Plan B is what happens on a large map when both sides have fought each other to a standstill or one side may be winning but it seems to be taking forever. To put it bluntly Plan B is the use of nukes and massive amounts of aircraft to bring about a quick victory. Obviously this is for games on large maps or maps that have both sides somehow seperated so that a massive land offensive just won't get the job done. Usually when things degenerate to this point it will mean both sides have gone advanced and are using fusion plants, moho mines and moho metal makers along with advanced units and radars.

When you have decided it's time for Plan B you have a lot of work to do. First you'll need a fleet of adv. conair. Actually not a fleet; more like an armada. Advanced construction aircraft are priceless because you you can have an unlimited number of them working on one project. This means with a large group of them you can build fusion plants, berthas, air plants, moho mines etc. in mere seconds apeice. The best way to do this is to have several advanced con vehicles and possibly your commander guarding an advanced air plant that is cranking out a massive amount of adv. conair. Believe it or not you can fit 5 advanced construction vehicles around an advanced air plant (or 4 and your com). Doing this is crucial to build up a large fleet of adv. con aircraft quickly. Even better, if you are Arm use FARKs. FARKs whole claim to fame is that they build as fast as adv. con vehicles but they are smaller, and thus, you can fit more of them around an adv. aircraft plant. Remember 6 adv. air plants guarded by a ton of adv. con vehicles or FARKs will crank out a lot more than 12 adv. air plants guarded by very few cons or not guarded at all. This is something to keep in mind before you waste metal building a whole bunch of adv. air plants thinking you will produce faster.

Now that that's settled, and you have a huge fleet of advanced con aircraft (25+, hopefully closer to 40 or 50) it's time to act. Keep building advanced con aircraft and just add them to the armada wherever it is. Usually I have all my adv con air guard one of them and that one is placed on a group of it's own so I can easily find it and select it. Either that or have them all guard an advanced con vehicle. First of all go crazy with resources so you don't have to worry about them. Put up blocks of fusion plants and moho metal makers. Usually alternating one after the other F, Mh, F, Mh, F, Mh etc. Then if you can replace some M extractors with moho mines do that too. Put all your moho metal makers on one group so you can select them all and shut them off when you need energy. Try to spread all your new high-power resources out so you can't be put out of business with 1 well placed nuke.

Finally the weaponry. Ok theres pretty much 3 ways to go about Plan B: Aircraft, Bertha/Timmies or Nukes or any combination thereof. First of all plan defense. Get yourself able to defend against Plan B as well. Get lots of fighters and anti-aircraft up and build several antinukes scattered around your base. Mobile ones are good too but they take forever to build unless you use your adv. conair armada. Now you generally don't want to try to outdo your opponent if he's going really strong in one direction. For example if he is going nuke crazy then you build lots of anti-nuke and concentrate on having aircraft as your main offense. If you both are going for the same kind of Plan B just make sure you can outdo the other guy, ie: build more aircraft or more nukes than he can. Otherwise you will want to do something different than him. If you can manage to get your adv. con aircraft fleet in range of his base undected, build Berthas/Timmies scattered all over the map and don't open fire with them until you have a few and have at least some radar coverage on his base so you can target by radar with the big guns. Remember Berthas have a range of only 8 screens and Timmies 10. So compared to nukes and aircraft they need to be kind of close. Also it pays to airlift some radar jammers in before you start building the big guns to keep them hidden before they start blasting.

Nukes are a different story. Build them as far and tucked away from the enemy base as possible. Put radar jammers around them as well. Here's the crucial thing; For EVERY nuke silo you build YOU WILL NEED ONE FUSION PLANT. That's one fusion plant that can't be used for anything else. Nukes take 1000 constant energy to keep producing (and very little metal) and fusion plants generate 1000 constantly. Get it? So before you build each nuke silo build a fusion. Which shouldn't be too hard if you have the resources built up. Get as many nuke silos built as you can and as each one is built get it producing a ton of missiles right away. Just crank its production cue up to 50 or 100. If your enemy is smart they will have a lot of nuke protection which means you will need to launch several nukes at once to get through. Also this means that his antinuke silos will be priority targets for your Berthas and aircraft. Keep at least a couple of nuke silos on a group (usually your oldest ones because they will have the most missiles) so you can instantly select them when you spot juicy targets from your aircraft flying over the enemy base.

Now the aircraft. This takes a little research. Scout the enemy base and find out what kind of air defense he has. Usually a large amount of gunships is a bad idea for attacking a main base even if the enemy has shitty air defense. They are produced quickly but they move slow so they get eaten very fast. That leaves us with stealth fighters and strategic bombers. If he has a modest amount of air defense, and not many fighters, go with a hoard of stealth fighters. If he has very heavy air defense you are going to have to go with strategic bombers. Now you remember all those adv. air plants you made that are being guarded by all the adv. con vehicles and FARK's? Well it's time to turn all of them to either bomber or fighter production. Stealth fighters offer the advantage of being fast and undetectable on radar. Also if you park them on the ground somewhere they will produce 15 - 20 energy per each aircraft. Strat bombers on the other hand can be produced fairly quickly and it doesnt take very many to wipe out even a big target (including a commander). When gathering a large fleet of aircraft, select the air plants, then select move, then click a nice spot then (while holding shift of course) click patrol and click the exact same spot. This will make all aircraft produced hover on top of each other in one place so they don't land everywhere and clutter up your base. I shouldn't have to tell you that you are going to need a gigantic force of aircraft to do any real damage. Also you are going to have to be able to produce a gigantic force of aircraft over and over again as you must expect each fleet of aircraft not to come back from a major attack. The key is to do a massive amount of damage with each sucessive aircraft attack so that it becomes progressively easier for the next wave. With bombers you are of course going to target the big juicy units like Fusions, Nukes, Antinukes, Berthas and anything else that is A) expensive and B) looks like it will make a big explosion. In order to accomplish this you will need to scout the enemy base constantly before attacking with anything. Have a couple of regular aircraft plants guarded by con units and producing an alarming amount of air scouts constantly. Either that or have one of your adv. air plants producing stealth fighters just for the purpose of scouting. The key here is you don't fly all your attacking aircraft over and then hope to find a target. You should know what you are going to hit before you send the attack in. Having your attacking force on a single group helps immensely. Once you find a target just select the armada group number and click the target. Same as nuking, easy as pie. Of course the other main point here is once you find the enemy commander it's time to click his ass and unleash all the hell you have (all nukes, berthas, and aircraft). Keep in mind though, your opponent will probably get his commander moving as soon as he sees your scouts fly over.

Oh and lastly (this shouldve been first, actually), put advanced radar everywhere. Usually you accomplish this with a few adv. con aircraft. Adv. radar is crucial in Plan B. If nothing else to find out where the large enemy clusters are that you need to nuke. It is also very important to have up so you know when you are getting attacked well in advance. Having advanced radar near an enemy's base can be a decisive factor in many games. Try to keep as much coverage as possible even if it means sending adv. con aircraft out, over and over again, to rebuild destroyed radars.

Ok, I think that wraps it up. Good luck. Oh and please note: Yes, you can go with Plan B from the beginning on a large map but it takes a lot of time and effort to get going and if the enemy can reach you with a big, inexpensive air/land force you are going to be toast.

TA Beginner's Guide Main

Moldy Crouton Main