Soviet handbook
See: Soviet Build Orders - By Pizzaguru
- Economy management -
Good players never 'ride zero'. This means they never run out of money in a game, it's really bad if you get 0 money because all production stops when you do. This is why it is important you manage your economy well. It’s important that you control your miners well so they are mining the ore/gems close to refinery. The most common way to do this is by selecting your miner after it unloads then clicking on the ore nearby. However, there’s another way to do this. Order your miner to unload on a refinery when it is already returning to unload. When you do this, the miner will mine the ore closest to the refinery instead of continuing where it got full. These two methods form the basic of miner control, if you apply both these methods your economy will be much better.
The common way:
The uncommon way:
There are more tricks to have a better money flow.
- Before an ore field is depleted, move miners to new ore. Leave 1 miner on the old ore field if it has an ore mine. It supplies enough for one miner and will keep it busy for a while.
- Order a miner to go back early when you get close to 0 money. Don’t sent back an empty miner ofcourse, pick one that’s half-full(or more).
- Put the structure tab on-hold to keep the tank production going when going low on cash.(i.e Country swing, wait before building 3rd ref till a miner unloads after 2nd miner done)
- Repair a droned war miner by making a service depot (If you are building a refinery at that time, cancel it. It’s cheaper).
- If gems are close mine it first.
- Place the front of refineries as close to the ore as possible.
- If you see miners with the same amount of ore in their truck, send one back early to make sure they don’t have to wait for one other(work out of synch).
- Mine the ore around the ore mine first if you want your economy to last longer because that ore will be replaced.
- Mine areas of ore away so you can place a refinery deep inside the ore field
- Allies only! Chrono miners tend to teleport to a refinery far away if the closest refinery has a miner busy unloading. This means that without you controlling them it will have a long drive back to his original ore field, therefore you must send the miner to the ore next to the refinery it teleported too. This does not only save a long journey for miner but will also work in synch with the miners working on the new ore field and balance themselves over the available ore field. (Only when you apply the method to keep the chrono miners at the ore of the refineries they teleport to.)
- Allies only! If there’s not a refinery for each 2-3 chrono miners. Refineries get overloaded and miners are forced to drive back instead of teleporting.
- Dog control -
Tank control or better known as TC is the most important skill needed to win at games. Tank control is very hard to learn, it mainly comes with experience.
Splits:
Using splits is the best way to kill important structures or miners without losing any tanks or even having a tank fight! Splits rely on your opponent not scouting thoroughly, the lack of multi-tasking or simply for him not to notice you split. These splits can do great damage, like killing miners(crippling his economy), MCV, battle lab or spy satellite etc.
- To have a more stealthy split, don’t take a couple of tanks from your main tank force but have a rallypoint from a war factory to the place you want your split gather before doing the hit and run. Even better is to primary a different war factory.
- Move along the edge of the map where it’s unlikely for him to have scouted or other routes where you know his scouting was poor.
- When your split got spotted and he splits up too with the same amount, you can bring more tanks to your split. Many people don’t notice your split getting stronger you then can crush his split and maybe miners/MCV.
- You can also regroup the split quickly then immediately attack him one of his splits, don't give him time to regroup. This will slaughter his tanks because each of his splits will be outnumbered.
- Do not fight other tanks with your split, unless you have them outnumbered.
Fodder:
Miscellaneous tank control:
- Keep tanks in tight groups. Best way of doing this is by not moving large distances. When you move to close to the shore or a cliff etc. they will line up, avoid this. You can regroup by using Alt + click on one of your tanks. Sometimes you and your opponent's tanks mix which ruins your formation, when this happens you should drive out and form a compact formation again.
- Do not click on the tanks of you opponent, let your tanks auto target. Only click tanks when you have less then 6 tanks or when your opponent has fodder.
- Sometimes it’s better to squash fodder then to click tanks the entire battle.
- Try to move your tanks in a perpendicular direction to his (if ur tanks are south and his are north and he moves in, move your tanks to the east or west). This way your tanks will do a “drive-by” and kill his tanks while yours will only be damaged (his tanks change target to closer, healthy tanks after your opponent gives his tanks a new order).
- Use the T hotkey a lot to make sure you're not leaving any tanks at your base. Tap the T key twice to select all units of a given type on the map.
- The moment you have more tanks then your opponent in a tank fight, drive past him then turn around/driveback. If you do this correctly, many tanks will be damaged but few will die because the moment you are behind him, he can't shoot the tanks that were in front earlier(they are now in the back of your group). And this will assure that all tanks are in range to shoot which makes the advantage of having more tanks bigger.
- When tanks are on higher ground, their range increases, use this to your advantage on maps with hills(cliffs even better). You do have to force attack fire on something, they wont shoot the increased distance automaticly.
- Each time you give a new order to your tanks, they will rotate their turrets in the direction they are going to move so if this direction is not to your opponent's tank, it wastes time on rotating. Try to find a balance in giving to few/many orders.
- Do not turn your back to your opponents tanks, your tanks will waste to much time on rotating their turrets after each kill or when recieving a order to move in a different direction then his target.
- Keep your damaged/promoted tanks in in the back because these units are of more use when they don't get hit. I assigned ~ to Health Navigation.
- When you think he clicked on a tank, move the tank you think he clicked on back so his tanks will follow it without firing any shots, giving you free shots.
- Miscellaneous -
1. By watching an enemy naval shipyard’s crane you can see when dolphins, submarines and squids are build. Then you can counter this i.e. on mayday you can build dread on the other side so his squid can’t reach your dread because you placed a desolator or squid in the small passage. And when you see allies make dolphin you’ll know to make submarines.
2. With good timing you can dodge the bombs harriers and black eagles drop. If you see a plane coming, wait for the shadow to appear next to your tank then move in the same direction, the plane is going. If done at the right moment, the bomb will miss and hit the ground behind your tank.
3. When you put a units in a transport, you can tell it what to do when it gets out of the transporting unit. This is done by telling for example a seal to go in the IFV but before it gets in, you make a waypoint(Z) to his iron curtain. now you move the IFV next to his iron curtain and deploy(D) it. This will almost instantly blow up the IC. Useful with ivan/engineer/seal/spy/tanya.
4. Counter drones:
- Protect your refinery's with a sentry
- Place your tanks near your miners/refinery
- Move your tanks on ore, this will slow down the drone when it moves over the or giving your tanks a clear shot.
- Two ore more tanks can kill a single drone if they don't miss because of the drone changing direction.
- Order a war miner to attack the drone when it is close.
- When he makes alot of drones, make conscript fodder and move them with Ctrl+shift.
5. When playing vs allies on a naval map you can tech for dread (maybe back it up with 2-3 flack tracks to counter planes/rocketeers and seals/tanyas). When he starts to make dolphins you will have to make submarines and multiple naval shipyards. If you don't build submarines and naval shipyards, he will kill your shipyard and with 5 dolphins and have total control of the water because the dolphins can kill any navalshipyard you build faster then you can make any naval unit. After he has some dolphins he can start making aircraftcarriers which can kill your base no matter how many anti-air you make.
6. Sometimes you and your opponent get eachother in a basetrade situation, you and him are in a race against time to be the first to kill all hostile structures thus winning the game without either of you losing their tanks. If it's a true basetrade, returning to your base to defend is not an option. In a basetrade you want to destroy all hostile structures rapidly while you stall your opponent for time. Destroy rapidly:
- Kill warfactories/barracks/MCV first else they will slow you down
- Split your tanks and attack multiple structures simultaneously. Don't make splits to small or him repairing his buildings will slow you down.
- Build a structure out of reach like a naval shipyard out on sea or a sentry on a cliff. If you can't place anything out of reach, hide a sentry(i.e. behind a tree) or build something far away from his destructive tanks(i.e. a remote oil derrick)
- Build drones and desolators to kill tanks thus lower his damage output.
- Send back a split to interfere his killing
- Drive away your MCV
- Repair buildings if his tanks aren't to many
7. Counter engi(+drone) - ifv/flacktrack:
- Have a drone intercept it.
- Build some dogs and place them near your warfactory in case he wants to capture that.
- Place a sentry and repack your MCV when he unloads then kill the engineer with the sentry. If the flacktrack has a drone in it too, sacrifice a tank (most people are to slow to retarget the drone to MCV)
- Wall MCV
- Sell MCV, build fodder and counter fast and possibly engi him back (very effictive on low resource maps.)
8. Use hotkeys! For some of you it will be a real pain in the neck to get used to it because the have played without for a long time but it's important to use hotkeys. Here's a list of the most important hotkeys:
- CTRL + 1/2/3 --> Create team.
- 1/2/3 --> Select team.
- Tap 1/2/3 twice --> Centre screen on team.
- Q/W/E/R --> Structures tab / Defence tab / Infantry tab / Vehicle tab.
- T --> Type select on screen.
- Double tab T key --> select all units of a given type on the map.
- SPACE BAR --> Go to event on radar.
- CTRL+ SHIFT --> Attack move.
- H --> Centre screen on base.
- K (F) --> Repair mode. (I highly recommend to assign it to F)
- L (A) --> Sell mode. (I highly recommend to assign it to A)
- Hold Z --> Enter waypoint mode.
- B --> Place beacon.
- CTRL + F1/F2/F3 --> Bookmark creation.
- F1/F2/F3 --> Go to bookmark selection.
- I also have ~ key assigned to unit health navigation and C to centre base view(or use F1). With these newly made hotkeys your hand doesnt have to move over your keyboard.
- To speed up your building placement, you must use the Q key to select a building when it's ready. This saves you time because you don't have to move your mouse to sidebar and back to the location where you want to place the structure.
- Another way to play faster is by using the N and D key at the start of a game to have your MCV deployed.
Other important settings:
- Tooltips ON
- Target lines ON
- See hidden objects ON
- Scroll rate FASTEST
- Sound volume 5-10
- Voice volume 5-10
- ~ key assigned to unit health navigation
- A key assigned to Sell mode
- F key assigned to Repair mode
- C key assigned to Centre base view / Coordinates
10. Use XGS Game Spy (RA2 only) to catch cheaters and review your game vs good players.
11. If your games have low FPS (lag), fix it. RA2 Lag, Choppy/Slow Gameplay
12. You can kill a whole bunch of rocketeer with a flacktrack if you control it well. If you drive away from the rocketeer they folow your flacktrack, they will form a tightly packed group and your flacktrack will damage them all.
Edited by Pizzaguru, 06 July 2012 - 10:40 PM.
