Expansion is important, as the closer you can deploy your packets to the front line, the better.
Expansion is always important. It's important because it fills the buffer. For frontline packet deploying use Connections.
You don't really have a good unit for damage against buildings (Connection will work, but isn't much better than a Byte or Worm), so spamming packets to attack buildings is important.
Connection is great against buildings. Simply walk right up to the building and deploy a couple of dozen packets, eat the packets before the building dies so that you lose very few.
Choose the places where you deploy packets carefully. You lose 12 from the buffer every time you dispatch, so if multiple ports are being attacked, select the one in the center to dispatch from and micromanage them rather than deploying from every port and losing all your bufferized packets.
If you're trying to save a Node dispatch directly from that Node. By spamming dispatch and eat on a Node you can minimise loses.
You also missed a lot of vital points. Mines, Flows, Firewalls and the correct use of Connections was not properly covered.
Gateways can make mines, use them. Mines do not damage each other so build a couple next to front-line Nodes as a first line of defence before dispatching packets.
Firewall is the most useful superweapon. Firewalls half the damage that affected units take and reflect half damage back to the enemy. People should be constructing one of these as soon as their second capped geo depending on map size and geo availibility. It is a very good at countering Pointers, a pointer will 1-shot kill itself with the reflected damage. This makes them key for Flow survival as well as very useful for Connections as they are weak to Pointers too. Firewall is still useful for 'final assaults' against non-System players. Firewalls
do not reflect EMP damage.
Flows are good antiswarm, are all terrain and are hard to hit. Flow speed increases with Node count. In midgame your Base should be spamming mostly flows. Flows are extremely weak to Pointers as they are 1 shotted by them, they are also weak to DOS. Make sure to not fly flows directly over enemy swarms or they will die, hold position can help in this situation. At some stage of the game you might think you've got enough Flows to assassinate the enemy base, this is generally a good idea but be sure to use firewall.
Connections. Their firepower comes from a global mana pool, the buffer. Firepower is global so extra connections do not noticeably add to firepower. Gateways should be used to constantly repair Connections. When using deploy the packets should not roam far from the Connection, quickly eat and deploy to dodge AOE attacks. A few connections and 100 packets can be used to assassinate the enemy's base, firewall increases the effectiveness of this. On some maps where the Base is far from Nodes a Connection should be kept near the Base for defence.
It may be helpful to stop thinking of packets as units. Packets are merely an ability that Nodes and Connections have. It uses a global mana pool charged by Nodes. Packets are healed when they pop into and out of the buffer. If fighting a Worm or Byte dispatch and eat in time to the enemy's fire rate. Inside the buffer they are invulnerable, outside they can be unexpectably killed by nukes, pointer flame, the Obelisk thing and stealth worms. Packets should not be left outside the buffer.
Connections and Nodes can be set to repeat to repeat deploy packets.
