Don't be afraid to spend a few units, when attacking a heavily defended planet, you're bound to lose lots of units, unless you sit back and bombing run spam, which sometimes even that isn't viable, and is always boring if it is viable. Make sure to clear out an area before you leave, and don't assume just because you've already been to an area that enemy units cannot come from that direction. Use bombing runs to clear clumps of units or heavy defenses (or both, preferably) remember that even your AT-ATs are much cheaper and faster to replace than a capital ship, and can be built in far more places.
I'm not saying you should suicide units all the time, obviously, but sometimes it is necessary to send your units into a battle you know they cannot win in order to ensure the next group will succeed where they failed. Use fast units like scouts or air units to figure out where enemy concentrations are, and hit them, or avoid them if you do not have the force strength to challenge them yet (i.e if you don't have enough reinforcement points). Generally, if you don't know what you are up against, medium tanks are a good option, they can tackle most things, but are fast enough to get away if they cannot win. Try to use a well rounded force, spamming of one unit type is sometimes viable or even desirable, but other times you might run into a bunch of hard counters and get annihilated. Basically, if you only take one thing away from this, scout out your enemy, and know what units you are going to use to do what beforehand, and use the unit types you need to accomplish those goals accordingly.
Also remember that there's a lot more things to consider in land than there are in space. In space, you worry about the enemy, and where their units are, and where your units are in relation, and occasionally nebulae and asteroid fields come into play, but for the most part, those are a non factor.
On land, you have different elevation, build pad structures, choke points, hills which some units can shoot over but others can't, areas that only certain unit types can cross through I.E. water, narrow foot paths, etc. Listen to what the little hologram guy says, most of the time its just LOL FOR THE REBELLION/EMPIRE etc, but they do offer useful strategies from time to time. For instance, the rebel guy will say "use the terrain to your advantage!". Do this. On land you can outflank enemy units, and depending on the unit type and units used to do so, this can be extremely effective and even turn the tide of a battle.
For example, let's say you're playing as NR, and you're scouting with some T-2Bs, and let's also say you only have 3 reinforcement points available, one of which is spent on the T-2Bs, one on infantry to capture points, and one on some T-3Bs, which are holding down the fort at your landing zone till you can locate a good place to establish a foothold. They come across an AT-AT just across a river, there is a small path for units to cross, but the river itself extends considerably farther.
Now in a straight up fight you're probably going to need at least 2-3 companies of T-2Bs to even think about taking this thing down, so fighting it head on is not an option. We've eliminated that one, so what are our other options? Flee, this is a perfectly viable option, though in a land battle you want to try to seize the advantage as quickly as possible (just don't rush) so that you can get more troops landed and form an effective fighting force, besides, you're going to have to deal with the AT-AT sometime, why not now? Our third option is don't fight fair. Let's assume the bank of the river is low, low enough to where your T-2Bs can drive over it. What you'll probably want to do is to flee a short distance, then go down the river a ways enough to be out of the AT-AT's sight range, then drive over the river, since your T-2Bs can hover, and get around behind the AT-AT. As you may well know, the AT-AT has a decent forward movement speed, but its turn rate and acceleration are abysmal due to its 4 legged design. You can simply put your T-2Bs behind the AT-AT and as long as you micromanage them properly to where they stay behind it, they can fire at it with impunity till it is destroyed. You can do the same thing with hills, and pretty much any terrain feature that actually affects unit movement.
Basically, try to know the strengths and weaknesses of each unit, both friend and foe, and learn how best the strengths of your units can be used to exploit the weaknesses of the enemy units. Against a player, this also applies in reverse as well, as they will probably be trying to do the same thing to you, so you should be on guard against likely strategies if possible. This all comes through experience, so don't be ashamed if you lose a bunch of units at first, and there are some situations where you are going to lose units regardless. Also, remember retreat is a viable option at times, if you find a world is much more heavily defended than you expected, it may be a good idea to retreat to avoid huge casualties.
Topic: ground (Read 2217 times)