I've seen various units posted in various places but haven't come across it compiled in one location.

Could one of you put up a complete what kills what best list here?

Hideki should add that to his units information page.

i should?

Yes, you should, I don't see a reason to post that in here.

How's about because i asked for it here : p

Just read unit descriptions and learn from in game experience. The best way to learn is to play with decent players and try and follow what they do build/tactics wise. Watch good players while your in game, any player thats in a clan or otherwise skilled should sufice. Save the detailed questions till you get the basic builds/tactics down from watching other players. Knowing all the details will be information overload for a new player.

As far as rock/paper/scissors goes, I'm pretty good at that game. But all u should really be building for now is the 'Strong' units from each ship class. (ie: the atom bombs in rock/paper/scissors)
for hiigaran Interceptors/Pulsars/IonsFrigs/Destroyers/Battlecruisers
for vaygr AssaultCraft/MissleCorvs/MissleFrigs/Destoyers (until you get good don't try and make vay Battlecruisers cause they're expensive)

The only other ships you should really be playing with are:
FlakFrigs - help kill fighters, but they are fragile and need protection from bigger ships
TorpedoFrigs - only build these if your Being Attacked by vaygr corvs - usually you want to make IonFrigs instead. (so make sure to get your advanced research mod in a timely maner so you can make ions)
Vaygr Emp scouts - learn how to use these, they can disable fighters for about 20seconds with their emp bombs.
Lasers - if you've won the swarm, you can build these to kill frigs and anything bigger

A note on Build orders:
On small maps try to learn a good transition from fighters to frigs if your hiig, or fighters to corvs if your vaygr. Those are the two basic build ups for each race. Bigger maps focus a lot more on 'team builds' where one guy makes the big ships (like BattleCruiser/Destroyers), and the other guy's swarm (making fighers/corvs, and then getting frigs/dd later in game). So make sure to communicate with your teamates!

A note on Tactics:
Dont attack unless you have a superior fleet! You should never start a fight you cant win, and its usually easier to defend than to attack. Also you should talk to your allies and have them attack all at once in force. One guy attacking by himself means he's fighting a 1v3 while his teamates sit back and watch. Also remember to Dock your swarm! Don't let your swarm dwindal and die over the enemy fleet, recal it from the battle for repairs.

Hope all that helps. Pretty much my general advice to you on how you can effectively improve.

I do appreciate all advice given, especially from a player who seems to be a walking ledged. There is a method to my madness though.

There are 4 stages from ignorance to knowledge.

1. Learner doesn’t know what learner doesn’t know
2. Learner knows what learner doesn’t know
3. Learner knows what learner knows
4. Learner doesn’t know what learner knows

The best teachers stay at level 3 while the best players progress to level 4 when all movement becomes natural and no thought is given to what you are doing.

A regular newbie comes in to this game at level 1. Seeing how this may be the 3rd HW game I develop a level of reputable skill, I believe I stepped into the lobby for the first time at level 2. Since I have to replace a lot of what I know tactic wise, and virtually every thing I know unit wise in this game, the best way for me would be to ask questions. For instance, I could’ve spent 2 hours offline scuttling every unit in the game next to another unit to see what the blast effects would be, instead it was answered in one question.

In a way, I’m disadvantaged to a lot of aspects of this game because of prior knowledge of the way things worked on the other HW but different here. Case and point me trying to figure out how to turn on a gravewell.

There are other things that I have as much if not better experience as half the players on GS though. Like situational awareness (scouting) and RU management. One thing that has not changed much is unit navigation and sensor interface. The new build and research menus took a few days to get used to using. RU management is no different from any other RTS. If you’re not spending RU then your doing something wrong in your “strategy/logistics” you either adjust your build to less or you’re resourcing to more. In my opinion, you should never have more than 1000ru unless you’re saving for a jump. If an ali needs money cancel a build. And you should NEVER reach 0ru. If either of these 2 things happen you could be doing better and should try to improve.

The post you just left is something I asked for 2 weeks ago in the lobby and would’ve been very helpful then. It went something like this

<Rat> what is the best “middle of the road build I can work on to get used to this interface and not look like a moron in an mp game”
<multiple skilled players|CLAN> there isn’t one… every situation is different… it depends on what the enemy is doing…

I wish I could’ve gotten the answer “inties/pulsar/ion/dd remember to scout” I’d’ve been like “cool thanks” and went offline, practiced that for a few hours vs a pc(s) until I could get my transitions smooth from one class to another without running out or having too much ru, came back online and adjusted accordingly. I’d play more 1v1 games but not having the HW/HWC record function makes that pointless since I can’t go back and watch what they did from their point of view. Unless they do a hid style recording and send it to me. Believe me it’s hard enuf to get into a game with most of you, much less get you to spar me 1v1 AND record it AND upload it somewhere I can download.

At this point I’ve got a good handle on the menus and improved interface, unit management came easy (it’s really not much different), and because of the games I played online I have a good idea about what the maps are now.

What I asked for in this thread was a complete rock/paper/scissors list because I don’t know what is best at killing what, and I haven’t been able to find it. Post that for me and I’ll print the SOB and tape it to my monitor for reference while I’m playing. You said, “build pulsars”, cool I can do that, but whom should I tell them to attack? If I see laser vet hit the seen, what should I build to counter? Unit description says gunships are good vs fighters, but it seems experience showed contrary.

Think of it like this; imagine if you could go back 3 or 4 years (however long you’ve been playing) and start again knowing everything you know now. I can because I can ask you.


As I said Thank you Very much for the post. I appreciate all advice. This response is exactly what the newest of newbies should read first.

I think one misconception about hw2 is thats its just a rock paper scissors game - and that u have to counter whatever you enemy does. But thats not really it at all. There are 5 atombomb ships - the 'strong ships' - that can counter anything, and then under those 5 atom bombs are a network of about 10 rock/paper/scissors ships - the 'weak' ships.

90% of the time you want to counter any ship, you simply look at the list of 5atom bomb ships. If the ship you want to kill is a fighter, build an interceptor, if its a corv, build a pulsar corv, if its a frig/capital ship, build some IonFrigs or a Destroyer, if its a bigcapital ship, build a Battlecruiser. As a general rule of thumb, try not to counter one ship class with a ship of a different class (IE: don't counter fighters with corvs, or counter frigs with fighters, exct.) Quite simply each ship class (fighters/corvs/frigs/dd/bc) has 1 'Strong' unit that counters all other ships in its class. So for exampe, the Interceptors will kill the Bomber and Lancefighter, the PulsarCorvete will kill the Gunship and the MinelayerCorvete, the IonFrig will kill the TorpFrig, and the FlakFrig. I listed the strong units for hiigaran/vaygr in my last post. So say you want to counter any fighter (interceptor or bomber), you just look at the strong unit of the fighter class that I listed above (the interceptor if hiig, assault craft if vaygr) and build that to counter. Often times, the best way to counter a 'strong unit' is with the exact same 'strong unit' (interceptors should be built vs interceptors).

I strongly suggest that you don't build many 'cross class counter ships', or the 'non-strong units'. Any unit that isn't a 'strong' unit is easy to kill, making your fleet weak. So stay away from bombers, lance fighters, gunships, and minelayers. These units are fragile, and easily killed by strong units. There are however a few 'cross class counter ships', that are very usefull to build. They are fragile, so you'll need to protect them, but given the right opening they can be excelent ships to have in your fleet. FlakFrigs - will decimate fighters, TorpedoFrigs - pop corvetes and collectors like popcorn, Lasers - just rape frigs. Laser's in perticular are amazingly powerfull, but are very delicate so you should only build them when you've won the swarm.

So rather than make a huge dia-gram of every ship and what that ship kills (which would be a nice handy-cap). I've wrote down some info that will help you understand the big picture of the 'atom bomb>rock/paper/scisors' diagram. After all you don't want to be just countering what your enemy builds all day or you'll never get ahead. You've got to make your own 'strong' build, while allowing flexibility to counter anything the enemy throws at you. If you build the 'strong' ships, the enemy wont be able to punch you with anything you can't take. Most o the 'weak' ships (any ship besides the 5 'strong ships' that i listed in the first post) either A:suck (lance/gunships/minelayers), or B:mainly there for offense(bombers/lazers), and shouldn't be used as defensive counters. The flak/torp frigs are the only two 'weak' ships that are usefull for defensive counters. Marine frigs are also usefull to capture lone destroyers, but you need more in-game experience before you should build those at all.

Here's your information overload tho:
http://www.geocities.com/mikehorvath.ge ... s_v2_1.zip
The value is the percent chance that the left ship beats the top ship. This is pretty accurate data too, based off of in-game simulations.

thats an interesting way cloaked put it, i knew it but i didnt classify as them so. cross class counter ships are definately weak, usually because they have serious weaknesses (maybe except for lasers, that's why it's so popular which also make pulsors a somewhat popular ship too. but i bet without lasers, no one would start making hig vettes...)

although i think lances are a bit under used imo. if you have decent swarm and see lasers coming around before u get vettes ready, simply changing to lance kills lasers just as good. they may be slower than interceptors but certainly faster than missiles and you don't have to spend ru on vette upgrade for speed upgrade and all. but still, the reason it's not used as often is, when there are vettes that you need to kill, there's usually flak roaming around as well, and if the map is big, you will probably max on fighters and need to move on to next class and you wouldn't just fit lance in the fighters but you can just pass fighters off to a team mate.



actually i thought this is about the whole darn game...-_-, if you keep countering properly, you are already ahead of them, push in, make more, they can't over power you already. like i've wrote somewhere else, decide against enemy plan and you usually have advantage. (although some strats are too late to counter when you realize, namely double dd in some medium to small map or plat rush in small map.) and as always, being defensive and countering can get a little boring too, while, if other side is not really watching your build, you should take the opportunity to attack before they're ready.

those are the fighter rush/hyper torp/hyper cap, but obviously they all have quite a bad weakness (maybe except fighter rush, but it depends so much on the size of the map), so people should be able to at least counter the latter two effectively... yes people should... that it should be lame doing those strats but it's never that lame, when it just keeps working.

Well obvously if you get rushed you have to counter emediately and abandon your own plans. If u counter his rush good tho, then ur likely to bash him back and win the game. HId, my point is that in most games you should be building up, and not just trying to follow your enemy, countering every ship they build.


I rarely lose to such old school strats. -_- Too easy to defend against those rushes - but why are u even bringing them up for our 2nd week guy here?....