Hi, With PA:T coming out I thought I'd have a go at the online 1v1 mode that it features (not sure if the original PA had this, was a long time since I played it). Initially I got ranked at Silver after winning 2 of the 5 matches. From then on though my win ratio has just gone downhill, to the point where I'm now down to Bronze rank. I've played Supcom and TA before so understand the concept of the streaming economy, and take advantage of looping queues, but I either end up being wiped out in the first 10-15 minutes, or 30+ minutes in after my titan or nuke attacks fail and I have nothing to back them up with. Before I give up completely on the multi-player side of things (because constantly loosing isn't fun), I was wondering if anyone had any tips they could share, particularly with the new game's balance. Thanks
The best way to improve your game is to watch the best players and practice. So watch the to few players build orders and copy them. You should always attack and harass. Especially if you go dox. Most likely you should never for t2 unless the game has gotten to a standstill. Use hotbuild, practice practice practice. Apm of above 80 should be good enough to win most games if you have a good guild order.
I agree with almost everything that clopse said, definitely something that you should be doing. Experimenting is also good as it lets you get experience on what works and what doesn't. Spoiler: a speculation However, for that Apm of above 80 I call bs. For one, you really don't need a high apm to be good at this. I'm a fairly good player and have beaten all of my opponents with an average apm of 40 (never exceeding 65). From my observations, having that really high apm makes you lose grasp of the macro game because you're too busy focusing on getting good micro (which is what really builds up the apm). I've seen this in clopse, elodea, pt4h, and occasionally cola_colin. That's currently just my speculation though so don't take it for fact.
Thanks for the suggestions guys and that link tunsel11. Doing the high APM thing doesn't sound like my sort of thing, but maybe I can try some of the other suggestions. I watched a few replays last night, and it seems that the second player has already lost as soon as they start getting attacked (even if they didn't know it). When that happens to me, is there anything I can do to prevent it, or make it so it doesn't cripple my economy if it occurs?
There are other ways to play. If your a slower player like me, you can certainly win plenty of games without being mega fast. My recommendation would be: Use factory rally points to help you. Take a map like Forge, there is a nice group of 4 metal points close to your start location, which is a prime target for raiding units. Rally your first factory there, and send a fabber to get the metal. The rally point means your units will congregate there and fend off any stray raiding dox without you needing to worry about it (unless your playing a top player, but that shouldn't be an issue in the lower leagues). You also want to be making your opponent 'follow' you, rather than you reacting to them. For example, they start out with mainly tanks- build some air and make sure they see it (scout a few times). This will force them to either build AA, or make air of their own- point is they are now reacting to you putting you in control. Also, try and place units and strategically important points on the map. Taking Forge as an example again, there is a group of 6 metal spots on an island at the back, and there are 'shoulder' metal clusters of 4 metal at the sides (one for each player effectively). Put 2 or 3 dox in each location and leave them there. Doesn't require much work on your part, but if your opponent sends out a fabber on their own (even air, <3 dox AA ability), they'll lose them (making them send something to deal with it). More time they are dealing with things rather than attacking you. Final advice, be aggressive with t1 and build a mix of units. The easiest compositions I've found for starting is: Start bot and make dox for raiding. These are cheap, don't worry about losing them as they cost virtually nothing. Send them at your enemy and to wait in lots of locations as described above. Use tanks as your main force (they are generally easier). Make mainly 'bolos' or the hover tank depending on the map (hover tanks are superb on lava and water maps as they can go where nothing else can, otherwise bolos are cheaper), with a couple of infernos to act as a 'shield' and to destroy buildings. I like a ratio of about 5 bolos to 1 inferno. If your opponent has any air, add 1 spinner into that mix and dot them around your metal points to stop them destroying your metal. Keep building vehicle factories and building up a large force- don't attack with vehicles in small groups due to slow speed. Mix in the odd air factory and if your opponent doesn't have anti air or fighters, you can really punish them with a few bombers Final thoughts, keep tabs on where their com is (using air to scout is good for this). Don't attack the commander unless you have a good force. If he's on one side of his base, try and send an attack force to the other and kill off his production / eco. This game plays very much like TA did on line, rather than SupCom which was more base focused. You basically need to keep expanding, and keep annoying your opponent. Make them play the game the way You want
one thing I can't recommend highly enough (and something I continually try to work on, and regularly fail at) is scouting air scouts, land scouts, radars, satellites, doesn't matter particularly much which route you take, but good intelligence has won me more battles than good micro or clear strategy ever has.
If you want a concrete way to win more games do this: guess where your enemy is sending there expansion fabbers and kill them. If you do this better then your opponent you will win most games by virtue of having more metal unless you make a really big mistake ( like putting no AA in your tank army or letting your commander get sniped by boom bots).
This.. I've won quite some games against top players between 3 to 7 minutes because of this. Destroying fabbers often also means interrupting their "flow" of the game. they need to build a new fabber and send it out again, effectively stopping metal expansion for long enough to get a great lead if the opponent doesn't manage to kill one or more of yours. And from then on it snowballs. If you find yourself constantly defending then you need to keep the following in mind: They have control of the whole planet and you do not. Sometimes you must take the decision to jsut send all your units out to attack even if there is a force comming to you. You will deal with that force another way for example with your com and units that are still being made.
