4
Jul
2009
Locking down the Cobra, micro time
I play against, and with (on random) too many players who don’t pay attention to their Cobras enough. This is a short guide to how to lock yours down correctly.
The Cobra is a great defensive unit, and a hard counter to all vehicles. Locking it down means you can’t move, and doing so takes a while. So it’s worth taking your time to do it right to ensure their survivability, it could save the day!
- Direction: Always lock your cobras down facing the direction of threat, you can do this by moving a cobra to a point, then ordering it to lock down in the direction of threat, it’ll then face the right way. The reason for this is simple, the Cobra’s turret turning speed is slow; it’s a long range firing unit therefore you need to take advantage of that. If you have ground units approaching them, by the time a Cobra’s turret has turned towards them, they are well in range. Having your Cobras pointing the right way means they will get a shot off as soon as a unit’s in range, applying damage sooner.
- Placement: Where you place your Cobras is the difference between survival and destruction. Try and use the bottle necks that are found in a lot of maps, valleys where ground units will travel down on attack. Remember Cobras are very much a defensive unit, so use them in this way. Trapping your enemy in a bottle neck means all your Cobras are firing on fewer units, delivering more damage to each. It also means when you upgrade to Piercing shot, having the enemy units bunched up means the shot will go thorough multiple units.
- Spacing: Spread your Cobras out! Locking down 3 or 4 cobras in one place is just an invitation for a Leader power or Canister shell. Make your enemy work to kill them, don’t bunch them up. As long as they’re all in range, they will deliver the same firepower spread out.
- Depth: You should place your Cobra’s in more than 1 line. Your first line should be at equal distance to where the enemy threat will be, so all their combined firepower will hit the front units together, applying the most damage. You should then have a second line behind them, which should consist of your Cobras with high veterancy. The enemy will most likely try to take out your front Cobras, leaving your best ones untouched at the back doing the most damage. Having more than 1 line also means if the opposition uses a leader power on the front line (Carpet bomb for example), you still have a better back line of them to fall back on. Think of it like a battle scene in 300 or Braveheart films!
- Spobra (Spartan Cobras) Placement: You Spobras are you biggest asset, they’ll deliver the most power and can become virtually indestructable, try and keep them alive! Place them at the very back of your line, well out the way behind your main force. This does 2 things: Firstly it keeps them alive as the enemy will probably not notice them at the back, as their attention will be on the bulk of your cobras, and secondly by the time the enemy units are in range on your Spobra it would be almost destroyed or on red health, it’s a 1 shot 1 kill deal for it meaning your Spobra’s on its way to 13 stars very fast. If you have a ‘V’ shaped area your defending, where your at the bottom of the V, and threats can come from the 2 lines, place your Spobra at the point of the V so it can fire to both sides.
[...] to get to tech 3 fast with a Barracks which will allow you to roll Cobras out, and make sure you position and lock them down properly. Upgrade your supply pads as soon as they’re done. If there are 2 reactors on the map, you [...]
[...] normally lock my Cobras down in the middle valley (read here how to lock them down properly), then spread my wolverines along my ‘line of death’, so if a Cyro is dropped i have a [...]
Cobras are really good and you can attack bases easily… but i lock down my cobras when attacking bases for longer rang so turrets cant attack them.