<< Back
UEF Land
Armored Command Unit
The UEF ACU has 12,000 HP. An ACU explosion is 4,000 HP. If you and the enemy ACU are both under 4,000hp, you both will receive a draw as long as the ACUs stay within blast radius of each other.
Another feature of the ACU is the overcharge ability. Overcharge causes 70,000 damage plus some splash damage to every ground unit in the game except an enemy commander. It takes 3,000 power to use one overcharge shot. In the early T1 game, when overcharge is most useful, it is nice to know that one factory is enough to increase your maximum power storage to over 3,000. The overcharge ability is most useful during a comrush into an enemy base, destroying enemy factories and engineers. Overcharge is useful against point defenses your opponent has thrown up since your unwelcome arrival.
In addition, the ACU has several unique upgrade abilities. These abilities pretty much divide into two distinct categories: making your ACU into an attacker or a builder. Unlike the other ACUs, the UEF ACU is not really meant for attacking. This is because it does not have any offensive upgrades to its gun, but instead defensive upgrades such as a personal shield and a damage stabilization subsystem. The personal shield can be upgraded to a shield generator, but it's better to just have the personal shield. The only offensive upgrade for the UEF ACU is the tactical missile launcher and tactical nuclear missile launcher. These are fun to play with, but not commonly used in game. Of course, the UEF ACU also has a resource allocation system and the T2 and T3 engineering suites. Another upgrade is the personal teleporter. The personal teleporter usually isn't used since it requires an enormous amount of power to upgrade and use. It also takes about 20min without assistance to obtain. The ACU must then be warped to a specific location and even then it takes additional time to charge the warp.
One neat upgrade for the UEF ACU are the left and right shoulder pods, which are little engineer helpers. The upgrade only costs -3 mass and -60 energy per pod. It takes only 40sec for the upgrade to complete making it a good upgrade to do during T1. Additional information about these little guys is shown below.
C-D1 Rover
The C-D1 Rover is a flying engineer that assists the commander in building things. They are air units and die instantaneously to T1 interceptors. However, a tactic that is often overlooked is using these engineer drones individually. They are defaulted to help the commander, but they can also have their own engineer queue. Want to get mass extractors at a fairly hard to get place? Use the C-D1 Rover to build it for you. Even if it dies, the ACU can re-produce it with no hassle.
Tech 1
Land Scout: Snoop
Land scouts are by far the most useful unit in the game. It is a mobile T1 radar that doesn't cost you any power. Scouts are indispensable at tracking troop movements and providing you with intelligence. The top-mounted gun on the Snoop is only useful for killing other enemy scouts.
Light Assault Bot: Mech Marine
The light assault bot is a cheap, quick unit mostly used for early engineer harassment. They are best used in groups of two or three, accompanied by a land scout. Using these light assault bots to engage enemy engineers is an excellent way to stifle early economy. Also, six of these light assault bots can be loaded into a T1 light air transport, creating a ghetto gunship. Mech marines are the weakest of all the light assault bots, doing very little damage and having almost no armor.
Medium Tank: MA12 Striker
The MA12 Striker tank is the mainstay of the UEF T1 ground units. Although weak and not able to do much damage, it's disadvantages shrink as more of them are put in a group. The MA12 Striker takes the least amount of time to build (12sec) as compared to the Aeon T1 Light Tank (13 sec) and the Cybran T1 Mantis (14 sec). These tanks work best in formation, and should break formation once they close in on a certain target.
Mobile Light Artillery: Lobo
Lobos are by far the best T1 mobile light artillery. It has an extraordinarily large damage output for its class and is fairly inexpensive and time-efficient (7 sec construction time). The real benefit of Lobos is their ability to obliterate T1 buildings. It takes only two shells to destroy a T1 point defense and only seven shells to destroy a T1 land factory. When used in formation with MA12 Strikers, these artillery will make short work of enemy installations while the MA12 strikers take out any opposing land units.
Mobile Anti-Air Gun: Archer
The UEF Mobile Anti-Air Gun tends to have a harder time taking out T1 bombers and interceptors. T1 scouts are usually quick enough to outrun the linked railgun. It takes a group of three or more to successfully fend off one ghetto gunship.
Tech 2
Heavy Tank: Pillar
The Pillar is the heavy tank for the UEF arsenal. Its cannons do a considerable amount of damage. However, it cannot turn very fast and thus, it's important to keep these tanks in formation with the enemy in front of you. Unfortunately, because the cannons fire slow moving shells, they have a tendency to miss.
Mobile AA Flak Artillery: Sky Boxer
The T2 Mobile AA Flak is an excellent unit to use for AA support. It is particularly effective against scouts, interceptors, bombers, and gunships. They provide ample anti-air coverage, and is a cheaper way of getting anti-air up fast when it is needed. Use them.
Mobile Missile Launcher: Flapjack
The UEF Mobile Missile Launcher is very effective against an enemy that is still Tech 1. This is because of its range. The Flapjack out-ranges T1 structures such as the point defense. Because of this, you can use them to destroy these point defenses before charging with your attack force, minimizing losses. In addition, it does significant damage to other buildings and ACUs. Two ways to counter these missiles are by using shields and tactical missile defense.
Amphibious Tank: Riptide
The UEF Amphibious Tank hovers over water. The tank uses the same gun used by the T2 UEF gunship. It uses a fast-firing machine gun to do quick and heavy damage. However, since the bullets do not lead the target, the tank is used best for stationary targets. These tanks should rarely be used to kill units even though their damage to them is fairly high. Since it can't really deal with units too well and doesn't have the more mobile function of the gunship, Riptides are, in general, not commonly used.
Mobile Shield Generator: Parashield
The UEF Mobile Shield Generator is much like the Aeon mobile shield except it is weaker and cannot hover over water. However, the Parashield turns better, covers a larger area, and speeds up faster than the Aeon mobile shield. Using a number of these units work great in formation with other assault units. When setting up a formation, the shields will set themselves up in such a way that they will cover the majority, if not all, of the units.
Tech 3
Siege Assault Bot: Titan
The Titan is the UEF siege assault bot, which comes equipped with a personal shield. It works well in large groups, but dies fairly quickly to T2 Point Defense and support command units.
Mobile Heavy Artillery: Demolisher
Mobile Heavy Artillery can be useful in taking out T2 point defense. However, what usually happens is the enemy most likely has T2 artillery, which has the range to destroy T3 mobile artillery. Siege bots are also very effective in wiping out mobile artillery. In addition, mobile artillery are vulnerable to air attacks as well. In general, T3 mobile artillery are never used because the resources could instead be used to produce siege bots.
Support Command Unit
The UEF Support Command Unit hosts a variety of different upgrades that make it incredibly powerful. Much like the ACU, the support command unit can go down one of two paths, the builder, or the attacker. Support commanders are most often used for their Resource Allocation Subsystems (RAS), which make them mobile mass/power farms that can build, hide, or shoot at things. The UEF RAS gives the support commander +15 mass and +3000 power. In addition, the support commander can build an engineering drone much like the one for the ACU. This drone will be its personal assistant and assist build everything the sCU does until it is separately told what to do.
As for the attacking side, the UEF sCU should use the advanced cooling upgrade, the high explosive ordinance, and the personal shield. The advanced cooling upgrade increase the rate of fire while the high explosive ordinance upgrade significantly increases the damage output of the sCU by adding splash damage. The sCU has the option to upgrade once to personal shield and then twice to a shield generator, but the personal shield is all that's necessary.
The other upgrades for the sCU are not really that useful. The radar jammer upgrade is irrelevant since your enemy most likely already has a T3 omni sensor, and the sensor range enhancer isn't worth getting since you get most of your intel from scouting withe T1 air scouts anyways.
Experimental
Mobile Factory: Fatboy
The Fatboy is a gigantic tank that has the ability to build land units out of its cargo bays except for T3 siege bots and T3 mobile artillery. In addition to being a unit producer, the Fatboy also has four mounted cannons with a large range. It's range is slightly smaller than T2 artillery and T2 Tactical missile launchers. When enemies come too close to it, it also has a fast firing machine gun, similar to the ones used by the T2 amphibious tank and the T2 gunship. Finally, it has a shield generator field, covering itself and a small amount of ground as well as a landing pad for aircraft refuel and repair. Although the Fatboy can do lots of damage with its cannons, it has no means of defending itself from air units. Much like the other land experimentals, the Fatboy gets obliterated by T3 strategic bombers. The trick with the Fatboy is to kill any units before they can reach the Fatboy itself. Although the Fatboy is powerful offensively, its not as durable as you think, and can die fairly quickly if it is overwhelmed by a group of siege assault bots. The Fatboy is not a direct-contact attack vehicle, but rather a support vehicle that pushes up to an enemy base slowly as more and more buildings progressively get destroyed.