Question about units, types, and uses.

[iap]

Hey, here is another completely noob question, sorry, but I still confused of all the vehicles I can build, it come's up to hundreds of designs.

For now I'm in the middle of the first campaign. But I've already got too much vehicles to choose from. No cyborgs yet, and I don't know if and how I will use them when I get them.

So, to summer it up as I understand it:
in the wheels section< the trade off is between strength and speed and types of guns you can carry.
Same trade of in the body section (And there are so much different bodies!).
In the "guns" section the trade off is between damage, accuracy, ballistics, target and reload time.

Now that makes alot of sense writing it like that, but in the game I get so confused with all these types, and old types, and there is always some new body researched that make all the other designs redundant. So I end using only lancers and mortars attached to a commander.

It helps me now, but I know its not a good strategic approach.

Can you help me with your experience?

[Ilr]

THIS IS AN OPINION ONLY:
Summary: You've pretty much got it figured out already...

The general "Tao" of Warzone (underlying "flow") is that many components are purely existential. In other words, Designed to become Obsolete later. In your Wheels case, nothing could be true-er. Wheels are complete junk. Eventually you want to get to the point where every ground unit you build is either Tracked Propulsion or Hover Propulsion with a Mantis or Vengeance body. And yes, imbalances do exist... Lancers are a LOT more effective against "small" Cyborgs and "fast" vehicles than they actually should be or are otherwise indicated in the guide. They also reload way too fast on VTOL vehicles for the amount of damage they do.

In other words, every commander you own, should have half a dozen Mantis-->Tracked-->Lancer/Missile units attached to it b/c there's nothing they won't kill faster than most other units. You should also have All your Factories set to (by right-clicking them) Long-Range + Retreat @ Medium. Then you just make a truck follow your commanders around and plant Repair Facilities every 20-40 tiles and have some extra repair drones standing around those repair centers to speed it up. Cannons themselves are pretty damned worthless and you should only have a couple Python-->Tracked-->Cannon units to draw Fire and Mortar rounds and you should always have Speed-Limiting turned off (F11) so your units can get in and out of the fight faster.

Regarding Artillery: In the campaign, there's so damned many Lancer and Missile towers spread out everywhere that the CPU never attempts to repair, that nearly all of your "base clearing" needs should be handled purely with a Sensor Drone and 8-12 Tracked Artillery units. And you should always Group-Bind all of them and then micromanage all their movements instead of just assigning them to a commander.

Everything else in the game, cluster bombs, lancer cyborgs, cannons and machine gun based vehicles, AA Vehicles, ALL Flamers except Thermite, and whatever else that's small or wimpy... is just there for looks. Don't bother with it until some major changes can come about...

[Zarel]

In terms of propulsion, the trade-off is mostly between speed and resistances. Wheels is obsolete by newer propulsions, in general, you should choose half-tracks for speed, and tracks for defense. Later on, you'll get hover, which is even faster but weaker, in which case half-tracks is more of a middle ground.

In terms of body, you have four different body series: Project (gray: Viper, Cobra, Python), New Paradigm (yellow: Bug, Scorpion, Mantis), Collective (blue-green: Leopard, Panther, Tiger), and Nexus (black: Retaliation, Retribution, Vengeance).

Each series has three sizes, small, medium, and large. Once you get your first medium body (Cobra), you should pretty much never use small bodies (except on trucks and maybe repair/sensor, to save money). They're cheap, but they don't have much else going for them. Between the medium and heavy bodies, medium bodies are faster, and heavy bodies have better defense.

In addition to that, each series has their own quirks:
Project: "normal"
New Paradigm: Less expensive, faster, less defense, more thermal defense
Collective: expensive, slower, more defense
Nexus: very expensive, very long time to build, fast, high defense

In terms of body/propulsion combinations, people tend to use the same combination for all their attack tanks. Personally I use, in order of when I get them:

Viper Wheels, Viper Half-Tracks, Viper Tracks, Cobra Tracks, Scorpion Tracks, Mantis Tracks, Retribution Tracks, Vengeance Tracks

(Skipping everything in between)

In terms of weapons, most people use a mixed army. Each weapon, in addition to having different damage, reload time, and HP values, also do varying levels of damage to different targets. Mini-Rocket Artillery does more damage to structures, Lancer does more damage to tanks, Machinegun does more damage to cyborgs...

[iap]

Thank you guys, this actually helps!

I'm sorry for the dumb questions (I have plenty of more of these) but this game is... different from other RTS's out there and it's really..... GOOD! But hard to understand...