A strategy guide from Happypuppy / Reprinted by Saboteur (Home)
Defense is always high on the list of good things to do for winning Commanders in mutiplayer scenarios. For Skirmish players, it is the No. 1 priority. Humans might pay attention to other things than pounding you right out of the shoot, but the AI comes gunning for you right from the onset.
While many defensive tactics are obvious, there are a few tricks and tips that can really help you get the most bang out of your defensive buck.
(Top)
In the opening phases of the game they are critical. They cost about a quarter of the cost of a Light Laser Tower and defend very well against air attacks. While many players squander time and resources building L.L.T.s first, you will see nary a L.L.T. in any of our games. Instead, building a few missile towers and moving straight into heavy laser towers is normally more appropriate.
Building three or four missile towers right after you get your first construction unit is always a wise choice.
The one exception to the spurning of L.L.T.'s comes in a few Skirmish maps where the AI is serious about doing nothing but penetrating your base. Then a couple of L.L.T.'s in front of each group of four to five missile towers can often make the difference due to the higher hitting power of the L.L.T.
Later in the game, missile towers still play a critical role. Though they are very weak against strong or numerous ground-attack waves, they play the devil with air attackers. Even a player who isn't trying to Porcupine will still want to build a good number (10-20) of missile towers to help defend his base. A serious Porc is looking at a veritable ring of these useful tools (40-60).
Don't overlook missile towers just because UTASP offers more advanced tools for airspace protection. Missile towers are the cornerstone of every base, and irreplaceable for securing outposts and those lonely mexes.
(Top)
This is always a problem. Missile towers are cheap but weak. However, proper building and spotting techniques can help quite a bit. First, build your missile towers in clusters of three to four. This way when a cluster starts getting overrun, nearby clusters are eating up the attackers. Next, plant a heavy laser tower in front of your missile towers in the direction of expected enemy action. Not only do the heavy lasers dish out more damage, but they take a lot more as well. The invading ground forces will concentrate on the heavy laser and tend to leave your missile towers until they have neutralized the greatest threat.
The most important way to help your towers is to increase their spotting range. This is so important we will give it its own number.
(Top)
If you look closely, you will note that each of your emplacements has only a limited spotting range. However, the range of the weapon, particularly missile towers, is normally much greater than the spotting range. In order to get maximum bang for your buck, you must increase your spotting range so your weapons are capable of targeting the enemy at longer ranges. Defensive units can normally target the enemy before they come into range to use their weapons.
Increasing your spotting range relies on using spotters -- usually small Kbots in the opening segments of the game. Level 1 artillery Kbots are good because they can dish out and take a reasonable amount of damage. To get the most spotting use out of them, set them about a quarter of a screen ahead of your fixed defenses. However, you'll soon notice an annoying problem: your spotters keep getting picked off. This is where spotting aircraft come in.
When you get an Aircraft Plant up and running and have a couple of spare clock ticks, it is a good idea to crank out a few spotter planes or fighters and assign them to patrol the perimeter of your base. This increases the spotting range of your base defenses. Further, these aircraft are quick and nimble and hard to destroy, compared to your ground-based spotters. If you haven't been using spotters, see how much of a difference it makes in the effectiveness of your defensive perimeter.
Another spotting tactic, though more expensive and generally less useful, is to build cheap buildings at the edge of your visual range. When the enemy begins to overrun those buildings, they will expose themselves to your defenses. This is fine in theory, but a smart opponent would use units with long firing ranges to pick off spotter emplacements, like mines, from outside their visual range. You would likely never get a good spotting on them for your defenses and the building would become nothing more than a waste of time and materials. We definitely recommend using mobile units as spotters.
This method is hopelessly outdated. It is too tedious to be used early on (it's easier to just order your defences to attack invading forces manually once you spot them on your radar) and not nearly effective enough to be used later in the game. The targeting facility is a building you simply can't afford to overlook in any game that will last more than an hour. Combined with a couple of XLR radars you will get maximum efficiency for your defenses without having to worry about it.
(Top)
Those long battles start to take a toll on your base, even if you are successfully repelling wave after wave of attackers. It becomes time-prohibitive to individually repair all of your damaged defensive structures.
The obvious way to effect repairs is to set construction units on patrol to start repairing your base. But, as we mentioned earlier, Kbots have a bad tendency to wander off grabbing metal in fire zones. We have also found that sometimes they develop a mind of their own and ignore things that need repairing. On the other hand, planes make excellent patrolling repair units. They almost always repair the things they should and don't go outside of their patrol zone looking for trouble. In a fully mature base, most of our best players have at least three roving construction aircraft wandering their base at any given time.
The only problem we have found with this is that patrolling construction bots and planes have a bad habit of helping to pitch in on new construction projects. Normally, this is very helpful. But when you are desperately trying to simultaneously add to your base defenses and repair old ones, it is really annoying to find that your roving repairmen are solely helping with the new construction.
We haven't found a clean solution to this yet, and are just telling you about it as a heads-up. If you are wondering where your repair dudes are, then look to your new construction, pull them off and give them individual orders.
With UTASP, some guns are so big you'll want to dedicate a constructor or two for the sole task of guarding them. Enough said.
(Top)
While roving base repair is a good thing, sometimes you will be generating groups of 20 or more casualties at once. Planes are a good point for this. If you send out groups of planes just to attack something and then bring them home, you have a lot of damaged planes landing in your base.
For serious wave-attack players, we recommend putting a construction plane or two on patrol on an open area near or in your base, then always putting your damaged units there. This will quickly get them up to speed. The one downside is that you need to be careful when selecting these units to send back out to make sure that you don't send the repair units with them.
This is easy to counter by the use of groups. Although personally I often fight to the death, leaving little to be repaired. Using Necros to revive your defenses is handy, though. Be sure to have Fabricators around to repair the units as soon as the Necro has revived them! The Necro is too valuable a unit to be wasted on repair tasks that can be handled by other units, not to mention the fact that fabricators will do it faster.
(Top)
Aircraft Repair Platforms and Carriers both provide a valuable service in helping repair damaged aircraft. However, there are a couple of points to think about in using them. First, note that you normally don't get a single plane damaged, you get a bunch of them damaged. That means multiple Air Repair facilities, and that can be a real hassle in time, effort and space.
However, how are you using your planes? Are you mainly using them for hit-and-run raids or long-term patrols over hostile territory? For hit-and-run raids, then the open field/construction plane option discussed earlier might be much more cost-effective for you. But Aircraft Repair Platforms and Carriers provide one real service that the aforementioned solution doesn't: Planes come to them automatically when damaged. A serious bennie. Generally, if you are using lots of planes to patrol, you should build a few Aircraft Repair Platforms.
For sea battles, Carriers provide an even better option, as they have radar and excess power as well as repair functions.
(Top)
That really depends on the player. Some people like to Porc out and others almost ignore base defenses. Some love Dragon's Teeth and others ignore them. However, here are a few of our most popular combos:
The most basic defensive emplacement of the Happy Puppy Destructive Testing Team is what we lovingly call the Hard Spike. The Spike is three missile towers with a heavy laser placed right in front. All of these units are placed right on top of each other. Through exhaustive scientific testing (well, sorta) we have determined that Spikes combine long-range pain with equal cover from ground and air attacks.
Most of our players also have a deep fondness for batteries of plasma cannon. A serious Porc might want to consider one battery for every two Spikes, though 4-to-1 is a much saner proportion for the rest of us.
UTASP brings out the porc in each of us with its galore of defensive structures. There are tons of new structures that have a very high 'cool'-factor, and as amazing as it may sound, most of them are actually useful, albeit a bit on the costly side. Just build them and see how they perform, you'll find other great options for yourself like the "Spike"/Plasma battery combo described above. Only two things should be noted: Roman candles are only effective against large numbers of enemies, as they will never hit where they aim. Same applies for those heavy rocket tanks like Loki. They still justify their existence when placed a bit further back from the front lines as backup against big raids. And even more importantly, don't bother with stunners! I'm yet to witness a situation where stunners have turned the tide of the war, neither in attack nor defense situations. Most of the time they're just mildly annoying.
(Top)
To a person, we have decided that Annihilators and Doomsday Machines are highly overrated. While they pack an incredible long-range punch, they take lots of time and resources to build and all attacks will naturally focus on them. They also have an annoying problem of taking quite a while to kick into operation, providing a nice window of opportunity to take them out with expedient air strikes.
If you are going to use these weapons, we highly recommend setting a construction unit to guard them, as any enemy with a whit of sense is going to hammer them at every opening.
In the opening moments of the game, a few anti-air Kbots can make a very big difference. Against humans, they slow the information going to the enemy, since most humans like to send out a few scouting planes to take a measure of their opposition. Four or five Jethros can take out those pesky spies and can also move as your base expands, allowing you to provide anti-air defense for each new area of your base, in turn allowing you extra time before constructing missile towers.
Against the AI, the effect is almost the same, but in some missions the AI will start out with more powerful planes, and Jethros or Crashers are forced to become your only quick way to defend your resources. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, but it comes in handy.
Later into the game when things like targeting facilities are put up, these weapons are worth the trouble of setting them up - and above all, protecting them! One annihilator won't last if you won't back it up properly. If you can spare two flakkers to cover one annihilator, do it. But don't settle for anything less than a flakker a piece, otherwise you might as well order the airstrike yourself. Above all, don't let the opponent get up close and personal with these devices. They'll go down easy when in their open state.
(Top)
In general, Dragon's Teeth offer very good defensive bang for the buck. They play the devil with Swarmers and, properly used, can stop any ground-based attack from gaining momentum.
We here at the Happy Puppy Destructive Testing Team need to admit that we don't use Dragon's Teeth enough. We tend to play more wide open, slugfest style games, as opposed to properly channeling our enemies into kill zones with Dragon's Teeth. But this doesn't mean that we don't appreciate the tactic.
When using DT's, remember that they take a while to build. The best way we have found to get lines made is to start two construction units on either end of a line and have them meet in the middle.
Also, make sure you have some long-range weaponry not too far behind your DT lines. A good tactic your enemy will use is to pull up a few long-range attackers, such as missile vehicles, just outside of your DT line and start hammering your base. The logic is simple; if the DT line stops them from getting in, it stops you from getting out. A couple of plasma batteries at the right place are the cure for this.
If you're running a recent version of the TA Demo Recorder (and the NON-Boneyards version of the game), you'd be crazy to neglect this tactic. It features a tool that lets you plot out full barriers of DT with a single mouse click! Besides that, I'd recommend using two or three airplanes for the fastest construction. They will be vulnerable, but they won't waste time between each DT built as ground constructors would, and they can build over rough terrain.
(Top)
This is probably the biggest defensive problem a beginning player will have. For your weapons to auto-target, one of two conditions must exist: one of your units must have a visual fix on the target or the target must be firing at you. In the second case, only the unit being attacked will fire back on the target.
However, you are going to get frequently pounded by things outside your visual range. To counter this, use your radar extensively and use the radar map to manually target your weapons on incoming enemies. If you are consistent, particularly with plasma batteries, Doomsday Machines, Annihilators or artillery, you can often hose down an offensive force before it ever reaches your base.
As I mentioned, manual targeting is good if you don't have a targeting facility yet. Once you get one, your only off-screen attacking issue will probably be long range artillery, which is a whole different ballgame anyway.
(Top)