does a better job than the basic cannon but the difference isn't as huge as I would like it to be. It would appear this weapon is around 60% stronger than the basic cannon. But it still isn't that amazing.
Incendiary cannon
Source: borillo, armadillo, burratino, bomb truck, bomb buggy and scud launcher.
Shoots rapid fire bombs pretty darn effective against infantry and buildings. It's splash and damage appear to be about 90% as strong as an armadillo which is a very powerful unit in its own right. But there are two things that make this scavenger much stronger than the armadillo: range and the ability to shoot while moving. I also noticed that bomb trucks don't explode when a scavenger steals its weapon.
Tesla cannon
Source: tesla cruiser, catastrophe and wormqueen.
Makes a rapid fire tesla cannon, it's shoots around 3 times per second and gives a dps about triple that of a tesla cruiser with the same emp effect (which is also much more noticeable with the higher rate of fire). This is a very powerful unit capable of taking on almost every ground unit on its own but I have also found a hidden feature in the area of veterancy. When this scavenger gets heroic its constant stream of tesla gets replaced by burst of 3 shots every 3 seconds which according to math and my tests is weaker than the original! This might be the first unit where getting heroic is bad, you literally lose 50% of the dps.
Plasma cannon
Source: mastodon, tarchia and mechalodon
Creates a plasma cannon similar to the mastodon. It's damage and splash radius isn't as high as the mastodon (dps is 70%, splash is 3 tiles instead of 5) but it has two giant benefits that the mastodon doesn't. No charge up and high movement speed. These two attributes make this a very useful scavenger to have against any kind of tanks.
Rapid laser cannon
Source: abrams, aeroblaze, athena and blizzard tank
Makes a rapid laser cannon. It is effective against all targets and can shoot at aircraft. It has better performance against aircraft than the chaingun while also holding the same anti infantry power (although it has no splash). This makes for a useful jack of all trades unit.
Toxic pill launcher
Source: tyrant, oxidizer and plague splatter
Shoots toxic pills identical to the tyrant's weapon. It has a rate of fire around 70% of a normal tyrant so this weapon is actually weaker, the scavenger has around 4 times the survivability though.
Confusion ray
Source: irritator
Unique to only the irritator, this weapon is very similar to the deviatress except it's range is a bit less but it more than makes up for it with fire rate. It fires a beam every 0.4 seconds which is at least 3 times as fast as the deviatress.
Prism cannon
Source: prism tank
The second completely unique weapon, doesn't the prism tank just feel special? This weapon is completely identical to the prism tank but with less range. The scavenger does have around 6 times the survivability than a prism so it's still pretty useful.
Radiation cannon
Source: nuwa and syckle
Creates krukov's weapon but much better. Like krukov the beam has a high splash radius and gives the 'irradiation' effect to enemies hit melting entire crowds in seconds. Not only is the scavenger much more durable and doesn't stop firing to throw smoke, it also shoots much faster at about twice per second. The scavenger becomes an absolute monster with this weapon completely annihilating everything except structures in seconds. Even units immune to radiation get damaged by this weapon for some reason. This is easily the strongest of scavengers.
Advanced beam
Source: hailstorm, future tank, charon, gharial, shadray, archelon, ramwagon, magnetron, colossus and iron dragon
A powerful beam pretty similar to the normal scavenger, it has twice as much damage and can't shoot infantry. A very special feature I've noticed is that the beam kills crews... After 2 seconds of continuous fire on a vehicle the crew gets killed. Every vehicle that can be emptied by morales gets cleared like this. A very interesting new feature added in 3.3.3, they didn't used to do this.
Advanced ARO launchers
Source: grumble, sentinel, apocalypse, gehenna, quickshifter, phantasm and seitard ballista
Shoots rapid projectiles similar to a salamander. It is very powerful against tanks, buildings and aircraft but ineffective against infantry. Damage wise it appears to be twice as strong as a regular salamander, which means very strong.
Chump squad
Source:mcv's, planes, chinook, chrono prison. Battle tortoise, mastermind, drakuv, centurion, madman, boidmachine and other scavengers.
These do nothing, no weapons get added. You actually can't even target landed aircraft. And I lied a little bit, epic units do give something, the basic cannon... which is still worthy of chump squad.
