Absolute Annihilation/Units

Some basic hints and tips for various units:

Bold textDefensive StructuresBold text

Light Laser Tower: Very cheap defensive structure that you should build early and often. Will stop those pesky players who like to send small squads a minute or two in the game from doing damage to your economy that you may never require from. This unit is good against light fast ground forces. It can be easily outranged by many units. It is weak against air, but does hit sometimes. Often refered to abbreviated as llt.

Defender/Pulveriser: Very cheap defensive structure. It can provide protection against early air rushes. Does not need to be built as early as llts, as building an air force is slower. Will take out level 1 fighters and level 1 brawlers easily. Effective against level 1 bombers, but several are needed if the opponent attacks in nubers. Not effective defence against level 2 air, and quite easy to destroy. Italic textWill not shoot at land units.Italic text Often abbreviated as mt.

Heavy laser towers: Moderately expensive defensive structure. Longer range and harder hitting than a light laser tower, can do serious damage to even level 2 attackers. Effective against land but not air. Can be outranged by longer ranged, level 2 units. Often abbreviated hlt.

Guardian: Expensive plasma cannons. Quite a long range and pack a fair bit of punch. Many games begin with an expansion phase with players marking out territory. Once the territories start to clash meet in the middle, you can almost guarantee that one or both players will start building plasma cannons. These can then kill all the llts and hlts in the opponents front line. Once a cannon is completed it will start shelling the opposing position if within range, without them being able to return fire.

The normal reaction is then for the enemy to rush at the guardian with all available nearby units. An inexperienced player may find he has not adequately protected his guardian with llts and/or llts, and loses a unit that cost a large amount of resource to build. Other players have built an adequate protection, and find that as well as being able to destroy a number of opposing fixed structure, they also destroy a number of mobile units that attempt to kill the guardian, and which can then be reclaimed for metal. In some circumstances it may be better to retrate from a guardian, rather than increasing your losses in a futile counter attack.