My first thoughts on Green: At the very beginning, I (and most of the other members of the 2nd Fleet) thought Green was overpowered. After playing green for a while, I figured out htat it actually isn't that overpowered. When looking at the "most interesting facts" about a unit (attack and defense ), green really is overpowered. Add the possibility of every unit except bsae to replicate itself, and you have an epic color (I'll call them color from now on instead of race or faction xD). But when you play green for a while, you also notice that negative aspects. Sure, you can build lots of harvesters and swarm the resources in nearly no time, but then your Upkeep is screwed. Corvettes are pretty nice against AI opponents, because they just don't react when you attack them with a corvette that is out of the enemie's range. A human would probably send two (or more) ships at the corvette and slash it into pieces. Green is (together with blue... I can't decide xD) my most favourite color. I'm looking forward to writing some tactical guides and reading other people's guides
Actually, John said to because green is fast and strong, it's expensive and takes longer to build. Since green is my favorite color, it's also my favorite faction.
My strategy isn't too complicated. I build a foundary, a scout, and a couple harvesters. I'll scout a while to see where the enemy is and how I'll go about getting there. Then I send off five battleships to the enemy. While they're attacking, I build five more and keep repeating the process. Instead of confronting the enemy on one side, I like to surround it. I haven't experimented with green enough yet to develope a strategy...:/
My internal name for them is "faction", and then I go "green faction" or "green" for short. They're still a little unbalanced. I'll probably tweak them in an update. In general, it's good to rush green (with your base if you have to) if you're playing 1 on 1 against them - green starts slow, but once it gets going, it's powerful. And don't let green hold more than one resource spot! Also - as for corvettes vs. humans, try bringing them in behind your other units - they're protected there, and their range is enough to bring them into the battle. I've used a corvette, running around behind a base before - it's a decent defensive strategy, block units with the big guys and skirt around behind them with corvettes.
This thread is helping me a lot. I've only played against the AI so its somewhat easy to exploit certain tactics. I'm pretty sure if I played online I'll get my butt handed to me My main faction is mainly blue. My tactics is usually building an extra harvester, foundry, then start pumping out 2 more harvesters. Then I start building a scout and several destroyers. I use the foundry as a forward base for launching attacks.
I think greens building times should be lengthened or something. They usually kick my butt hehe. When I use red on a close range map vs. blue I like to spawn a few cruisers and carriers, then seek out blue and I can take them out pretty easily due to the faster build times and the fact that blue bases can't build cruisers, only scouts EDIT: I like how the server name is now "Buggy... try again later" haha, you should add a smiley at the end...
I find that green has the advantage at the start of the game. Since the first couple minutes is a mad harvester rush, green can actually claim the resources since the green harvester have the ability to fight. This can effectively shut down any red player right away.
The worst part is if the game is on a nomad or close range map the harvester swarm actually feeds itself while it advances, kind of like locusts. The best strategy I have figured out is that if you try to stick too hard to a particular build order or strategy you will get destroyed. Try to contain the enemy while using foundry's to attack from multiple directions, If you are holding more resource fields than the enemy and keep a solid wall of units up you will win eventually. Specific strategies can be used against AI but online it's all about thinking on the fly and staying in control of the map.
Harvester rush has been nerfed in the 1.1.1 update that I just submitted to Apple. harvesters are half as powerful as before, don't come with escorts, and move a little slower. Oh, and the upkeep is higher. When I started looking at the balance, I was shocked that something this big made it through my optimization and balancing measures - I mostly looked at combat units, not expecting someone to take a harvester into combat... but that's green's philosophy, is that everything is at least a semi-competent combat unit. but then, couple that with cheap cost, fast movement speed, fast build speed, and a healthy HP level, and the harvester was a juggernaut! If someone could tell me what the counter was to the harvester rush, I'd love to hear it, because to me, if I managed a harvester rush, I'm not sure that anything would stand in my way... so yeah, look out for update 1.1.1, with all the bug fixes.
Yeah, the game was made for micromanagement on the iphone - the multimove screen, combined with holding the device with two hands, gives you exceptional control over your fleet. playing the debug build in the simulator makes me feel quite limited by my single mouse cursor! As a side note, I'm not sure how well micromanagement would work on the iPad, if/when I make an iPad-compatible build. The game was thoroughly designed for an iPhone-size interface - with the ipad, I guess you could put it down on something, and use two fingers to multimove, but I always picture someone holding the device with one hand and interacting with the other. thoughts? (also, do any of you actually have ipads?)
I'm getting an iPad when it comes out in Germany! I could imagine using more than two fingers on the iPad. On an iPhone it doesn't work so well because the fingers block a high percentage of the screen. on the iPad I could imagine using two fingers of one hand and one of the other hand, if not two fingers per hand in multimove mode. Inside the menus I mostly use one finger only anyway
I think the counter tactic has been mentioned in the main thread. It bases on using three lines, harvesters as defense in first line (they can attack, they have a short range), carriers or destroyers (I can't remember) in the second line (they can still attack, because of a higher attack range) and corvettes in the third line. So it bases on having as many units ready to attack the incoming mass. If the enemy harvesters can't break into the formation, only the front line will be attacked, and since it consists of harvesters itself, it can multiply itself and stay alive this way. You will deal massive damage because of the three attack layers, and the enemy will only be able to attack with three or four harvesters on his front line.
Red Conquest v1.1.1 is out! update ASAP and let me know what you think about the new green balance. They've been nerfed pretty hard, and I may have gone too far, so let me know. also, if you use 1.1.1 and still have any major bugs, let me know asap - there should be no more crashes.
From the group discussion thing: And the 3 basic builds for blue: Carrier rush(small maps): 5x Carrier from main 5x Cruisers from Carrier * Only build cruisers from 1 carrier or you'll waste resources to quickly. Try to kill off a foundry's and harvesters, since they require a large investment, and if you make the investment pointless, your opponent has lost. Doix Build(for lack of a better name ): << This works great on Basic Arena Main: Foundry Harvester Carrier << skip this if you are low on resources, and your opponent isn't rushing you. Foundry: Maintenance vessel Harvester Destroyers (produce non stop). This build is pretty solid, you open with a quick foundry which means you can adjust for pretty much anything... You can choose to get the carrier before the harvester if you are getting attacked, or skip the harvester from the foundry and build it from the main instead. DO NOT SKIP THE MAINTENANCE VESSEL, I've won a lot of games vs blue because people didn't build it, sure they'll have 2 destroyers by they time you have 1, but it doesn't matter since their units will die so much faster. As long as you have your main base taking all the damage, the slight increase in firepower is insignificant. Mass Destroyers (which I stole from FoeHammer ): *The order seriously doesn't matter* Foundry Harvester Foundry Harvester Then build destroyers non stop. The point is to have more destroyers than your opponent before he attacks, and to punish him for wasting his population usage on anything except destroyers (for example, building a monitor). This will work on large maps with lots of asteroids and resources (Big arena, hidden treasure, Musical Chairs etc). A few notes on Green: Green will lose early game to rushes since it takes so long to build anything, and late game since all the units use up so much population. Their only chance of winning in a 1v1 is a perfectly timed attack, before either blue or red can mass up to many units, the only advantage green has is corvettes, the fact that units can multiply means nothing since the resource usage is to high, so you'll be resource limited very quickly. Corvettes do an insane amount of damage, the goal is to keep all the corvettes behind your main base while it absorbs all the hits and hope your opponent is producing units slower than you can kill them.
Keep producing Fighter formations and transfer them to the planets (this is IMPORTANT!). Also try to always heal the planets. With your combat units, go in from the side to snipe the units one by one. Should be relatively easy to do ;-)
Well actuall the order does mater If you go blue you should almost always build Foundry to begin with, and then harvesters, sense blue builds so slow and have cheap units the foundry can start building Destroyers while the base is making the harvesters ^^ ----------------------------------- Anyway, I Have a lot to do in skool right now, so what better why to waste my precius time then to write about a build in Red Conquest ^^ GREEN: Corvete fleet (tryed this for the first time with usedtobegreen) (Build may be diferent from map to map, due to diferent resorses.) This build is good if you go head to head with the enemy. sense you will have strong units making a protective wall, shelding the week attackunits from danger. Build harvester (and make the harvester split itself, for as many times as you like) build 2-6 (depending on how big sheald you want) carriers The first carrier should start buildning Corvettes Then have the corvettess split them self for as many times possible. the importent units for this build is Carriers as a defensive wall, and Corvette, which is aktually often used for hit and runs on harvesters, sneak attacks, and Guerrilla warfare, but is now used as a less-mobile unit. The Corvette can only attack one target at the time, but its perfect for this strategy sense it can fire from a far distance. And you can get a lot of them, even though it's a green unit. You set up the shield and just make all the corvettes mass in the back, as close to the carriers as possible. To counter the Corvette fleet, you should attack the enemy from behind, sense the Corvettes are unprotected there. Or just try to move your units to the back.
