Key Advice for Low-Rated PlayersIntroductionForged Alliance is a deep and very complex game. There is no real guide for new players, beyond the single-player campaign and some YouTube videos.
This guide is for lower-rated players (less than 500 points on the 1v1 ladder, or less than 1000 points in global rating) so you can improve.
The best way to improve at FAF is to play 1v1 ladder matches. “team games are a crutch. . . . Team games teach you bad habits because you have a team to lean on.” BRNKoINSANITY,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8jx_1R4o0w.
I could just tell you: go out and play ladder matches. But not all of you will, or you will try it and get discouraged. What I remember most from my early attempts at the ladder is feeling lost and not understanding why I was getting crushed. This is meant to be a road map for 1v1 ladder matches. If you have more success in the ladder, that means more opportunities to improve your game, which means you will have more fun in team games.
I want to give you the tools that you need to get 500+ rating points on the 1v1 ladder. If you are at -143, or +475, or anywhere in between, this guide is for you.
Every rule has exceptions. Think of these rules as a framework. When you are starting out, you should follow the rules. When you achieve a level of success (let’s say, 500+ rating points on the ladder) you can experiment with bending the rules or leaving the framework behind entirely.
I did not just wake up one morning knowing all this. Most of this, I didn’t even learn this by playing the game. I learned these things because other players told me (narrating their game while they were streaming, through chat messages in-game, and on Twitch chat) or because I watched people playing and saw them do things differently than I would have done.
Playing to learnPlaying against the AIIf you’ve very new to SupCom, and you want to learn the mechanics of the game, playing against the AI is not a bad way to learn. If you really don’t know what you’re doing, playing against other humans is not particularly fun.
But playing against the AI teaches bad habits, because there are so many mistakes that the AI won’t punish you for, especially being too passive (turtling).
If you’re going to play against AI, at least don’t play alone. There are custom games where people play together against the AI. If there isn’t a game like that, then host one! You don’t have to be good at FAF to host a game. There are other people, some at your level, some better, who will play with you. When there are multiple people playing, you can chat with each other, share advice, point out mistakes, and learn about how other people play the game. It’s a way to compete (see who can build up their base the fastest, get the biggest economy, do the most damage to the AI) without another person trying to break your base.
Play 1v1 LadderWhen you are laddering, you are responsible for everything: economy, intelligence, ground, air, and navy. You will learn the importance of scouting and you will learn to start doing it (or you will pay the price). You won’t ask your teammates for “e pls” or rely on their overflow. You will learn how to balance your own economy. You will see how important it is to harass your opponent because you’re going to be on the receiving end of it. You will own every defeat and every victory.
The ladder is unforgiving, because there’s no one to rescue you from your mistakes. But it is also very forgiving, because your opponents will be mostly people who are at your same level. So they’re struggling with the same things as you are, and then some.
Economy for 1v1 LadderHow many land factories do I make? What I remember most about being new to ladder is not having any idea how many factories I should make at the start of a match. This led to some very frustrating losses. We’ve all experienced being overrun by another player who just made 2-5 more land factories than we did, and churned out more land units than we could. I still often lose because I don’t have enough land factories. This is not something that only happens to bad players.
For a large map (20x20), or an island map, you probably want to use transports to quickly expand. Which is going to change how and where you build your factories. You may also want to start upgrading mexes to T2 sooner. That’s a more complicated situation so I’m only going to give advice about smaller maps.
For a small or medium map (5x5 or 10x10), at the start you might want just one air factory, and many, many land factories. On those maps (5x5s and 10x10s), streaming out T1 “land spam” is usually critical to winning the game.
The short answer (courtesy of BRNK, who explained it while he was streaming) is: 1 land factory for every 2 mexes you can hold, plus additional factories based on the reclaim you will get. Some maps have a lot of reclaim lying around; and on every map you can try to get reclaim after battles.
T1 Land factories generally require 4 mass per second. And of course, 2 T1 mexes will give you 4 mass per second. Land factories cost only 3.7 if they’re adjacent to a mex. If you put your mouse over the factory, it will say “3” mass per second, but the computer lies, it’s really 3.7. The adjacency bonus is nice, but it doesn’t really change the total number of factories you should build. You can run 13 land factories all with the adjacency bonus for the same cost as running 12 land factories all without the bonus.
Even on a small map, this can mean 8+ land factories is a good idea. That is why you will see good players drag out a line of land factories. At the start of the match they might try to carefully place their factories for adjacency bonuses (with T1 mexes and T1 pgens) but later in the game, they will just drag a big ugly line of land factories.
Where do I build my factories? On a large map, 20x20, you may need factories spread around the map, because units walking across the map are (1) vulnerable to being picked off by the enemy and (2) may not be providing much value until they arrive at their destination. If units have to walk for 60 seconds to get where you want them to be, that’s a long delay to get the value out of the mass you are spending.
But on smaller maps, it is probably best to start by only making factories in your base. This has a number of advantages. First, it means you only have to defend a single location to avoid losing factories. If you fall behind in unit production compared to your opponent, that can cost you the game. So if two of your factories are far away from your base, and you lose them to a raid, suddenly your opponent will be out-producing you. Second, with units streaming out of your base, it means you will always have a lot of units near your base in case it comes under attack. Third, as units stream out of your base, they help you to secure the territory between your main base, and where you want them to be. Fourth, you can start building factories immediately in your base. But if you want to build factories around the map, it takes time for the engineers to get there, so there is a significant amount of time that you could have been cranking out units, but aren’t. The engineers might be picked off along the way.
You want to build air factories adjacent to power generators, especially hydrocarbons. Air costs a lot of power, and making pgens costs a lot of mass and power. If you can save power through adjacency bonuses, you’re actually saving mass too, because you don’t have to build as many pgens.
When there are reclaim fields, it may be worthwhile to build a factory near them so you can crank out engineers to grab the mass.
Should I make air units? Yes. Usually you want a build with second air or third air (meaning: your second factory, or third factory, is an air factory), unless you are on a very small map, in which case you might want 6+ land factories before you make an air factory.
On maps where air is especially important, you might want to eventually make more than 1 air factory. If you have more interceptors than your opponent, you can “win air” which gives you more freedom to do things like send out transports and bombers. If your opponent builds gunships or T2 fighter/bombers, inties can quickly kill them.
How many pgens do I make? It is well known that new players struggle with power. They either make not enough, and power stall, or too many, and end up wasting their resources building power plants when what they really need is more tanks.
You want a few pgens at the start to pay for all the construction that your engineers are going to do (building mexes costs a lot of power, that is one reason why reclaiming rocks is so important at the start of a match). For every T1 land factory you have running, you need 1 pgen. For every T1 air factory you have running, you basically need 4 pgens. (More if you’re making transports, but people usually don’t crank out large numbers of transports.)
It takes 60 seconds for an engineer to build a factory and it takes 30 seconds for an engineer to build a pgen. There are a few ways to set up your build instructions so you add as many pgens as factories: one is to have 2 engineers building land factories while 1 engineer builds pgens. (Thanks, BRNK.) Another way is to have an engineer building a land factory, then a pgen, then a land factory, then a pgen. The problem with this 2nd approach is that it takes so much longer to queue up. And if your engineer dies, you need to go back and re-do this time-consuming process. If you just grab an engineer and tell it to build a line of pgens or a line of factories, that takes less than a second. Your time and attention may be your most precious resource, even more important than mass or energy.
You also want pgens to support commander upgrades. Upgrading your ACU can be very powerful, but the upgrades cost a lot of power. So you may want extra pgens to support ACU upgrades, and then to have power surplus so you can use overcharge. But keep in mind that every 2 pgens is 3 tanks that you don’t have on the field. If you make 6 too many pgens, you are going to have 9 fewer tanks, which could make the difference in an important battle.
To get a sense of whether you are building too many, or too few pgens, watch your replays, and look at your power bar. If you want to have power for a short time in order to make an important upgrade, consider whether it makes more sense to build a power storage, instead of building more pgens.
How bad is it to stall? Good players will sometimes intentionally power stall, if there is something important, like a commander upgrade or finishing a T2 pgen. And they can power stall if their power is sniped. But bad things happen. During a power stall, mexes don’t produce as much mass. Radar and shields turn off. It takes longer to build things. You want to build enough power, based on what you plan to do, to avoid a power stall.
Building pgens costs a lot of power. An engineer uses 30 power per second when it is building a pgen: so you need 1.5 pgens for every engineer that you want to have building more pgens. If you are low on power, that is when you can least afford to spend power building more pgens.
A mass stall is less bad. When you mass stall, things take longer to build. But otherwise, it does not affect your operations.
It is still inefficient to mass stall, because when things are under construction, you’re paying for them, but you’re not getting any value out of them. One finished T3 heavy artillery is worth a lot more than two half-built T3 heavy artillery. (I’m not proud of this, but that’s actually what I did in my very first 1v1 ladder game . . . .)
Economy is all about balance, and spending too much on making buildings takes away from your ability to make units. One thing good players will do during a game is to select all engineers (Ctrl-B) and pause them (Z), and see how that affects their economy. It turns out, the fastest way to find out just how much your engineers are costing you, is to pause them all and see what happens. Then they make a decision about which ones to unpause (perhaps, all of them).
When should I have engineers assist a factory? Each T1 factory has 20 build power. The ACU has 10 build power, and a tech 1 engineer has 5 build power. This means that if you have 4 T1 engineers assisting a factory, you can produce as many units as two factories running at the same time. Engineers only cost 50 mass, but a land factory costs 240 mass, and an air factory only costs 210.
So why should you build factories, when you can just build engineers to assist your factories?
First, engineers are much more vulnerable. A single bomb can kill 5 or more engineers clustered together. A frigate can slaughter engineers grouped around a naval factory.
Second, engineers do not get any adjacency bonus. If your land factory is next to a T1 mex, it gets a 7.5% reduction in the amount of mass needed to produce units. But if you have a T1 factory next to a T1 mex, and it is being assisted by 8 engineers, you’re really only getting a 2.5% bonus. This is especially important for air factories, where the pgen adjacency bonus is so important.
When should you use engineers to assist a factory?
Sometimes, you have an immediate need for a particular unit.
If you only have a single T2 factory, it can be faster and cheaper to assist it than to make support factories.
While the factory is upgrading, that can be a good time to assist. While a factory is upgrading, it is not building anything for you. And it does not get the hit points boost until it finishes upgrading. So less time spent upgrading means it is less vulnerable to being sniped in the meantime.
Naval factories are more expensive and can’t benefit from adjacency. Also, their units take significantly longer to make than other factories, but you don’t get any value out of a unit while it is under construction. Faster construction times means your mass spends less time tied up in the factory.
When do I get T2 mexes? Upgrading a T1 mex to T2 will get you an additional 4 mass per second, but it takes 800 mass, and it can take 90 seconds unless you have engineers assisting.
There are other, cheaper ways to get an additional 4 mass per second: you can build 2 T1 mexes, which costs 72 mass.
Or if you break two of your opponent’s T1 mexes, you’re not getting an additional 4 mass per second, but you are stopping your opponent from getting the same amount.
800 mass could be used to build 16 tanks. If you can use 16 tanks to secure 2 more mexes (or to deny 2 mexes to your opponent, or to deny 1 mex and secure it for yourself), that is more efficient than upgrading a mex to T2. Not only does it provide the same income benefit as making a T2 mex, but having more tanks means you have a bigger army and more map control.
On many small maps, it is common for players to complete a match without ever upgrading a mex to T2. It is just too important to keep the pressure on.
So when should you upgrade your first mex to T2?
On some maps, like Daroza’s Sanctuary, there is just such a ridiculous amount of reclaimable mass lying around that it is not even bad to make early T2 mexes.
Once there are no more mass points you can secure, you may want to upgrade T2 mexes so you can continue growing your economy. You have to decide whether you can afford it, or if you need to be churning out more land spam.
If it’s a large map and you’re looking at a long game, you may want to upgrade mexes.
If your opponent is upgrading T2 mexes, you probably want to keep up with them. You might be able to make up the difference through raiding their mexes and securing more territory. But you can also try to keep up with them by upgrading your own mexes.
And, if you’re not able to otherwise spend all of your income, that can be time to upgrade mexes, because the alternative is that you overflow mass. Any mass that you overflow, in a 1v1 match, is lost forever.
But this last reason, that you aren’t able to spend all of your mass income: that may actually be a sign that you bungled things. If you’re on a small map, you SHOULD be able to spend all of your income. You SHOULD have made enough factories. The fact that you didn’t, means that your opponent might be churning out more units than you, and your opponent might use those units to roll right over you. If you can survive, you’ll have a T2 mex, and in the long run, that’s good. But in the short run, you might just be dead.
What do I do with my commander? Aggression or Engineering? Without upgrades, your commander is roughly equivalent to 20 T1 tanks (that’s about how many it can beat in a straight-up fight) and 2 T1 engineers (it builds exactly twice as quickly as a T1 engineer).
With or without upgrades, you can use your commander aggressively (to secure territory, and to deal and tank damage) or defensively (to build up your base, and to be there in case enemy units show up to raid your base).
At the very start of the game, you need to build at least 1 factory. Depending on the map, you might be better off staying to build 3+ factories and protect your base, or you might get the most value out of leading the charge.
If you send your ACU away from base, you are giving up about 100 mass (because it costs 100 mass to make 2 T1 engineers). If your ACU leaves the base, kills a single enemy tank (52 mass cost to your opponent), and scoops up what’s left (30-40 mass), you’ve already almost gotten the same value out of the ACU as if your ACU stayed home in base.
If you use your ACU aggressively, you WILL lose games when your ACU gets caught out by a larger force. That does not mean you should stay in your base. If you stay in your base, you will also lose games. Part of becoming a better player is knowing when and how far you can push your ACU to take the most advantage, and when and how to protect it. This is just something you need to develop over time by playing the game. Have units with your ACU; have radar or send out scout planes to see if the enemy has more units near your ACU so you aren’t surprised by a large force; know whether there is deep water nearby that your ACU can run to; and as the game gets on, have interceptors or flak so your ACU doesn’t just suddenly die to 8 gunships that come out of nowhere.
Eventually, the game becomes too dangerous to have your ACU on the front lines. The primary game-ending mechanic of SupCom is that, as the game goes on, the battlefield becomes a more and more dangerous place.
Commander upgradesUpgrading your ACU to get T2, so you can build point defense, is usually the wrong move. Instead of doing that, upgrade a factory and make T2 engineers. It’s not much more expensive and it makes your army (or air force) more diverse. Your ACU doesn’t need T2 unless you’re planning to drop it into a danger zone. If your ACU is with your army, the gun upgrade is generally much more effective. As long as you don’t just walk into too much point defense, a gun ACU beats a T2 ACU, especially if the gun ACU can overcharge stuff that the T2 ACU builds.
One of the mistakes new players often make is being too passive. They want to build a bunch of T2 point defense to make a fortress that can’t be broken. But in Supreme Commander, there is no such thing as a position that can’t be broken. The best defense is a good offense.
Unit mixFactory infinite build orders and factory attack moveOne of the most powerful things you can do in SupCom is to set your factories with “infinite” build orders, so they will loop endlessly through a list of units to make. Rather than telling a factory to make “10 tanks,” you can tell it to make “3 tanks, a land scout, a tank, a light artillery, a tank, and an engineer, on infinite loop.”
You can, and should, give your factories move orders (or attack-move orders) so your units will rally out to some waypoint. If you don’t do that, when they come out of the factory, they will just stand around in front of it waiting for you.
When I have an infinite build order from a factory, making a mix of units, I like to have an engineer in the mix. This is because when the units stream out with an attack move order, the engineer will grab mass along the way. If there’s a battle, reclaim will be left behind, and the engineer can grab it, which often pays for the engineer, and then some. If I think a location is important enough that I want to send a pack of units there, then probably it would be nice to have some build capacity there in case I want to put down some PD, or a radar, or factory, or whatever. Just having engineers around the map, reclaiming things, not only strengthens the economy but it gives flexibility when I want to build things.
What ratio of tanks to light artillery? In general, 5:1. If your commander is leading the charge, you can have more light artillery in the mix, because your commander is taking the place of 10-20 tanks.
Against Aeon, you probably want something more like 2:1 or even 1:1. And of course you need to have radar or bring land scouts. This is because Auroras have such excellent range.
Do I even make mobile anti-air? Every mobile anti-air unit you make could have been a tank. If you make MAA, you will lose fights where you just didn’t have quite as many tanks as your opponent. But you need some kind of anti-air. Your opponent could surprise you by suddenly shifting into air production and making bombers. If you rely on interceptors for anti-air, you run the risk that you will “lose air” (that your opponent will have more interceptors than you, and kill all of your interceptors in an air fight). I don’t have a good answer on this, but I will note that high-rated players often skip making MAA until they need it.
Air mixIf you’ve only got 1 air factory, it may be smart to put it on infinite build making 2-3 interceptors and 1 scout plane. If you want some air aggression, you can add a t1 bomber to the loop.
When you see a scout plane landed in your base, that is a reminder for you to pick it up and send it on a scouting mission. Some of us need reminders to scout or we will forget to do it.
When and how do I tech up? When do I go to T2? When do I go to T3? I don’t have a good answer for this. I’ve heard multiple reasons why you might want or need to move to T2: (1) because your opponent went to T2; (2) because your T1 land units aren’t getting the job done; (3) because you are getting T2 mexes and need TMD to protect them; (4) because you can afford it; or (5) because it’s been 10 minutes.
BRNK made a video about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5cTaTKJ5vIWhen do I get T2 Navy? Navy units tend to be expensive, but they tend to be more efficient than similar land units. For the price you pay in terms of mass and power, naval units are faster, stronger, and hit harder than land units. That is one important reason to invest in navy. If one player spends 2,000 mass on riptides, and the other player spends 2,000 mass on frigates, the frigates should win easily in a stand-up fight.
On a map with a lot of water, you don’t want to be locked out of the water. (A navy lock means: one player can’t build a naval factory anywhere because his opponent sends ships over to kill it.) So depending on the map, you may need to build a naval factory pretty quickly and you might want a T1 torpedo launcher. (It is not a “torpedo defense”; please stop calling it that. Torpedo defense is a defensive system that makes torpedoes not hit their target. A “torpedo launcher” is a building that fires torpedoes.)
Subs beat frigates. A sub can hit a frigate, and the frigate can’t hit back. But it takes a long time to die. And while frigates are slowly dying to subs, they can do a lot of damage. Potentially, they can break your opponent’s naval factories, helping you to lock them out.
A good unit mix at the start is often 1 sub + 2 frigates on infinite loop.
T2 navy is great, but it is also expensive. If your opponent rushes T2 navy, you can often shut that down if you just show up soon enough with enough frigates. Making a T1 naval factory and upgrading it to T2, and then building a destroyer, costs 5,550 mass and 26,500 power. For that price, you could make 4 naval factories and 12 frigates. If you show up with two more frigates than your opponent has, you may be able to crush his factory before it finishes upgrading or at least before the destroyer comes out. Then you are far ahead of your opponent. (And that might be a good time for you to start upgrading a naval factory to T2.) Or if you swarm enough frigates around a destroyer, you can sink it.
Frigates might not excite you the way destroyers and cruisers do, especially because they are so limited in range when you are trying to kill stuff on land, but you should not overlook them. Even when you get to the T2 phase, you probably want a good number of frigates in your fleet. You want them in front of your other ships, to provide vision and to tank damage.
Frigates deal area of affect damage. Not a large enough area to hurt submarines with ground fire, but they are great at slaughtering groups of engineers, which you will often find clustered around enemy naval factories.
Frigates are faster than mech marines, have better radar than a land scout, a better direct fire gun than a tank, range and splash damage like light artillery, hit points like a wall section, and (except for Aeon) have anti-air guns like the mobile AA.
Technical StuffTemplates and HotkeysTemplates can save a lot of time (especially if you’re trying to put down a point defense with 8 wall sections around it).
There are only a few hotkeys that I’m using. I bound the F1 key to: select all fighters. This means I can just press “F1” and it selects all my interceptors and ASFs, so I can quickly send them around the map. And I use the period key (“.”) to select the next idle engineer, so I can make sure that my engineers are doing useful things.
Just using these templates and hotkeys will save you a lot of time. As you get to be a better player, you can look to add more into your game.
Build orders“You can think of generic build orders as a ticket to enter competitive gameplay. If you don’t know any build orders, it does not matter how good of a strategist you are. You will probably die within the first minutes, or at least handicap yourself so much from the very start that you will die a slow painful death, over the course of the game.”
That is from the introduction to Heaven’s build order tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6uE1-xS2ukBRNK also made a video about build orders:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8jx_1R4o0w Learn how to use the Replay VaultThe Java client for FAF has access to a vault with information about just about every FAF game ever played. It is in the vault section, and it is called “online replays.” Some of the replays don’t work, but most of them do.
You can filter the replays to search by player name, player rating, map name, and other factors. So you could search for all 1v1 ladder games ZLO ever played on the map Loki. And then you can watch a few replays and steal his build orders.
If you click on “ID” it shows a list of 10 factors you can use to filter the games. What is less obvious is: this is actually a scrollable list. There are more than 10 things. Scroll down to see additional search factors, like player name and map name.
Comeback MechanicsEvery good RTS has comeback mechanics. So how do you come back, when you are behind? And on the flip side, what do you have to worry about, when you are ahead?
The three main comeback mechanics in SupCom are: (1) reclaim; (2) eco snipes; and (3) commander snipes.
Sniping the enemy commander (killing them with a surprise attack) is straightforward enough that I don’t need to explain it. A lot of players (and I am guilty of this) only look for commander snipes when we are losing. When you are ahead of your opponent, you might overlook the chance to take out the enemy commander.
Eco snipes are when you target down important economic structures, namely pgens or upgraded mexes. If you land a T2 transport carrying 14 lobos, or 16 zthuees, behind your opponent’s base, and crush 4 T2 mexes, that can be so much damage that suddenly, you’re not losing any more. Or perhaps you build a TML and use it to kill some T2 mexes.
Reclaim is so complicated and important that it needs its own chapter.
ReclaimEnergy ReclaimEnergy reclaim (from trees) is mostly only important in the early game, and when it is available it is usually part of the build order for a particular map. After you are done carrying out your build order, energy reclaim is probably not going to be very important for the rest of the match (but keep it in mind if you have power problems, it can provide a short-term fix).
Mass reclaim at the start of the matchMass reclaim (from rocks and dead units placed at the start of the match) is important to early build orders, because it can give you mass so much faster than you get from T1 mexes (which produce 120 mass per minute, but an engineer can pull that from a wreck in seconds), and because it costs so much energy to build T1 mexes. Every good build order takes into account where there is mass that can be reclaimed early.
Reclaim fields are strategic objectivesEvery mass point is strategically important, and when multiple mass points are grouped together, obviously it is even more important. New players tend to overlook that reclaim fields (either placed on the map by the mapmaker, or the result of a battle) can be equally important, because they can provide just as much, or more, income as mexes, albeit a finite amount. But you are only going to get a finite amount of mass from every mex: the only way to get infinite mass from a mex is if the game never ends.
When you are watching a replay, you can look at the mass income each player has. You can also look at the total amount of mass they have gathered during the game. And you can look at the total amount of mass they have reclaimed during the game. You should pay attention to this while you are watching replays. There are many games where one player with less income from mexes uses reclaim to keep up with or even surpass their opponent in terms of total mass. This is why reclaim can be a comeback mechanic. Even if you are behind in mexes, reclaim can keep you in the game or even give you a winning edge.
This also makes the game more interesting because (1) it punishes players for failed attacks; you don’t just lose units but you give reclaim to your opponent, which is called a “mass donation”; (2) it creates new strategic locations on the map. Chokepoints don’t move, mexes don’t move, but every time you play a map, and as the game goes on, the reclaim fields can be in completely different places.
See the reclaimTo see how much reclaim there is, press Ctrl-Shift. Very small amounts (less than 10) do not show up, but otherwise, the amount of each piece of reclaim is shown as a number on your map. You should be doing this throughout the match.
Grab the reclaimThe most APM-efficient way to get reclaim is with an “attack-move” order (alt-right click) or patrol (a unit on attack-move behaves the same way as on patrol, except they stop when they reach their destination and run out of things to do). You can give an attack-move order in a fraction of second. But the engineers will not scoop efficiently: if there are small wrecks, or single trees, the engineers can scoop those before scooping the important stuff.
The most efficient way to quickly get reclaim can be “manual reclaim” which is where you select an engineer and for each rock/wreck/tree clump that you want them to reclaim, you give a separate order (a separate mouse click while holding down the shift key).
You have to balance your need for APM with your need for getting mass quickly.
You can build a factory next to a reclaim field, set an attack-move order for units coming out of the factory, and have it build engineers. Engineers on a “factory attack-move” order have double range when they are reclaiming things, for some reason. (This is a game engine bug, but it is not considered an exploit.) You will see good players build factories next to reclaim fields just so they can crank out engineers to grab reclaim, even in the middle of the ocean. You will see players use transports to drop engineers into reclaim fields, so they can grab the reclaim, or so they can quickly build a factory to get factory attack-move engineers into the field.
Reclaim your own lossesIn team games, it is obvious that you should reclaim the base of a dead teammate to quickly boost your economy so your team does not fall too far behind. You can also cannibalize your own base in a 1v1 game. You have to decide between scooping and rebuilding. Sometimes, the smart move is to scoop the mass, and use it to keep your war engine running.
If there is a battle between 20 T1 tanks, 10 of yours and 10 of your opponent’s, the reclaim field might have 700+ mass in it. That is enough to rebuild your 10 tanks. That is enough to run a T1 land factory for three minutes. That is enough to build a pgen, a T1 land factory, and run it for over a minute. That is almost enough to upgrade a T2 mex. Even a small engagement can leave behind enough reclaim to make a real difference in the game.
This guy scoopsYour ACU does not just fight, it also scoops. After (or even during) a battle, you can give manual reclaim orders. Or you can put the ACU on patrol (just make sure it doesn’t wander off). One of the benefits of having your ACU out on the map is not only that it helps you to win fights, but you can scoop the mass afterwards.
Control YourselfMore important than controlling units is to control yourself.
Pay Attention, but not Too Much“Tunnel vision” is when a person focuses on one thing only, and fails to notice other things on the map. When there is a fight going on, it is normal to want to watch it, to see how it resolves, and to see if you can control the units a bit to increase their chances of success. That might be the best use of your attention. But maybe not. You need to decide where to focus your attention.
Good players don’t just watch things happen. If they’ve got a transport that’s trying to unload units but is under attack from interceptors, they might click away to a different area of the map, give some orders, then click back to see if the transport unloaded the units or not. They don’t just stare at it to see whether it will survive. Whether or not that transport unloads the units might be extremely important to how the match develops, going forward—but staring at it doesn’t change anything.
Don’t be a “looky-loo.” Don’t miss opportunities to control your entire army because you’re waiting to see what happens to three units. Keep everything moving. You have a mighty war engine, with many moving parts, and they all need your attention.
In order to see the big picture, it is as simple as looking at the big picture. Zoom out! And glance at your minimap often. FAF has nice graphics. The units look nice when you are zoomed in. The strategic icons don’t look so nice. But you’ve got to zoom out so you can see what is happening.
Attack Your Opponent’s AttentionWhen you are aggressively attacking, you force your opponent to respond. Even just sending a mantis behind their base takes their time and focus. JaggedAppliance talks about a “ZLO bomber”: a bomber sent out to some random part of the map, which is not really targeting any particular unit, but which is targeting the opponent’s attention, because players have to react when they see a bomber. Don’t let your opponent get comfortable. Harass and disrupt their plans.
Have Good MannersIf you’re not rude to people, many of them will help you out. They can give advice and point out holes in your game. Most people don’t actually want to be better than you at FAF. They just want to beat you. So they don’t mind explaining how they won, or what they think you did wrong. It feels good to pass on advice, so do it, and let other people do it to you. Not all the advice you get (or give!) will be good advice, but discussing the game with other players is an important part of the total FAF experience and an important part of your journey to becoming better.
Be ReflectiveWatch replays of your games. If it hurts too much to watch a game you lost, skip it. You’re probably making the same mistakes in games that you win. You will see so much in the replays. Switch between the three perspectives (the overview, what you could see, and what your opponent could see). If you don’t watch your replays, to see where you’re messing up, you will miss major opportunities for improvement.
Sentimentality is WeaknessBecause of the reclaim mechanic, there are times when it is better to bring a unit home and suicide it, so you can scoop out the mass, than sending it to die on your opponent’s doorstep (where your opponent can scoop the mass). This happens most often in team games that reach the T4 stage.
If you make a TML (tactical missile launcher) and pick off a few of your opponent’s mexes, and then your opponent starts building TMD (tactical missile defense), your best move might be to suicide the launcher (select it and press ctrl-K) and scoop up the mass. You will get back hundreds of mass, instead of having an “anti-T2 mex” costing you 6 mass per second while it builds missiles that you might never get to use.
If there’s an enemy bomber coming for your base, you can stop a unit in partial production in order to start making a mobile anti-air. If you press “s” to stop a factory that is 80% done making a tank, you will lose about 40 mass of investment. But if you get a mobile anti air unit out faster, you might save an engineer from dying (50 mass). It’s a mistake to worry too much about half a unit when you need to be paying attention to the big picture, and you need to budget your time/attention efficiently.
If you start making a building that you don’t need, you can reclaim it. When a building is fully built, reclaiming it takes away health and does not give you mass (until it dies). But when it is under construction, reclaiming it gives you back some mass. So if you start making a T2 pgen, and you decide that you don’t actually need it, stop building it, and start reclaiming it.
Be DecisiveMaking a plan, and sticking to it, is a good thing. Decide at the start of the match how many factories you’re going to make, where you’re going to expand, and when you’re going to go for T2 land or T2 air.
There are times when you need to abandon a plan. There are times when you need to react to some new development. In particular, you should be scouting your opponent, so you can counter your opponent’s strategies. But in general, make a plan and carry it out.
Be PersistentWhen stuff gets destroyed, rebuild. When you lose mexes, retake them. (And if you lose them again, retake them again, again and again.) Even though the battlefield gets more dangerous as time goes on (which means, among other things, that it is harder and harder to hold mexes in the middle of the map) it is still worth it to build T1 mexes wherever you can. Don’t be a quitter and don’t get discouraged. Stay in the fight until the other guy quits.
ConclusionMake a plan, and carry it out. Make decisions, make them swiftly, carry them out decisively, and then move forward to the next thing.
Manage your entire army. You will find more efficiency at the large scale (paying attention to the map and your economy as a whole) than in the small scale (micro-ing single units).
Zoom out. Always be scouting. Always be looking for reclaim, and then take it. Be aggressive without donating mass.
What purpose does this guide serve?I want to help people to start playing FAF by reducing barriers to entry, and help people to play ladder by reducing barriers to entry, and to help people improve at FAF by encouraging them to play 1v1 ladder, which is the best way to improve.
I want to provide advice within a narrow scope, because to provide a guide/tutorial for FAF as a whole is an undertaking that is too broad (it would take too much effort, and the end result would be so big that no one would read it) and for which I am not qualified.
Since the best way to improve at FAF is to play 1v1 ladder games, the most efficient way I can help people to improve at FAF is to find a way to get them to ladder more. Based on my recent experience moving up the ladder (from about 250 to 750), I am in a good position to write such a guide.
Also, to ensure that the guide is short, I want to focus on advice/guidance that players basically can’t get elsewhere. I don’t need to explain specific units and unit mechanics. Players seem to have a good grasp of that. And I don’t need to describe build orders, because there are already excellent tutorial videos from Heaven and BRNK.
Also, to keep the guide short, I want to focus my advice only on the smaller ladder maps and only on the first 10 minutes or so of the game.
If more people play more ladder games and improve their gameplay, that should make things better all around.
BRS_DESTRUCTOR has also made a list of tips for newer players:
/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=16980I would appreciate any corrections where the guide is wrong. Please keep in mind that this guide is not intended to tell the entire story of everything every player should be doing. I tried to keep it short and it should only include advice that would be of significant help to players who are having a tough time getting their ladder rating up.
Also, I would appreciate feedback about whether any particular advice was helpful. If it's not helpful, it should be cut. I think the #1 way to improve this guide is probably to cut out half of it so it is short enough that people will use it.
Also, I welcome any discussion in this thread in more depth about any of these issues.
I am grateful to everyone who has responded to my questions, given me advice during games, shared advice and wisdom in Twitch chat, and especially everyone who streams and casts games (their own, and replays).