A guide for new players aimed at preventing lack of expansion etc.

[GameplayGuide]

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Introduction

This page is intended to explain basic gameplay mechanics and prevent new players making basic mistakes like not expanding or spamming defences in their own base. It will introduce advanced gameplay concepts that are not covered in the newbie guide so you should read the newbie guide before this as concepts explained there will be used in this guide. If you do not understand something that is being explained in this guide, you will probably be able to find an explanation of the term or phrase at the bottom.

Note: This guide will be constantly updated with new information as new versions of Zero-K are released. It currently WiP and could do with some input from our veterans.

Gameplay

Factories

Zero-K has lots of factories, so it can be hard to choose one. If you are a very new player it would be advisable to use either the cloaky bot factory or the shield bot factory as these are the least esoteric. Once you have some experience of the game then by all means experiment with new factories though. This guide will assume you are playing cloaky bots.

The importance of expansion

It cannot be stressed enough that you must expand and harass enemy units and structures. If you don't your enemy will take map control and you will not be able to keep up with his/her army's numbers. Resources in Zero-K are very much territorial. Metal spots that you can build metal extractors (better known as mexes) on are placed throughout the map and must be controlled to gain more resources.

It should not need to be said that you need as much metal as possible. It is also important to build one or two LLTs or Defenders to prevent your expansion being destroyed by enemy raiders. Do not build too many static defences though, building too many will just be a waste of metal.

Early game: The raiding and scouting phase

You should decide which factory you are going to start with when you are choosing your start position and then build it as soon as you can when the game starts. Once you have built your first factory you should get about five raiders for defending your constructors and harassing enemy expansion.

Once you have about three raiders you should go into the enemy's start box to find their base and see if there is a rush that you will need to counter. Scouting is very important to Zero-K and ideally you will know everything the enemy is doing. There are a number of ways to do this, the easiest of which is to build a cloaked unit, like a Scythe or a Gremlin, and take it into the enemy base.

It should be about one or two minutes into the game now and you should know whether your enemy is rushing something that you need to counter as best you can, whether your enemy has any expansion that you could be harassing and what defences are in his/her base, if any.

With this knowledge, you should decide what options you have and what you should do in the situation. If your enemy has expanded but the expansion is weakly defended or even undefended you should be moving in to attack it. If the enemy base has few or no defences in it you should attack it, trying to destroy the enemy factory or commander as your first priority. If there are no weakly defended areas of enemy territory, which is quite possible, you should just hold back and consolidate your forces and keep expanding until you have a sufficient army to assault one of these positions.

If you found some weak positions and attacked them, it should be about four or five minutes into the game by now and you should have taken most of your side of the map. You should have been continuing to expand to take more territory with more metal spots during all of the previous actions.

Mid game: The expansion and conflict phase

By now you should have about half of the map under your control, which on most maps translates into about 30m/s coming in. Once you have about 20m/s income you should think about whether you need more of your current units or a new selection of units if your current unit composition is not working. If your current tactics are working and you are not being pushed back towards your base you should probably build a Caretaker to increase the speed your units are built at by 10m/s. If your current unit composition is not working you should build a new factory. While which one you should build depends entirely on the current situation, you are usually safe with either a gunship factory or a airplane plant. The rest of this guide will assume you have built a gunship factory as a second factory.

You should also be building assault class units and some riot units to counter the ever heavier units your enemy will be building. You may also need skirmishers by now.

You should be continuing to expand and fight for metal spots while never stopping your raiding whenever possible. That said, you should not be sending raiders to their deaths against superior forces. Always try to take as many metal spots as possible, even if they are not fortified. A mex will usually make cost even if it is only there for a minute, so do not worry about putting them in contested territory.

Try to push the enemy back and take more metal spots. If your enemy starts spamming static defences you have numerous options. Light defenses can be dealt with using assault class units like the zeus, ravager, or thug. If the enemy has multiple heavy defenses, then you should first consider going around them or fighting in areas where his defenses are weak. Avoid sending large groups of units to die at the enemy defense line, if he wins then he will get the reclaim. If the enemy is defended all around too heavily for most ground units to get in then it is time to start making some artillery units, or heavier assault units like the Goliath Heavy Tank. Experiment with different strategies to see what works best for each defense configuration.

Late game: The deciding stage

Combat should be raging over the whole map by now and, depending on the map, you should have significant metal income as well. This phase typically starts at about 10-20 minutes and will decide most games. Your goal it to break through and destroy enemy economy, kill enemy units and commanders, gain more ground and reclaim value than your enemy. Killing enemy armies and defences will let you move freely, but your ultimate goal is to destroy all the critical parts of your enemy's base.

What should be done in this stage is almost entirely dependent on what has happened in previous stages of the battle. It could differ from needing a lot of raiders to counter enemy skirmisher spam to needing heavy assault mechs to break down fortified positions.

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(I know, I could have been more helpful. This stage needs some expert attention though.)