HOW TO: Help your team in Strat - A guide for strat newbies

[Zero Angel]

1) Early Game Flow

A strat game is typically divided up into several phases, the first minute typically involves players setting navs at pools, and then after that is the standoff phase in which all players try to gain the most advantageous position for what will be the opening dogfight. It is important for the team to stick together during this phase, and it's quite possible for stragglers to be attacked and killed even while naving. If you're new to strat *never* be the first to charge out and trigger the opening dogfight, the enemy team will focus fire you and you will die within seconds. Charging out can be disasterous for your team, as they may rush in trying to save your ship and all die due to the fact that you triggered the dogfight before they were all ready. Whe your team has set their navs and his facing down the enemy team, Try to hang around the edges of the formation but behind a little bit and then flank charging enemy scouts. Attacking a ship from the side (flanking) means your shots will hit more often. If you are getting focus fired than fall back immediately and hope that your teammates can shake those guys off of you.

If you somehow manage to survive the opening dogfight, and you recognize that your team's Ace does not have a ship -- you may elect to give him your full scout (as opposed to 'empty scout'). Most of the time he *will* make good use of it, and will appreciate your generousity. However that is completely optional, most people it seems do not want to give up their fullscout and end up dying shortly after as full scouts tend to become priority targets for the enemy team.

2) Get good at running.

This means running early and running often. Learn how to fast-run (a technique that involves using your strafe+jump+forward thrusters at the same time to run at maximum speed). Pay attention to your radar and minimap. It's easy to get surprised by a cloaked ship, and if you're alone then you will DIE.

3) Keep your head down

Until you become an good dogfighter than follow your teammates, use them for cover, support them. Never expect your teammates to babysit you, instead try to 'babysit' them by following them around, attacking what they're attacking and trying to be helpful. Make sure that you do not lag in attention to the point where you get jumped by a cloaked ship, only then realizing that your teammates left you to go get pods! In a situation like that, even if you have full or half ammo, than go back and stay with your teammates. There is no more attractive target for an enemy ace than a lone straggler who is not paying enough attention to what's going on!

4) Prioritize your targets

Some targets are more valuable to kill than others. For example, if a scav and extractor are together, than kill the scavenger first*. If you kill the extractor first than the scav will just collect the loose scrap from the destroyed extractor and then set itself on the pool. Likewise, a full scout is always a more valuable target to kill than an empty scout because it has a greater damage output, and a tank is more important to kill first than a scout. When I play strat, I give special priority to killing full scouts that may have survived the opening encounter. If your teammate attacks a target than try to help him out by contributing extra damage so that you can both put that target out of action as quickly as possible. If you can quickly take one enemy out of action, than it gives both of you an upper hand.

* There are exceptions to this rule, and they typically are if your team is on only 1 pool and needs the 80 scrap for a tech center, or 65 for a tank, or if you must absolutely prevent the enemy from having 2 pools (to stop tanks from being produced, or prevent them from making a tech center/overseer)

5) Learn how to paint and what to paint.

You will notice prior to the opening dogfight that you will get an 'attack my target' order on an enemy ship rather early on. Well, this is called a 'paint' and it allows you to know, at all times, where a given enemy is. Most teams will paint the most dangerous ship on the field, whether it is a ship piloted by an enemy ace, or just one that has a really high attack power. It's important to paint targets that have the potential to do the most damage to your team, like a laser scout with shadowers (that can surprise you and you can't escape from) or blast tank (that can cloak, sneak up on you and kill you quickly). An interesting quality about painting is that if you paint a target, your allies will always see that target on radar and in the HUD, but you wont. That is why it's important that if your teammate paints a target, you select all your teammates and paint that target again (ie: "paint back plz") so that the teammate who originally painted the target also has a fix on that target. Never paint non-threatening targets like extractors, as painting something will often clear any previous paints that your teammates might've had on a threatening target.

6) Learn how to manage scavengers

Nearly all of the time loose scrap is more important than getting pools, because loose scrap accelerates your team's income very quickly. If your commander gives you a scavenger, send it to places where there is loose scrap (in mid-game, a place where dogfighting has recently took place will have 'loose' from destroyed ships). However you want to make sure that your team has at least 3 pools. If the team only has 1 then capping a pool is often more important than scavenging, but in other situations then it's a good idea to send your scavs to collect loose. Never allow your scavs to wander into the enemy base. This can happen if you become forgetful about your scavengers.

7) Support your team by managing scavs and pools

This is a *very* important function in a strategy game, and when your team has equal or greater dogfighting supremacy, you can provide an extremely valuable service by destroying enemy pools and planting your scavengers there (if you can, try to collect scrap from the destroyed extractor before setting a new one), this frees up your commander (who may be a better fighter than you) to assist his team in dogfights so that they do not get outnumbered. I have won many games as a commander because I had one very good scav jockey/pool thug to help me tech up and build ships quickly.

8) Getting better

Getting better comes with practice and a will to improve. If you want to become good at dogfighting, then play deathmatches -- learn how to master your craft, learn the dynamics of combat like when to charge forward, when to retreat, when to feign retreat, and how to move in ways that make you hard to hit. Practice on being able to quickly enter and exit combat situations without being bogged in.

If you want to become good at resource management (even as a thug), then observe how your commander commands, watch how scavengers are used and keep an eye on the scrap bar. Get a good idea about how a great commander commands and then command a few games and find ways to increase how quickly your resources come in. Commanding will teach you a lot of things and will make you a better thug too.

Eventually you will improve enough to discover what playing style you're good at. Some people are good at pools/resources, others are good as supporting wingmen for an ace, and others can become an ace. Not everyone will become an ace as it requires quick reflexes, the ability to multi-task, battlefield awareness and a mastery of tactics. Some people are natural aces, and others help their team most by being supportive.

It's possible to have a lot of fun no matter what your skill level is and what role you play for your team.

[Dr Gonzo]

Nice guide, very cool idea! Has anyone ever considered recording an entire strat game and providing commentary? I've always felt that there was a lack of learning resources that new players could get a hold of.

[Red Devil]

ask anyone - i can't hit the broad side of a barn at 50 paces. MTS kilt me yesterday with chain while i had sonic cannon. it is like being the abominable snowman with no teeth.

[Ded10c]

ask anyone - i can't hit the broad side of a barn at 50 paces. MTS kilt me yesterday with chain while i had sonic cannon. it is like being the abominable snowman with no teeth.

What he said. Xeno managed to take me with chain while I was packing assault blast.

[Nielk1]

Query: How drastically would things change if the enemy could not distinguish between Empty and Full scouts by name?

[Ded10c]

That is a very interesting thought. I've not seen FAF missiles used much in dogfighting... might be worth an experiment.

[Zero Angel]

Query: How drastically would things change if the enemy could not distinguish between Empty and Full scouts by name?

*very* drastically, and probably for the worst. Knowing whether the enemy is using an empty or full is the only way you can tell whether said enemy is capable of using shads on you. Shadowers will bend you over and spank you if you are piloting an empty and aren't prepared for them.

[Nielk1]

HAHA, isn't doable anyway without hiding the name from the allies too. Just wanted to ask.

[Sly]

Good guide. The biggest problem I have when commanding is that most thugs make a lot of minor/common sense mistakes. They don't pay attention to you being attacked by an enemy and continue hitting a pool, are too scared to rush 3 scouts when on radar you see 4 other ships with you, etc. If a player can just master the use of his minimap view in strats, he will automatically bump up a level in skill.

[Fulmen]

ask anyone - i can't hit the broad side of a barn at 50 paces. MTS kilt me yesterday with chain while i had sonic cannon. it is like being the abominable snowman with no teeth.

Use Arc next time.

[MrTwosheds]

What he needed was blink.

[Red Spot]

9) Anticipate
You can generally see the enemy coming without actually having him/her in view. For instance when a team of capable players is not attacking you can expect an assault to be coming your way. With a team you can often expect a full tank-team of bigger, up to full blown survised assaults. Facing a single foe it often results in airborn attacks, at least attacks often supported/led by airborn units.

I'm sure someone can word the above a lot better, but I do find it to be 1 of the most important things in pretty much any MP-game (and often SP-games as well). If you can be 1 step ahead of your foe you can almost win games from a defensive stance (10 hornet R-tanks in your base when your foe sends 20 APCs/Maulers to you means you'll have a heck of a scrapboost to build assault units).

[Zero Angel]

9) Anticipate
You can generally see the enemy coming without actually having him/her in view. For instance when a team of capable players is not attacking you can expect an assault to be coming your way. With a team you can often expect a full tank-team of bigger, up to full blown survised assaults. Facing a single foe it often results in airborn attacks, at least attacks often supported/led by airborn units.

I'm sure someone can word the above a lot better, but I do find it to be 1 of the most important things in pretty much any MP-game (and often SP-games as well). If you can be 1 step ahead of your foe you can almost win games from a defensive stance (10 hornet R-tanks in your base when your foe sends 20 APCs/Maulers to you means you'll have a heck of a scrapboost to build assault units).

That is something more that a commander will want to take into account than a wingman. Knowing what tech an enemy has, their defenses, and their unit composition allows the commander to decide whether he should have his thugs do a base hit, or whether he should do something like build a laser fullscout or just put everyone in empties and try to fast tech to blast tanks.

The situations you describe are rarely encountered in 3v3 or 4v4 strat. In such a large strat, commanders will only employ serviced assaults as a means to break out of a stalemate if his thugs have difficulties breaking enemy base defenses. APCs are rarely employed. I usually use them as finishers if my thugs can break defenses but need some extra hitting power for the defenseless base, or in FFA games to surprise a scion commander who hasn't built enough jammers/defenses. These kinds of strategic considerations lie outside of the scope of this guide.

[M4BHoward]

Awesome guide ZA! Sooo true on so many points...

I would add one more piece of advice: If you are a noob commanding, and you have advanced players nagging for scavs, GIVE SOME TO THEM. If they say hit pools, CONFIRM THE ORDER. When they say 2 pods, MAKE TWO PODS.

In short, the "vet" players know what they're talking about. Give 'em ships, guns, and scavs, and you can shift your main focus onto your basebuilding and scrap management with the four extra pools they get you (personal noob experience talking here.)

TIP: when you need to spam out anything that costs 20, keep your SCRAP in the RED. This will allow you to spam production without wasting valuable resources and time.

[Col Klink]

I very much appreciate all the advice given. I haven't play much online so I consider myself as a totally green noob. Now I have some sound advise on what to do to support the team and build some experience if I can get in to some online action on a dialup. Or would it be better to host some training missions myself for other noobs like myself? I guess I could enter this information when I start a new game. Would that attract any new players? I know vets pretty much loath noobs, but we need to gain some experience one way or the other. Thanks for the posting this thread.