OpenRA Strategy Thread and Guides
Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2016 11:47 am
Queue 50 pillboxes. Salt. Pepper. Art of RA. Done.
...
...just kidding.
For reals though, I thought it would be nice to make a compilation of useful build orders, basic strategy tips, and meta game thoughts so newer players don't have to go through what I went through to learn how to play this game. Hopefully, this will motivate some newbies to learn the game instead of trying to spam artillery... I'll start with some basics information.
I. Hotkeys and commands
Settings > Inputs. Go look them up and remember them. Credit to Gatekeeper for going through the effort to list this information. Some things of note:
Ctrl + # = Sets hotkey for a unit or an army. Press that number to call that army. Double press that number to center screen on that army.
A: Attack move. #1 key you need to learn! Always attack move scouts/armies (For better engagements), never attack move aircraft unless you actually want them to fire!
S: Stop command. #2 key you need to learn. Stop armies when: they are engaged and are getting flanked. Or when Aircraft appears, after a stop command AA units will prioritize air targets above ground targets. Dont stop move if enemy aircraft is going for suicide attempts. Rather use regular move orders/forcefire ground targets at this point.
Alt: Usefull for loading inf into multiple APC's at the same time. Also functions as a force move command. negating any firing orders, handy for curshing inf blobs with apc's/light tanks.
Shift: Holding shift or pressing a shift+command allows you to queue orders. Handy for engineers in particular. Also handy for queue up an unpack order for an mcv after moving to new base site. (Crushing can also be combined with shift commands for setting out a path through the inf blob and out of the combat zone, or for multiple drive-by's). Also, this is how you teleport chrono tanks.
Z: Sell mode, instead of moving over your mouse towards the hotbar you can also press this button
X: Power-down mode, same as Z, handy in a power emergency.
C: Repair mode, ^Same. BUT, I think most people don't know that clicking on a damaged vehicle with this tool sends them towards the service depot.
F: on hinds/yaks this button will send them back towards an helipad/airfield to reload their ammo. Set rally points with your all your helipad/airfield (W button Wink) on a certain safe point on the map where they gather after reloading, so you can pick up rearmed aircraft there when you need some.
E: Buildings tab on hotbar. If you have a building ready, pressing this button will also equip the building to your cursor allowing you to place it. Handy for quicker placement of buildings.
R: Defense Tab on hotbar. Works the same as E mentioned above.
T: Infantry Tab on hotbar. Works the same as E and R as mentioned above.
Q: selects all combat units on screen (no harvesters, engie, or MCV). Double press Q to select all combat units on map.
W: select all units of same type. If you select a rifleman, then a tank, then press W, you will select all riflemen and all tanks. Very useful for sorting your army out, highly suggest players to learn and love this button.
B: place beacon. Hit space bar to return to beacon. Useful when you decide to move out with your original MCV.
M - mute button. Because no one ever pays attention to this one and they always wonder why the sound disappeared.
II. Build Orders
Every newbie's favorite subject. I'll separate this into early, middle, and late game. Note that these are the most common / rough build orders, and that I am not going to include exact unit counts, with the exception of harvesters, because that will take up too much space and explanation...plus it would be easier to learn that part through gameplay and replay review.
Early
Abbreviations: PP = power plant, Rax = Barracks, Ref = Refinery, WF = War Factory, SD = Service Depot
WF first
PP > Rax > Ref > Wf (3 harvesters) > PP > Ref
+Best eco start and scaling
+Best scouting with fast ranger/flak truck
-Cannot build large amounts of infantry early; weak early game map control
-You may run out of money when you are trying to build 2nd harvester and 2nd refinery at the same time
2ref
PP > Rax > Ref > Ref> PP > WF (2 harvesters)
+Safest build, smoother scaling, and best early game map control
+Best flexibility for rushing or defending; great for unfamiliar maps
-You will end up with 1 less harvester or a very late MCV, as compared to WF first
-If you lose your early army, you have no advantage going into midgame.
Middle
This are, again, by no means set in stone; they're just rough build orders that I've found to work from time to time. The current meta currently revolves around the Eco continuation and the Timing Attack continuation after the initial WF first or 2Ref
Eco
Ref > SD > PP > Rax > Rax > Ref
+Most popular middle game continuation
+"Fastest" MCV possible with good eco
-Easily exploited by most rushes
Timing attack
Rax > Rax > PP > SD > Rax > Ref
+Can inflict massive damage to greedy expansions if unscouted.
+Very good "all purpose" build on new or weird maps
-Semi all-in; if your army dies, you will have problems expanding
You greedy bastard
Ref > SD > PP > Ref > Rax/Ref > Rax
+Gives you more money than you can spend
-Very difficult and to get away with this on most maps
-Impossible to spend all the money you earn
I'm an arty noob
Ref > SD > Radar Dome > PP > Rax > Ref
+A viable opener for Soviets with V2s.
-usually requires moving out original MCV to keep eco healthy.
-this will start artillery and static defense wars
Late
build more artillery More on this later.
III. Basic Tactics
Like the 5 basic elements, there are 5 things to consider when trying to figure out if you're going to win a fight. These are, in relative order of importance : 1) line of sight, 2) macro, 3) army composition, 4) defender's advantage, and 5) micro.
1. Line of sight.
Any moving unit will have less line of sight than a stationary unit with the same vision range. All units have a firing range greater than their line of sight. This is especially important regarding infantry fights and how the A-move command works. If you are the attacker, make sure you have line of sight to minimize your losses. If you are the defender, denying your opponent line of sight is a good way of scaring him off. Knowing if you're going to win the battle is half the battle right there.
2. Macro
Self explanatory.
3. Army composition
Early game, you want an excess of rifles with 3-7 rocket soldiers for armored units. From here, it's pretty situational as to how you want to build your army. A lower ratio of rifles to rockets does more dps, but is more expensive to maintain. Vice versa for higher ratios. Personally, I think making a decent mass of rifles before massing rockets is better, since it makes it easier to keep your rocket soldiers alive.
4. Defender's / home-court advantage
Aka...base pushing and pillboxes! If you want a way to tip the scales of battle in your favor, just build some buildings (and pillboxes) in front of their army. With the upcoming nerf, this (hopefully) won't be as big a deal, but static defenses, stat wise, are very cost efficient for what they give you, with the obvious downside that they can't move. Not a problem if you build them in the middle of the battle though. Building barracks and power plants in the middle of the battle is good too, since they act as meat shields for your army.
Walls are good too :3
5. Micro
The micro in this game is really not that intense. However, something worth noting is that there is between 300-1000ms delay, from when you issue your order to when the unit is actually executing your order. That range is really large because it has a lot to do with latency, the distance the players are from the servers, etc.
When it comes to vehicles, a new move/a-move command will make the unit freeze for a second, redirect itself, and then it'll execute the new move command. In general, it'd be better to just have everything done by 1 command, not by spamming 10 commands.
The same goes for infantry. A-moving will override whatever the unit was doing before, command the unit to move, and then attack, in that order, with some lag. So, in general, don't spam a-move when your units are already firing! This is also one reason why stop micro is better than a-move for getting your units to fire on the right target. An exception would be for rocket soldiers to focus fire tanks, since their reload delay is really long anyways
General rule of thumb: if you have the advantage in 3 of the 5, you're probably going to win the engagement. If you have fewer than 3 advantages, it's difficult to tell who will win the engagement. Therefore, it's important to make sure you have as much control over these factors, especially the first 3. More importantly, it's important to know where your advantages/disadvantages are and how you can play around them accordingly.
IV. Basic Game Sense
What are you reading this for? Play the game! No one can tell you what to be thinking and building while you're actually playing the game.
V. Basic RTS Strategy
...okay fine I will share some basic RTS theory though. Everyone knows that Money -> units -> fuck shit up -> profit $$. But there are some nuances that all/most RTS games share, and OpenRA is no exception. Disclaimer: these are general rules that apply to other RTS games and may or may not have an impact on OpenRA games, so viewer (reader?) discretion is advised.
-It is generally a better idea to invest all possible resources towards one particular branch rather than splitting your resources between all possible branches.
In this game, production facilities, economy, and tech is all linked to one building -- the construction yard. On top of that, your economy and half (or 1/3) of your fighting force is linked to the war factory. If you were to eco up, it's a much better idea to be building refs + harvesters at the same time instead of refs + medium tanks or barracks + harvesters. Likewise, building barracks + harvesters is not as good of an idea as barracks + tanks/MCVs.
This is mostly econ 101/game theory, but basically, there's a timing window where you are at your weakest (building eco/tech), and splitting your resources makes this timing window larger and makes your army build up slower. You want to hit your max/acceptable scaling potential of one particular aspect of your army as quickly as you can before proceeding to the next. This is one reason why mass infantry is so popular; since infantry is so cheap, it doesn't dramatically affect how quickly you can hit your eco ceiling.
-Don't send any more units than you have to. If you're going up against a superior army, you want to divide your army and attack elsewhere. If you have the superior army, you want to attack multiple fronts take the objective as quickly as you can.
A watered down version of the Art of War. There are lot of things one can apply from that book to this game, but I think this idea is the most relevant. If you have a superior army, you don't want to be battling for any longer than you have to. The longer you fight, the quicker you get whittled down, especially by artillery units. So, in these cases, it's a better idea to do a 2-pronged attack on one front, as compared to just doing one massive a-move attack on a smaller front.
If you have an inferior army, it's better to use guerrilla tactics and try to trade as cost effectively as you can with your smaller army, while at the same time, you send multiple groups to take out as many of his eco lines as possible.
TL;DR : please stop sitting around with artillery when you can just go in and kill your opponent.
-Scout!
This is probably the weakest part of everyone's game, since there are not very many good ways to scout in this game. Both factions have access to unique scouting tools, but they're more of luxuries rather than reliable methods of scouting once you consider time and cost. The best one can do, as of now at least, is to camp strategic points so that you can track enemy movement, and to use aircraft. This is, however, rather inefficient and costly.
To all the seasoned vets and RAGL pros, please contribute your thoughts and to correct any poor advice...I am also a new player, and these are just the things I have learned in the past few months.
@Frenzy: this may have taken me longer than half an hour to write out
...
...just kidding.
For reals though, I thought it would be nice to make a compilation of useful build orders, basic strategy tips, and meta game thoughts so newer players don't have to go through what I went through to learn how to play this game. Hopefully, this will motivate some newbies to learn the game instead of trying to spam artillery... I'll start with some basics information.
I. Hotkeys and commands
Settings > Inputs. Go look them up and remember them. Credit to Gatekeeper for going through the effort to list this information. Some things of note:
Ctrl + # = Sets hotkey for a unit or an army. Press that number to call that army. Double press that number to center screen on that army.
A: Attack move. #1 key you need to learn! Always attack move scouts/armies (For better engagements), never attack move aircraft unless you actually want them to fire!
S: Stop command. #2 key you need to learn. Stop armies when: they are engaged and are getting flanked. Or when Aircraft appears, after a stop command AA units will prioritize air targets above ground targets. Dont stop move if enemy aircraft is going for suicide attempts. Rather use regular move orders/forcefire ground targets at this point.
Alt: Usefull for loading inf into multiple APC's at the same time. Also functions as a force move command. negating any firing orders, handy for curshing inf blobs with apc's/light tanks.
Shift: Holding shift or pressing a shift+command allows you to queue orders. Handy for engineers in particular. Also handy for queue up an unpack order for an mcv after moving to new base site. (Crushing can also be combined with shift commands for setting out a path through the inf blob and out of the combat zone, or for multiple drive-by's). Also, this is how you teleport chrono tanks.
Z: Sell mode, instead of moving over your mouse towards the hotbar you can also press this button
X: Power-down mode, same as Z, handy in a power emergency.
C: Repair mode, ^Same. BUT, I think most people don't know that clicking on a damaged vehicle with this tool sends them towards the service depot.
F: on hinds/yaks this button will send them back towards an helipad/airfield to reload their ammo. Set rally points with your all your helipad/airfield (W button Wink) on a certain safe point on the map where they gather after reloading, so you can pick up rearmed aircraft there when you need some.
E: Buildings tab on hotbar. If you have a building ready, pressing this button will also equip the building to your cursor allowing you to place it. Handy for quicker placement of buildings.
R: Defense Tab on hotbar. Works the same as E mentioned above.
T: Infantry Tab on hotbar. Works the same as E and R as mentioned above.
Q: selects all combat units on screen (no harvesters, engie, or MCV). Double press Q to select all combat units on map.
W: select all units of same type. If you select a rifleman, then a tank, then press W, you will select all riflemen and all tanks. Very useful for sorting your army out, highly suggest players to learn and love this button.
B: place beacon. Hit space bar to return to beacon. Useful when you decide to move out with your original MCV.
M - mute button. Because no one ever pays attention to this one and they always wonder why the sound disappeared.
II. Build Orders
Every newbie's favorite subject. I'll separate this into early, middle, and late game. Note that these are the most common / rough build orders, and that I am not going to include exact unit counts, with the exception of harvesters, because that will take up too much space and explanation...plus it would be easier to learn that part through gameplay and replay review.
Early
Abbreviations: PP = power plant, Rax = Barracks, Ref = Refinery, WF = War Factory, SD = Service Depot
WF first
PP > Rax > Ref > Wf (3 harvesters) > PP > Ref
+Best eco start and scaling
+Best scouting with fast ranger/flak truck
-Cannot build large amounts of infantry early; weak early game map control
-You may run out of money when you are trying to build 2nd harvester and 2nd refinery at the same time
2ref
PP > Rax > Ref > Ref> PP > WF (2 harvesters)
+Safest build, smoother scaling, and best early game map control
+Best flexibility for rushing or defending; great for unfamiliar maps
-You will end up with 1 less harvester or a very late MCV, as compared to WF first
-If you lose your early army, you have no advantage going into midgame.
Middle
This are, again, by no means set in stone; they're just rough build orders that I've found to work from time to time. The current meta currently revolves around the Eco continuation and the Timing Attack continuation after the initial WF first or 2Ref
Eco
Ref > SD > PP > Rax > Rax > Ref
+Most popular middle game continuation
+"Fastest" MCV possible with good eco
-Easily exploited by most rushes
Timing attack
Rax > Rax > PP > SD > Rax > Ref
+Can inflict massive damage to greedy expansions if unscouted.
+Very good "all purpose" build on new or weird maps
-Semi all-in; if your army dies, you will have problems expanding
You greedy bastard
Ref > SD > PP > Ref > Rax/Ref > Rax
+Gives you more money than you can spend
-Very difficult and to get away with this on most maps
-Impossible to spend all the money you earn
I'm an arty noob
Ref > SD > Radar Dome > PP > Rax > Ref
+A viable opener for Soviets with V2s.
-usually requires moving out original MCV to keep eco healthy.
-this will start artillery and static defense wars
Late
build more artillery More on this later.
III. Basic Tactics
Like the 5 basic elements, there are 5 things to consider when trying to figure out if you're going to win a fight. These are, in relative order of importance : 1) line of sight, 2) macro, 3) army composition, 4) defender's advantage, and 5) micro.
1. Line of sight.
Any moving unit will have less line of sight than a stationary unit with the same vision range. All units have a firing range greater than their line of sight. This is especially important regarding infantry fights and how the A-move command works. If you are the attacker, make sure you have line of sight to minimize your losses. If you are the defender, denying your opponent line of sight is a good way of scaring him off. Knowing if you're going to win the battle is half the battle right there.
2. Macro
Self explanatory.
3. Army composition
Early game, you want an excess of rifles with 3-7 rocket soldiers for armored units. From here, it's pretty situational as to how you want to build your army. A lower ratio of rifles to rockets does more dps, but is more expensive to maintain. Vice versa for higher ratios. Personally, I think making a decent mass of rifles before massing rockets is better, since it makes it easier to keep your rocket soldiers alive.
4. Defender's / home-court advantage
Aka...base pushing and pillboxes! If you want a way to tip the scales of battle in your favor, just build some buildings (and pillboxes) in front of their army. With the upcoming nerf, this (hopefully) won't be as big a deal, but static defenses, stat wise, are very cost efficient for what they give you, with the obvious downside that they can't move. Not a problem if you build them in the middle of the battle though. Building barracks and power plants in the middle of the battle is good too, since they act as meat shields for your army.
Walls are good too :3
5. Micro
The micro in this game is really not that intense. However, something worth noting is that there is between 300-1000ms delay, from when you issue your order to when the unit is actually executing your order. That range is really large because it has a lot to do with latency, the distance the players are from the servers, etc.
When it comes to vehicles, a new move/a-move command will make the unit freeze for a second, redirect itself, and then it'll execute the new move command. In general, it'd be better to just have everything done by 1 command, not by spamming 10 commands.
The same goes for infantry. A-moving will override whatever the unit was doing before, command the unit to move, and then attack, in that order, with some lag. So, in general, don't spam a-move when your units are already firing! This is also one reason why stop micro is better than a-move for getting your units to fire on the right target. An exception would be for rocket soldiers to focus fire tanks, since their reload delay is really long anyways
General rule of thumb: if you have the advantage in 3 of the 5, you're probably going to win the engagement. If you have fewer than 3 advantages, it's difficult to tell who will win the engagement. Therefore, it's important to make sure you have as much control over these factors, especially the first 3. More importantly, it's important to know where your advantages/disadvantages are and how you can play around them accordingly.
IV. Basic Game Sense
What are you reading this for? Play the game! No one can tell you what to be thinking and building while you're actually playing the game.
V. Basic RTS Strategy
...okay fine I will share some basic RTS theory though. Everyone knows that Money -> units -> fuck shit up -> profit $$. But there are some nuances that all/most RTS games share, and OpenRA is no exception. Disclaimer: these are general rules that apply to other RTS games and may or may not have an impact on OpenRA games, so viewer (reader?) discretion is advised.
-It is generally a better idea to invest all possible resources towards one particular branch rather than splitting your resources between all possible branches.
In this game, production facilities, economy, and tech is all linked to one building -- the construction yard. On top of that, your economy and half (or 1/3) of your fighting force is linked to the war factory. If you were to eco up, it's a much better idea to be building refs + harvesters at the same time instead of refs + medium tanks or barracks + harvesters. Likewise, building barracks + harvesters is not as good of an idea as barracks + tanks/MCVs.
This is mostly econ 101/game theory, but basically, there's a timing window where you are at your weakest (building eco/tech), and splitting your resources makes this timing window larger and makes your army build up slower. You want to hit your max/acceptable scaling potential of one particular aspect of your army as quickly as you can before proceeding to the next. This is one reason why mass infantry is so popular; since infantry is so cheap, it doesn't dramatically affect how quickly you can hit your eco ceiling.
-Don't send any more units than you have to. If you're going up against a superior army, you want to divide your army and attack elsewhere. If you have the superior army, you want to attack multiple fronts take the objective as quickly as you can.
A watered down version of the Art of War. There are lot of things one can apply from that book to this game, but I think this idea is the most relevant. If you have a superior army, you don't want to be battling for any longer than you have to. The longer you fight, the quicker you get whittled down, especially by artillery units. So, in these cases, it's a better idea to do a 2-pronged attack on one front, as compared to just doing one massive a-move attack on a smaller front.
If you have an inferior army, it's better to use guerrilla tactics and try to trade as cost effectively as you can with your smaller army, while at the same time, you send multiple groups to take out as many of his eco lines as possible.
TL;DR : please stop sitting around with artillery when you can just go in and kill your opponent.
-Scout!
This is probably the weakest part of everyone's game, since there are not very many good ways to scout in this game. Both factions have access to unique scouting tools, but they're more of luxuries rather than reliable methods of scouting once you consider time and cost. The best one can do, as of now at least, is to camp strategic points so that you can track enemy movement, and to use aircraft. This is, however, rather inefficient and costly.
To all the seasoned vets and RAGL pros, please contribute your thoughts and to correct any poor advice...I am also a new player, and these are just the things I have learned in the past few months.
@Frenzy: this may have taken me longer than half an hour to write out