How to play FFA.
Introduction
In FFA - especially teams - you can never always win, but you can increase you chances to win, and make the game more interesting for everyone.
You can avoid that peoples cry something like "This noob gave all his base and reclaim for free - I hate to play FFA with noobs!" by reading this manual page (and maybe some others to get better in general).
Details
Know who is good in FFA - play more FFA games to know it.
Attack this one first, but don't underestimate a noob team with a Starlight or Detriment!
It is very important to
- scout and harass
- use intel to control your enemies
- master economy-fighting balance
- know which one to attack (good players, scout for easy-to-get mexes)
- get as much metal income as possible without letting others know about it (cloak, reclaim, no waste).
Scout and harass
Always harass anything outside you base if one team try to get more metal income as this team deserves.
But don't spend metal with wreckages!
Use fleas, raiders (as long as they survive) scythes, Ravagers(assault tanks).
If you are lucky, you see what this team tries to do.
You can only know what the others have by knowing what you could have made at this time.
The enemy can
- have a unit cloaked
- have a Strider inside the enemy base
- have things under water.
But if you you know how much percent of the map's metal spots you and your enemies are holding, and if you know how much they did build when in defense, you know how much metal the team spent on other things.
It takes a long time and many FFA games to get a feeling for this.
Use intel to control your enemies
Decide what the other teams should see and what not.
Statics
First, try to not cloak the mexes in your base, your factory and your nanos, but you can get a few self-cloaking constructors assisting the factory
If the enemy don't know that you are cloaking anything, he will think that what he sees is all you got.
You can also jam (not cloak) enemy units!
Get 1 eraser and send it at the side of an enemy porc line to confuse the enemies next to this one.
- If the radar blips disappear, the neighbors get scared, because their radar will not work as they expect!
Never hide defense (except long range things like anni, chainsaw), as long as tacnuking (600m) these is not worth the effort.
- If the enemy sends 1 scout, he will see your defense as soon as this defense attacks his scout.
The more defense the enemy see, the less likely they are going to attack you.
- Make a few Nanoframes of Anni, DDM, etc. - If the enemy scouts them, he will think you finish them (but not if you spam these).
Units
Get a few Dirtbags or Fleas in front of an enemy base.
The enemy:
- think you have 2 bases
- try to flee from you and attack his neighbor (2 enemies get weaker).
- attacks you you get free wreckages.
- attacks the base where you have Dirtbags/Fleas and weaken your neighbor
- get nearly free intel on what is happening.
Always move (patrol) with Dirtbags.
- If you send a real army, the enemies think it is only another spam of Dirtbags or have to scout it each time.
Master economy-fighting balance
Always make sure to reclaim the wreckages if you attack someone, before you leave the battlefield to build reinforcements!
- Never forget constructors
- Repair - even in front of the enemy territory - to reduce the wreckages you drop.
Cloak nearly everything, but try to NOT cloak your mexes, so enemies will see mexes and think: uncloaked base, nothing there.
- Useless if you build shields
Never prepare defense for everything!
- If you get nuked, think "Good game!" and try to win the next game, but build one if you hear the nuke sound of-course.
- 1 Screamer is useful against many things - scouts, Lichos, Krows, but you need to learn when to build it (depends on map metal).
The best defense for cost is:
- 1 Stardust (hits light gunships, most dps/cost, good against swarms)
- 1 Newton with "attract/off-symbol" to trap light bombers.
- Pillager or Firewalker vs enemy arty.
If you get more than 1000-1200 metal in wreckages, it is often better to make an investment into 2-4 resurrect bots + amphibious factory to build them.
If you use nukes and fail, don't try it again with only 1 nuke more.
Scout, kill/stun-nuke antis and use at least 2 or 3 nukes more than the last time - decreased by the stunned/killed antis of-course.
Always scout - even if you lose 500 Metal for one enemy team every 3 minutes - it is only 2.5m/s and can help you to decide when exactly to build antis, how many, is someone is starting a starlight, etc.
You can't cloak nanoframes and see at least nano particles if something cloaked get repaired or a cloaked con is resurrecting anything.
- Spend less metal for scouting the more enemies you get
Always expand - even if it is annoying if your expanse get attacked, you can surprise the enemy army to get reclaim.
If fleas or 1-2 scythes not help anymore, get a Big Berta - you need 2 tacnukes to kill it, 3 to penetrate 1 shield, 4 (or 1 emp and 2) to kill it inside shield spam, and 2 more to kill the wreckage (or it get resurrected).
- The heap contains only 1000 metal, effectively reducing the enemy team's loss to 4000m
- only use <2000 metal to kill it, or you get a disadvantage over the other enemies.
- Sometimes it might even be better to make shields against it and wait for the enemy to target another one or let another one kill it.