Supcom advice for newbies

[kandy]

Ok I have just picked up this game today, sadly I didn't get a 'proper' copy of the beta so haven't had months of practice like others.

Anyone got any newbie tips they would like to share?

[Say_Ten]

Don't charge big scary things with your commander.

[Pengwhine]

Don't charge big scary things with your commander.

Unless hes an invisible laser commander. In which case do.

[Say_Ten]

He wasn't :(

N.b. Only playing in SP atm :)

[Dux0r]

hurry up and install it, im going to enjoy this :p

[Gunsmith]

if your about to "stall" press Z to pause construction, usually 2-3 seconds of pausing will gather enough resources to outdo the continued rate of sonsumption.

you can bind a factory to a FERRY point to have freshly made units shipped strait to the front lines.

mix units: 40 tanks will be taken by 4 gunships

when moving units, hold rightclick and drag to have them make a formation in a certain direction, you can also left click whilst holding the right mouse button to change formation.

when building holding shift and clicking a unit will build 5 units instead of 1

loading "peewees" onto a transport and having them fly around makes a good early/cheap gunship as they'll fire from the transport.

sheild generators are good but demanding on power, turn off less strategic ones if you start stalling.

mobile shield generators in a group will automatically position themselves to cover as much of the croup as possible

ctrl-right click to have all units travel at the same speed, note they will all move at slowest units speed.

dont assume big defense guns will stop everything incoming, small units are agile enough to get past.

tier 2 mobile AA is cheaper then fixed AA emplacements and faster to make, replace them with fixed AA for enhanced firepower.

base artillery make nice guns on small 5km maps, watch the reload time on them tho.

[Neon]

Place power generators next to buildings and mass mines as they will help efficiency and reduce running costs.

Don't group your base up, it's generally a good idea to build many factories all over the place. I tend to place them near a mass mine I have developed, so you effectively have lots of production going on all over the place.

You are "supposed" to be able, according to the tutorial movie, alt+lclick build to que up 500 units, this doesn't seem to work, so shift+lclick as Gunny said works.

If you are partial to ground armies, like myself, make damned good use of building an air factory first, for defence and to move the ground units. Even Tech3 ground units are painfully slow.

Build Mass generators! Be sure to have a builder constantly building power and mass all over the place.

As mentioned keep your commander protected. He can and will destroy your entire base if someone ninja's him whilst he's stood in the middle of it.

I'm with Gunny, build lots of AA ground units. People love air, and it's equally fun to move a platoon of AA guns into position and watch the carnage.

That's about all I have learnt from the game so far.

A tip from Chicane, is to take a unit and then make all the others guard it. This will help your squads move as a group, rather than, for example with ships, your AA cover getting moved out of range of the more expensive units. Although I think this is covered by Gunny's point about altering the formations.

Finally, RTFM :)

[bvark]

Watch people's replays for build order and tips.

Use engineers to assist metal extractors when they're being upgraded.

Alt+click is gone. Use 'repeat build' to build lots of things - a lot of my T1 factories get 'tank, artillery, repeat' as their build order to build up an effective T1 fighting force.

T1 mobile AA is worthless. T2 mobile AA is all-but-worthless against T3 gunships attacking point targets (like your commander).

A mix of T2 and T3 AA in concentric circles, with a personal shield and a T3 shield is good to protect your commander late game.

Build mass storage next to mass extractors, rather than energy production - their energy use is negligable wheras 4 mass storages increases extraction by 50%.

Build energy production around your T2 and T3 radar.

[kandy]

Cheers guys, very handy!

Love the game and:

hurry up and install it, im going to enjoy this :p

How does defeat at the hands of a first timer feel eh dux0r? :p

[Deman]

Be aggressive, if the opponent is happy to sit in his defense and hide push on him with tactical missiles, artillery, surround him.

Harass Mass extractors early on, you'll be amazed how much it distracts the opponent. If 2-3 units take out a mass extractor they've paid for themselves ten fold and delayed the enemy enough to gain an advantage.

Buy a decent computer or you will be binned from large scale games ;)

ps. Had another farking brown out last night.

[kandy]

dux0r destroyed my chances early in one of our games last night by building a few point defenses and some AA right next to my first hydrocarbon power plant....... ****er. It was on a map where I was closed in so couldn't ignore it.

I got rid of it fairly quickly using artillery but it was enough of a slowdown/distraction to give me a massive disadvantage!

Anyone know how to cancel stacked build orders? Ie. I've asked an engineer to build 15 buildings and I want to cancel a few of them without having to redo the others.

[Deman]

Just right Click the on the stacked, or shift rick click cant remember exactly. One cancells all, Other cancels the last queued building.

[K]

Right click on build order icons to cancel them

[K]

Shift right click cancels in bunches of 5 just like shift left adds 5

[kandy]

Aha, ty :)

[Screwball]

im giving in and buying it today sumtime even though i suck at strag games

[Deman]

Excellent more fresh meat! And yes it really is a superb game, I am not remotely bored of it despite playing for 2-3 weeks solid now. Even quit WoW :)

[andyf]

If I misclick while setting up a build chain, and plant a move order instead of 'assist this unit' or something, how do I delete that?

Also, press "B" to go into build mode, which lets you use keyboard shortcuts to select what you want to construct. Should be a nice fast shortcut once you are familiar with everything in your Tech 1 / 2 / 3 build lists.

Lost track of a selected unit? Hit T to set mode to Tracking, then your zoom will be centered on the unit. Panning the screen will cancel tracking mode.

[porsche]

A nice feature of this game not always obvious to newcomers is that if you hold shift you can see all of the waypoints, patrols, build orders etc for all units.

You can move existing objects, so if you accidently ordered placed a power generator in the wrong place then move it.

Doing this you can link units to other units' waypoints and do nice things with ferrying as Gunsmith already mentioned.

-Porsche-

[Afty]

Also, press "B" to go into build modeI like this mode, but as it disables the ability to find and create groups with CTRL-1-9 it did my head in until I realised you can disable it with a hotkey too: escape!

[Atos]

When placing electric plants next to buildings they have to be adjacent to have a benefit. For arguments sake, if a factory has 4 squares on its left hand side, is there a greater benefit to having a T2 power plant occupying 3 of those squares, or is the benefit equal to three T1 power plants?

Hope that makes sense :)

[RoboStac]

http://forums.multiplay.co.uk/showthread.php?t=47180

Is how it worked in the beta - doubt its changed too much.

[Deman]

While adjacency bonus is handy at times, you also need to remember some things like to go boooom :)