Advice community Q/A Thread

[biass]

These are for the tactics/strategy questions you want to throw out for the community to answer, without flooding the threads where a specific player will answer eg Petric/speed, but they will certainly try to answer some stuff here if they can

Spoiler: show

I ask some of the offending (you know who you are) newer players to please listen to the advices of more skilled players and attempt to not spread misinformation to other new players because it is getting very far out of hand.
This doesn't mean don't try to help other people, but make sure what you're saying is actually correct, so we can ensure people learn the correct things

[Darth_Google]

And when im just about to post my guide this thread appears. So sad.

[biass]

Not sure how it's sad, anyways, back to topic:

[PhilipJFry]

Question: I see a soul ripper being built by an opponent who has about the same asf as mine. Often I can kill it, but lose air control as a result and lose all expansions to strats.

Assuming I forgot to scout and only discovered it when it starts shooting my base, what's the best course of action to take?

As to point one you start to question your ecowhoring skill because your opponent made a unit that costs as much mass as 100 ASF. Then you proceed with spamming Sams all over the place.

As to point 2 pretty much the same without time to react.

[Lieutenant Lich]

How do I fight Aeon as UEF in t1?

[Oeterama68]

How do I fight Aeon as UEF in t1?

Either get t2 land or heavy airplay or gun, depending on map and situation.

Other than that... Good zigzagging with t1 tanks will buy you time but probably fail eventually. Secure important expansions with a pd and pay attention to deal with any arty if you wanna try to gain/hold your part of the map early on. In essence you're at a disadvantage early on so play around the fact.

Some notes;
If you go heavy air then the likely reaction is either t1maa or airplay from opponent. T1 airstage is pretty much equal so you'd rather fight in the air than on the ground vs aurora. Against t1maa you probably have to switch to drops (for raiding or reclaim stealing) after exploiting that the t1maa takes time to arrive everywhere. If the reaction is t2 air then don't forget that swifties are not all that efficient (read: not invincible) vs inti's. Pay attention to production.

If you go gun then UEF has somewhat of a nice advantage in that your gun doesn't waste dps vs aurora and OC happens to be extremely effective vs obsidian and mobile shields. However, Aeon doublegun does outrange you so you might have to invest in nano (expensive) to deal with it if you can't just pick a different area to send your com. You can use t2 pd & static shields (oc is very strong against mobile shields and poor against static ones) to hold a position if you really need to. Sparkies build things quickly but it's quite an eco drain so make sure it'll be worth it.

For t2 army composition you probably want t1 arty mixed in once enemy t2 starts rolling out to deal with mobile shields and obsidians (they are slow and low range so it will help your kiting quite a bit, t1 tanks are somewhat useful due to obsidian's slow fire rate but good unit mix from the opponent turns them into fodder). You might want to add some flak here and there depending on how air is going. Be very mindful of when your opponent goes t3 land.

Some fringe stuff;
Walls are very nice, op and massively underused. Sparkies build them very fast as well.
Ghetto gunships eat aurora alive, but are expensive.
Post t1 aeon tend to be quite a powerheavy faction, try to do something against that t2 pgen going up.
Bombing radar is always good if your opponent doesn't rely overmuch on t1 landscouts, but aeon t1 landscouts are epic so yeah...
Aurora are super slow so some early labs can do good damage, their low hp makes them quite beatable in micro wars as well, but aurora is very microable too so depends a bit on micro skill.
Sometimes going for really fast expansions can help since aurora gain strength in numbers (and thus forcing your opponent to split them can delay that a bit) but if you sacrifice too much to achieve it then you're just shooting yourself in the foot.
Really well microed aurora can hold their own vs t2 land as well (they can actually kite pillars), which is just brutal and very hard to deal with.

That's all I could think of, I know you asked for t1 help but I assumed you meant land, on water you can just make frigates if there's space. Thing is, beating aeon usually means not relying on t1 overly much. On 5x5 and river maps the natural disadvantage is more pronounced.