Micro Tactics...

Micro is very fleet-composition, personal strategy, and play style specific here.  there could be a couple general good combinations, but that's about it.  and those are in the strat guides

if you wanted to make a complete guide (or near complete) it would be many, many pages long

Don't confuse micromanagement with tactics or strategy.  They are inherently related, but are two different things.  Strategy and tactics are your plans, micromanagement is how you actually execute those plans with a bunch of clicks.  Good micromanagement means you execute strategies quickly and accurately, but speaks nothing of the tactics or strategies themselves.

With that in mind, the question is: are you asking about good micromanagement techniques, or good tactics?

For micromanagement, I have one big counter-intuitive piece of advice: slow down.  The biggest mistake I see from newbies is that they try to go too fast and end up screwing everything up.  Go at a comfortable speed and prioritize what's most important.  Once you have a good solid technique you can speed it up as needed, but don't rush yourself.

For tactics, Sins doesn't actually have that many.  Most revolve around timing and placement of special abilities.  Units turn very slowly, making it quite difficult to outmaneuver an enemy in battle.  Pretty much the only units that you can do advanced tactics with are flaks and strike craft, because the former can fire in all directions (and doesn't need to face the enemy) and the latter is so blazing fast. 

There are a couple pieces of advice I can give on this account though:

• Keep fighters away from enemy flaks.  Try to lure enemy fighters (by moving your bombers) towards your flaks.
• Keep your fleet reasonably tight.  There are very few (offensive) abilities in the game which are area of effect, so there's little reason to spread out, especially if that leaves some of your units vulnerable.
• Keep as many abilities as you can manage (particularly capital ship) off autocast.  You want to aim them strategically to maximize their effect and to conserve antimatter as needed.
• Watch your capital ship health, and learn to retreat it before it starts taking serious damage.  Often times you have to begin your retreat before your shields are even depleted if you want to survive.
  
• Notice if your enemy has vulnerable units (such as carriers) that are not being guarded and send a strike force (light frigates against carriers) to take them out.
• Destroy enemy construction frigates the moment you attack a gravity well.  The last thing you need is a repair bay to build mid-fight.

use the z-axis; there's a whole dimension of movement that most players don't use.

Yeah good point, didn't mean to mention tactics like that :P  I've seen people use a cap to go alongside another cap like I think the Kol or which ever one fires forward, by going to its side and just moving around in circles [the other ship was a broadside attack so was actually dealing higher damage then if it went head on] or so I believe o..o

Good tips there Darvin, and as for the z axis I know you have to assign it a key but how do you use it ? I pressed the key and nothing changed, I was expecting it to move vertically when you move the move cursor but nothing happened heh.

I've seen people instead of targetting units leaving a GW to instead follow them with a move order, they attack as they shoot and manage to keep up with them properly and kill them For me I am extremely effecient with micro, been doing it in many games for a long time, its just a case of knowing what to do in this heh. A question I have is it always best to focus fire on caps despite mitigation OR to kill smaller ships quickly to lvl up one's own capital faster ? cheers

Always a tough question.  For me, the question I need to ask myself before I focus on a capital ship is: can I make it count?  If it's going to get away, then I probably won't bother focusing on it. 

A good example was when I was fighting for a volcanic the other day.   I completely ignored my enemy's Marza for about ten minutes of fighting, focusing instead on his support units.  Suddenly, all my units converged on the Marza and began focus fire.  He decided to make a hasty retreat, but had under-estimated my little trap.  He managed to jump out with about 200 hull remaining, only to run into about a dozen LRM's in the next gravity well that finished him off.

If I'd begun focus firing his capital ship earlier, the hoshikos would have healed him and he'd have backed out if things got dicey.  I'd have taken casualties for no real gain.  Instead, I waited for the right time and place to do it.

Yeah man, thats the kind of stuff I mean, very good point there too I didn't think about ! Simply because most RTS games I've played don't have repair support units haha. Thanks for all your input into my last two threads, its been enlightening heh. I noticed some interesting micro with the whole z/x axis thing as well as making fighters actually fire whilst staying practically stationary in front of flaks to actually only get hit by a gun or two tops heh.

For myself, I will certainly start turning autocast off and concentrating on my own tactics, however late game [10+ cap ships if ever reached] I would probably leave it on autocast, or at least the majority, I read that the halcyon bitch slap of doom is best to keep all on manual so you can really use that antimatter for le slap <3

another tip: dont use z axis :> you will screw up because its buggy......

spoken like someone who doesn't know how to use it. Don't worry prole, it isn't the size that matters.

I've noticed something, is it just me or out of the hundered or so people who play online, the twenty or so that know some amazing micro tips relating to positioning and execution just avoid sharing in order to keep their own personal advantage at the expense of culturing an unfriendly online experience to any new players ?

I mean just look at most RTS games, you actually have the -best- players telling others how they do everything, in the hopes that the bar will be raised and more people will have the "Oh thats a cool tip, I'm gonna try that online" type attitude instead of "Damn I have no idea how they did that and they won't even advise, I can't beat them, or even match them".

In my short time, I feel this may be the issue, hence why I feel it would help if some of the better players actually explained some of their micro tips, I've seen players actually get bombers/fighters to stop and fire at buildings, no need to dogfight all around it as it doesn't move, yet out of the seven or so people I have asked no one wants to tell.

The idea of that sounds about right, its expected really =D

Engagement range: hold position

but it makes them prime targets for other strikecraft/flak frigs 

a lot of the tricks are knowing which ships have their firepower where.  if you can get your strong bank against their weak banks (i.e. a battleship in the middle of the enemy fleet, or flanking maneuvers) then you stand a much better chance.

beyond that, it's knowing how to use the abilities in very case specific scenarios

ref the strikecraft hold position, i've seen somewhere on here someone did a DPS comparison with leaving them moving vs. stopped, and they do deal more damage when they hold still because they don't have to manouver to fire when they are ready to again.  En masse I think there are situations where it would be good to do this, but again, they're sort of sitting ducks.  The other problem i've seen is, once one dies and is re-built, I think they revert to their original attack behavior, so you have to command then to hold again... A logistic nightmare...

Against a spam fleet that can't effectively hit strikecraft back, though, the hold position seems like an effective strategy.

yeah, but if you put SC on hold posistion then they're super easy to kill. Its more effective to set flak to hold posistion or local area. Truth be told, most of my ships are always on one of those two.

Interesting, I am gonna give that a try

What RTS games have you been playing?   I remember repair units going all the way back to WC2, if not WC1 (although no one really used Paladins in MP).  The C&C series has MRV's and medics.  All the AoE/AoM games had them--monks, priests, pharaohs, einherjars....  Starcraft sort of had them--the Protoss had shield regenerator buildings.   All 3 Warlords Battlecry's have lots of healers.  It seems to me pretty standard in RTS games to include healer units, unless a race is specifically engineered to have the lack of them as a weakness.

Anyway, the micro I bring in from previous games is to manage your control groups.  It seems to make sense to group your distinct unit types into control groups and get them to focus-fire as a group on the units they counter, rather than just have all your ships completely focus-fire one thing.  There's a little bit of down time involved every time you're constantly switching targets.  That and the bonus you forfeit more than offsets the benefit you get from focus-firing.  I just noticed that's a little less obvious in this game than others (for example, in Red Alert you just don't group riflemen together with tanks...it's obvious).

The mana cost for heal was absolutely exorbitant in that game, to the point at which it was functionally useless against any smart opponent.  This was compounded by the fact that units died very quickly in that game (particularly late game when paladins were available) and it took a lot of micro to cycle out wounded units effectively.  This was made even worse by the number of spells and abilities in the game that were 1-hit kills or close to it.  By comparison healing was too weak to justify.

The Protoss Shield Regenerator was seldom used, but the Terran Medic (expansion) was an awesome unit.

Question I have regarding micro... What abilities are best left disabled and which should be kept on auto use ?

I just never seem to know when to use what abilities, considering how -every- time I log on online there is never any available games I can't even hop in to learn via someone telling me, but by then I have cost our team the game because I am the only player who hasn't been playing online for months/years c..c

Generally speaking, I categorize abilities into three categories:

1. Never Use Autocast:  these abilities require a degree of intelligence or precision to be used effectively and it's virtually never worth turning on autocast.
2. Avoid Autocast:  the autocast AI is subpar for this ability; you can use it, but avoid doing so as you can get much better performance from managing it yourself.
   
3. Toggle Autocast:  the autocast AI is relatively good for this ability, so you can leave it on if you like, but you should still toggle it off and on to conseve antimatter as necessary. 
   

Here's a list of how I'd classify the capital ship abilities.  Passive abilities are not included.  Unless otherwise stated, ultimate abilities are in the "never use autocast" category.

Kol

• Gauss Cannon: avoid autocast
• Flak Burst: never autocast
• Adaptive Shield:  toggle autocast

Sova

• Missile Turrets:   toggle autocast
• Embargo:  toggle autocast

Dunov

• Shield Restore:  avoid autocast
• EMP:  never autocast
• Magnetize:  never autocast

Marza:

• Radiation Bomb:  toggle autocast
• Raze Planet:  toggle autocast

Akkan

• Colonize:  never autocast
• Ion Bolt:  never autocast

Progenitor

• Colonize:  never autocast
• Malice:  avoid autocast
• Shield Restore:  toggle autocast
  

Radiance

• Detonate Antimatter: avoid autocast
• Animosity:  toggle autocast
  

Rapture

• Vertigo:  toggle autocast
• Vengeance:  avoid autocast
• Domination:  avoid autocast

Revelation

• Reverie:  avoid autocast
• Guidance:  avoid autocast
• Clairvoyance:  never autocast
• Provoke Hysteria:  toggle autocast

Halcyon

• Telekinetic Push:  never autocast
• Anima Tempest:  toggle autocast

Kortul

• Power Surge:  toggle autocast
• Jam Weapons:  toggle autocast
  

Jerrasul

• Colonize:  never autocast
• Gravity Bomb:  never autocast
• Nano Dissassemblers:  avoid autocast
• Drain Planet:  toggle autocast

Skirantra

• Repair Cloud:  toggle autocast
• Scramble Bombers:  toggle autocast

Vulkoras

• Phase Missile Swarm:  toggle autocast
• Siege Platform:  toggle autocast

Antorak

• Phase Out Hull:  avoid autocast
• Subversion:  toggle autocast
• Distort Space:  avoid autocast

Nice list there, I believe it is Karma worthy

I noticed how colonize is always on avoid/never autocast, any reason why ?

Some Micro tips for Strikecraft:

#1. Fighters against enemy Flak:
 

Set your fighters to "Local Area Only" engagement range if your enemy is using bombers. This way your fighters are protecting your fleet from bomber attacks and drawing enemy flak frigates in to your fleets  big guns in order to kill your fighters, and cant be picked off chasing a bomber accross the well or into their flaks. If your enemy is suing flak in conjunction with LRFs, set your fighters to "Hold Position" and Move them near the enemy LRFs (do not order them to attack, as it will make them fly around). The fighters will stay stationary and fire on priority targets (LRFS). The reason this works well is because the enemy flak will not be able to fire at the fighter with 100% of ther firepower, more like only 40% (Flak have 5 banks, 2 in the front, 1 on each side and 1 in the back, holding position will only allow them to fire from their front 2 banks.) ** WARNING: adjusting engagement range on strikcraft means you will have to move them manually, it may be a good idea to set them to a control group (ctrl+ a #) so you can quickly select them all and chage their behavior.

#2. Bombers:
   

If your opponent as an amount of fighters that can seriously threaten the integrity of your bomber squads (i'd say %50+ of your total bombers in fighters is dangerous), keep your bombers docked. It takes time to replace strikecraft, and your bombers are useless if they aren't in large numbers. Keep them safe and docked until your own fighters and flak thin out the enemy fighter squadrons. If you keep an eye on the enemy fleet composition info card (the one that says how many of each type of ship and their total shield and hull percentages) you can tell when it is safe to launch your bombers (usually when you see enemy fighter squads fall below 40%). Launch against a minimal amount of targets (structures, HCs and Caps are the best) and then dock them again once enemy fighter strength returns. Against enemy stationary starbases, use the "hold position" behavior and Move (not attack, as they will fly around if given an attack order) close to the starbase. They will fire on it (or sometimes on other nearby structures) as soon as their weapon cooldowns expire. This tactic is also useful against enemy cap ships that have engaged your fleet supported by flak, station your bombers as close to it as possible and they fire away, then issue them to attack once the Cap ship begins to retreat.

#3 Flak:

Flak are best used in the "attack local area" engagement range. This keeps them near your fleet, rather than running all over the gravity well chasing down fighters, running into enemy defenses and getting picked off by enemy ships. Using "hold position" would only be advised if you're using them to protect a starbase, otherwise it limits their firepower. The best possible scenario is a fighter trying to fly in circles around your flak (all flak banks can then fire), but one can often get a similar results by moving flak in circles. Flak are also very good at absorbing damage, when engaging an enemy fleet, you may want them on the front lines or engaging enemy ships point blank so they can soak up LRF splash damage and also fire all their banks on enemy ships and circling strikecraft.

Because if you go into a planet with more than 1 enemy siege frigate, your capital ship will colonize, and then the siege frigs will kill the planet before you can kill the siege frigs.  So you just wasted antimatter on colonization, you just wasted money on underdevelopment costs, yadda yaddda.

You can usually leave it on autocast if you are colonizing a roid, because your cap will usually kill the siege frig before it kills the roid, but even then sometimes you get screwed.