regular tactics and how to counter. guide

[laPPen]

Hey Folks

I thought about making a guide about common gametactics that will propably come across your way when you start playing the game.
To some of them the counter is pretty obvious with other tactics its a bit tricky.
I will update and edit it depending on my free time and the number of requests i will get.
So if there is a tactic that gives you a headache post it here and i will try to give you a clue how to handle it.

If this kind of guide already exists somewhere and i just didnt find it yet pls tell me so i dont waste my time.
(Waving to sheppard and his guides wich are pretty good but i did not read them completely)

I will start with the most common gamesituations you will be facing and try to divert them into the different battlegrounds where they take place. Land , Air, Sea and mixed.
Further i will try to do it as detailed as needed and name different solutions for different races if it seems to be required. For example facing shieldspamm navy is a different approach depending on the race you play and on the navy you are facing.

Here is a list of tactics that are already done and of tactics that are named but not answered yet, if someone wants to cover one of those just give a short reply so we dont do it double.

List of tactics that are already covered in this thread:
Pd creep
counter shield spamm navy (in progress)
t2 airsnipe
...

To Do List of tactics and counters:
cybran rangebots and stealth
the art of scouting
navy rush
t3 strat bomber rush
aurora spamm on open or water maps
percy spamm in engymod
drops incomming
more to come...

Thank you for contributing, credits to: Pietro,...

[laPPen]

Land tactics:

Point defence creep:
One of the rather obvious counterable tactics. If someone does this to you the best way to stop it is to use T2 mobile missle launchers and to build a few t2 pd yourself a bit outside of his pd range. Depending on the map and the pressure this pd creep does to you it might be possible to ignore it and attack somewhere else. Those pd are quite expensive so you should either be able to outeco your enemy or use your superior number of troops somewhere else to raid and cripple his eco. Avoid feeding mass to your enemy and attack the firebase only if you are really sure you can breake it. If you plan to attack them keep in mind that your unit mix should contain more artys and less tanks than in other game situations. A stealth field generator can get quite handy aswell it can allow you to build pd insight his pd range without beeing noticed and it helps to get your troops close to the pds without getting shot.
If you can manage to get t3 land in time a few mobile artys will do the job easyly.
Pietro :

a strategy that is often overlooked in defending a firebase. When your opponent spams MML to break your firebase, u can easily counter those by putting only a few MML's yourself in your own firebase. Your MML's will be covered by shields and TMD, but your opponent's MML's will be in the field unprotected. Therefore 1 or 2 MML's in a firebase will make it much more difficult to destroy it and you won't have to spam TMD like crazy (especially if you have crap TMD like UEF). This will buy you enough time (until the T3 Phase) to focus on your eco or another battle. Of course this requires a lot of micro to prevent your MML's to chase the other MML's and run into enemy forces. But it's worth it.

Air tactics:

t2 airsnipe: It is a very common strategy it occurs often in small - mid sized landmaps mostly in early-mid game. The counter is rather obvious aswell: shields, interceptors and t2 mobile flak.As always it is important to keep your enemy scouted when you notice that your enemy has a t2 air factory you should prepare for it. If you missed to scout it and get surprised by that tactic your intel play failed, these are the emergency measures to prevent boom: is there a pool somewhere close? go swimming! no pool? bad for you now it depends on what kind of t2 air going for you, how fast you can click and what you have available close to your comander. "ctrl+a" selects all air units you have, send them in to help.T2 fighter bombers attacking? -> Dance for your life: your first click should give your commander a very tight circle move order to dodge shots as good as possible and avoid the first volley. If u have t2 tech available somewhere close try to build a shield, but be carefull not to build it to close to the com so the construction doesnt get killed by the splash damage from the shots wich are aiming for your com. all landfactorys close by should immedieatly spamm out mobile aa, all engeneers in that area should start to build static t1 aa or help finishing the t2 shieldgen if you have the tech in place. If it is mercys comming for you dodging does not help, a mobile t1 aa at the right spot does help, move it between the incomming mercys and your commander. t2 gunships comming? dodging is harder but it can help to lower the damage you recieve, act like in the fighter bomber scenario, but as they are slower and tank more shots build static/ mobile aa before you start dodging, you need to deal damage asap.



Naval tactics:

Facing shield spamm navy:
On most maps that have a big percentage of water loosing navy will cost you the game. Once you are out of the water it will be incredible hard to get back into it again ( depends on mapsize and your enemy). Shielded navy will be able to siege you and is extremely hard to kill so how to deal with those shieldspammers?
Facing uef shieldspamm navy:
As uef: cruisers work very nice they have decent dps and an awesome range. Every missle will hit the giant shieldbubble, make sure to keep those cruisers out of range from direkt fire naval units. Battleships do a good job in t3 stage aswell. Riptide spamm ( t2 hovertank) is working good aswell. They can close in and destroy the enemys formations they are hard to hit as they are very small and have decent dps once they get into fire range they tear ships into pieces. If he has lots of destroyers and frigates its not working that good. However if he has mainly cruisers battleships/cruisers and shields they work perfect
Mixed counter: t3 gunships (mass broadswards can be very effective in case he has not too many cruisers. They can tank a lot of shots and deal big damage- try not to clumb them up to avoid splashdamage from cruisers))
As cybran:
If the uef guy has only a few t2 torpedo boats in the mix it very viable to pump out cyb t2 subs, the uef destroyers have really weak anti torpedo weapons so you can just move in with the subs and take out key targets. When the enemy starts to build t2 torp boats u can forget your subs in that case it works well to mix in some extra cruisers into your navy and change the fire mode from aa to ground the cyb aa cruiser gun does great damage but hits nothing thats moves, but those shield bubbles are huge and they will get shot down fairly fast. In the lategame you should concentrate on cyb battleships. masswise they are the best battleship from all factions and perform really good as t3 destroyer. Always mix in those stealth ships, or t3 sonars (even bigger stealth radius than the t2stealth ship) from early untill lategame.
mixed counter: T3 gunships (see uef description)
As Aeon: depends mutch on his mix if there is only a low number of torpedo boats in his navy t2 subspamm works fine(like cybran).In general u should spamm t2 hovershields yourself and build lots of destroyers. In the lategame t3 missle ships do a great jobs in getting shields down(not good for killing small moving targets), they have the biggest range of all navy units and do nice damage. The tempest has nice range and does very good damage too but it is extremely slow and vulnerable and its so big that you cant protect it with shields. The Aeon Battle ship has very nice dps aswell but it has a shitty range and low rate of fire(its crap imo).How crappy tempest and Battleship might be you will propably need some of those ships to finish of enemy t3 ships, but you will relie more on t2 destroyers in lategame than other factions do.
Aeon hover units are your friend, in order to drive under his shields and soak up damage (works best if he has not too many frigates and destroyers). from t1 to t2 hover tanks, flaks and shields in t2 stage and even in t3 the aeon landfactory has usefull stuff for you : the shield absolver unit, it can hover. use it! There is no other faction that needs to combine navy and hover units as mutch as aeon does.
mixed counter: t3 torps bombers do a decent job if you have the air, restorers might have problems to break shields as they do very little ground damage compared to other t3 gunships.
As Seraphim: As Seraphim you have really nice destroyers for fighting uef navy. Sera dest have the same range like uef destroyers and dont get outranged like they get against the other factions destroyers.Their beam cant be dodged and is doing good damage, but the best thing is that you can just submerge them and exploit the horrible weak dorp damage that uef detroyers deal, so he needs to build lots of torpboats to counter that. However if his battle navy consists of mainly torps boats you can just surface again and now the torpboats are toast. It is not easy at all to get the right unit mix against sera if you play uef, especially in early-mid naval game. To deal with the shields it is common to have a few cruisers behind your destroyers to keep them sieged, combined with some floating artys comming with your naval assault who are doing a nice job in taking down shields. in the later game there are those awesome t3 subs from sera they are true sea superiority ships dont forget to build some battleships aswell. But uef is the only faction that has a good chance in lategame navy warfare against sera, those atlantis combined with shields can stop the subspam. When you reach that point of the game you should be spamming sera mobile t3 shields aswell and you should consider spamm hover artys and some hover t2( even some hover tanks to stop riptides if he builds some in order to destroy your shieldformation + flaks against airthreads)to send them with your navy. Those arty do some nice damage on shields if they come close and force him to build frigates or destroyers to stop this spamm, so he cant concentrate on atlantis and shieldspamm +battleships +battlecruisers. this mix can cause real problems as he has the better weapons vor over sea dominance an it wil be hard to win the shield war against uef.
mixed counter: Seraphim air totally fails in terms of anti navy warfare , dont build it. t4 bombers can do a nice job in superlategame tho, but you will propably need more that one in order to do damage as there will be loads of shields tanking the first shot.
facing aeon shieldspamm:


.... to be continued

[Nombringer]

Great idea, PM if you want idea's/help for writing/proofreading some of the stuff.

[laPPen]

Sure i apreciate help on this. Thanks for the offer.
In order to keep the overview i will copy paste and edit your work in the 2nd post of this thread if that is ok (i dont want to steal other ppl mental property) and name the contributers name under it.
I will try to make the counter shieldspamm on navy guide next. It will be quite long as it depends very mutch on the factions facing each other. So no need to work on that issue for the moment.

[Pierto]

Very nice. I'm sure there will be lots of useful information in this thread.

If I may add my 5 cents: a strategy that is often overlooked in defending a firebase. When your opponent spams MML to break your firebase, u can easily counter those by putting only a few MML's yourself in your own firebase. Your MML's will be covered by shields and TMD, but your opponent's MML's will be in the field unprotected. Therefore 1 or 2 MML's in a firebase will make it much more difficult to destroy it and you won't have to spam TMD like crazy (especially if you have crap TMD like UEF). This will buy you enough time (until the T3 Phase) to focus on your eco or another battle. Of course this requires a lot of micro to prevent your MML's to chase the other MML's and run into enemy forces. But it's worth it.

[laPPen]

good point pietro i will edit it into the post if u dont mind.
Thanks for the help.

I would like to hear some tactics what can be put in the threat. So do a brainstorming everybody who reads this and name some.

[Gorton]

I think a good point that has to be made is the importance of regular scouting.

[laPPen]

yeah it is super important, but i dont have an idea how i can embed it into the tactic context. If u have an idea or even want to write the text for it i will be happy to put it inside

[Nombringer]

Probably a lengthy piece on tech one units, and how to use them effectively.

[ColonelSheppard]

i might illustrate abit of this in videos if i got time