Warzone 2100 Forums

Looks like VTOL are not quiet efficient, maybe I picked the wrong turret?

I only know Archangel Missile can fire far enough to destroy the Fortress in ranges, but that's nearly at the end phrase of the game, what about early phrases? What you do?

Fortresses have a lot of HP, though they are also quite expensive (with prices no cheaper than $1000), and take forever to build with just a single truck. I suggest overwhelming them with sheer numbers. A swarm of 10 or more Bunker Buster-armed units with full rocket damage upgrades should be enough to take down any fortress with full health upgrades. Alternatively, you could just gradually wear them down with a bunch of Ground Shakers.

Use the proper weapons for the targets you are facing:

Bunker Buster rockets are available rather soon. They are a good choice against fortresses, hardpoints and bunkers in particular in early game. They are IMHO often underused.

Recall that bunker busters do 300% damage against hard structures and 400% against bunkers.

Scourge missiles may seem superior to BBs at first, but they do 25% to hard structures, because they are anti-tank weapons.
So while the raw max damage of a scourge is 630, a bunker buster with max 568 (and half the ROF), will be much better. Plus, they are lighter, more on speed below.

VTOL-BBs can be very effective! They take out AA bunkers quite well, too. The biggest drawback is the low payload: a VTOL carries only one BB!

The other key to taking down fortresses is speed. They are slow turners. If not set up very well, try to circle around them and they might have a hard time shooting at your units more than once. In particular AIs like to place fortresses somewhere in their base, where you can really go around them easily. Sometimes you can just keep moving your battle group in circles and the fortress keeps on turning. When sending in units close, try to die at their back, so that your next attack requries them to turn 180 deg. Remember that players cannot micromanage base structures! This may allow you to get in range more easily, or give you chance for a hit&run. Similar point: attack from different directions, to make it turn. Then add in decoys: sacrifice a cyborg to give your heavy tanks the first shot against the bunker. It can work really well to keep on sending cheap cyborgs close to the fortress (maybe from a different direction), while your BBs, gauss and plasma cannons deal the actual damage from the second row. You need to exploit the targeting logic, which tries to go for the nearby units first. Current targeting does not compute "threat". (Plus, even if a flamer cyborg does not damage a fortress very much, the fortress is meant to defend other base buildings as well - any unit is a threat.)

To build a really strong fortress, add in AA defense and lasers to prevent cyborg decoy attacks.

Listen to me

1. Use artillery against fortresses
any single mortar can kill cannon fortress from distance, but you should be careful.
you need sensor upgrades to kill fortresses with combination of sensor + artillery.
so mortars, bombards, howitzers etc. have longer range than fortresses but you need sensors.

2. Use VTOL with following turrets
- heap bomb bay
- thermite bomb bay
- plasmite bomb bay (strongest weapon in the game)

Vtol with bunker buster is not very effective as plasmite or thermite bombs

3. User Rocket Fortresses to kill Cannon Fortresses

4. Use Wide Sensor (green one) in combination with artillery
Ripple Rockets
Ground Shaker
Archangel Missile

5. Use large masses of tanks mixed with bunker busters

6. Use cyborgs to kill Rocket Fortress

7. Use heavy cannons or twin assault cannon
e.g. 10-15 twin cannons can kill 1 fortress with minimal loss
but your units should be researched (with increased damage, armor)

8. Use bunker buster on hovers
5-10 bunker busters can kill 1 fortress

I have found bunker busters to be quite useless if the enemy has active units around their defenses to draw the fire. They take an age to reload and are taken out quite quickly. However, if the enemy is lax around his defenses, or walled himself in, they will give a nasty surprise!

I wonder if Bunker Busters could be made to ignore units and only fire on structures, then they would be lethal I am thinking...

The thing is that they are good against structures but useless for everything else so it might be better to use an all rounder weapon that will be effective against units as well. I have been liking a mortars/lancers or mortars/twin assault cannons lately, especially the incendiary mortars. Having morters massed with lancers (early) and then Twin Assault cannons (later) has been working well for me - when you upgrade the mortars ROF and Damage, they really work well because you have such a huge range (with sensor upgrades) so you can lay a lot of fire on the enemy before he gets in range of you - with some lancers/cannons in the mix once he does get to you he will be weakened and easy pickings.

Important: Remember you have to stop for mortars to fire, I usually use the stop command for this instead of waiting for them to move and stop because they tend to mill around and not fire for a long time.

One thing I have found is that you can't just rely on your massed units, you need to be backing them up as they advance with D structures, consolidating the ground you have gained with your trucks so than you have a place to regroup to if the enemy is scaring you a bit - flamers always give me the willies! lol

Disclaimer: I am no "expert" or "mentor", just sharing some things that are working for me at the moment

Rommel wrote:I wonder if Bunker Busters could be made to ignore units and only fire on structures, then they would be lethal I am thinking...

Try giving your units the order to "hold fire", then order them to attack the fortress. They should only attack the fortress and nothing else.

Or attach to a sensor and tell the sensor to target the fortress.

Reg312 wrote:Listen to me

1. Use artillery against fortresses
any single mortar can kill cannon fortress from distance, but you should be careful.
you need sensor upgrades to kill fortresses with combination of sensor + artillery.
so mortars, bombards, howitzers etc. have longer range than fortresses but you need sensors.

This is definitely the best way, but with sensor equipped units, I find a good method is to build some sensor turreted units, make sure you have arty like ripple rockets, arch angel or howitzer built within range and then then you can use the sensor units to target the fortresses. I was playing a 4v4 with nullbots earlier today and the game was basically stalemated until I used sensor units shielded by heavy units so they could get close enough to target the enemy structures - I had like 50 or so archangels built and they hammered the opposition when targeted with the wide spectrum sensor, was beautiful to watch...

I was just trailing them behind massed wyvern gauss cannons - the CB was devastating as the other team had built up massed howitzers and only a few archangels - I built my archangels right at my edge of the map so they were too far to be hit by the howitzers the enemy was using, very satisfying

Try it with Contingency mod installed - the sky gets literally filled with projectiles, it's insane and mesmerising to watch.

I always build a Bombard team of 15+ units. It seems to have worked extremely well so far.