Looking for Red Alert, Tiberian Sun, Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000 experts

FunkyFr3sh · February 6, 2015

Since we have a lot of new players and it takes too much time teaching them the tricks one by one I decided to show some hints every time a player joins a game room, would be nice if some of the old school players would share their knowledge so we can add these messages for all games we support. I started with Red Alert today and I already have a few lines written down, here is how it looks currently (the lobby picks a random line):

Red Alert

Soviets: Building 10 Construction Yards allows you to build Tesla Coils at the fastest possible speed

Soviets: Building 7 War-Factories allows you to build Heavy Tanks at the fastest possible speed

Soviets: Building 12 War-Factories allows you to build Mammoth Tanks at the fastest possible speed

Soviets: Building 5 War-Factories allows you to build V2-Rocket Launchers at the fastest possible speed

Allies: Building 4 Construction Yards allows you to build Turrets at the fastest possible speed

Allies: Building 6 War-Factories allows you to build Medium Tanks at the fastest possible speed

Allies: Building 5 War-Factories allows you to build Light Tanks at the fastest possible speed

Use the "Q" Hotkey to move and fire at the same time

Building 2 Barracks allows you to build Rocket Infantry at the fastest possible speed

Russia = 10% Cheaper, Ukraine = 10% Faster Ground-speed, all Allies Countries = 10% more Fire-power

Attacking from the South gives you a 1 Cell range advantage for certain units

Use the Bookmark Hotkeys to save up to 4 Positions on the map

Hold the shift button to select multiple defence structures and use it to stop people from base walking

Trade Construction Yards with your allies to gain the Technology from their faction

Gem Map Allies Tank Build: SmallPower Barracks Refinery 3xWarFactory AdvancedPower Refinery WarFactory Refinery 2xWarFactory Refinery AdvancedPower

Gem Map Soviet Tank Build: SmallPower Barracks Refinery 3xWarFactory AdvancedPower Refinery WarFactory Refinery 2xWarFactory Refinery WarFactory AdvancedPower

Infinite Ore Map Soviet Tank Build: SmallPower Barracks Refinery 2xWarFactory AdvancedPower 5xWarFactory Refinery Depot

Infinite Ore Map Allies Tank Build: SmallPower Barracks Refinery 2xWarFactory AdvancedPower 4xWarFactory Refinery Depot

Standard Map Build: SmallPower Barracks Refinery 2xWarFactory Refinery SmallPower 3xRefinery WarFactory

Sell all your buildings besides the Construction Yard when you lost all your power plants to be able to build fast again

Sell your Depot after building it to save power and you will still keep the Technology you gained from it

By using "alt+click" harvesters and other vehicles can crush infantries

Double click a factory building to turn it into the primary building used for your production

4 Engineers can steal an opponents building (3 when Aftermath is turned on)

Put your units on guard by pressing G to allow them to attack units in the area

You can sell units by placing them on your, service depot. Wait until the green dollar sign appears and click to sell the unit

Control your harvesters to eat the Ore/Gems nearest to the refinery for faster consumption and money

In a 2 player game without spectators the players will always have the biggest possible distance to each other (e.g. player1=bottom left->player2=top right)

Tiberian Sun

Use the "Q" Hotkey to move and fire at the same time or to make your units go to different locations one after another.

Building on Low Power is 50% slower.

A full harvester of green tiberium is worth 750$, a harvester of blue tiberium 1120$.

As long as the respective production building is alive, you don't need to keep technology buildings. You can sell them to get money and a couple of infantry back, and keep the building options.

A disruptor does more damage when shooting diagonally through buildings. If angled correctly, it can one-shot refineries and warfactories by "force firing" to the opposite corner.

By using "alt+click" harvesters and other vehicles can crush infantries, can even be combined with "Q".

Making a harvester in the warfactory costs 1400$, building a refinery and selling it afterwards costs only 1000$ and even leaves additional 5 infantry behind.

After giving your carryall the command to land on a unit, you can order that unit to fire at a target, so it will keep firing until the carryall lands. It will also start shooting right after being released again.

Orca-Bombers tend to waste a lot of bombs when being told to attack a building. You can "powerbomb" by flying them close to the building first, and then attacking it.

Use "ctrl+click" to force fire. Can be used on the ground to extend the range of disc men.

Select a production building and "alt+click" anywhere on the map to set a rally point for units produced in that building.

Three standing light infantries will kill a single light infantry walking by.

If you want to protect your base from disruptor drops with RPGs, place them a couple of cells apart, so that they cover each others blind spots.

Five banshees can one-shot a disruptor.

Ten banshees can destroy a main building (construction yard/warfactory/refinery) in one shot.

3 engineers can steal an opponents building when multi-engineer is on (you cannot steal an emp)

Put your units on guard by pressing G to allow them to attack units in the area

You can sell units by placing them on your, or your allies, service pad. Wait until the green dollar sign appears and click to sell the unit

Place a building underneathe a landing enemy carryall to temporarily prevent it from landing

Harvesters full of blue tiberium can be used as a 'harvest bomb' with enough damage to destroy a refinery or a war factory

Control your harvesters to eat the tiberium nearest to the refinery for faster consumption and money

The colours 'gold' and 'red' and 'pink' and 'purple' will result in opposite locations on the map Terrace. Pink will ALWAYS be bottom left or bottom right

Quick hotkey cheat-sheet.: R=repair, W=set waypoint, P=power down, F= Follow, V=view radar event, G= guard, D=deploy, Q=que unit, T=type of unit, E= select all units, H=view home, X=units scatter, S=units stop, A=ally your teammate, etc.....

If you place a devil's tongue right next to a building, the flame attack will do more damage to that building.

If you hijack an enemy's Subterranean APC when it is occupied by a Cyborg Commando, your enemy cannot build another "CC", until that sub is destroyed.

To get more money out of each tiberium field try eating the tiberium directly around the tib-tree FIRST because it will regenerate quickly.

There are many different "build orders" that a player can choose from, test new build orders to see how they hold up to other players' strategies.

If you are facing a NOD opponent you do not need to space out your buildings as much as when facing a GDI opponent, but you might want a sensory array and an EMP for subterranean units.

You can place defensive units on guard (G) to defend your base automatically while you are busy attacking your opponent.

By accessing the interface controls within the game, you can bookmark the enemy's base to a single keyboard command, which can save time scrolling across the map to see their base.

When you place component towers you can save money and build time by leaving them empty. When you are attacked you can quickly place a SAM,RPG, or Vulcan to defend your base.

NOD is usually better at mod maps because you can bunker down with SAMS and artillery near the tiberium. The solution to defeating a massive bunk is to outbuild and use a EMP.

In a team game, you can put engineers into a teammate's sub APC ...and... After you are defeated, your engineers will still be alive so you can grab your teammate's MCV in secrecy, hopefully.

A ghost can kill a carryall (carrying a mk2 or other unit) in one shot if you shoot the carryall right as it lands. You have to be sneaky to pull it off, try hiding behind buildings or under trees.

Stealth tanks do not shoot at units passing by unless you command them to, unlike many other units, so they are not very effective as defensive units.

Westwood maps and modded maps require completely different build strategies depending on the map's terrain, amount of tiberium, the number of players in the game, and many other things.

To automatically protect yourself from NOD's engineer rush you can put infantry around a building, use lasers at the corners, or use a waypointed bomber defense.

If you have 2 harvesters and 1 refinery, you can fill the first harvester up to 3 bars and send it back to the refinery so that by the time it's done, the second harvester is on its way back, this can reduce harvester wait time temporarily.

Waypoints are very useful in TS. They can be used to auto-engineer buildings, set up a bomber defense (GDI), or to use harpies to individually auto-shoot infantry.

You can automatically reload your planes by placing one of your waypoints (in a waypoint loop) on a helipad.

You can follow harvesters (or any other unit) with protection units using the F key.

A sneaky way to kill your opponent's harvesters is to hijack it first then kill it with a Cyborg Commando. After you steal the "harv", your enemy won't be warned when you start killing it.

It takes 7 shots from a titan to kill a disruptor, this means that 3 titans can kill a normal "diz" attack, and 4 titans can kill a one-shot "diz" attack.

Subterannean units can surface directly under an engineer to kill it. This is done with the ALT button and can be a great way to clear the way for a banshee attack.

Pavement can be useful to protect your engineers from underground units "ALTing" up under them, but it is expensive, especially on a westwood map like terraces.

In a team game, if you are broke and can't afford a tiberium refinery, build a silo and send your harvester to your teammate's refinery. This will allow you to make money without having your own refinery. (Note: your teammate must manually stop his harvesters for this to work or else they will block the refinery from you using it)

If you want to become elite and beat pros, you better get good at simultaneously managing attack, defense, out-building, and harvester control.

Try to think of every engagement in terms of how much money or build time you are trading with your opponent. Was that diz attack really worth it if they sold the refinery and your diz died?

3 bombers can take out a refinery if you attack it diagonally.

3 titans can kill a 1-shot disruptor ONLY if you CNTRL fire on the carryall as it is in flight, then switch to shooting the disruptor after it has landed. (hard to pull off)

You can kill a full health MCV base with a multi-missile by placing the "missile-pointer" just to the top left of the middle fan on top of the MCV, you must also time the missile so that the pointer points to your missile silo when you launch it.

If you have scouted around an enemy but not in his base, you can use the "S" button to stop a sub unit under their base. This is an example of what is known as "cross-scouting".

You can hijack an enemy's harvester full of blue tiberium and use it to bomb your opponent. Try to steal a full one that is already heading back to their refinery.

You can draw out your enemy's defensive units by attacking their harvesters, which will leave their base less heavily guarded and ripe for attack.

If your enemy is well bunked with sams, you can always send an orca, JJ, or carry-all in front of your main air attack so that they draw all the fire from his/her sams.

In a Forest Fires game (8-players), each starting position has a unique job. TL&TM: destroy the bridge in top middle. LM/RM/TR/BL: attack quickly/scout BM&BR: guard the bottleneck at the bottom right of map and make defenses. (T=top M=middle B=Bottom L=left R=right)

If you destroy a bridge with units on it, the units will fall into the water and die. (-Bridges Destroyable- must be turned on in the game settings for this to work)

Mixing units when you attack can confuse your opponent. For example: Try sending several Titans to your opponent before you send a Disruptor so that they get to your opponent at the same time.

Try attacking your opponent while he is distracted, a human can only multi-task so much, and attacking a distracted opponent gives you a small window of time to do more damage.

If you EMP a carryall that is landed on a unit, both the unit and carryall will die….also… if you emp water born units like a GDI APC or hover-MRLS, they will sink in the water and die.

The most effective way to bomb (GDI bomber) a bunch of Titans is to wait until the Titans get to your base and group up in order to attack you. When the titans group up, bomb them from behind… towards your base. Bombing in this way will maximize the number of bombs that hit the Titans.

You can NOT repair your GDI bombers on an ally's GDI service depot

To see more of the map and more build options on the right side of your screen while playing, you can change your screen resolution to the maximum that your PC screen will allow. To do this go to... > Main Lobby > Settings > Game Settings > Tibsun Config > Video Screen Resolution (Change the dimensions to the size of your PC screen)

There are a lot of options in the lobby to choose from when you start a game; however, all pros use the same settings for tournament style….. Bases=ON, Allies Allowed=ON, Bridges Destroyable=ON, Short Game=ON, Multi-Engineer= ON, Speed=7, Credits =$10,000, Unit Count =0, Tech Level = 10

When you ban someone from your game, they can NOT rejoin your lobby. Instead.. try kicking them so they can rejoin later if they were AFK. This is done by typing the following: /kick UserName

You can make an opponent kill his own buildings by surfacing a subterranean NOD unit (within firing range of his units), then diving, and moving under his target building back and forth, while staying underground. They must have a sensory array deployed for this to work. The way you counter this attack is by un-deploying your sensory array.

Dune 2000

You can get rid of "Silo needed" message without building silos: if you have a starport, purchase as many vehicles as there are available (preferably MCVs), then CANCEL the order. Refinery storage will empty, therefore silos are not needed.

Sonic Tanks can have a small range boost through force firing: to do so, select a Sonic Tank, then hold down CTRL and click on the ground, in the direction towards enemy units. This will slowly damage enemy units, even if they are normally out of sonic's range.

A good way to break through a Sonic Tank group is to use the harvester decoy tactic: mix in a few harvs in your group of units and send them in the enemy units first; sonics will try to hit harvs, and will start doing friendly damage while your units can move in and attack them.

Building 3 barracks, factories or Construction Yards gives you the fastest corresponding production speed. Building more Starports or Palaces does NOT increase production speed.

In 8 min no rush ruleset, the best economy build is 4 refineries with 3 harvs per each.

Concrete allows you to build close to it, even if you don't have an actual building in that region. Therefore, deploying a Construction Yard to an expansion and selling it still allows you to build there as long as concrete doesn't get removed.

Sardaukars damage enemy vehicles when they are ran over.

While concrete makes your buildings have full HP, they also delay your build order, which can cause you waste a lot of time that the enemy can take advantage of. In early game it is recommended NOT to build concrete, do it only for Wind Traps, to get full power. Late game concrete is fine, since once you're teched up and have completed your build order it doesn't delay anything anymore.

In 8 min no rush, always move out your units once you have a decent amount of them. Try to get map control, hold certain positions and don't let your enemy get into your territory.

Always have a mixed army: don't all-out-mass Combat Tanks, Quads and Troopers, mix some Siege Tanks and Missile Tanks in too, as they fill certain roles the first three can't.

Tiberian Dawn

Make sure to group your air units onto a team by pushing 'ctrl 1-9', because they cannot be selected, by clicking, while flying.

If you hear 'silos needed' just build a helipad and cancel it, the used credits are no longer counted towards silos and you get all the money back.

If you're having trouble keeping your weapons factory alive against Nod recon bikes, try putting grenadiers around it.

If GDI tanks keep destroying all your Nod tanks, build recon bikes instead, they are a direct counter to the medium tank, even in a head on fight.

Push the "X" key to make all selected units scatter in a random direction. This is very useful for quickly getting your troops out of the way of a tank trying to crush them. Just put the infantry on a team "ctrl 1-9", select them quickly and tap "X" once or even twice.

Try spreading your troops out so that splash attacks from Flame or High Explosive weapons don't do as much damage, it can help them to not get crushed by tanks, also.

If you're Nod and spawn on the western side of a map (left side), make sure to place your Airstrip as far to the East (right) as you can, to stop your units from being build delayed. Building a second airstrip will completely solve this problem.

If your airstrip is too far to the West and has a build delay and you find that a unit will just say 'ready' on the side bar, wait until EVA says "Reinforcements have arrived" (when the last unit is dropped off) and then click the 'ready' unit on the sidebar to call in the next plane.

4 Apaches can destroy a construction yard in 1 run, even if it's being repaired.

4 Orca can destroy a Weapons Factory in 1 run, even if it's being repaired, 3 if it's not.

Troops, base defenses and Communications centers can all detect stealth, when the stealth unit is on an adjacent cell. You can also detect stealth if one of your units collides with a stealth unit. Use groups of fast units to move around an area where you think there's a stealth unit to try and collide with it. You can also hold "ctrl" to force fire on a cell where you think a stealth unit is hidden.

No unit is 'bad' in Tiberian Dawn. If your opponent uses a new strategy with units you're not used to dealing with, think about what units have an effective weapons against the units you're facing.

Starting with more than 10,000 credits often means players will spam helipads at the start of the match, because they build at the speed of a 300 credit structure and the orca/apache can then be used to snipe the Construction Yard etc. Try to avoid starting with more than 10,000 starting credits. Note: Turning on 'separate helipad' doesn't fix this, because air units can be produced faster for each helipad you own.

Refineries and Helipads build faster than other buildings in regards to how much they cost. A refinery cost 2000 but builds at the speed of a 600 credit building and a Helipad costs 1500 and builds at the speed of a 300 credit building.

To tell your large vehicles to crush enemy troops, select them, hold 'alt' and click on the enemy infantry.

bmoeller · February 7, 2015

This is a good post.

Soviets: Building 7 War-Factories allows you to build Heavy Tanks at the fastest possible speed

I had no idea about this. I thought 7 maxed you out on all the units.

I would like to see your building order on all the different type of maps such as unlimited ore, gems only and so on, if you would be so kind to share.

Sol · February 9, 2015

feel free to change grammar in case its wrong.

i will keep adding these as they come to mind

Tiberian Sun:

Attacking from the South gives you a 1 Cell range advantage for certain units. (I think this is also true for Tiberian Sun, maybe someone can confirm this. I am pretty sure I have read something like that somewhere.)

Use the "Q" Hotkey to move and fire at the same time or to make your units go to different locations one after another.

Building on Low Power is 50% slower.

A full harvester of green tiberium is worth 700$, a harvester of blue tiberium 1000$.

As long as the respective production building is alive, you dont need to keep technology buildings. You can sell them to get money and a couple of infantry back, and keep the building options.