[douglas]

DUC is king of the early game, and PPB wins mid game. APBs are the best only in the late game. It costs a ton of research points to get high level APBs and they don't get better than DUCs and PPBs until those expensive high levels, and they suffer in the early and mid game compared to PPBs by not being able to skip non-phased shields. Late game that doesn't matter because everyone has phased shields, but until then it's a huge difference.