Embarassing - need help from a pro

You have to watch the replay (and hope it works). As Advent, it's easy to counter another Advents Illuminator spam with carriers.

Depending on the map, it's sometimes a good idea to expand with a colony cap on one front and a colony frigate on another. Especially if there are neutral resources and you have to build a colony frigate for those - you might as well speed up your expansion. Colonize bigger worlds with the Mothership and asteroids with the Missionary. Neutral resources are very important.

Scouts don't work unless it's a rush map and the opponent doesn't build light frigs or carriers to counter the scouts. Scouts can be handy against a quick Vasari Assailant rush but once there are other ships in play they get useless in combat fast.

Well, I mainly play as TEC (Going to try out different races more) but here's my opening build:

1. Build 2 scouts, a cap ship factory, and all three mines on my home planet.

If the map layout has multiple asteroids nearby your start position, waiting for a cap ship with colonize can be fatal.  If I pump three combat frigates and a colony frigate, I can have my first colony up and running while your cap ship is still in production.  If I pumped three more combat frigates and a second colony frigate, I have two colonies up and running when your cap ship is just finishing.  If there are other asteroids accessible or neutral extractors, I can send a spare colony frigate and a few cobalts up to take it while my capital ship works on well defended colonization targets.

This strategy is a hard counter to the standard colonization cap opener for a few reasons.  First, by choosing colonize as your first skill, you basically can't rush until you're level 2, by which time my excessively quick expansion has already payed off.  Secondly, unless you're Vasari, I get pretty much uncontested access to neutral extractors in the early game.  Thirdly, your speed of colonization is going to be slower than mine because your capital ship can't be in two places at once to colonize multiple asteroids simultaneously.

There are a few weaknesses to this opener.  The first is that to do it you have to pump those first few combat frigates right away, so your first scout frigate is coming out very late.  This keeps you out of the loop if a rush is coming.  Secondly, it's expensive to build multiple colony frigates early on and pay for the extractors and civilian planet upgrades, which can slow this down somewhat in the short-term, but long-term it sets you up for a great economic boom.

I can't tell you if this is what your opponent is doing, but it sounds to me like you're colonizing as fast as your mothership or evacuator can, but because of the map layout your opponent can colonize multiple planets simultaneously, something a colonization cap can never do.

I'd say if he has 6 planets by the time you have 2, and yet he sucks in battle, go straight for the "he's a fucking cheater" explanation.

If we're talking desert/terran planets, then yeah, I'd go for the cheater explanation, as well.  If we're talking about asteroids it could just be that he was busy expanding while the OP was waiting for his capital ship to finish.

Without a replay, we can't say for certain.

This may be good advice.  I am indeed expanding as fast as the colony cap can.  Actually, I used to never get colony caps, but lately I always do it and use it as my colonizer (hate micro'ing colony frigs, they are frail and die easily, they are relatively expensive, etc).

I haven't figured out how the guy expands at the amazing rate he expands, but I can tell you I've never seen anything like it really.  One guy suggested reviewing the replays, and believe me I thought of the same thing.  Unfortunately, because I had performance problems I shut off generating replays.  However, I will turn them on tonight, as I'm sure the a-hole will be on and playing.  Maybe he is doing this "expanding on multiple fronts simultaneously" open.

Okay, assuming this is what this guy is doing, somebody give me a HARD COUNTER to it?

Yeah i can see how u could get 6 asteroids if u do cobalt + colonizer frig way.

Otherwise he cheats lol.  I remember the old cheat I uncovered that was patched. I attacked some dude with 30 sieges liek 15 minutes intot he game lol.  I am no cheater, I just did it for kicks.  His reaction was priceless

It's also worth noting that the Akkan is a worthless pile of rubbish so build a Marza/Kol if you are TEC. Ion Bolt is a joke compared to say, Reverie, and a small range boost isn't going to help if I move my fleet a little closer...

Also as has been mentioned, you can send your Mothership/Egg to a Desert or Gaia planet and a small strike team to an Asteroid, the only danger is if the Siege is left to kill your new planet, but that's easy to kill with two light frigates.

You know, I didn't really give serious consideration to the guy cheating (although for the life of me it sure feels like it).  But are there really versions of this game hacked to cheat?

Without actually looking at the program's design, no one can say exactly what's possible.  Map hacks are very common for RTS games, much easier to make one than it is to detect and stop one.  Resource hacks are the opposite; they typically require some sort of weakness or bug in the game to exploit in order to work, and are easily disabled by closing that software issue that they're using.  This is why I'm skeptical of a resource hack going on.

I dont know of any cheats in 1.12, but earlier versions had few bugs

The game would crash surely if they were cheating as it simulates the same thing on ALL machines. So them buying $10K of ships would not work on your machine which thinks they only have $3K and you would be out of sync.

So who is this person you are playing? It is very possible that you are playing one of the best players going around under a Smurf account....

A few of the original better players have shown up again lately under different names and are kicking ass while apparing to be new.

I suppose it could be a pro posing under a smurf account, pretending to be a newb.  I didn't really consider this earlier because I didn't see how or why a pro could get his rocks off doing such a thing.  I figured it would be a total waste of his time and energy.  I mean, I'm no newb, but I'm certainly no tier 1 pro.  I mean, the last thing I'd want to do if I was a pro was play people who were absolutely no competition compared to me - it would be no fun.  But who knows?

Just found the guy online tonight and played him again - same results.  But this time I THINK (tried, at least) to set up the automatic replays.  So I will check it, and post back here later.

So what is this guys name???

was it tyr, jj, berz, sid, cykur?

I understand the curiosity.  I'm not going to give his name because I don't want him reading this post and seeing his name.  I'm not trying to badmouth the guy or gossip about the guy (although he is an a-hole, ha ha), I just want to beat the sob.  I'd like to give the name, actually, but I think best policy is not to.

Actually, I will check on some known smurfs for pros.  If I find this guy is using a known smurf, I will post here and out his identity.

Just watched the replay of tonight's game.  He did what Darvin3 posted about - pumping a few combat frigs and colonizer frigs and spreading out to 2 different 'roids.  He got the Progenitor Mothership, and sent that to yet another 'roid (he didn't get to finish that one because I attacked, as you will see).  HE DID NOT UPGRADE HIS PLANET.  He dropped a military lab as soon as he could, and a second one after he got his first or second 'roid.

I opened with 3 scouts, the Vasari Space Whale, and a few frigs.  The difference is that I did not drop any labs, and I upgraded my planet right away.

The way this game went, he had just gotten his second asteroid as I had gotten my first.  Then I sent my capship and a few frigs to the second asteroid he got and attacked it.  He quickly sent his mothership and 3 disciples.  After a skirmish, he jumped towards my turf, so I jumped deeper into his, going for his home planet (thinking he was going for mine).  This was my mistake (hindsight is 20/20), because while I beat my head against a wall trying to take out a lab or mines or frig factory or something, he was pumping disciples there to drive me out.  Meanwhile, instead of going to my homeworld, he took out my only 'roid, and colonized it.  After being driven off his home planet, I went back to one of his 'roids and attacked it, but by then he had brought back his mothership and had a bigger fleet to boot, he had 3 'roids (his two original plus the one he took from me) and I was back to none, he was teching to illums and it was essentially all over with.  In my defense, I did take 3 neutral mining sites by this time - he had none.

Thanks for the help.  Any comments on this particular build he used?  And what does neglecting to upgrade your homeworld right away do for you?  Buy you the funds to pump a few frigs and colonizers quickly?  Buy you the funds to drop a few labs rushing to illums?  What do you guys think about that?

he may have 2 separate small fleets or ur just really really slow.  btw, super economy always goes with super fleet.  I know cuz I am pro and on the game scores Im generally 1st in economic spending and gathering plus 1 in fleet .  And unless Im rushing I always upgrade civilian infrastructure right away at the begining of game.  and just kill the seige frigates at the planet and colonize then build a turret there to deal with the other ships so ur fleet can move on, this really works.

Yeah intriguing concept. I have been working on making similar strategy since last night actually using Vasari.  So far it seems to work after about 20 minutes/  I'm trying to lower this.  I guess in his example he didnt go Civic. 

And you only talked about asteroids.  Which are cake to take, the kicker is having enough of them around.  Asteroid will pay back for intself the fastest.  I'm workin on taking 1-2 roids, while cap ships works on a planet hehehe.  We'lls ee if i Can polisht at out. 

The old build order has been king for too long. Somethign better needs to be found

This discussion has had me thinking.  I think I may have a new strategy brewing.  Hmm...Victory is in reach.

Oh crap....

well, the fact that you guys are fighting all this out with low amounts of cobalts, discs, and ravs leads me to believe the game is probably not very skilled on either side, no offense, so i would rule out smurfing (keep in mind a guy with 50 wins on a new account is not a smurf, jus a guy making a new account to have less learning losses visable) if you get within range of someones hw and attack it and they are able to force you off without a feed using only discs, then you jus wasted your time. ALWAYS take the roid first, you can usually cap a roid and build a frig factory/repair bay on it before the other player can counter properly, then its a matter of who has more income and better micro. Also, if he is doing this kind of expansion as a vasari on a large map odds are if you scouted out you would see he has most of the nuetrals and is fiercly micro'n them. but as i said earlier he doesnt sound very skilled or he has taken smurfing to the next level and is pretending to suck too. All in all, dont build discs/ravs/cobs... ever... unless the other player spams carriers. if there are that many roids on the map for people to colo go lrf's and research a repair bay, or jus fast tec to carriers.

anyway dont be discouraged, if this guy is expanding that fast odds are his resources will be low at first due to his upgrading of planets (a common mistake that gets a lot of people killed is expanding to fast), id be willing to bet if u start using a decent lrf spam with a marza or egg/prog you can steal many of these roids from him early on. not to mention that if he is not using aggressive nuetral grabbing all the money you are spending on labs and lrf research he is spending on upping his new roids, that means that when u hit him with a good lrf rush and kill his work drones you will essentially stick him with nothing to build but low lvl frigs. 15 kanraks or 12 illums will destroy any amount of discs he can build as long as you keep spamming ships to the front and stop him from building any more labs.

If you try all this and he still seems to be unrealistically fast and he is NOT controlling the nuetrals, whisper me his name and ill play him myself.

G/L

-bronze

None taken.  I specifically said that I was no pro by any means, and I said in my opening post that he seemed somewhat of a "newb."  I've played some of the real pros before - that's just a level of "skill" that I would never have the time nor energy to match.  I'm comfortable a few tiers down from that.  To be honest, I'd rather win a game with brains (strategy) instead of "skill," but the simple fact is that most games aren't set up that way, so I just have to make due (sigh).

Thanks for your advice.

My opening (Vasari) is as follows:

(A is small map - I don't play small that often; B is large w/ space map - I've refined this a bit.)

A.

1. 2-3 scouts to explore the nearby worlds and take any neutral extractors (latter is VERY important as Vasari)

2. extractors on home planet

3. work my way to cap ship factory, then build Evacuator

4. build however many LFs i can afford

5. colonize 'roid or two nearby, or least defended world with all non-scout ships.

6. build 2 warfare labs

7. research LRF and sentinel

8. build enuf vitsurka labs for ice and volcanic colonizations and first phase detection (3 i think)

9. colonize nearby worlds, using all possible ships to minimize losses

10.  max out defenses at frontline worlds.  maybe surrender a few planets for a contiguous line of connected planets for easier and more effective defense

11. build up for fleet.

B.

1. build 5-10 scouts and set to autoexplore

2. build extractors

3. build LFs & Evacuator

4. colonize nearby asteroids - max 2 jumps away - or least defended terran/desert if no roids close enuf

5. if other players nearby, mad grab for planets, only upgrading infrastructure to 0 undevelopment tax; if no nearby players, firm up my planets and fleet as I go.

6. make fleet upgrades as needed, rush my Imperial research getting phase detection and everything needed for max RA

7. expand, start building up my Warfare research and defenses as needed.

My cap ship order is generally 1) egg 2) Devastator 3) egg 4) devastator/Vulkoras/Carrier depending on opposition tactics.  if they swarm (like the AI loves to) i go devastator.  if they go for the lined slugfest, i go desolator.  eiether way, I'll usually end up with 3-4 desolators, 6-7 Devastators, 2 eggs, 2 Marauders, and 2 carriers.  first thing i do in a major brawl - cast all volatile nanites and phase missile swarms.

I read MOST of these posts.....

First, are you guys playing on the same map?  And is he the one choosing it?   There are some small maps where really the other guy is playing the map, not playing you.  This is one of the reasons why I usually only play random maps. 

There is one map, I can't remember what it is called, which is just a ring of asteroids around some other types of worlds in the center.  A player with an optimized strategy can RACE around the outer edge in no time colonizing.  There are a couple other maps with chains of asteroids on either side....again, a plan for how to rapidly take the map is what is beating you.  

This guy forgoes his HW infrastructure upgrade because it allows him to pump extra ships to grab the asteroids.  He can probably have his first 2 teams for Disciples and colonizers built by the time the Progen rolls off the line.  Then he expands, and doesn't require skill, because he can just crush you.  By the time your HW upgrade is paying for itself, his asteroid extractors are paying him more, plus he controls more of the map.  This means you lose.

Finally, just post the damn replay if you have it so someone can analyze it.  It is annoying when people want help but don't want to post to show what is going on.  It is like asking a doctor for help but not letting him examine you.  There is no reason to protect the other player...he didn't do anything wrong, and if he DID cheat, well, someone needs to be aware of the exploit to correct it.

It just means this is a rush oriented map and they aren't getting around to building anything else.  The skill involved is in how fast the guy is expanding and killing.  I'm guessing this is a 9-10 planet map or something.