Spring guide
‘’Keep in mind that spring still is a beta , therefore crashes happen (a lot) and we (well, not me!) haven’t got everything fixed out yet.’’
Before we start, let’s have some background info.
TA: so what's so cool about this game ?
[warning, boring info that doesn’t really mean anything]
TA was created by Cavedog (R.I.P) in 1997, about half a year before Starcraft was released. It was revolutionary in many ways, with 3D graphics (but a fixed camera) good animations (aircraft barrel rolled and leaned when they turned etc.), 3D terrain and many units (150 in the original game). But in my not so humble opinion, the 3 greatest things that set TA apart were...
- Its physics ! Every shot trajectory was calculated ! An artillery shell could try to get over a hill and hit an aircraft, which exploded into bits, damaging other troops nearby, which could also explode and set forests in fire. Yeah, might not sound that big after 7 years, but back then we had Starcraft, who defied at least a half dozen physics laws.
(Example of the tentacle true space. Yea, really realistic) Click here
- The order system ! You could have 300 units waiting to be built, and when they are done, they could go and patrol an area and attack anyone in it. Order queues were limitless. You could build your whole base and drink tea while it was getting built. Construction units on patrol would repair damaged units, help build things and reclaim (sucking it in and transforming it into recourses.) stuff.
- The resources system ! Contrarily to other RTS games, the resources in TA are infinite. What limits resource consumption is the rate at which they can be gathered. This sole fact would make for longer and more epic games, with hundreds or thousands of units fighting in the endgame.
Pretty cool game. If you want, check out their old website for more info. Click here
[/warning, boring info that doesn’t really mean anything]
Anyway, enough with my rambling, onto Spring!
Now, as I told you, Spring is a remake of TA and has the same stuff TA had. Plus a few new things… check out Spring features page for more info. Click here
Resources
There are two types of resources in spring, namely metal and energy. Both are gathered continually. In the upper corner of the screen, there is a bar and some numbers showing how much you are gathering/consuming. Units and building cost both metal and energy, while some units/building require energy to walk, shoot or operate in general.
Metal is gained from either using metal extractors (often called mexxes) to extract from certain areas of the map or by using metal makers that transform energy into metal. Metal making requires a lot of energy though. A faster way to produce resources is to reclaim stuff by sucking it in and transforming it (corpses is the most common source of metal, but you can also reclaim trees to gather energy).
Energy is made by different buildings, or reclaimed. There are many different types of energy producers, but i'll cover them in later.
In a game, always keep an eye on your metal and energy bar, because if one of them goes to zero, your building rate will stall, and some units will start to dysfunction.
A Normal Spring Game
Anyway, now you will learn the basics of a normal Spring game, as I see it. Every Spring game starts with all players only having…
The COMMANDER! (Insert DUN DUN DUUUUUNN)
The Commander is the unit you start with and the most important one in game. He is unique and cannot be rebuilt. In fact, there is a mode where the game ends when the commander dies, so never leave him alone.
The fastest builder, he can walk and build under water, he makes a nuke sized explosion when he dies, he has a laser and the privilege of a Disintegrator gun (alias D-Gun). The D-gun is the single most powerful weapon in the whole game, which kills ANY (ANY, I mean it!) unit in one hit (friend or foe no difference, be careful!). Even if that sounds a little overkill, keep in mind that the Commander has a very limited range, is defenceless against any aircraft and long range artillery and when he is immerged, he cannot shoot. (Subs! Onoz!)
The Commander is used for setting up a base, and early base defences. The D-gun kills should protect him against any level 1 unit that tries to kill him, so if you lose your commander in the beginning of the game… then your dead. You lose your best (only?) builder and attacker, plus you have a nuke size explosion that may destroy half (all?) of your base.
Anyway… if you're seeing everything in a top down perspective, click the commander (Ctrl+c if you can't find him) with left mouse button to select him.
(If you have a crosshair as a mouse, press j. If your camera is ZOOMED out or all jerky, press ctrl+j until you find OTA camera.)
Okay, let’s discuss how to build stuff.
Like any normal RTS, it’s choose and click location. But there is more with Spring. Hold shift and click on different locations to make the unit build the same building there. Hold shift and drag and you will make a line of the building. Hold ctrl and shift to make boxes/rectangular shapes of buildings. Use these ! Make a line of DT instead of click each and everyone. The controls are there to help you. This is called queuing up stuff. You can use almost every single command in a queue. Buildings can be queue to build lots of different units, and then the other orders in the behaviour of the unit. You can make them walk to something, or guard/follow a unit by pressing G and selecting the unit to guard. Try it. Selecting a unit and pressing shift key will show the orders queue.
Build 2 solar generators, or 4 wind generators. Keep in mind that wind is pretty unstable, and that some maps (like moon ones) have no wind at all ! (The level of wind in the map is indicated in the Map Selector in the Lobby).
Now select the metal extractors and the whole screen turns black and green. Okay, place one on the green stuff. (The greener, the better! Like broccoli!)
The TA bestiary
Okay, time to describe the cool units that are at your disposal to make your enemies bleed. 8)
(Disclaimer : This will discuss the types of units, not every unit. Therefore, if I say that vehicles have large armour, I don’t mean artillery of course.)
On to the first level 1 lab/plant to build. The categories are…
Vehicles
These babies are all about armour. The level 1 units are pretty basic, with more armour then their k-bot counter parts. Level 2 shows even more of the same pattern, better armour then their k-bot counter part. Level 2 also has the mobile flak unit, which is the only real level 2 mobile AA. Their weakness is that they are clumsy, turn slow and can’t climb mountains… at all. Leads to trouble when an explosion makes a crater, unit survives but it gets stuck in the crater. Or just when they are trying to get up a step hill.
K-Bots
K-bots are generally slower then tanks, and with less armour. So why build them in the first place? K-bots are cheaper! Since they are cheaper, you can build more. Even if 1 K-bot maybe weaker with one lone tank, many K-bots are stronger. This doesn’t work out that good in game thou, since tanks ARE stronger. K-bots are also smaller, and will slip true DT and such alike easier then tanks. And finally, the third advantage (which IMO is the biggest) of K-bots are that they can climb most mountains with ease! Climb by defences, up on mountains, true holes. Mostly no problem, but even k-bots can’t climb anything. But they are much better then the vehicles at this.
Aircrafts
Planes are planes. In spring, there’s a plane for every role. Bombers, fighters, gunships, flying radar, transports, stealth fighters and torpedo bombers. Planes are fast, and are not effected by terrain. There is no wall or alike that can stop a plane. You can just swoop in a base and take out AA with your gunship, and then bomb the crap out of their important structures. To stop em, you got to rely on Anti Air (AA). That’s the planes weakness off course, they are the only units that have an anti unit against em. (Except subs)When someone finds out your building a large air fleet, they just cram their base full of AA and their army with mobile AA. And the only counter is more planes then their AA can handle, or a ground troop to take the AA down. Good luck!
Ships
Ships are good on a map with water. (DUH!) Ships come in many different kinds, but mostly for taking out other ships or bombing the crap out of land units some way or another. The ships strength is that they have long range. All ships made to take out land, has long range. Ships have lots of armour. Another thing that’s good about ships is that there is not much you can do to stop em. Once you se that the enemy has ships, either build a dock and a navy real fast or build planes and pray that he doesn’t have many AA ships. Their weakness is that they are confined to water, therefore they often stuck in water with units just outside their reach. And they are expensive.
Hovercrafts
(These are counted as level 2 units, so I would not recommend them as the first to build unless it’s the perfect map for them)
Hovercrafts are a tank and a plane (some say ship, but I find planes to be more accurate for some reason O.o) mixed. Sure it’s weaker then your average tank, and slower then your average plane. So why build them at all? Okay, picture this. You’re playing a swampy maps with many transitions from water to land... Since your enemy knows that the only good thing to do is to go air, since the water way is very hard to take and land is impossible, he crams his base full with AA and builds lots of planes. Then your army hovers over land and sea, and takes down his whole base. Long story short, Hovercrafts are good for those who like (or must) attack from the ground, but can’t since there is water. And their weakness is their low climbing ability, and that’s its weaker then a tank but slower then a plane. (Don’t build on a land map, tanks ARE better.)
The first steps
Now comes the tricky part. The first minute is always the same really, so what after that? Well, it’s hard to judge. But here are some paths to take.
1. Build many construction units and send them out to build mexxes and Geos. Then a defence and maybe some DT.
2. Build some construction units, and then start building defences. Follow the ‘’line defence’’ guide lines. Build fusions and metal makers, then an army. After that, use the army how armies are used best. This strategy is called PORCHING, and is considered by many as BAD. And, there are disadvantages with this. You can’t use many metal extractors or geos, so you have slim to none recourses to build your base. A popular strategy is to kill the anti-nuke, and then blow the whole compact base to bits.
3. Build a small army of 3-6 units and attack the enemy. The goal isn’t to kill him, but to do as much damage to his resources and hinder his economy. Mexxes are the most important, and then look for wind or solar generators. Try to keep on attacking him, but remember to still tech up and build defences.
Anyway, use your construct units to build defences of SOME kind. Take advantage of Geothermal gases. Yea the smoking stuff. You can place Geo plants there for good, cheap and space saving energy. If you’re expanding, use every Mex' positions, and try to find a place to settle your defence line.
When you can defend yourself from most level 1 units, start on your level 2 building.
When it’s done, ALWAYS build a construction unit first. Use it for your first mini fusion. (Or build some mobile fusion at the vehicle plant if you're Arm) Build level 2 units in the meantime. Low on metal? Upgrade the finest of your Mexxes to Moho Mexxes. They are bigger and better (but they suck up energy). You can also build a Moho metal maker if you have enough energy to support it. (MMM :p) Okay, if you made this far, you must really start thinking about how to defeat the enemy. Look for his weak spot. Maybe a K-bot assault from the mountains ? Maybe planes. Maybe using amphibious units. That part is for you to figure out.
STRATEGY
I read this guide through, and suddenly realised…
where is the strategy?
So I fiddled this section up. Hope you'll learn something from it and increase your Spring gaming experience.
DEFENCE
Ah… the overall defence. There are many different ways of making a good defence, but there are 3 main categories.
Compact defence!
The most common type of defence. Is a single line of defence, often with DT in front. Inside your base is some AA, and that’s about it. The good thing about this is that it’s pretty easy and fast to set up, and you know where your territory ends, which can make the game much easier. Problem is, if something makes it past the line of defence, then you’re screwed. Unless you’re building line after line of defence, or have some units to stop em.
Spread out defence!
I saw a guy pull this off one time, and he won with large margin. The trick with this is to never really have a defined line of defence, just a HLT here, a radar there, some DT there, a mine here and there… Basically, you expand every time you build a defence building, so in the end you have ENORMOUS space to move in. Since the defence is spread out, you can have some units hide behind mountains and attack. He used merls who he trapped in fortification walls. I tried to run past the defence with an army of 30 bulldogs. He’s HLT and missile and plasma batteries stop me before I even reached his final defence line. Even thou this defence are the best of em all, it’s hard to build up, and requires lots off recourses and time. IF you’re able to pull it off, the only problem may be if they are fast enough to run by it all, or if you don’t have much AA and 30 brawlers are coming…
No defence… at all?
Yes, this is an option. Okay, you may want some mines here and there, and some DT to stop em from running right true the door and AA in your base if their building planes. But how do you defend with no defence? with units. The whole concept is that you put all your effort on making units. This works pretty well, since you can look where the enemy is going to attack, you can MOVE your whole defence to that location. The problem with this defence, is that when you are attacking, you lose most of your defence. Sure you can leave units behind, but I find it hard mentally to leave half the army at home when i am attacking. If you manage to pull this off, and make enough units to both attack and defend, then you have not wasted any money on defence, and you have a strong army!
That’s all I know of.
Also, one thing to remember is to eliminate the largest threat first. If you’re relying on DT, take out the FARK or construction planes first. WEAKNESS
Okay, you built a good defence You must get into the mind of your enemy, and find the weakness of your defence. Take a 4 second look true the enemy’s eyes that just scouted the area. How would you attack something like this?
- well, I would try a gunship raid or attack from those undefended mountains…’’
Then prevent that from happening, by reinforcing the area.
MOVING
Moving or attacking is pretty easy right? Just move from point a to point b and attack c… Nope, not if you like your units be First, you have to have your units move TOGETHER. . If some are trailing behind, then you just have to wait a lithe for them. I heard that if holding ctrl while telling the units to move, they try to stick together. Don’t know how much of that is true. A way of having your units stick together is to take a pretty slow unit, like a Can and have others guard it. Transports are useful for moving units, but use the air transport (valkery /atlas). The other ones are pretty hard to use, since it takes more time to load/unload
ATTACKING
When attacking, remember what the unit role in the fight is. Fark are used to heal your wounded important units or. Bulldogs are meant to take damage and give damage back. Merls are used to shot missiles from distance, and doesn’t require a clear path. The question is what to heal. Merls die quickly, so one shot= dead can mean that the healing could be used on a bulldog instead. Therefore try to heal the middle mans. Not the giant hp monsters, not the weak defence strong/useful attack. Mobile artillery has enough hp to survive one or two attacks. Heal them so they stay alive.
ARMY VS ARMY
Many units attacking one unit is the best thing you can do, as if you kill one of theirs, they lose one source of fire power. Focus fire is the important. Using focus fire in a group of easy killed units is very effective. Using em all on the HP power houses is less effective. When you’re facing an army, always try to attack from behind or the side. Keep your units a little spread out when attacking. Not to far, but just so that area weapons don’t do as much damage. Have your HP powerhouses at the front, or at the front plus sides. Keep em pretty close thou but not to. On one hand, having them spread out makes it easier for the units behind to attack, on the other hand you don’t want zippers and pyros running past them and flaming up everything. This is the normal way off attacking the army. There is the classical pincher movement to… In this, you run one third of your Hp powerhouses go to the left, one to the right and have one stay where there are. This gives you 3 advantages. It easier to get past the units and attack their weak units or just run past them into the base, you do more damage, since their units will have to change their target all the time and cant escape and it makes it MUCH harder for enemy to run away or try to get past you.
ARMY VS BASE
Okay, you may have made it past the ground troops, but the fight is not over. (Unless he used unit’s to defend, and didn’t have any backup ones) Now you must face his base defence, and depending on the type of the defence he has…
Line defence
Gather your army and set up for battle a bit away from his base, and get ready to move in. Have the FARKS guard your main HP power houses, so they are in the front but still can hide behind em. Everything else behind that. When attacking, have several units attacking the HLT and plasma batteries, and use the FARKS to reclaim his DT. When you have a hole in it, just run like a maniac into the heart of the base. Spilt your tanks in 2 groups, 1 guarding your long range/high damage units and the let the other go lose into the heart of the base. Find the Fusion plants with your second group of tanks, and try to move the other big group to a place that is easy to defend while hitting the fusions. Behind buildings is perfect! Kill as much as you can in short, or kill all^^ If there are several lines of defence, do the same thing as normal but reread it from the begging when you read ‘’once a hole in the defence’’.
Spread out defence
Agh… The thought one. While the individual towers are easy to beat, you can’t run past his defences unless you like suicide. (And if you do, Ctrl+a and then ctrl+d will do the trick. A slice over the wrist works to.) This is when you have to have penitence. Use your army, and slowly start killing the defence. Step by step, defence structure by defence structure. Keep Building units, and moving them to the fray (you can use Air transports with repeat command and make em drop the units a lithe bit away from the fight). Once you start getting close to his Last line of defence, think of it as a line defence.
Units defence
Think army vs army. Don’t rush past em with all your units. Your units will spread out and try to go true holes in the enemy’s formation. In short, they are dead meat. If you MUST get to the base, have half of the tanks go round the units.
NAVAL BATTLES
Naval battles are hard to predict if you don’t play island maps a lot, since there many factors to take into play. Since land units are removed, you have to think in a WHOLE new perspective. No land means that only Sea, Air and hover units can fight (and LRCP off course). Anyway, try to have air units scouting land and sea, and looking how much AA the enemy. Ships roam around assaulting other ships, with a mix of subs, sub killers, AA ships and normal ships. Hover crafts should be the thing to use when assaulting land that’s a little far from shore. Have em escorted with planes or ships (or both).
SHIPS
When using ships, have scout ships or planes scout the area in front, then subs and sub killers front. Use Long range ships at the sides to protect anything off value you might have with you (a sea transport or an air craft carrier). When in battle, try to have the subs run away from sub killers, while your sub killers kill the enemy subs. Your subs should try to attack the most important ship they have, and then just go crazy. When facing land, you’re pretty much in for an easy win. Just have your ships blow it all up. If you face LRCP, take them out first. The rest of it is out of your hands.
HOVERCRAFTS
Use the ARMY VS ARMY or ARMY VS BASE strategy here.
PLANES
Hohoho, planes. Fun stuff to attack with. Anyway, the most stuff is basic with planes. First, always attack the AA first. Unless your are going to do a suicide mission. Kill the AA with gunships, and use bombers to kill structures. Many players use gunships only, with is pretty wrong. Bombers with gunships make a very good job. Okay, these are the planes and the roles off attacking with em. Scouts, so you can fast see WHAT the enemy has and WHERE he has it. Use gunships to take out AA and overall decoys. Have Bombers fly in and bomb the crap out off his fusion or whatever you’re targeting and fighters guarding the bombers. When facing units, do the same. When facing sea, do the same thing, just add Torpedo to bombers and gunships.
USING TERRAIN
Using terrain is pretty important. Many things benefit from thinking smart. First, LOS and RADAR. Both are blocked by terrain. So put you radar as high as possibly, other wise you may just don’t see anything. Use this, by hiding behind mountains when gathering an army or just trying to hide an important building. Terrain should also be able to shield your units. Therefore, when you’re building something high on top of something, try placing it a little behind the top. This is like crouching behind a crate when just your head and gun sticks up. The best usage of terrain is the Climbing ability of some units, Units like hovercrafts and vehicles have pretty low climbing ability, and they are used pretty often. Therefore, k-bots can be used to get by line defence with DT. Another good thing about terrain is that it mentally makes you feel safe. If there is a water barrier between me and the enemy, with 3 land bridges here and there, he probably won’t have any ground defence at a location AWAY from the bridges. Presuming the map is pretty flat (like flooded desert) a hovercraft assault would do A LOT of damage, right?
LRPC
Long range plasma cannon… We are talking Big berthas, intimidators and such alike. These babies got the RANGE and may be the ultimate weapon on small maps. There are 3 different kinds.
Pop-up Pop-up cannons are pretty cheap middle range gun. A guardian can outshoot them, but they are still a choice to use. When ‘’off’’ they take 50% less damage! I heard that a closed popup can withstand a nuke! (If it’s not a direct hit) In xta you can build em with level 1 construction k-bot or whatever. Sometimes individual wars between 2 or 4 pop ups break out, where both sides try to kill the others one. Just remember to repair them, as with all PC…
Middle range (MRPC) Guardians and such alike. These aren’t for attacking, they have a pretty long range, and are pretty cheap. Plus their targeting is pretty fast, meaning they are practically made for defence. Perfect to have on a hill close to a HLT and some MT…
LRCP The big bertha, yea. Not the ultimate, but several times cheaper and more accurate then a Buzz Saw/Vulcan. Not good at defending, since their slow targeting makes it impossible to hit moving targets. Try to build one on small maps, or just build one close to the enemy. In fact, build several, with a lot of AA around em (and ground, if that’s possible. A LRPC expansion is very useful and can sometimes become the winnig factor of a game.
Very long range (VLRCP) Buzzsaws are big, cost much, and VERY inaccurate and are pretty flow on targeting. But, they have the DOUBLE range of a normal LRCP and shoot 4(!!!) shots a time. This is the one thing to finish those uber porckers. Defend these well, with lots of AA around and in a wide circle. They only have about 5000 hp, so killing em easy is you don’t have AA… In OTA however Vulcans/Buzzsaws have the SAME range as LRPCs so LRPCs are generally better because they are sooo cheap and each are a seperate entity with a fair bit of life
The obvious way to kill LRPC is to use planes, since they are fast to enter and kill it all. Also, LRPC drain A LOT of energy when firing... hint hint
ENERGY AND ALL THE PROBLEMS with IT
As i said before, most level 2 units reqwire energy to move, shoot and operate general. Meaning that if you have no energy to support your army, you can't do anything! You can use this in your favor, by attacking his fusions, or by giving metal makers to your enemy when you are attacking him, or he is attacking you! Things that drain a lot of energy include LRPC, goliaths, HLT, and most level 2 units.
PAPER-ROCK-SCISSOR
Try to look at all units as induvidual. Even if i myself dint write much about the single one of the units, know your favorites. The only real paper-rock relation ships are AA and planes... Maybe subs vs sub killers...
Strategy Tips
-Resource ladder is pretty important… (Yes, I made ‘’ladder’’ up) Do transitions from solar generators to fusion step wise. First solar, then geo, then mobile/mini fusion then fusion.
-SCOUT! Know your enemy! Check what he has, and what he is building. Look for weakness in defence and such alike. If your or your ally is scouting, don’t look away. Gather as much information as possible.
-Radar = GOOD^^. Radar checks areas for units, increases your units LOS and is overall helpful. Radar makes a big different when attacking. But so is Jamming. Jamming is good for sneak attacks, or attacks that are a lithe surprising. They are cheap, so just build one and make your units guard it.
-WORK TOGETHER! Often I see allies who just mind their own business and don’t care what the other persons saying. DON’T… DO… THIS!!! Listen to each other, make up a plan. A plan can be a sentence if you want. Like ‘’I’m going land, can you make air?’’ or something. Do attacks TOGETHER. If there is a 2v2, then it’s 2 allies’ vs 2 allies. Not a ffa with neutral partners. h=share units. left click on the bars to autoshare resources with allies
-Queue (yea, easy word for it to:/) up orders! You can almost win the game by pausing, queuing up some stuff, and then go eat lunch. Not really, but holding shift is good whilst clicking (queues 5 units at once)
-Guard = following and protection. Use planes to guard your tanks, and subs to guard your transports so on. Then they will choose to attack whatever is hurting their guard object first. You can even do this to structures, for units who are built to move to a unit’s position or AA to attack whatever is shooting on the fusions ect… Overall, this makes working with several unit types easier.
-Reclaim stuff. (sucking it in and transforming it into recourses) when your starting to run low on metal, reclaim your enemy’s and your own corpses. Trees give energy, so if you’re out on energy in the beginning...
-The key for porchers are to build LRPC. Or even better, build a nuke and use LOTSA planes to kill his anti-nuke. Then BOOM! ^.^
-Experiment! I suggest you go into single player and try every unit. Use commanders for arm, and small battle (watch that Krogoth!) for core. Try every approach to a problem. Remember, just because a unit is good, it’s not invincible.
-Several types of factories. Yea, even if it cost money. A advanced building cost as much as a bulldog or 2... You got the time, and the money. Build it.
-Expand! Even if you have a good base, not a bad thing to make it bigger.
-Knowledge is power. You must know what you know about the enemy, and what the enemy knows about you. (Or thinks he know about you�) If you know he’s building aircrafts, do something about it.
-Raid. Take the weasel or a couple of pewees on a cruise right by the enemy’s mexxes. Having trouble finding em? Use f4 to see where the ground is drained^^. A tip is to stay away from the commander, or use buildings as hostages. Hide behind stuff and kill it off, then move on. If your sure your going to die, move close to a building a self-destruct.
-Just because pewees are better then AK’s doesn’t meant that AK’s are useless. (And so on…)
-In fact, no unit is useless. If you believe it is, try it once. On what it was meant to do.
-Mixed armies. O boy, if you haven’t heard this one a thousand times before your only been playing half-life for the last 7 years or something. Even if goliaths rule, a couple of missile units will make em much more effective.
-Farks are useful in combat. Always have 1-3 with you. Reclaiming DT, or doing what they were meant to do. REPAIR-.-*
-Ask questions. No one is going to laugh at you. And if he does, he’s a ass and shouldn’t even be poked a stick at. No question is too stupid. Just don’t except anyone in the heat of battle to answer: ‘’how do I play?’’
-Learn! If you lost, Always think why you died. What did the enemy do better then you? What was the key to winning? And so on
-Develop! Are you a programmer, a 3d design artist or just some regular Joe? Come to the forum for talk, chatter, suggestions and overall steps of making spring better! Remember, spring is open source. So just dive into there and replace AK’s with flying monkeys in space suits or whatever.
-Try having some good music on when playing. It can give you a good kick. I recommend the WAR OF THE WORLD (the strategy game, yes it exists) ‘’eve of the war’’ the original TA music http://www.fileuniverse.com/?page=listing&ID=54 Or anything you like.
-Need more strategy and tips? Since Spring is a remake of TA, any TA strategy guide works...
-Don’t get to serious. It’s a game.
This guide was written by Kixxe aka Johan Wittrock before everyone edited it mercilessly
