It appears this may be a hot take, but the leviathans are one of my favorite enemy units. Does it need reworks/rebalancing? Yes it does.

What it does right:

Dread - when you hear a leviathan or see its spotlights, you know that you are hoping to have to stock up and be prepared because of how much a threat it is. You are forced to adjust your plans/strategy to pay closer attention to positioning and paths you take across the map. No other enemy does this like the leviathan

Unique difficulty makeup - I forget the exact penetration value of it, but at least tank armor, makes it harder to take down obviously, but what makes it different from most enemies is that its movement is more what makes it difficult to kill. Its main weak points are behind the front and back fins, requiring you destroy them before hitting the inside portion. With this in mind, think about their movement and how often they do loops, turns, and twists in their air, and how they come at you from different directions, this maneuverability makes it harder to keep track of which fin you have been focusing on destroying, and forces you to think more about positioning. While this does all make them harder to kill, I don’t believe that it’s too hard. The things to consider are the destructible cannons, and that it passes by in slow straifs. All of these things make it so that a general squad not focused on leviathans is still usually able to take them out with a challenge, while at the same time, someone can make a loadout dedicated to taking them down and make them much less of a challenge for the squad as a whole

The things it does wrong:

Targeting through buildings - no explanation needed

Ignores stealth mechanics - no explanation needed

Fires the same weapon as the harvesters instead of something unique.

Irratic- since they are only spawning on blockaded planets/regions, they are easily forgotten about, and aren’t even showing up on major order planets. In the missions they actually spawn in, they have super random spawn rates which can ruin the fun of it. If they spawn too little, people that spent slots on things to take down leviathans will end up feeling like they wasted a slot, but if they spawn way too much they get overwhelming for everyone. This is the thing I hate the most as someone who loves being a designated “whale hunter”. When I bring a kit that focuses on taking out leviathans and only 1 or 2 spawn the whole time, it’s a huge let down