A strategy guide from Happypuppy / Reprinted by Saboteur (Home)
The Swarmer is dedicated to the simple proposition that huge numbers of small attackers will overcome most opponents. And this can be a surprisingly effective strategy against silly humans.
The Swarmer techniques are fairly self-explanatory. The sole tactic of the Swarmer is to build waves of 50+ small attacking units as rapidly as possible, then launch them at the enemy. The idea is that base defenses can only focus on so many units at any one time, and a decent percentage of attacking units will do damage before being destroyed.
If you are employing good, high-speed building strategies against an opponent who is a bit lax about his base defense construction, this can be a quick and easy win. And even if your opponent is on his toes, it can still result in much pain and mayhem for the hapless recipient of your most unloving attentions.
The good point of the Swarmer is that with enough pounding, even the most hardened Porc will start to feel real pain. It might take four or five waves to break through a really good Porc defense, but when you do, each wave afterward will be hitting where it hurts.
Swarmers, however, cannot both build a secure base and swarm at the same time. A good Swarmer needs to have one wave of 50+ units on the way to the target, one wave about to be launched and another under construction so his attacks will hit close enough to take advantage of any holes punched by the waves before them. Do the math and you see that between 100 and 150 units are tied up in attacking ground units at any given time. Not a pretty picture if you are hit while all this is going on.
Another bad point lies in attacking a player who is seriously into Dragon's Teeth. A good wall of Dragon's Teeth will stop your waves cold and make your units so much fodder for long-range base defenses.
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Think Eagle with ground units. The primary difference between Swarmers and Eagles is that while the Eagle won't have all that much use for Level 1 units, your waves will primarily be made up of Level 1 bots, as they are much faster to build. The key to Swarming is maintaining the highest production rate possible. It isn't the quality of the attackers that counts here, it is the quantity. Just a few Fidos or other good Level 2 attack bots mixed in with a whole pack of lesser bots will really make a disproportionate difference, since the defenses are more likely to target the weaker bots due to sheer numbers. Swarmers require multiple Kbot labs assisted by construction units to stay at peak production rates.
Too much in the way of base defense isn't for Swarmers. Do what you can with your extra clock ticks, but remember that the key here is getting waves out and onto the enemy as quickly as possible.
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Build 50+ units, send them at the enemy, repeat. That is really all there is to the Swarmer. Note that this tactic tends to work much better against humans than against the AI. The AI doesn't suffer from slow human reaction times in rounding up its ground forces and redirecting them to your assault points. Humans tend to lag and get dusted.
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