What did you learn from the Commander of the March Tourney?

I played my best game on the naval map. I was pretty surprised I guess my games with Godde and clopse helped get me better here, even though I lost both. Hell, this was the first time I won naval.

I don't know if Godde repeated the trick, but when I played him he sent T1 scouts with his Leviathans to try and get my ships to waste their barrages.

All I can say is in my experience it's all about getting to T2 ships, then working the T2 hard. Not that different to other battlefields, except less turrets and more radar. Though taxman66 said he got T1 swarmed and it beat his T2. I'm dubious but interested to see the replay.

Oh, and I learned to not put ships in the way of fabbers. I had one leviathan which had to keep adjusting its tracking because a fabber ship was pushing it out of position. This also delayed the fabber enormously.

I learned that talking for 9.5 hours solid is actually quite mentally taxing. (My own fault entirely).

Game one I lost because of misconception about usability of T1 and the speed you need to transition to T2. Pretty much newbie stuff.

You also really need to take the outlaying mexes.

Overall it was also very much tricks to death instead of a broad strategic engagement.

When I see that a opponent is doing something I need to really do something about it and not just halfly make atoken effort into that direction. More spesificially you see a T2 air factory you really need that AA around your commander.

Aslo dropping flametanks adjacent to enemy commander is a thing you can do.

I learned flame tank drop first game I played after update. Wasn't me it killed, was teammate. I build missile turrets, some say eco waste but I do it as a formality and it apparently waned the enemy from considering dropping flamer on me.

I might be good....but compared to those guys....lets just say ill never be that good! xD

Vanguard drop is nasty if you're not on your toes. Stationary AA doesn't stop it because they'll have a wave of fighters moving ahead, and they'll drop short of the AA if they run into it.

I learned that not making AA units can cost you a game. Need to work on my T2 transition, maybe go faster for a 2nd T2 factory.

T2 is indeed a bit too good right now, it feels like its not possible to win T1 vs T2. A T1 mid game should be a bit more viable, towers are indeed a bit to cheap.

I need to scout more and often.

Keep an eye on factories, a question here:

Is there a keybind/mod that cycles through the idle factories, I know there is a keybind that selects all idle but that is not what I want.

and finally more practice, considering I had played a total of 5 1vs1 online games when the tournament started going 2/4 is great.

I learned that I really need to speed up my early game and get more units out at start without failing my economy. I also learned that I need a LOT more training to beat the good players hehe

What's the IRC ladder thingy?

Alright so, let's see what went wrong for me and why I need to work on many many new things.

First round was okish. I wasn't trying to harass my enemy too much, because I knew he is not expanding and he is basically no threat to me. I calmly build my T2 vehicle factory and then T2 air and started to get some pelikans, I didn't want to ride around half of the planet to reach him but rather make it quick.

No AA in the base, my couple vanguards dropped near the commander, unfortunatelly for me, they dropped not in the range of commander and he was able to manage ubercannoning them all down. Secord drop was closer and I managed to d-d-d-drop it close to him.

Secord round was quite terrible for me, I felt like I was playing really bad there, but my enemy didn't really manage to use this to his advantage and I pretty much won by the same strategy.

I have no clue how I have beaten Giggle, too much stuff yesterday and this match doesn't seem to be stored in my memory for some reason.

The match against Colin was .... argh. It was super unlucky for me, since I am 100% sure that I would have won this match. I had a nuke at 19 minutes while Colin had both of this T2 and a commander and a tons of fabbers at one place and no antinuke. If only it did land! The nuke launched but immediatelly bugged and exploded somewhere in the no-men's land. Same happend to second nuke. And third. And fourth. I kinda gave up. After the second nuke and let myself overrun by T2 navy. I have to say a big big thank to @Cola_Colin for giving me a tie here after we review the problem. I really appreciate it. Unfortunatelly for me, this tie costed me the invitation to the big tournament.

A match against Gunshin was actually the best I had yesterday. Gunshin is very good player and we were quite equal the whole time. I need to manage my expansions faster and more efficiently. I think I won by another vanguard drop and manage to destroy T2 Energy and his T2 factory. His commander manage to escape into a proxy base, so I again have a good reason why always have a nuke ready. If you play aggressive enough, you do not have to worry about an antinuke that much, at least not the first 20 minutes. I nuked his whole proxy base and gg was called. So yep, keep being aggressive and keep it pushing, best from all directions, left right bottom air nukes, all at once.

And the last match, I feel like I lost due to some terrible mistakes I made. The biggest one - no radar vision. I simply forgot to build a goddamn radar =/ Then I managed to missclick and sacrificed the most precious fabbers I had and needed to collect a quick 10 minute win. And then another big mistake, I switched my factory to get a T2 fabber and I forgot to switch it back, which costed me the game since I was overrun by about 5 levellers. I feel quite bad for myself in this match, I know I could have done much better.

Some general points, always keep harassing your enemy, always, constant scouting is good and scouting around the planet is very important. Many players tend to make proxy bases in all the wierd spots and it may cost you the game if a raid comes from an unexpected direction. T2 air is a must, no question about that. And you need pretty much all 3 units being built in there. Fighters for defence, otherwise good luck covering all your base and proxies with AA. Kestrels for a quick defence and picking up on enemy's mex expansions. And of course transports, you need them for a surprice attack, use this opportunity, it is very powerful!

Also another good point, I am talking to you @burntcustard, while it is very good to assist T2 factories and I always do it, ussually there is a "point of efficiency", let's call it like that. I ussually assist my factories with at least 4 fabbers, you can probably go higher, 10 maybe. Then it starts taking more time for units to leave the dock, than the time they spent being produced. And your production rate is going down the slope from the moment you keep adding more fabbers. It is simply much better to build another factory and split the fabbers and assist two factories. When you keep assisting them efficiently, it is better than having the double amount of factories that are unassisted.

I also learnt, that despite the AI was set to Hard, it still totally sucks

Anyway, I will be practising my gamestyle in the upcoming days and weeks and if you wanna have a match with me, hop on our The Realm teamspeak or contact me here or use the automatch, I will gladly face you in the battle and learn something new from you (and I bet you can learn something from me too).

Burntcustard needs to build walls
Lategame nuke spam is still boring even if the person doing it lost. (I still think unassistable nukes are a better choice)

I learnt at all times mid to late game keep your com away from the outskirts of your base in the middle some where and give him an army of anti air for those dam gunship snipes!

Walls are good in early game and if your enemy does use t2 bots or only levellers or t1 spam. Walls are basically not viable against shellers or vanguards at all.
Some walls, ok. Wall spam, useless.

I think custard did a great job and his economy was strong, there were some small mistakes that cumulated at the end.

I think it's because of the cost - T2 naval takes 20% longer than everything else.


And yes! they fixed t2 air factory cost.

Oh I also learnt that the current PA Stats server maxes out when 50+ people play and just as many or more people watch stuff on it.
But there seems to be a solution coming in

I plead guilty I might have been checking all games at once continuously (-:

I learned that if the host becomes a spectator before anyone joins then the game shows as undefined in the lobby list, which made it difficult to find caster games. I have raised a bug for this would you should go vote on.

http://pa.lennardf1989.com/Tracker/index.php?do=details&task_id=3283

I re-learned the importance of early raids on fabbers, it will be interesting to see caster thoughts. I was always behind the curve that game, not sure if it can be entirely blamed on the early raid though

I really noticed how big a downtime there is for naval fabbers assisting tier 2 factories. Those T2 ships take a good ten seconds to clear the dock. Therefore I think I will:

1. Use the downtime as my window for producing my second T2 naval factory. Where possible I will place the first in such a way that assisting fabbers can place a second without moving.

2. Put fabbers on patrol between T2 naval factories so that they can assist whichever one is building, thus ensuring a minimum amount of downtime for them.