Send in the airborne engineer division
The engineer drop is an excellent, yet unfortunately seldom-used, maneuver that frequently blows games wide open. The maneuver itself is simple: load up some engineers into transport(s) and drop them behind enemy lines. Most of the time they will get through, especially if you fly the transport(s) off the edge of the map. Engineer drops are most successful on maps like Fields of Isis which have starting positions with large interior areas that have easy to guard chokepoints against land, but are very hard to defend against air incursions. What you do once the engineers have landed is where the strategy really comes into play.
Generally you want to set up some kind of defenses at first. A pack of engineers is very helpless, so have them build some point defenses. Six T1 engineers can fit into a single T1 transport, so even if you only send one transport, you still have a lot of construction power at your disposal, and turrets will be built quickly. If it’s a bit later in the game, you want to send along higher tech engineers, because T2 point defenses are significantly better in engineer drop situations due to their longer range. After you get some defenses up, build a radar tower for intel-gathering. What happens next depends on how far away your forward mini-firebase is from the enemy’s base.
If your new firebase is within point defense range of the enemy’s base, just keep building turrets. Point defenses will rapidly kill enemy buildings, and if you get behind enemy lines with engineers you can quickly take out many resource buildings and factories. In many circumstances your opponent will be directing and marshalling his forces near the front lines rather than in his base, so it may take him awhile to bring enough units back to overwhelm your firebase. In the mean time, the point defenses can handle whatever newly-constructed units sally forth to attempt to take out your firebase.
If your firebase is a bit farther away from your opponent, you have a greater number of options. First, you should consider building a stealth generator, if you sent along a T2 or higher engineer and know that your enemy hasn’t noticed your units yet. You can go for the classical commander assassination via tactical missile launcher. You can also build tech 2 artillery and pound away at his base. But my favorite strategy is to just build lots of factories and overwhelm the opponent from behind.
Even if your firebase is ultimately killed, you will distracted a significant amount of your opponent’s attention and materiel away from the front lines. Don’t take a long while to regroup if your firebase is destroyed. Press your advantage.
Engineer drops are hard to defend against because they can happen so quickly. Within ten seconds of landing the first point defense will be up. To completely defend against a possible engineer drop, you have to defend your entire starting position — not an easy proposition on many maps. This is prohibitively expensive before the late game, and probably not worth it since engineer drops aren’t used in most games. The best defense is to just to rapidly respond to any incursion of your territory and overwhelm it before your enemy has a chance to establish strong defenses. Aim for the engineers rather than the turrets. If all of the engineers are dead, you can take your time against the turrets.
Engineer drops should be carried out as quickly as possible for maximum effectiveness. If you wait too long your opponent will have siege assault bots, which can rapidly quash nascent firebases. At tech 1 and tech 2, the point defense turrets are a lot stronger than the mobile units. But there is no tech 3 point defense turret. Also, later in the game, your opponent will have more interceptors, better radar, and definitely better ground-based anti-air coverage (I’m thinking SAM missile launchers here). It’s quite probable that you won’t even be able to land within the opponent’s area of the map if you wait too long to try.
April 30th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
I use engineer drops in almost every game I play. I find this is especially effective on maps like open palms where you can drop them on mountains behind there base. Most units can’t hit anything that high up.
April 30th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Not only for super awesome ninja BEHIND YOU AHH tactics, engineer drops are also excellent just as a way to get around the map faster. People (including me) often just go ‘meh, engineer go over there plzkthx’ and don’t take into account the horribly long time it takes for them to get there. Meanwhile, if you get a transport up and going early on in the game you can have engineers situated at strategically important locations minutes before the enemy, such as the wrecks on Ian’s Cross. Alot of people i play against simply walk their army over there in hopes of taking it, but if you’ve already have a garrison up and engineers working on securing the location it’s going to be significantly harder for them to take it as they havn’t already dug in.
May 1st, 2007 at 2:28 am
Been trying to do this more. I whored transports for engineers in my past couple of games and I cleaned house. Works like a charm.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:59 am
While it is indeed impossible to adequately cover every place engineers can be profitably dropped, you certainly can just scatter a few T1 units in the little back-yard spaces that the most audacious drops use. It’s easy to prevent engineers from getting into the back of your starting-point base in Open Palms, for instance, yet some very good players have had it happen to them. I bet they all habitually park a few T1 bots there now :-).
May 1st, 2007 at 8:51 am
Good article CydeWeys. (All my comments are relating directly to 1v1). I would argue that if anyone lets this happen on Fields of Isis they need to be giggled at! :-) I think that your back corners are easy to defend. True, maybe not the other ‘area’ just North (if you’re East base) or South (if you’re the West). The maps that I love to do this on in 1v1 are Syrtis Major and Arctic Refuge. (And of course, on Emerald Crater it should be all about Engie expansion). Those 2 come up a lot for me ranked 1v1, and engie drops are essential. I always have one Air Scout doing nothing but flying a pattern around the back and sides of my base.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:27 pm
One thing I tend to do alot since I play Cybran(UEF can’t do this). Instead of 6 egineers I either do 4 egineers 2 light assualt bots(If they don’t have air defencet) or 4 egineers and 2 heavy assault bots(if they do have air defence). This clears out any enemy t1 bots they have parked in the back of there base.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Engineer drops are one of the coolest strategies this game offers because your options are pretty open. Do you build an early PD or five at a chokepoint or go for factories and early spam busting down their front door early? Do you wait until a land factory hits T2 and sent some T2 engineers with a mobile shield to try something offensive like a T2 PD drop within range of the enemy base or do you play it safe and find a secluded corner for a TML or three? I am guilty of not taking advantage of such drops as much as I probably should because I’m generally concentrating so hard on spamming, but I guess on larger maps an engineer drop should be one of the items high on my list of things to do.
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:09 am
UEF Commander pods are even more useful. According to the Unit DB, they (both pods) cost a little bit more mass than two engineers and a T1 transport, but less energy and less time. They are the only true airborne engineers in SupCom, and can’t be hit by land units (only AA and interceptors). Since they can fly, it leads to very unexpected PDs on mountains in Isis, and the like. They can build wherever there’s enough flat ground and not limited by where they can be dropped. It’s also fun when they reclaim ground troops. They’re very easy to detect though, as they look like a pair of aircraft icons on your radar twirling around whatever they’re building. I’ve never tried it, but I think they upgrade in tech if you upgrade your commander’s building tech level.
May 20th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
I’ve won many games by using this tactic to drop two T2 engineers behind the lines to build a missile base. I’ve taken out better players with an assassination strike and laugh hysterically as i do it. I recommend putting radar jammers with the engineers to make it effective.