the basics
The art of micromanagement.
Whoever builds the heaviest guns with the least amount of clicks, wins.
Well, that's easilly said.. But it's often hard to keep track of your production crews during battle. That leads to idle factories and constr bots.
That's why i have production 'crews' and 'leaders' working on different parts of economy, factory & defense production, and unit production.
In the very early game, the commander builds most of my economy (mexes and solars), but this soon gets taken over by construction bot teams. The commander then becomes a speedworker slave. It can't build much, but does so in a hurry
Workers on the constr teams shift quite often, when i want to speed up something i pull workers off one job and put 'm on the urgent job.
And the 'leader' is used to build several related types of units after eachother, properly placed. It sometimes gets CTRL-#ed, for easy access using #. (# = number)
My strategy almost forces me to build both vehicles and kbots and planes.
Vehicles for defense and offense, Kbots for construction and battle support, planes mostly for recon and/or brawlering/bombing.
Obviously, on a water map subs and ships are the important units, instead of vehicles.
It's possible to build the first part of the economy with only a vehicle / kbot factory, but i find that involves more brainactivity, and quite often it means i cannot put out enough units after 5 to 10 minutes into the game.
Since tanks fire heavier shots than kbots, i put out the heaviest L1 tank as mobile base-defense. Rushers usually respect that, and opt to invest in a L2 economy straight away instead of L1 rushing to death.
The k-bots are the nimblest builders, and my strategy requires a lot of shifting of construction kbots.
Construction vehicles may be faster, but they are much more likely to stall production by stopping in the wrong place.. Especially in narrow workplaces they are a disaster.
So the first kbot factory outputs 10 constr kbots, and has an pre-set order of 'move south, then east/west, then a bit north, and guard your parent factory'.
The first tank and kbot take a while to produce, but the 2nd is faster. The 5th is produced real fast, coz there are now 4 workers guarding/assisting the factory.
So the 2nd constr kbot can be put on another task, like building more mexes. The 3rd gets put on adv-solar construction, and the 4th guards the 2nd.
Or, you guard the vehicle factory with the 4th, increasing it's production (and economic drain).
The vehicle factory is managed a bit more closely, it's start buildqueue (on metalheck) is usually something like 1 leveler, 1 constr bot, 2 levelers, 1 constr bot, 3 levelers, 1 constr bot, 300 levelers.
You can add a 100 units to a factory's queue by left-clicking it's buildpicture while you hold CTRL + shift.
Why do i get 3 veh constr bots when i'm already making 10 constr kbots? Because someone might blow up my vehicle factory just at the moment i want to make an L2 vehicle factory. That can only be done by the constr vehicle.
Ofcourse, you might want more sophisticated buildqueues, but i urge you to keep it simple. Brain- and click-time is best spent on recon and attack, not construction.
But anyways, now you know you have 2 teams, one for energy one for metal, who's leading those teams, and their production plan.
You can shift the workers from one to another group, thereby changing priorities of your army.
And as soon as my economy has some steam, the same trick is pulled for aircraft. Factory is built, 2-5 constr planes put in the queue, followed by 20 fighters. Guard-order the factory to guard itself, and walk away. The first plane takes a while, but 2 const planes can help put up your fighter aircraft quickly.
Those fighters are excellent mobile anti-air and/or recon units. If your opponent is foolish enough to use slow constr planes for his base production, then your fighters can hurt those quickly and badly.
Once enough LLTs are up in the opponent's base, planes are also about the only thing that can give you a complete view of his base.
At some point, most production teams get L2 leaders, the economy groups first.
The 'defense' L2 leader's first task is building radar and
possibly anti-radar. The L2 radar jammer is comfortably large, and cheap.
However, some players attack soon after you start to jam radar.
L2 production teams can get quite large, and it's then usefull to put the leader (alone) in a group. CTRL-[number] to put it in, hitting [number] twice will center the view on whereever your leader is at that time.
Since my left hand is around AWSD on the keyboard, i use control groups 1-4 for battles, 5-7 for construction and 8-0 for LRPCs groups.
During the buildup of my adv L1 / early L2 stage, some constr kbots are on factory-assist duty. But nano-towers out-build anything, so they are used for factory assist, a.s.a.p.
In AA 1.44 i use about 6-8 nanotowers for a L2 vehicle plant, and as many as 20-30 for a mech (L3 kbot) factory.
When nano-towers die, they blow up, taking out their neighbors. So in most cases, i build 'm in groups of 4-8. So when a bomber gets a lucky hit on one of 'm, the other groups survive.
Nano-towers take forever to build, so having 2/3 L1 kbots working on one is not a bad idea.
You can also order the first nano-tower on the blocks to assist the k-bot building the blocks, as soon as the outline of it's own construction is visible.
By putting your factories to one side of the n-tower block and some economy on the other side (facing away from your opponent), you can have the n-towers speed up economy production aswell, in a limited radius.
I've found that capability to be extremely helpfull towards winning, since it allows me to adapt more quickly than the other guy.
Just don't overdo it! On a map like metalheck, you'll still need approx 10 L1 constr units and 20-30 L2 constr units in case your nano towers get bombed or otherwise destroyed.
As you might have guessed, using blocks of n-towers to fuel production of your economy forces you to spread out your base, and diversify the sectors. That's good, because if part of your base is destroyed, none of the 'pillars' (metal, energy, factories) will be gone.
Spread out, diversified bases allow you to bounce back after an attack.
N-towers are kind of difficult to construct, and when the battle requires your attention, adding production power to a factory with n-towers can take too many clicks...
So instead, have 2 L2 kbot factories.
One L2 Kbot factory (plus n-towers) is used only for production of battle units, and the 2nd uses no assisting (guarding) nano-towers.
The 2nd is used to put out 5, 10, 15 or 20 farks / freakers (L2 speed builders). That factory gets an order to move the units to the factory that needs a speed increase, and have 'm guard it.. That means you order the factory to do what you want the produced units to do. Factories don't walk :D
This way, the production on the 'war factory' is increased gradually to as high as you need it, without the clicking of building nano-towers, waiting for it to complete, and then having the n-towers assist the factory. You can focus on the battle instead.
And yes, having 2 constr bots / n-towers guard the production of the farks/freakers will result in quicker increases.
If i'm allowed the time by my opponent, i build other crucial structures (like a L2 vehicle factory with it's n-towers) also double..
Ofcourse, you're not going to use all your factories all the time..
But having them (with those n-tower blocks) means you can build units quickly when you want / need them.
My L2 aircraft factories has about 8-12 n-towers near it, but those are working on other stuff most of the time...
If the other guy nukes me, i build 2 more anti-nukes stocked with 100 antinukes, just in case he fires 50 nukes from 5 silos after eachother later in the game..
Now, i'd like to share some battle tactics aswell.
The relation between recon and base design/defense i'll get to in another post..
Some proven tactics
These tactics relate to the balance of absolute annihilation, version 1.44
Suppose you can build 5 tanks quickly.. Then use 'm, instead of building 20 :)
Drive 2 or 3 heavy tanks as panic-inducing reconaissance into your enemy's base, while your factory produces 10 more.
It really pays to micromanage those tanks.
1) you can have 'm shoot the weak / important stuff first. why take out those frontrow HLTs and guardians if you can drive by them and take out his juicy mexes and geothermal (which he put next to his fusion, for fun's sake)
2) you'll see what other structures/units your opponent has, or is working on.
3) you'll see how your opponent manages his troops.
Driveby shooting
Most base defenses get thicker as you deeper into the base. So instead of driving your tanks straight into it, drive heavy tanks along the edge back and forth. That way you eat up the defense, and if he tries to repair it you can attack the construction bots, which represent a lot of micromanagement time for your opponent.
Ofcourse, if there are a bunch of annihilators or doomsdays (longrange heavy lasers), this strategy is foolish. then retreat your tanks, and move on to:
Artillery
Long-range mobile artillery can actually work...
If you're playing AA Core, have a look at Tremors (from L2 vehicle plant). In groups of 3-4, they are devastating.
So much so, that if you point such a group at someone's base, they will do anything to get rid of them. They'll send in their brawlers if they have 'm, or entire tank force, or whatever.
Be ready for that reaction. Have your tremors behind plenty of firepower to deflect whatever he throws at you. Gollies and levelers work best, i've found.
Usually i put the tremors into 2 control groups (select 2 tremors, hit CTRL+1 to put them into group '1', CTRL+2 for group 2, etc) possibly together with some anti-air units.
Then put your tanks into group 3.
Now you have a quick way to micromanage the tanks and the artillery.
Keep the tanks between your enemies approaching units and your artillery.
Use the artillery groups (1 and 2) to bomb different parts of his base.
If and when you win the tank battle, you can send some tanks into the base as eyes for the artillery. Better yet, have a group of L1 kbots standing ready at the flanks, to provide additional protection to the artillery or tanks, but also to invade the base and finish off what the artillery started.
Hidden sets of 10+ brawlers / L2 bombers can quickly end your artillery party, but your fighter aircraft might save it. And provide LOS for your artillery too. Send 1 or 2 fighters in, and force-fire the artillery on your selected target.
LRPCs
Long Range Plasma Cannons are usefull, but i find the vulcan simply takes too long to build and uses too much energy when firing.
Better to have 4-8 berthas in your camp, because that
1) shoots sooner
2) spreads out the risk of counter attack
3) allows you to select multiple targets at once
4) allows range control by building newer ones closer to the opponent.
5) grows with your economy, instead of raping your economy.
And since LRPCs blow up with a big bang, don't put anything you wanna keep directly next to it. Especially anti-air.
The same goes for all the heaviest units. It's often lots more usefull to build more of the heaviest L2 units than those ultra-expensive biggest units.
If you wanna have fun with those expensive toys, at least back them up properly :)
