The art of raiding

[Herbert]

Hi All

I am trying to perfect my early raids on Gap of Rohans and wonder if someone has found something better? I play in a top or bottom slot using cybran and my startup is:

1 landfac
2 powergen
2 mex
1 powergen
2 mex
5 powergen

Out of the landfac I make:
3 engies
2 labs
1 scout
infinite engies

I raid over the mountain as soon as the labs and scout come off the production line. With it being so early usually there's no resistance and I will knock out quite a few engines and mexes. The only time that changes is if someone has kept their acu in base. My early eco is not a problem.

Does anybody have anything better?

[Mr-Smith]

hahaha you call your topic art of raiding and than you talk about gap.... one of the worst eco maps...

that map is by far to big for going labs as fourth
the time your lab has passed the map he easy has a t1 tanks there guarding his engis.
going just 1 first lab may work
or going air first and bomber

[Aulex]

Welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll first off i must agree with smith, lol GoR.
Second you probably want to time it right when the enemy coms leave the base so it leaves them with the decision of turning back trying to kill the lab and giving you most of the mass or getting the mass and possibly allowing the lab to wreck havoc

[rockoe10]

Because of the size of the map and time it takes to traverse the mountain, you may be better off doing a ghetto gunship and when they spam out some Mobile AA, just drop the LAB's. This way they waste mass on AA and you deal more DPS. Just from sheer distance traveled, you may be able to time it about the same.

[Herbert]

hahaha you call your topic art of raiding and than you talk about gap.... one of the worst eco maps...

that map is by far to big for going labs as fourth
the time your lab has passed the map he easy has a t1 tanks there guarding his engis.
going just 1 first lab may work
or going air first and bomber

I disagree.

2 x lab + scout being made and sent so early means they will reach the opposite players front mexes before they're all built. They knock off the engies and destroy the front mexes that have been built. Then move down to the next players front mexes and repeat. At that point I will have additional landfac spamming labs that will have started arriving over the mountain for my 2nd raiding wave.

I got 100 replays of it working near enough every time. What you arent considering is who has t1 tanks so early to counter 2 x lab + scout or guard engies? If they switch to tanks after I appear then tanks are more expensive to build and slow. I can easily micro the labs and scouts to avoid them. Unless they kept their acu in base or are using the same tactic as me my raiding works.

The acus grey dot is also slowly moving compared to labs and tanks so I know if its been left in base. I pursue my raiding (1st, 2nd, 3rd , waves etc) until they pd the routes of the mountain down (if they manage it).

[Herbert]

Because of the size of the map and time it takes to traverse the mountain, you may be better off doing a ghetto gunship and when they spam out some Mobile AA, just drop the LAB's. This way they waste mass on AA and you deal more DPS. Just from sheer distance traveled, you may be able to time it about the same.

That will take a while to do as I need a landfac, airfac, transport and labs.

By then the opposite player will have mexes up and ground units. I think they'd be able to deal with it better than the early rush.

[Herbert]

Welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll first off i must agree with smith, lol GoR.
Second you probably want to time it right when the enemy coms leave the base so it leaves them with the decision of turning back trying to kill the lab and giving you most of the mass or getting the mass and possibly allowing the lab to wreck havoc

It Rohans so usually they all send acus to the middle after the first fac is built. If the acu is left in base they usually send it to the mountain to cut off my raiding and make pd.

They wont know my raid is coming until it arrivals at the front mexes/engies or if they sent a scout. The acu wont make it back in time to stop some good collatoral.

[Swkoll]

4th and 5th labs are often too slow even on a 5x5 km map by the time they get to any decent opponent, they will already have scouts to detect raids and tanks to intercept them. I suppose this is good to counter early greedy plays but I would probably get 2nd and 3rd labs.

[Plasma_Wolf]

If you have a 100 replays, post some. On your question about who would have tanks by the time you arrive, I'd expect the answer to be "everyone". Gap consists of several distant chokepoints that are easily defended against raiding parties, so you may have the element of surprise by actually performing them, but that problem is easily dealt with by a single scout, which raises the question: why don't they.

Any raiding that is performed while the enemy hasn't sent a scout can't be judged on how good it is, due to how bad the enemy is at a very basic thing.

[Herbert]

4th and 5th labs are often too slow even on a 5x5 km map by the time they get to any decent opponent, they will already have scouts to detect raids and tanks to intercept them. I suppose this is good to counter early greedy plays but I would probably get 2nd and 3rd labs.

I stop the lab spam when they've closed down the pass using units, pd, or acu. If can be soon after the 1st wave, it can never happen, it depends on how the opponent reacts.