Somebody on TV Tropes says that Battlestations are broken. I can't edit it out because of Fast Eddie's tyranny having disabled my account. The reason why this deserves to be thrown into question is because any scenario involving "broken" Battlestations is likely biased results.
Let's take a look at each of the Battlestation's appearances:
- The Guns of Tiki Bay - Xylvania has two of these things around, and the objective is to destroy them both. Thing is, you can destroy the first one with the Gunship you get from taking out the 2 Ack-Ack Vets, and the second one can still be shelled by a manual Bazooka that can even get rid of the Ack-Ack and Minigun support--of course, if you want that perfect S, you're going to have to rout all of the enemies and thereby do the whole thing the normal way. But it still counts that you can even take that path.
- Battle of the Coral Atolls - you get one Battlestation, Xylvania gets 2. What else do you have? Let's see: Grunts, Flame Vets, Missile (Anti-Air) Vets, and a Bomber. Grunts and Flame Vets are useless against the vehicles, Missile Vets are beyond broken and would be useless against the vehicles if they weren't, and the Bomber has to worry about enemy Ack-Ack Vets plaguing EVERY island except the starting island. Well, actually, it's possible to bomb EVERY Ack-Ack Vet into oblivion and leave every other enemy unit up a creek without a paddle, and good thing. Why? Because guess what? If you want 100% Speed, you need to work through the level fast. Heck, it's quite possible to get ZERO Speed with merely low-key Bomber support, because the Battlestation is VERY slow, and you need to protect the infantry from the heavy fire to capture the two flags for the mission objective, so it's natural to want to keep them away from stuff that the Battlestation deals with, further slowing down the mission.
- Road to Xylvania - well, I'll give the guy SOME credit here. With the Battlestation, you can just spam the Y button to make sure the Missile Vets are active about counterattacking the continually respawning Gunships (and there are FOUR of them) while every enemy Heavy Tank and Pillbox gets nixed. Note that I did not say there are any enemy Battlestations. Why? Because THERE AREN'T. And Iron Legion doesn't get its 50% health boost that it does in Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. And meanwhile, you can actually do the mission without the Battlestation.....with a Perfect S-Rank. Here and here. Yeah, Speed is actually liberal for the fact that the level is rather linear.
- Siege of the Vladstag - again you fight 2 Battlestations, and they make sure that the front entrance is a no-go. Only, you can just sneak in the side entrance, and with that, you can either zap the Anti-Air Vehicles to let Nova's Gunships take care of the Battlestations, or use your manual Light Tank or Mortar Vet to combat them yourself.
- Prologue - lol tutorial mission
- Incursion - another mission where you get a Battlestation. And you basically need it again, because you get no Bazooka or Mortar Vets, and no other land vehicles. Well, you do get a Gunship, but when you get an air unit, the enemy always gets AA units. Meanwhile, this mission has a Perfect Speed time of 15 minutes, but do not be fooled into thinking that's lenient, because there's quite a bit to do if you want that Perfect S-Rank, and if you want to take care of the west POW camp quickly with minimal units, you need the Battlestation taking care of things there.
- Ice Station X - enemy Battlestation guarding the Concrete Barricade. It's easily vaporized by the Bombers. Also, the Lone Bazooka. Enough said.
- The Reckoning - now this is what the guy must have been talking about: you get your own Battlestation and you can use it to snipe the enemy Battlestations. Thing is, the AI Battlestations don't even try to evade snipe shots, so that makes part of the guy's argument inherently flawed. Then there's the fact that if you combat the enemy Battlestations without Gunships, you'll take too long. And once again, there's ANOTHER strict Perfect Speed time, and it actually IS strict. 11 frickin' minutes. I'd be surprised if I can get anywhere below 10, especially if I go for 100% Power.
- Under Siege - well, I can't argue that the Battlestation that Tundra gets breaks the first part. Of course, Frontier's Bazooka Vets are made HORRIBLE on this map, so that doesn't help. Why that problem is I don't know. Tundra, however, gets Mortar Vets, so I'm assuming it would be possible to beat the first part without the Battlestation. But I do know that the enemy doesn't have a SINGLE Battlestation in the first part. In the third part, however, there are 4 Battlestations that will attack the Mausoleum...except in the third part, you have nothing but air units regardless of which nation you are playing as, and this includes Bombers.
- Lightning Strike - Iron Legion has a Battlestation.....but it's actually harder to play as than Solar Empire. IL's only defense against inevitable Gunship shenanigans is those freaking Fighters that are a pain to control, because if you try to keep them from wandering into range of AA range, they can crash into a wall around the Iron Tower, the existene of which is stupid to begin with because it doesn't even fit storyline reasons, but it's there to end up making Ferrok's life miserable. And Gunships aren't even the only thing Solar has that can hurt the Battlestation. Solar has Bazooka Vets as well, and a Heavy Tank. What besides the Battlestation does IL have to do decent damage to the Heavy Tank or the objectives? NOTHING. That's TWO unit types that counter everything that could need to be countered, and the player can put the third on manual. What is this I don't even!
- Battle Stations (the map) - oddly enough, this map actually isn't too imbalanced. It's definitely more balanced than Exchange of Fire, that's for sure. Each player gets a Battlestation and an Anti-Air Vehicle by capturing a Factory. Sure you get only 1 AA unit for the enemy to trash, but unlike in Sand Castles or Donatsu Island, it's not a freaking infantry that inevitably gets killed by the air unit so that the opponent's other units get hammered. No, you can just maneuver it out of the Battlestation and Bazooka fire and never have it have to worry about anything else. (Though actually, AI not manuevering to try to evade attacks makes Donatsu Island a campfest where whoever tries for an Airbase capture gets shelled by Artillery and each player can shell the opponent's guarded facility to get a bunch of quick points from guard kills, and trying to take the north path is pointless.)
So what do we have? For VS maps, we have two maps where the Battlestation avoids being broken, and for Campaign or Co-Op maps with the Battlestation as the player unit, we have 3 where Battlestation usage is expected and Speed is going to be a miserable pain in maxing, and 2 more that (likely) don't even require the thing.
Seriously. It's not only vulnerable to air attack, it's even vulnerable to manual infantry attack because of its massive size leading to a major hurtbox. Just zap the infantry support to isolate it on Battle Stations and it's just a big target for the Bazooka Vets. There's nothing that qualifies it as a Game Breaker for that.