Forged Alliance Basics and a few features you may have missed

This guide will teach you the basics to quickly building up a good base and economy. It will also teach you a few secrets that can be very helpful if your enemy doesent know of it.

Starting the game

When you first spawn(on what ever map), immediately build either an air or land factory to one side of you. Then select the factory and order it to build 5 tech one engineers, and two interceptors(or anti air ground units depending on which factory you used). If you begin struggling on resources at this point, halt production of engineers until your situation stabilizes(there is a little pause button in the factories menu that will let you do this without cancelling your build orders). While your factory is working, have your commander build three mass extractors and as many power plants as possible without stalling your economy. As the engineers finish, make them build metal extractors on all nearby metal deposits. Also make sure some of them help build power generators or reclaim. Once the interceptors are done, make them patrol your base. This is to make sure you don't end up dead five minutes in due to tech one bombers rushing you.

Now that your engineers are finished making mass extractors, you should upgrade two of the mass extractors(one at a time with your commander assisting the upgrade). Once these are done do the same thing for the next 2 closest metal extractors. While that's going on. Surround the four closest metal extractors to your spawn with metal storage. This increases the extractors mass output and lets you store more mass away for later. This is important when building experimental units and expanding your base.

When all four of the closest metal extractors are done upgrading, upgrade your factory to tech two and upgrade your commander to a tech two engineering suit(only do one at a time and when you have the resources for it). Only do this when you are positive on energy by at least 200 or your economy will stall. While those upgrades are going have your engineers make another factory and make some type of anti air units and some form of anti land units to defend your base while the upgrades are going.

This so far should get you to tech two relatively fast. I have used this tactic in many games of Forged Alliance and it has worked quite well. From this point on what you do depends on what faction you have and what the game rules are, so from here it's up to you to make the right choice based on your opponent and your faction to win the game.

A few tips and features you may have missed.

1- Cybran tech two ground point defense is not always a good resource investment in the early game. The reason behind this is that the towers do damage over time instead of burst damage like other point defense systems. While this is situationally a good thing, it also means that higher tier units will have more opportunity to get shots off before they die than with other factions point defense. If you are cybran and are being attacked midgame, you should use fighter bombers or the tech two tanks to help defend. I'm not saying don't build defense towers, do build some, just don't go crazy with it until you have the resources to do so.

2-UEF commanders can launch tactical nukes, making them very dangerous. When building your base, make sure to have at least a couple tactical missle defenses.

3-Many people don't notice this, but seraphim battleships can launch nuclear missles.

4- Killing your own flying experimentals with the Ctrl K function can instantly kill enemy commanders provided the wreck lands on the commander. It is easiest to do this with a Czar.

5-The UEF navy is the best in the game. On a big water map, pick UEF. Its ships are just overall better than the other classes. Excluding the Aeon experimental battleship. UEF's navy is also better due to the fact that you can manually give engineering drones orders. If you tell the drones to all assist a naval factory, the ships will build at a rate much higher then that of other factions where you cant control or just don't have engineering drones.

6-Kamikazi tactics(for commanders) are some of the ways I have been defeated. It is also some of the ways I have tied with people much better than me at this game. UEFs are immune to this tactic because they have the overpowered tech three point defense. To do a kamikazi, equip a cybran commander with the following upgrades: Tech 3 engineering suit, microwave lazer, and a teleporter. Locate your enemies commander, teleport over to it, and fire the lazer at it until it explodes. Either killing you and your opponent, or very rarely only your opponent.

7-If you were thinking of building the Aeon paragon for infinity resources in your base, think again.
Pros of paragon-
* infinent rescources.
Cons-
*Low health.
*Takes forever to build.
*When it does die, it takes everything nearby with it, in a nuclear explosion.

If you do wish to gamble and build one of these, make sure to build another right after the first one finishes. The helps prevent your resource pool from being ripped out from under you.

8-When launching an air attack with tech three units, throw some tech two in the mix(but only if you already had the tech two units). The tech two take hits for the tech three so the tech three gets more hits. You can also do something very similar with experimentals. You have units surround an experimental so defense sometimes fires at the small units instead of the one, big, massively powerful one.

9-Try not to get stuck on a very small map with no water playing as UEF. Without water, the UEF are put at a small disadvantage. This is not to say you can't win as UEF on a small map with no water, you simply lose out of the naval advantage built into the faction.

10-Your commander is not your best weapon, and in most situations, you will lose the game if you try to use it as one. You have a chance if your UEF with a tactical nuke or Cybran with a teleporter and lazer. The reason I say this is because most games are played on the assasination game mode, and throwing your commander out into the open can decimate enemy defenses, but you run the risk of getting trapped, outgunned, or having a handful of tech 1 gunships or bombers hit you when your weak. Not to mention if a stray tactical missle hits your commander when it is at low health your as good as dead.

11- If you have a land experimental that is not a fatboy and your opponents commander is underwater, it is literally possible to step on them to death. I accidentally did that to a friend at low health while he was in my base. Half my base did not exist a few moments later.

12- Seraphim nukes launched from a Yolona Oss (tech 4 nuke launcher) will take two anti nukes to take out. If one is being fired at you. You must destroy the launcher. Or it will wear down your defense with its high build speed. The nuke has 3 stages, the first barely able to kill anything of high importance. The second will kill anything caught within about half the first stage. The third is just a few scattered projectiles. They hit hard but are very easy to dodge if you know where the missle is heading. It should be noted that the blast radius of the nuke the Yolona Oss produces is much larger than that of a normal nuke.

13- On a large water map, like betrayal ocean, the easiest way to take out an enemies base is with heavy artillery, like the mavor or with dukes. Because air units cant get to you on time to stop the artillery, and land units are too slow, there is not much your enemy can do to stop the barrage. Keep in mind there are counters to this strategy, so don't use it thinking its an automatic I win button.

14- The only way to avoid a barrage destroying your base is either take out the artillery, or build multiple layers of shields. So while some shields recharge, some will still be up to take the hits.

15- If you find someones engineer with one of your own, capture it(unless they are already capturing yours, in that case reclaim it.). With two factions you are actually much more powerful. For instance, a long ranged fatboy(mobile factory) and a seraphim experimental bomber, go very well together. The fatboy takes down the shields an the bomber drops the nuclear bomb into the enemies base while the shields are down.

16- Be careful at the end of team games. Some of your allies might not be done with the game. They might break the alliance and come after you. Be prepared if this happens.

17- Endgame there are sometimes so many experimentals in play they are used and sacrificed as if they were tech 1 scouts. Typically there will be a spot where a large number of engineers are gathered to build all of these. Targeting those engineers instead of the experimentals with bombing can drop the enemies productivity because they can no longer do as much with their resources.

18- If given the option of building megalith or spiderbot, pick megalith if you have more time, spiderbot if you dont have that much time. Megaliths can take down three spiderbots(monkey lords) working together. However if you need to rush an opponent, spiderbot is the way to go.

19- Aeon tactical misslle defenses do not work very well. Your better off killing the attacking unit than building too many tactical missle defenses. This is because when the missles are sucked towards the orb the defense fires, the incoming missles have a tendency to still hit the sheilds even if the defense tagged them.

20- If you are UEF and your opponent has multiple tech 4 assault bots(Specifically Seraphim), do not try to(directly) attack them with percivals. I tried to do this once and wound up immediately regretting it. The t4 assault bots AOE(area of effect) attack will kill groups of percivals very fast. Note that you can avoid this by spreading out your percivals, but if left alone or if they are forced through a narrow space, they will clump together and be highly suseptible to the area of effect attack.

21- If you are using an air force, be sure to build air staging facilities. These will refuel and repair aircraft at essentially no cost.

22-Never, under any circumstances underestimate any opponent. Because in some scenarios, even the newest of people to the game can wipe you out.

23- By far the most important tip: don't be afraid to play against people you know you will likely lose to, because out of repeated losses comes victory, and who knows, you might surprise yourself.

[namoth]

the rarity of getting to enjoy some proper marw or tech three artility use ^^

sort of a shame so many maps are so small.. :/ so few that is 80&80 for the marw to shine...heh..

i do think it might be worthwhile to point out for people though that unless they jurryrig supcom to play mp themselfs , the faf version have hade a lot of balance tweaks for things and some small additions by is community such as a tech three land factory anti air for all factions.

[lifesimulatordude]

@Tornad drop an SACU to destroy the shields

[Foxy]

Right. I'm not against making a guide geared towards newbies at all, but it would be smart to mention that the ACU indeed IS your strongest unit, even if simultaneously advising against using it actively, just so they are aware that they should probably learn to use it actively at some point in the future if they want to get better.

You're right that turtling and teching up is viable against the AI and newbies, particularly in the campaign missions it often feels mandatory to do that. Even then I would personally encourage new players to break out of their comfort zone and try to be active early around the map (even if without the ACU) to get some map control because control over mass extraction points is a very important part of the game.

Hope you find out how to edit the guide! I've never written a guide so I have no clue how it's done.

[Tornad]

@Foxy
You are correct on both points, but this guide is mostly for newer players. If a newer player tries to use their commander in an offensive manner, a slightly more experienced player will steamroll them in minutes. An experienced commander can get away with almost anything early game with the commander, a new one certainly can't. The point is more geared towards keeping new players from overextending their commander until they know how to use it. If the enemy team is coordinating at all, and sees a commander far away from any help, at best it walks back into it's base on 1-3k hp left.

As for your second point, I actually tried to edit that several times to input a better strategy that I learned shortly after I wrote this when I started playing multiplayer again, but the guide does not seem to want to let me edit it for some reason, still working on that. Your right, its not effective, not during high end play at least. Maybe against an AI or a very new player it could work.

[Foxy]

>Your commander is not your best weapon, and in most situations, you will lose the game if you try to use it as one
That't the complete polar opposite of reality. The commander is worth an entire army of T1 units and if you don't use it actively in the early game you will lose almost 100% of your games against players who know what they're doing. Of course there are risks to using it but it's still well worth it.

Also always rushing T2 while only building (air) defenses is not a universally good strategy. What good does your T2 factory and anti-air defenses do if the opponent now controls all the mass extractors outside your base (because you were only teching up and using ACU to tech up while they were expanding and being aggressive with their ACU) or simply made a T1 land rush?

[Tornad]

@Vindicator14 I do not know of a way to make units from other factories join an existing patrol, but you could select all of the factories of that type and then override the patrol by making a new one on the same path. Alternatively you can modify pre-existing patrols by holding shift and then dragging the points on the patrol to where you want them.

[Gernhart Reinorgeln]

Great Guide! Now, is there a way to make units from other factories join an existing patrol route, and how can I further modify the Patrol route?

[Tornad]

@lifesimulatordude If the game was 2x resources, that could be viable while the enemy units are stationary.

[lifesimulatordude]

or use 100 tactical missile launchers

[Tornad]

@lifesimulatordue Unfortunately, t4 units cannot be captured. While they can be reclaimed, the experimentals in question have built in t2 AA flak, which would annihilate any drones that got close. On top of this, most of the time experimentals will be escorted by a very large number of fighters, so any drones would be picked off a long time before they arrived.