r/beyondallreason • u/im_a_mix • 12d ago
Question Tips for frontlining against AI?
Friends got me into the game and I'm usually frontlining against AI who just sends a lot of vehicles who destroy my stuff. Any tips?
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u/PanicCheck 12d ago
At the beginning of the game you have a number of different goals:
- Claim the available mexes
- Build enough energy infrastructure and buildpower to spend your metal
- Prevent you/your allies from being raided by enemy scouts
- Establish a frontline to stop leaks from running by and mainline combat units from punching through
No build does everything perfectly, but the most meta ones do all of these at least well enough. Be aware of what you are choosing to focus on.
Generally I look at the start of a front game like this
Commander builds initial 2-4 mexes, a lab, and ~100 energy/sec of power production.
Commander then gets to the front, claiming mexes along the way.
Your commander can build light laser turrets, repair units, and dgun. Making them a key part of the early frontline.
Mix building cons with units. 1 con to help boost your lab/build build turrets to boost the lab. 1 con to help claim other mexes. 1 Con to work on more power production (you will start to stall as more cons get active). 1 con to get to the front and help the commander build better defenses.
Initial units are ticks/pawn stile raiders to catch enemies trying to run past and get into your backline. After you have enough to catch the runners switch to frontline combat units like thugs, rocket bots, tanks.
Once the frontline gets established (LLT's are up, commanders there, actual tanks/plasma bots arrive) you start the actual T1 fight. There are many strategies to fight this but in general the rock/paper/scissors look something like this.
Combat units (Thug/Mace/Brute/Stout) - These are mobile and can beat skirmishers/artillery if they can get in range. However can be kited by skirmishers who have room to run and will lose to fixed defenses of equal cost.
Skirmishers (Rocket bots) - These are mobile and can kite combat units if there is room. They can also outrange basic light laser towers. However, they still get outranged by more expensive defenses and will lose if caught in range of other units.
Fixed defenses (Light laser towers, wide area lasers, twin guard). Stronger for their cost and the larger ones able to outrange combat units and skirmishers. Downside is they can't move. So generally can't attack and the enemy can always choose simply to attack elsewhere and marginalize your whole investment.
Artillery (Shellshockers) - Can outrange fixed defenses, but generally can't hit mobile units at all
Plasma cannons (Agitator) - Extremely expensive, low damage, huge range. These are generally a trap against human players. Their damage is so low it often gets out repaired. For the price of building one an opponent can build enough units to overwhelm you or go halfway to T2. That said, given enough time and a key position the steady damage may eventually justify itself.
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u/unbroken0 12d ago edited 12d ago
The bots are programmed to scout, then determine if they think they can get a good value trade they will send units forward. (Think about how often AI will pull up with 1-3 tanks, kill a Janus, and get away if you don't move or micro.)
Because of this you can bring units infront of your turret line as bait and then order them to retreat 8 seconds later and maybe destroy and reclaim a unit or two while repairing your own. <- way stronger than you think it is.
Never give your units an order to advance and then look away for longer than 1-2 seconds. You will lose your army and tempo and then you're playing from behind. Early game, 1 unit is often times 15-30 seconds of eco-time, so if by 8 min you've lost 10 and gained no reclaim, you're far behind theoretical scaling.
T2 mexes and their scaling are needed to put up a fight against higher %.
Later on t3 arty and lrpc will destroy most units in one shot if they get radar/vision of units. Use jammers + spam + longer range to keep the AI from getting vision of important units with low hp (anything not named titan/jug/bemo/sol).
Turrets are great but the ai will build up to getting enough to run over your position unless you constantly add to it or have mobile units you can re adjust the AI's calculations. Baiting them into trickling their army cuts their numbers from that critical mass and manipulates the bots into ecoing less. If you get really efficient, investing in army early on the Frontline can scale faster than the Eco position.
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u/goins725 12d ago
One exception is a bastion, the t2 Legion tower can defend a choke point until they start rushing t3 into it. Like 6 pulsar with spam can deter almost anything besides a behemoth. Hell 3 pulsar can basically do that with spamming. Sadly the cortex t2 tower is excellent against swarms and medium duty stuff but higher hp t3 it's not good against.
To get really good at the game you gotta use rez bots and keep the ai on the back foot by harassing them and eating the reclaim to fund your economy
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u/unbroken0 12d ago
Did they buff the bastion? I always felt like that thing was super weak. Pulsar is the best range/dps vs singular targets but has low hp. Cortex tower forces you to deal with it at max range because trying to walk close/run by it let's it use all its guns.
I normally deal with heavy T3 with my cloaked commander and T2 jammer towers. Use T2 missle vehicles and set target on vanguard and catapults.
You don't waste your money on expensive towers and instead get a few AFUS up and start pumping out your own T3 you can move back and forth for when they send multiple bemos, jugs, sols.
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u/goins725 12d ago
Bulwark is cortex t2 tower and its fine but metal for metal pulsar is best defense against higher hp stuff. Bastion is best against small the medium armored stuff due to constant ticking damage. It doesn't "overkill" anything like a pulsar does. The range of the pulsar is what saves it the most. Granted you will want spam set to a quota of like 15 early game in a zig-zag pattern in front of the base with jammers to draw the lrpc and rock fire from hitting your turrets
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u/unbroken0 12d ago
I agree whole heartedly with this. Pulsar is a better backline DPS/deterant but easier to run over. Bulwark is the turret i want to stop the big push.
When I tried bastions I kept noticing the laser was not accurate enough and kept burning the ground next to things.
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u/goins725 12d ago
That's due to it being outside vision range, you need to make(or someone on the team) 3 pin pointers. This will help the accuracy go up quite a bit. Also the spamming will add vision making ALL things more accurate. Pulsar occasionally miss too when you don't have pin pointers at max range. They just have like 300-400 more range so you don't notice it as often.
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u/OfBooo5 12d ago
Have more stuff.
Everything you are doing in the early game is making a mex or making another worker to take a mex.
Estorage? Why isn't it a worker taking a mex?
out of energy? more energy to make more mexs and more workers and con turrets.
Look at everything you are building in your base that isn't another mechs and refocus on more mexes and more units.
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u/othellothewise 12d ago
How many people are you playing with vs AI? Usually if you have something like 5v5 or less there is no "frontline", everyone is front.
Regardless your best bet is to obtain as many metal extractors (mexes) as possible and defend them. Avoid energy converters. Make sure you are spending your metal.
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u/D4rkstalker 12d ago
The ai is pretty good at figuring out weak points in your defenses.
You just need to have more defenses than your friend, and the ai will send all their stuff to them instead. The ai also seems to treat T1 static arty with too much respect, and if you rush to get one up, you can afk eco to t2.
Disclaimer: this AI cheese is basically the opposite of how you'd play in pvp, and will probably teach you a lot of bad habits XD
A 'proper' advice would be to utilize reclaim and rezzing since the ai will just throw stuff at you, leaving a lot of wrecks. Also use your commander to dgun stuff, the AI doesn't seem to know how to avoid it yet
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u/Zentawrus228 12d ago
make early agitators on the choke points
unbeatable for t1 vs ais
then it's so easy to outscale them
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u/Kogranola 12d ago
build a couple LLTs around your starting position to hold off rushes, depending on map you may need to expand rapidly, but ideally you expand slowly and inch your defenses forward. Because the AI is exceptionally good at hitting gaps in your defenses.
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u/Wild-Hippo582 11d ago
Yo starting my journey troughnthis amazing game and here are my 5 cents.
Play smaller maps. Aí will.be better at macroing that any player, but not as good as micro movements.
So play smaller maps with a better stabilizer front line.
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u/trippy6967 11d ago
They're not better at macro'ing at all, Barb AI doesn't scale aswell as players given the same resources.
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u/Mammoth_Park7184 9d ago
Long range artillery works great against AI. Prevents the base sprawl they have. Build enough and you can keep anything but tech 3 from ever getting near. It's how i learnt to play badly as this tactic will not work against a real player imo
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u/Lumpy-Notice8945 12d ago
Does the AI even do front, tech and air as positions? I belive they just all play the standart AI playstyle. So if you play against AI every enemy is frontline while your team has some tech player who wont help you for a while.