Transports and setting up supply Lines
Talking about transports, its a good time to mention a tactic using transports with the repeat button.
Lets say you notice that player X has left the back wall of his base in a map such as castles relatively undefended, believing that you cannot mount an airbased assault easily. (Often this is thought to be so, esp if you only use air)
To pull this off you will need a cover force of 20 odd brawlers, a similar number of air transports, -heavy transports if you wish to be serious as well as a similar number of assault units, pref heavily armoured since the first wave will have to weather most of the players fire power at least initially. Assign each of these groups numbers for quick control.
(It'd also be a good idea to consider which would be the best units for the job since you can't get down from the walls of the bases in castles easily and the assault needs to be very effective very quickly to work.)
Also make sure that you have sufficient manufacturing capacity on hand with all factories sending units to one specific area.
Select your transports make sure they all pick up their first load. the difficult part comes when you coordinate the brawler assault so that they arrive first and draw most of the flak. Fortunately they are usually faster than air transports so there shouldn't be a problem there. Your transports should arrive next but make sure that they unload to a sufficiently wide area (press u and click and drag) to avoid them trying to unload on top of each other. As soon as they have started unloading queue up the order to load from the area your new units are waiting at back in your base then go back and set the unload area again,.. If you hit the repeat button now these transports will continue to shuttle units from your base into the back of theirs.
Why this strategy is good: -Allows ground assault in late game where you would otherwise be hampered by metal wreckage everywhere -player X's long range artillery effect on your assault force is effectively bypassed since you can get closer that much more quickly -also allows you to move forces past your own fortifications easily. For example press repeat then set the load and unload areas as well as a 'wait' position where your transports can go and wait safely while not transporting. This is advantageous when the ground outside your base is completely deformed and covered in wreckage. You can set up a couple of different supply routes to different areas and move forces into the different loading areas where they will automatically be shipped out. -Once the supply routes are set up, it allows you to concentrate on the assault itself without worrying about how to get reinforcements out from your base again.
Problems with this strategy: -Takes a fair bit of preparation and micro-management --Mecha 23:42, 28 Apr 2006 (W. Europe Daylight Time)
I have a few suggestions to cut down on micromanagement.
You need the following:
- A squadron of ground attack aircraft. One or two bombers may be useful for some extra bang.
- A secure staging area. It sometimes helps to draw a circle around the stagin area so units you dont want to be tranported arent accidentally ordered into the staging area.
- A good bunch of transports. The tougher the better.
- An attacking force, whatever you need to get the job done. Maybe artillery, maybe a mob of low level units.
Okay, to set up the mission, you need to do the following:
- Order your units to wait somewhere in the staging area (shift W)
- Then add the mission you want the units to perform when they are dropped off. Maybe its a straightforward attack order for all the units, maybe its a complex series of orders for each of the different type of unit in the staging area.
- Now select your transports and turn on repeat. Press L to select the Load order, click and drag a circle over the whole staging area, then press U and drag a circle to define a landing zone (choice of LZ is critical, to far from the objective, you wont get there soon enough, too close to defences, you're gonna get wiped out before you can get a shot off). Finally, order your tranports to move next to the staging area. This ensures they dont land at the LZ when they run out of things to transport.
And you're done. The transports will ferry all your units to the LZ. When the units get there, they will perform all the queued up actions you added after the wait command. Things should largely take care of themselves, you're only dealing with the high level stragetic decisions (where to drop, where to attack, what to attack with etc).
Some after thoughts:
- You can also automate a beach head with defences by adding some construction units to the attacking force and having them build up some defences around the staging area if you plan to make this a prolonged attack.
- Setting the waypoints on the factory will mean a steady stream of reinforcements for the front line. This mean you can easily change the type of units going to the front line by simply changing factories' build orders. You might even want to set up several factories of the same type, each ordered to go to the waypoint and execute a different mission after drop off.
- Adding another wait command after the intial one will mean that all your forces will gather into another staging post before proceeding. Useful, if you want to wait for your troops to all be transported first. You can tell waiting units to proceed by selecting them and pressing W.
