Some Q's I need to clarify

[Gruffman]

Just some things I am trying to get straight in my head , all help appreciated

Is there a way to force your acu to build things at their maximum possible range? Sometimes the acu starts the building from far away and sometimes it seems to walk over right beside where the building will be placed.

When you reinforce a shield with an acu/eng/eng station what resource (if any) does it use up? Does the resource type change depending who is doing the reinforcing?

How do you get units to efficiently form up into lines? Holding right click and setting the facing is hugely problematic I find, as units will go all over the place for huge distances while they try to get into order. As another example, if I have 9 units already forming a front line and I want to add a 10th unit, if the 10th unit is some distance away, the front nine will `fall back`....

Once and for all how do I highlight a bunch of units and have them advance/attack forward without breaking into single line (suicide) file?

I often see players doing what I assume must be a technique to boost energy and mass income where they are spamming Support Commanders endlessly. What's the logic and timing of this? Bluntly put I never feel I have the spare eco in the first place to start this tehnique.

Does the tml when left building on its own, take eco to create its missiles?

I'm aware t3 artillery can be sped up by surrounding them somehow with power stations? How does this work, whats the `best` way to surround them for the best possible increase? What level power stations?

What radar (if any) will let you see Cybran units, especially exp units?

No one seems to use Air staging facilities to refuel their planes, how come?

Thanks!

[nocaps]

right, okay:

when it receives a build order, an engineering unit checks if it's within its build range; if it is, it starts building immediately, and if it isn't, it walks right up to the planned building and then starts. if you want to prevent it moving too much, you should ensure that it only gets the order when the building is already in range: place a move order some distance away from the building -- such that when it reaches the waypoint it will be within range of the building -- then queue the building with shift. you can check the build range by looking at the orange circle that appears when you select a unit.
(this is only worth doing at the beginning of games, when you have a lot of attention to spare; otherwise it's better to let engis/the acu walk, and pay attention to more important things)

it uses mass and energy. as i understand it, assisting a shield to make it regen faster is equivalent to building a new shield with the amount of health healed. so, for example, if you assisted a t3 shield that was at half health until it was fully healed, the cost of doing that would be half a t3 shield in mass and e. the reason people do this instead of just building more shields is because of building space and the fact that multiple shields stacked each take damage from the same attack. there's no difference if you change the thing that's assisting, although it might take up resources at a higher/lower rate depending on its bp (and heal at a rate proportional to how fast it's using resources)

easiest way to do this is just to select+move the trailing units, and not to move the units that are in place at all. if that's not working, try moving all the units with a standard order then shift+rightclick+drag to queue a formation move

formation move. alternatively, in some situations, split attack -- you can press f1 (or f2? idk) to set the hotkey for this

in order of efficiency, mass producing units are as follows: t1 mex > t2 mex > m storage adjacent to t2 mex > t3 mex > t3 fab with adjacency = t2 fab with adjacency > ras scus. the reason some prefer rascoms to fabs is because they're hardier and less volatile, take little space, and you can move them wherever you like. each rascom produces 11 mass per tick and ~1k e per tick. there should be preset for ras in the q gateway. obv you should only do this once you have full capped t3 mex.

yes, and lots of it. you should turn off autobuild on tml you're not using but expect to use again, and reclaim tmls that are obsolete.

p gens actually increase the fire rate of t3 arty, t2 arty, and ravagers -- it's just that t3 arty are the only ones for which it's more efficient to build p gens as opposed to more arty. for best results, put t3 p gens at the four cardinal directions around a t3 arty; this should increase the fire rate by 50%. you might not want to do this if you're afraid of volatility or you need more space for shields. t1 and t2 p gens aren't really worth using for their adjacency.

stealthed units can be seen by omni and vision, cloaked units can be seen by omni only and identified by omni and vision at once. most cybran units do not come with built-in stealth -- only the monkey, and the acu with the stealth upgrade. however, at t2 cybran get the deceiver, which grants stealth to a radius of units around it (the cybran equivalent of other factions' mobile shields). the only cloaked units are the selen when standing still (sera combat scout) and the cyb acu with the cloak upgrade.

because planes have stupid huge amounts of fuel, and staging is painful to use. you can still use staging to good effect to repair planes, but the easiest way to prevent them being out of fuel is just not to have them patrolling all the time.

:)

[JaggedAppliance]

Is there a way to force your acu to build things at their maximum possible range? Sometimes the acu starts the building from far away and sometimes it seems to walk over right beside where the building will be placed.

Issue a move command so your commander is in build range. Check out Zlo's commands in the opening of this video:

When you reinforce a shield with an acu/eng/eng station what resource (if any) does it use up? Does the resource type change depending who is doing the reinforcing?

Click the Economy Overlay button on the top left, then zoom in to see exactly what your engineers and buildings are consuming. The type of resource consumed will never differ based on whether it's an engineer or an acu or hives or scus.

How do you get units to efficiently form up into lines? Holding right click and setting the facing is hugely problematic I find, as units will go all over the place for huge distances while they try to get into order. As another example, if I have 9 units already forming a front line and I want to add a 10th unit, if the 10th unit is some distance away, the front nine will `fall back`....

Just select and right click where you want them. If you want them in a very specific place then you can send them close to there with a normal move command and then give the formation move order(hold right click) to precisely where you want them. Units move slower in formation move and will try to group themselves into formation so it's not always ideal.

Once and for all how do I highlight a bunch of units and have them advance/attack forward without breaking into single line (suicide) file?

You can do a formation move and they will not break formation.

I often see players doing what I assume must be a technique to boost energy and mass income where they are spamming Support Commanders endlessly. What's the logic and timing of this? Bluntly put I never feel I have the spare eco in the first place to start this tehnique.

They are building RAS SCUs, that is SCU with resource allocation system which gives mass and energy income. This is what some people call T4 eco, you can do this after you have full t3 mexes but it comes at the cost of your dignity and self respect.

Does the tml when left building on its own, take eco to create its missiles?

Yes, once again press the economy overlay button to see how much the launcher is consuming.

I'm aware t3 artillery can be sped up by surrounding them somehow with power stations? How does this work, whats the `best` way to surround them for the best possible increase? What level power stations?

http://wiki.faforever.com/index.php?tit ... ency_Bonus

What radar (if any) will let you see Cybran units, especially exp units?

You need an Omni sensor to see stealthed units. T3 radar has omni, it's range is indicated by a red ring.

No one seems to use Air staging facilities to refuel their planes, how come?

People don't do a lot of things they should.

[Plasma_Wolf]

in order of efficiency, mass producing units are as follows: t1 mex > t2 mex > m storage adjacent to t2 mex > t3 mex > t3 fab with adjacency = t2 fab with adjacency > ras scus.

Only the ACU RAS is missing here. Upgrading a T2 Mex to a T3 Mex gives a bonus of 18 mass/s (assuming you've got storage around it already, then it goes from 9->27) for 4600 mass. The Aeon ACU gives the most mass/s with the RAS at 18/s (so the bonus is 17) for a total of 5000 mass.

The ACU RAS question is a tricky one though because it also gives a big load of energy, which is a very nice thing. However, it'll also cost loads of energy to upgrade. It will come down to whether you have the time and economy for the upgrade, as well as if your ACU is in a safe position for the time you need. I think these questions are more important than "is it a better option than getting a T3 mex?", although that question actually is part of the time, economy and safety questions about your ACU upgrade.

[AFGHANPSYCHO]

p gens actually increase the fire rate of t3 arty, t2 arty, and ravagers --

According to the fafwiki, ravagers get no adjacency bonus.

[tallian2]

Ravagers use energy when they fire. They benefit from adjacency by reducing the amount of energy used, not by increasing their RoF.

Tall

[speed2]

I've just did some testing and found out that right now ravager's adjacency is broken, it uses the least energy when it has no adjacency (-50e/p)
If you start adding pgen's it will decrease energy usage but from number 55 and not from 50.

4 T3 pgens can bring it back to -50 so not very efficient atm.

Spoiler: show

so wiki writters were using their sixth sence and better wrote that it has no adjacency someone might as well fix it once it's fixed in game