Saktoth wrote:Note that comnapping is lame and if you do this in most team games you deserve a whuppin'.
Not really if you aren't paying attention you deserve to lose.
That is the general principle yes. In a 1v1 com ends game, this is pretty reasonable- you should know what facs and strats the enemy is using, and should be watching your commander carefully. However, note i said team games, and i should clarify and say random team games (rarely com ends). In any random team game the likelyhood of having a noobie on your team is quite high. Its very easy for such a newbie to be comnapped, picked up, and dumped on top of one of the good players. While the noob might not be much of a challenge to the enemy, he can at least offer a speedbump or porc (Which is all most noobs know how to do) and is unlikely to cause nearly quite as much damage to the team as his com going off in your base will.
While its good and healthy for a noob to be comnapped a few times until he learns how to handle it, in the majority of cases it ruins the game, as it makes the 'threshold for entry' for a new player too high, and punishes his teammates for playing with him (Or playing random teams).
Even an alright player familiar with comnaps can get napped though. Sefi did this to me in a game recently, napping quant an jK's com and dropping it on top of my base (And yours, which id .taken since you'd D/C'ed). It took me out of the game entirely and quant and jK went on to noob out, hit the unit limit, and win with a buzzsaw.
Saktoth wrote: Even an alright player familiar with comnaps can get napped though. Sefi did this to me in a game recently, napping quant an jK's com and dropping it on top of my base (And yours, which id .taken since you'd D/C'ed). It took me out of the game entirely and quant and jK went on to noob out, hit the unit limit, and win with a buzzsaw.
Well okay Saktoth, but the other side is able to use the same strat. Also part of the job of more experienced players is to help the nubs on their team play better (hopefully the nubs listen), and they may see the atlas coming and mark it.
Great, a nap-the-noobs-and-bomb game. On almost every random-teams game. Sounds like a blast.
Noobs never listen. You can spam marks all over a t2 con and shout at him for ages and he still wont realise you gave it to him. They arent going to realise that there is an atlas flying at their boy (And in intense situations, it can be hard enough for you to notice this on the other side of the map), and even if they do they might not even realise they need to walk boy to stop it picking them up.
Even a mediocre player, it only takes a moment of inattention and the best player on your team goes up in a cloud of smoke (And if the comnapper is clever, he'll have aircons ready to reclaim).
The worst thing about this is it even if a good player is napped due to inattentiveness (And thus 'he deserved it, should know better and pay more attention') it punishes the other players on the team far more than anything else that player could possibly do. I cant think of anything worse for your team than letting your com be napped.
Even if you get the metal, since any boys that go up are yours its not like you're getting any of his boy metal, and you probably just lost 2 coms- you'd be lucky just to replace what you lost.
Well when I've tried napping people in team games lately it hasn't worked. I honestly can't remember the last team game I saw decided by a nap. That may change this weekend though.
Just launch the com at the base of that same guy that you napped from... :)
Airdroping is in fact a powerfull tactic if done right and off course it works better with tech 2 since tech 2 units are more expensive and powerfull and thus each aircraft carries more power... :)
I figured i would write up a little air drop guide:
A)20 Warrior Drop
I always do 20, because its a nice number to drop , you dont have to micro them, and they do alot of damage. if you drop less than 20 warriors, they probably wont get to the labs. When you drop, make sure you drop in a very wide circle, to take out llts and defenses. There is always a hole in every single air defense. For example
1. Ledges. You can always land on ledges. Worsk every time
2. No hole? com bomb and make one.
3. If the enemy has fighter swarm, create 20 extra transports. send these in first, and the fighter swarm will follow. send the real group on the other side of them map, 5 seconds later. you need to micro this correctly but its devastating.
4 It takes 10 transports to pick up a flak vehicle. and 6 to pick up a kbot t2 aa. before they all get shot down.
20 Hammer Drop)
Almost as devastating as a warrior drop, this tactic is much more affordable. Unfortunately they get tore up by flash. I would only drop hammers on the air guy, and even then warriors walk right through the air guy, and usually take out the next guy as well.
Dropping on the air guy is best strategy, as he wont have too much ground defenses, and probably no mobile defense.
if you do your drop correctly, you will land on a base with a commander. when yuo map out your drop, map out the return flight for all. once you have dropped, immediate tell 4 -5 transports to com nap. This will cause the enemy to try to dgun the warriors, forcing him to sit still for a com nap. CRUCIAL that you look for aa on ths, because if you lift off and there is too much, you willl blow your warriors.
The second most effective unit to drop are levelers, which work almost as well as warriors.
Flash are a distant 3rd, but you can drop about 5 times as much for the price.
When transporting units, always map under ledges. For example on delta siege, you can generally transport right along the basins north ledge, without being effected by any aa.
The majority of maps contains safe routes that most people dont build aa on.
Here are a couple i use.
Speedmetal.- This takes some microing fly far left and land on the ledge you need to micro as a group in a line, it takes a few seconds. This method allows you to win speedmetal in under 2.30 minutes. use repeat to continue stream of units and you win.
Delta) As i said before, use the ledges to hide
Tropical. - literally fly off the left side of the map, and run down the border. the mountains block any radar from seeing you . if your transporting kbots, always land directly on the hills. stay up there until youve wasted the ground troops. Also you can often fly down the exact center of the map.
Tabula- I suggest short hops from to the air spot over the water. this allows you to land on a ledge, and a generally clear path. Additionally there is a penis shaped hill that only works occassionally.
Altored) To drop on altored is so easy you can do it anywhere. Most of the time i drop on the sides, but you would be surprised how effective it is in center.
If you are doing drops, DO NOT commit to one area. drop at the ally who either needs the most help, or the area with the least aa, or the area that has the most metal. I suggest sending kbots to reclaim with. by the time your warriors die, you can suck 1500 metal from your drop.
Since airdropping means your not part of the bigger battle, you really need to support whoever needs it. Keep your warriors grouped for a quick drop. I suggest creating scouts and have them guard one warrior.
Scouting is many times not effective, i find that the first drop i never scout, so that thye have less aa.
Nice guide. Tough I think that if enemy AA is great enough the whole airdrop thing might become too expensive to be worthwhile, and that scouting is great if you do it right before the attack, instead of before preparing it...
Loading a T2 transport (Especially the heavily armored Core ones!) with 4-5 Roaches and then landing them next to T2 factories is a hell of an amusing tactic - I managed to destroy something on the order of 6 T2 factories earlier this morning using that.
Saktoth wrote:Note that comnapping is lame and if you do this in most team games you deserve a whuppin'.
Not really if you aren't paying attention you deserve to lose.
That's right, if player1 dont know what is weakest point on own defence, HE is lame if starts blaming player2 tactics as "lame" because lost match for player2.
Spring is WAR game and there is certain rules, one of them is that you need to win if you dont wanna loose.
Only bad players blames other players as lamers or n00bs, what ever did they won or loose!
Like this idea, if player1 have so weak air defence that player2 can do air drop in base or capture player1 commander. Player1 cannot blame no one else than itself by being a bad strategist!
Player 1 is to blame, yes. Thats true. But player 3, his ally, certainly isnt to blame and getting player 1 commander dropped on him just ruins the game. Player 1 might be incompetent but perhaps he can slow down the enemy and give player 3 a chance to win. Comnapping just punishes a good player for playing with an inferior player when he gets an allies com exploded on him.
I know some people would say 'dont play with noobs' (Though comnapping happens to the best of us sometimes) but im a pub player, not a clique player. Our community is too small to not play mixed-skill games.
Its still kinda lame in 1v1's, but yes, you should expect it and deserve to lose if you dont. They are generally com ends anyway, so you'll be paying very close attention to your com. Im talking about team games though. Thats where it really ruins things.
whenever i play with sefidel, orakio, farleshadow i always say to my allies "all build defenders this guy knows no other tactic other than airdrop" and most of the time my allies dont make defenders and most of the time the game is over with an airdrop. it is a good tactic but not good in sefidels case becuase everyone knows its what he is gonna do. and he really needs to try new things.
In tabula, someone (man i forgot who) did a horrible comdrop on northern (penis?) hill. However, my rapid expansion allowed him to cripple me from the back. Then the allies went down as well, especially without radar. Comdropping is so important for resources tho, with an air start. Load ur com and make mexes in various places with llts, defenders(so important), and radars. I see that people who forget the defenders and the radar phail miserably at this. This is a good way to push north in dsd too.
So flying just under a ledge really works then?
Also, is arm/core better for transports? Air-dropped units?
lbctech wrote:
So flying just under a ledge really works then?
Also, is arm/core better for transports? Air-dropped units?
flying under/by ledges is a really cool thing, in DSD most of the time you can bomb/drop if you fly in under the big ledge overlooking the main flatland, and in Tabula the penishill offers superb cover. Most people usually send their air straight in towards the enemy though, which fails
The other thing I am wondering about is whether their would be significant importance to ground floods (all dropped at once) or falling fly-bys. It seems that there should be .Now that there are those features.
I have been doing airdrops for a long time to compensate for my ineptitude in other areas of the game. Warriors rule, and i have painfully looked for an alternative in core side, but have found none. Warriors seem to have the ideal balance of damage and health to make serious damage.
I have almost never seen airdrops using 2 players, and i have never participated in one. So it is metal for 2 factories and warriors, and buildtime and E for atlas. Good for taking a back spot in small supreme with a geo and good metal spots. But it will arrive late, so...
The trick and rush of it is that you must load up the atlas, and make the smallest swarm you can with them. Then they fly half a screen behind the scouts. That half-screen must be the first time your air was seen by the enemy. No sending a scout 1 minute before, no nothing. You choose an area where the enemy must have stuff, and you hope it can be scouted by non-air. If not, you have half a screen at atlas speed to decide where to land, which AA to avoid, if going for a commander detoantion or avoiding the commander completelly, etc. OR, turn back and save the warriors if there is AA. There are always more spots to attack, and few ppl make serious AA without having seen any air. With a good size peeper wave and care, you can decide GO or NO GO before the swarm of atlas is in their radar. If no go, must make 3 or 4 more peepers and scout the next spot, and hit it fast. You can never be sure they didnt see the swarm.
If its go, order the area unload and the turn back quick. You should have more warriors building already. I have brought most of the atlas back sometimes, and the 2nd wave after a comm detonation is usually gg.
Unit mix:
I suggest 12 warriors, 2 aa kbots and 1 construction kbot. The worse thing you can find is fighters, and if you can land the AA kbots they should have cleared at least lvl 1 fighters before your 2nd wave. If you kill anything at all, suck it with the construction kbot. Suck your warriors too. 12 Surprise warriors can cover a construction kbot for quite a while making this quite profitable sometimes.
Factory Transport Assist LUA can make the pressure even higher, if you found a completelly open route free of AA. That way you can go all out on production, being delivered straight into the wound.
