Well I’m probably not the most qualified person to give an analysis of the new units, but I’m in the mood so I’ll give it a shot! Bear in mind that I’ve only played a handful of games with them, so I could be way off about some things. Here goes:
Borehole Patroller: On a very basic level, it’s a slightly more efficient attacker than a gauss cannon or a steelsplitter – perhaps about as efficent as a tarsier, but with more awkward tech – so if you’re in green/blue and have nothing better to buy for attack, go for it. However, the main purpose of the unit is to act as a buffer against one shot burst/freeze. You don’t want to lose these on defense on a regular turn, but if your opponent has to click drakes or frostbites or otherwise go ‘all in’ in order to kill them, they’re pretty good value. As such, they’re good defense to fill the gap between ‘maximum damage/freeze my opponent could do’ and ‘damage/freeze my opponent is probably going to do’, similarly to rhinos. Finally, since they produce two damage worth of pressure, they might occasionally be useful as a sort of mini grenade-mech on turns when its imperative to get to X attack to stop your opponent buying a crucial unit/ to allow you to get out an Arka Sodara/ to allow you to exactly kill their frontline units.
Tantalum Ray: This is essentially two units in one, and which one it is depends on whether you’re planning on going breachproof or not. If you’re not planning on going breachproof, then you’re probably clicking it every turn until it has 2hp, in which case the unit is equivalent to a fission turret plus a tarsier, without the fission turret’s end-of-life benefit, but for a cost that’s roughly 1 gold cheaper. That’s not a bad deal at all, especially if the rest of the random set means that you’d rather be in green than red anyway – and sometimes it’s just the most efficient attacker in the set. However, if you ARE planning on going breachproof, then you’ll want to use the click ability much less. I think not using the click ability at all will be too slow the vast majority of the time, but probably 2 or 3 clicks, depending on the health of the other units in your strategy (you want damage per health to be as equal as possible to prevent your opponent having any good targets), is usually optimal if you’re going breachproof. 2 clicks means that you’ve bought a tougher gauss cannon plus 2 (delayed) gauss charges for the price of a gauss cannon and a gauss charge – a slight improvement.
Thorium dynamo: Another alternative drone. In terms of gold its about 1 gold more efficient than just buying drones and a conduit. However, it’s main strength is that it only costs 1 energy, so in sets where you want to ramp up your econ quickly, it allows you to avoid wasting money on early engineers. You do have to be careful though – since it consumes your drones and has buildtime 2, the turn after you buy it you’ll have very little gold, which might give your opponent an opening to rush you, if the set is too fast. I probably wouldn’t buy it if I had no use for the green, unless I was also prepared to buy 2 conduits to allow it to use it’s click ability every turn – waiting three turns to use the click ability is a bit slow. The click ability does make it a nice combo with strategies that produce more green than you’d otherwise be able to spend, such as spamming fission turrets or rushing out a fast xaetron. Its breachproof properties are also not bad – less tough than wild drones but about the same as trinity drones, so it can certainly facilitate a breachproof strategy. It’s obviously a nonbo with anything else that consumes drones, like plasmafier or wincer, and finally, if you’re not going breachproof, remember that much like with vivid drones, it’s useful to leave a few normal drones around to be able to turn into forcefields in a pinch.
