Rushing and Raiding, Part II

The name of the game for Raiding is expansion, and although the action starts early in this type of game, that doesn't necessarily mean that the game is over quickly (although many Raiding games only last ten or twelve minutes).

Skilled Raiders can keep playing for a long time, and the most amazing thing about these players is that their Commanders are never inactive. As soon as the first Vehicle Plant is finished, a skilled Raider will queue his Commander to start building Metal Extractors, a Radar Tower, more Solar Collectors or Wind Generators, and even more Metal Extractors, all over the map.

The best Raiders are hard to beat not just because you'll be under constant attack for almost the entire game, but also because their bases are spread out. If your enemy has Metal Extractors all over the map, it's hard to find them all and destroy them.

There are many subtleties to the Raiding game that can tip the delicate balance in your favor.

Harass Your Enemy!

If your tanks fire on the enemy Commander, he's got to stop what he's doing to destroy them. If you can get him to chase your Flashes, then he won't be building more Metal Extractors or factories. Besides metal and energy, the third important resource in TA is time; if you can distract the enemy Commander, then he'll have to catch up with your production.

Don't Forget Radar

Radar Towers are cheap, and the early warning they provide is critical to success. It's easy to forget to build radar in a fast-paced, tense Raiding game, and if you lose a Radar Tower it's even easier to forget to replace it. Radar is especially important in a Raiding game, though, because your base defense will depend so heavily on your mobile units. If you know which direction an attack is coming from, you can respond thgat much more quickly and effectively.

Watch Your Production!

If you lose some Metal Extractors but you've still got Flashes queued up, you can stall your economy and lose the game because of that delay. As Orion mentioned in his first column, it's much more efficient to clear your factory build queues, replace the lost Metal Extractors, and then start building Flashes again, rather than trying to build more Metal Extractors while you're in a resource stall.

Run Right Past the Enemy

When your Flashes encounter enemy units, your reaction will depend on several things. If you have superior numbers, destroy them so that they can't Raid you. If it's an equal match or you're outnumbered, run past them! Don't stop; head straight to the enemy base to find some Metal Extractors or radar towers that can't shoot back. If your enemy doesn't have any more tanks in his base, he'll have to turn around and chase you, which ties up units that could have been headed to your base. Otherwise, he'll have to go after you with his Commander. If you can get enemy tanks to chase you across the map while you destroy every Metal Extractor along the way, great!

Know When to Ignore Enemy Units

If you find a non-mobile defense, like an LLT, and you don't have enough Flashes to overwhelm it, ignore it! It can't chase you, and a Flash can take several hits from a light laser without stopping. You can come back and destroy it later when you have more tanks. Also, if your enemy built an LLT too early, he may have choked his economy and have no mobile units to stop your Raiding.

Build a Second Base

As soon as your economy will support it (which is a judgment call), build a second base. This "base" might be nothing more than a second Vehicle Plant and a Radar Tower built next to the Metal Extractor and Solar Collector that you just finished, but if you have the resources to support two Vehicle Plants and your enemy only has one, you're winning. Alternatively, if you go for an Aircraft Plant instead of a second Vehicle Plant, you might be able to surprise your enemy with a couple of bombers. If he doesn't have any anti-air, you can destroy parts of his base or harass his Commander with impunity.

Watch out for the Commander Rush!

In this kind of game, stressed players will sometimes feel desperate enough to risk their Commander to cripple your production. Typically, the enemy Commander will leave his own base behind and try to sneak over to yours. If he makes it, he'll try to D-Gun everything in sight before being destroyed. Remember that Comm-Rushing doesn't win anyone any friends, and playing with Commander Dead = Game Ends will discourage this tactic. Sometimes, though, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Keep Moving

Remember, units in TA don't have to stop moving to fire. A few Flashes (with +SHOOTALL turned on) can destroy a Metal Extractor or rake a Solar Collector without even slowing down. If you roll your Flashes past the enemy Commander and park them on the opposite side of his Vehicle Factory before targeting the factory, he's got to walk all the way around the factory to use his D-Gun. If you can trick an enemy Commander into D-Gunning his own units, great!

Never Pass Up a Target of Opportunity

Although Metal Extractors are the most important target, closed Solar Collectors don't produce energy, and you can stall your opponent's production in the early game by zapping Solars as you pass them. A pair of Jeffies can devastate an early economy by denying your enemy energy as you search for his metal; if his factory stalls and can't produce a unit to help his Commander stop your scouts, then you've already won.

Reclaim Wreckage

Remember to reclaim wreckage if you have the chance! Reclaiming the corpses of a few Flashes is enough metal to build another Flash of your own, and it only takes a few seconds. If you're playing on a map with rocks scattered across the landscape, reclaim any of them that you pass by; the extra metal is worth more than you might think.

The D-Gun

If you try to D-Gun by clicking on the "D-Gun" button and then clicking on an enemy unit on-screen, you'll be lucky to hit the fast-moving Flash tanks. Train yourself to click the "D" key on the keyboard with one hand, while you aim with the other. If you're gunning for a unit in motion, don't try to put the crosshair directly on the unit; you'll probably miss. Instead, aim for the ground right next to the unit, or right in front of it. The D-Gun blast is just as effective, and remember that its destructive path continues for some distance after it hits the ground, so all you really have to do is shoot near your target.

Act, Don't React!

You've got to be aggressive in a Raiding game. You have to be able to coordinate searching for the enemy's Metal Extractors, supporting your own economy, and responding to attack -- sometimes all at once! If all you do is respond to your opponent's attacks, he'll expand unchecked and eventually overwhelm you with numbers.

So, does this mean that every Raiding game unfolds exactly the same way, or that every Raiding game is over in less than fifteen minutes? Not necessarily.

Sometimes a Commander will choose to build a Samson early in the game to help defend against Jeffy raids. Samsons have great range, and it only takes a couple of their guided missiles to destroy the fragile Jeffy. This tactic helps you to defend your own metal (by keeping the Samson in your own base), but it costs you one Flash that could've been on the way to the enemy base, so it's a very important tactical decision.

Will you ever see construction units in a Raiding game? Sometimes, but not very early. Construction units take a long time to build, compared to Jeffies and Flashes, so building a Construction Vehicle can cost you valuable time. However, some Raiding games do produce Construction Vehicles, Sentinels, and Defenders. You can't beat the Flash for a great balance of cost and effectiveness, though. Should you go straight to Flashes and skip Jeffies? You can, but Jeffies are much faster than Flashes, they take less time to build, and they're cheaper. Remember that your first mobile unit will probably be under construction before you even have a single Metal Extractor, and so a few points of metal saved can make a big difference.

Finally, D-Gun skill is crucial. You'll frequently find yourself in a situation where all of your mobile units are going to the enemy base and your Commander is the only unit you have to defend yourself. A missed D-Gun shot can literally be the difference between a win and a loss, and if you waste too much energy with mad D-Gunning, you can cripple your energy income.

This topic leads to a very important question: Can Core win in a Raiding type of game? It depends.

Yes, a skilled Core Commander can beat a less-experienced Arm Commander by using these tactics, but if the players have equal skill, the Arm Commander will almost always win. Arm excels in the Raiding type of game; as Guener likes to say, "speed kills." The first stages of the game will be similar, because Weasels are almost identical to Jeffies; however, once you start comparing Flashes to Instigators, the differences become more obvious. Instigators aren't as fast as Flashes, and they take a little longer to build. Plus, Instigators don't aim as quickly as Flashes, so they may have to stop to destroy targets that a Flash could kill without slowing, which makes them more vulnerable.

Can Core substitute Slashers instead of Instigators and win? It's not impossible, but the Core Commander had better be good, because Slashers take even longer to build than Instigators.

So now that I've told you how to Rush and how to Raid effectively, is there any way to defend against these tactics? Certainly.

It's hard to quantify a specific "defensive tactic" in the Raiding game, because the same units are used for offense and defense. If you park your Commander at home, your enemy will spread all over the map and out-produce you. If you keep too many tanks near your base for defense, you'll have the same problem. If you don't keep any tanks close to home, you run the risk of being crippled by Raiding, but sometimes you have to take that risk.

To beat a Raider on a Raiding-type map with normal starting resources (such as 1000 metal and 1000 energy, or "1K/1K"), your only real option is to use the same Raiding tactics, because it really is the most effective way to play. You just can't produce Construction Vehicles and have an LLT protected by Dragon's Teeth before the Raider will cripple your economy, period.

There are ways to protect yourself against a Rusher, though.

Dragon's Teeth (DTs) are the bane of the Flash tank. A few LLTs surrounded by Dragon's Teeth will protect the LLT from taking any damage from the Flash EMGs, and so a few "DTed" LLTs can destroy many times their own cost in Flashes. DTed Sentinels or Gaat Guns (also called HLTs, for "Heavy Laser Towers") are very, very dangerous. A few Guardians sitting comfortably behind a DT line can easily trash dozens or even hundreds of Slashers, if you have time to build a defensive line like that. Defenders and Pulverizers (or MTs, for "Missile Towers") are inexpensive, and their anti-air missiles have even better range than Slasher missiles.

Always remember to have good radar coverage, too. It only takes a few seconds to drop a Radar Tower near your defenses, and the sooner you know an attack is coming, the sooner you can respond to it. Finally, even if you concentrate on anti-Rush, make sure you have a few mobile units to provide LOS contact for the defenses. If a pack of Slashers gets within range of a DTed Sentinel, they can eventually destroy it because they have more range than the HLT and the area of effect of their missile explosions will wear down the protected tower. A Guardian that can see the Slashers, though, can destroy them quickly with its powerful plasma shells.

One of the most important aspects of base defense that many players forget is that humans are smarter and more inventive than the TA AI. Just because you build a beautiful line of defenses protected by Dragon's Teeth does not necessarily mean that your opponent is required to go there to attack! If your opponent realizes that all of your defenses are concentrated in one place, he may attack from a different direction. If he finds out that your defenses are all on the outer perimeter of your base, he may decide to run his Flashes right past your HLTs and ignore them. He'll lose a few tanks to the laser fire, of course, but once he's farther inside your base he can freely destroy your factories and resources.

Remember that against a Rusher, defenses inside your base are just as important as defenses on the outer edge of your base. Just be careful, though -- a Guardian firing into your own base trying to destroy enemy units is not necessarily a good thing!

Well, that's all I have to say about Rushing and Raiding. Don't be misled into believing that Rushing is only a newbie tactic, and that there's only one type of Raiding game. In fact, there are advanced players who have absolutely mastered the science of Slasher Rushing, and Raiding your opponents resources is an important part of winning any game.

Finally, remember that these tactics are just parts of the game, and that you can incorporate many aspects of them into your strategies without being a "Rusher" or a "Raider" all the time. That strategic depth is what makes Total Annihilation such a great game, and it's the reason I enjoy it so much!

-- Brave Sir Robin

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