New GDI unit – Orca Bomber – How good will it be?

Redwood just announced the Orca Bomber a new GDI unit, and it already has been added to the game. What is it, and will it be good?

Orca Bomber basic unit properties

• GDI unit from the Helipad for a cost of 100 Tiberium
• Can only attack ground (stronger against vehicles than infantry, but doesn't seem to matter much)
• It will automatically drop bombs once an opponent ground unit is on it's own hex, or any of the adjacent 6 hexes
• It has 6 charges (similar to Orca, MLRS) that it can fire in quick succession before needing to reload
• The attack will damage it's own hex and all adjacent 6 hexes and it will also damage your own units (friendly fire). Most damage is dealt on the hex of the bomber itself, but the damage to the adjacent hexes is significant.

I suggest you watch one of the videos at the end of the article to get a sense for it's speed, tankiness (hitpoints) and damage dealt. Some insights:

• It quickly shreds missile and laser squads en masse, so this type of anti air seems to be no option
• Same for masses of Pitbulls and Bikes, with some nuance:
• Particularly running bikes in will be impossible while the Orca Bomber still has bombs, as the bike needs to stand still for a second before it fires, and in that time, it dies
• Pitbulls might have a chance to run in, get a shot off whilst just taking two bombs, and run in again for another shot – yet, I did not get to test this so far
• Despite not being particularly strong against infantry, and Zone Troopers being strong against air, they win a 1on1 fight with a Zone Trooper! This is crazy, as a Zone Trooper should counter it more than vice versa, and a Zone Trooper is more expensive (120 Tib vs 100) and comes from a more expensive building (Tech Lab 120 vs Helipad 50)

So, how do you counter the Orca bomber?

1. The obvious counter is any air-antiair. Talons, Banshees and of course Hammerhead and Phantom. In a longer game, Talon and Banshee might not work well, as many Orca Bomber decks will have Hammerheads themselves, so if cost and time allows, they will be accompanied by one, and it's high hitpoints mean that they will take a while to kill it, so the Hammerhead would have plenty of time to kill them. But as long as no Hammerhead is out, especially boosted (Oxanna/Jackson commander abilities) Talons & Banshees seem viable.
2. You can try to abuse the autofire and reload time. For example, run some dogs in to trigger the bombs, and follow up with 2-3 pitbulls. This seems viable, but it's not easy. It needs good timing, and you need to dedicate 3-4 of your limited number of units to this exercise. And dogs plus two pitbulls (the absolute minimum) also already cost 90 Tib.

How does it compare against it's Nod counterpart, the Inferno?

• The Inferno seems a bit more hit & run with it's indirect range two, and being more fragile
• The Orca Bomber "must" run in – but considering it's high hitpoints, and the even bigger area-of-effect damage, this seems hardly a downside
• Pitbulls and Bikes can two-on-one Infernos, which seems nigh impossible for Orca Bombers
• And the Orca Bomber just costs 10 Tiberium more

Is the Orca Bomber overpowered?

Only time will tell. My gut feeling is that it depends on how much of a downside the autofire is in practice. Because other than that, it seems stronger than the Inferno, and this at nearly the same cost. 

I'm worried not just about raw strength, but the narrower range of potential counters. Against Infernos, Bikes/Pitbulls and situationally even missiles can be viable counters. The Orca Bomber seems to mandate having air-antiair, which in turn can be countered by Hammerheads.

On the other hand, the higher the player skill, the weaker the Orca Bomber should be, as you cannot prevent it from automatically firing. The Orca Bomber force-drops it's payload if an enemy unit is in range. As the unit needs to be balanced, this makes me believe that it will not be that great at high-level play, as it otherwise would probably be overpowered on low-level play.

It certainly might trigger a meta shift so that more decks make the choice to add some air-antiair, and more decks chose Phantom/Hammerhead. A risk is that high Orca Bomber adoption renders barracks/factory decks or even some ground tech (e.g. Juggernaut) decks less viable.

There's already two review videos out there by our productive Rivals YouTubers, if you want to spend some more time on these units, I recommend to watch them: