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Decent AT Units?

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Greetings denizens of my favorite RTS game! Me and a few of my friends routinely play this game in 4-6 person FFAS or Teams. I have one friend that always, ALWAYS goes heavy tanks. As a result, i often find myself being overrun by reapers, and due to the lack of an up-to-date unit guide, i can't find any actual information on how to effectively stop them. The only thing that is relatively fast and cheap is a terraforming a shallow trench, because they are tanks and cant cross it. Unfortunately this is a temporary solution, since terraforming is easily undone. Generally i don't have a wall of DDMS or emp turrets to stop a bunch of reapers, let alone a Goliath, and he always sends them out with a few flak tanks for AA. I usually end up playing shields or spiders depending on the map, and occasionally light vehicles. So again, my question is what is the best affordable way to counter Reapers in the current game, other than the temporary solution of terraforming.

Apologies if I am missing an obvious solution.
+2 / -0
6 years ago
Hey hey.

I will list a few advices that should be helping you.


1. Play not only with your friends, but also the rest of the community, at least spectate some games, or watch replays. There you will see bether players using very different strategies, that you can copy and use yourself to improve. (You will kill all of your friends ;))

2. When your friend has the possibility to create a huge reaperball, you did something wrong in the first half of the game. The key against tanks is not to let them become so strong. You must face them when they are weak, alone and unsupportet.

3. Use your opponements weakness for yourself. Tanks are awefull slow. (Panthers and Kodachis aren't, but they are weak) So raid, raid, raid. Kill is eco as often as you can. He will not be able to get a huge army with bad eco.

4. When you went for spiders on a semi-flat map where he uses heavy tanks, use the terrain for your advantage = raid with fleas. Flank him with your army, force him to stay in his base with his army....

5. Terraformed Pikes are your friend! 2 Stardusts on a pike make a great defense against 1 or 2 reapers. Same goes for crabes.

6. When you went for shields. Use Dirtbags, they help you to get your friends army stuck, always keep a line of them in front of his army.

7. Get racketeers. Tanks are big slow units, which appear in small groups. (Normaly there should never be more then 5-8 in the endgame. When there are more. You are both waiting way to long to finish the game) So stun them out, then swarm them with bandits or whatever.

8. Use Infiltrators. When he attacks you with a single goli. get 2 or 3 infiltrators and stun him for 30 secends. Kill it then.

9. When you have LV's get ravagers. They aren't as strong as reapers, but cheaper! Ravagers beat reapers! (Also they are faster)

10. Use Domminatrixes. When you have defenses, where he needs a bit of time to break threw. Get a dommiball. They capture his units, and leave them to eliminate themself. (Reatred with those dommis that captured an enemy unit)

11. Farady. Maybe the most underrated defensestructure in the game! They are tanky and they stun your opponemt out so that it cant retreat!

12. Try more different factoryes. There a many more good counters in the game. When you try other playstyles you will surprise your enemy.


Ok i guess this should be helping. One last thing. If you need more advices, i offer you to join us on mumble. We give advices, help eachother ingame, play training rounds etc.

+0 / -0
6 years ago
Thank you very much. I think I exaggerated the amount of reapers, usually it is 5-10 supported by some aa. I completely forgot about the doms, that would probably do the trick. Also racketeers would too. I do play with the community sometimes, and I frequently watch replays on Shadowfury333's youtube channel. I am just generally the first one targeted by the others because I can beat any of them in a 1v1.
+0 / -0
6 years ago
Thus it amounts to near constant harrassment over my mex spots.
+0 / -0
6 years ago
But anyways, thanks you for the advice. I think i have an idea for tonight that will stop those damn reapers in their tracks
+0 / -0

6 years ago
A much simpler solution would to be to build skirmishers. Scalpels for example are pretty effective.
+0 / -0


6 years ago
Here are some more particular units:
  • Buoy outranges Reaper and can slow them to a crawl, making them easy to kill. Scalpel behaves similarly. If there is enough space you can probably get the same out of Rogue and Recluse but their inaccuracy and other weaknesses makes them a lot less desirable.
  • Grizzly is great, it has a lot of range and health.
  • Penetrator and Snipers can pick off tanks, making it very expensive to attack into them. A swarm of Ravens can work similarly.
  • Try Thunderbird along with any raider, if they have no AA.
+0 / -0
You might be making a much more basic mistake: Trying to fight your way to victory in a FFA game.


FFA is not a simple step-up from 1v1 or Team games, it's an entirely different game mode. You might be the most experienced player in the game, but if you can convince the other players that those tanks are a major threat to them, they might just kill them for you.

Time is your best friend in a FFA. The key to winning against multiple opponents is to be only ever fighting battles that you can win - quickly. Once you start losing units, retreating is often the best option. This goes both for you and your enemy. Use terraformed obstacles, terraformed turrets and anything available to make his advance as hard as possible. He'll either decide to retreat early or get backstabbed by one of his neighbours, especially if you inform them about his offensive.

FFAs are won by diplomacy. You might have to sacrifice your entire base to keep your army alive. Yet in the end, an army without base makes a much better diplomatic tool than a base without army.


If you just want to improve your play against tanks, acquire some experience in 1v1 to learn about strategic counters(raiding, flanking, out-expanding) and Teams for tactics useful in combating tanks(terraform, striders, micro). It doesn't matter if your enemy isn't playing tanks, play tanks yourself and learn from his reaction. It is best to play against as many different players as possible.
+1 / -0


6 years ago
CHrankAdminDeinFreund is on point, which is also why there is exactly one FFA game on my channel. It's a super-long mode that's way more fun to play (when you have the time, patience, and inclination) than to watch, since the fun of it is what's going on inside your head regarding everyone else and preparing for that, rather than constant combat and tactical shifts.
+0 / -0

6 years ago
In the spirit of the above advice: Ultimatum.

1) Kills tanks real good. If they're unsupported, can kill tanks forever.
2) Free terraform. Just attack the ground and you have a free trench. Makes all their tanks group, lining up your ducks.
3) Nobody likes attacking into stealthy punisher units. They'll probably leave you alone when they realise you have the counter to all their stuff.
4) Works against a lot of the other stuff that people tend to use in FFAs: tanks, grizz, crabe, striders, singus, troll coms, endbringer weapons, DDM etc.
+0 / -0
Skasi
6 years ago
Oh yes, compared to games with two teams, FFAs are much less about aggression. They're all about making yourself more powerful and much less about making the enemy weaker. In an 8 way FFA if you make one enemy weaker, then you will sacrifice a part of your own and one enemy's army. So out of 8 teams, 2 will experience a loss, one of them being you. That's very bad, mathematically speaking. Instead you wanna focus on growing. If growing requires annihilation of a neighbors base, the so be it. But make sure to be able to overwhelm them quick and as cost efficient as possible. Target weak, new players first. Be "evil" if it helps you win. Look after yourself first - you need to survive.
+0 / -0

6 years ago
After reading all of this FFA stuff, I really want to watch a good one !
+0 / -0

6 years ago
if its just alot of reapers, with some aa.

You have alot of counters

Spiders: Spam Hermits or Fleas, consider spy to feeze them.
Shields: Spam Roaches or bandits, also get a few racketeers to disable reapers.
Defence: Terra Raised stardusts.

Alternatively:
Rush Strider fac, make Ultimatums
Rush Cloaky fac, spam Glaives or Snipers, warrior or rocko spam can work too.
Rush Hovers fac, spam Scalpals, or Penes
Rush air fac, but just take ou the AA first with spammed bombers.

Many more options, dont be afraid of changing fac.

but yes FFA, different, a DDM should hold them off until you have something nice to hit back with.





+0 / -0
Firepluk
Unit you are looking for called an "ultimatum" and can be produced via strider hub
But more important you need to keep yourself aware of ur enemies whereabouts, so scout the map regularly with light units and later in game with air(swifts)
This way if you see huge reaper army u can make 1-2 ultimatums, 1 can wipe like 5-6 reapers if used properly

P.S. if he has just 3-4 flak tanks you can still try to ambush him with mass gunships - take out the flak first, then reapers are an easy pray for say banshees

If I had to do it I would first scout, keep them in LOS with vulture then make 2 disarm planes and disarm flak and then attack with banshees only. This requires coordination of your actions and some skill - but probably would be one of the most efficient ways to deal with this problem
+3 / -0

6 years ago
that said. and Firepluk has 7 months ingame time in the last 6 years. zomg.

+0 / -0
6 years ago
mojjj, where do I find that list?
+0 / -0

6 years ago
http://zero-k.info/Users
+0 / -0
6 years ago
thx
+0 / -0
6 years ago
hm, the link does not work
+0 / -0
The user list is badly implemented and will at times lag out the server, thus it has been removed except for administrative purposes.

Maybe I'll make a zkstats website out of all my statistic tools once we're fully steaming.
+0 / -0
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