Let’s face it, who of the online players actually clicks each unit separately or makes patrol routes to shoot tanks in a certain order; most people just attack-move a lot and hope they shoot the right things. Meatshields can be useful against this sort of micro as well as good at protecting high-damage units with low armor.
What is a Meatshield?
It’s a unit that takes damage but has actually very few other uses than taking damages; luckily enough, in CnC 3, most of these have some sort of use at least. Here's an example, feel free to modify it for other armies.
The predator and riflemen; predators are high damage dealing tanks to other tanks/buildings, however, if you send just a group of predators, they’ll be kicked rather easily, mixing and meatshields come in handy here, imagine having tons of riflemen between the preds attracting opposing scorpion/seeker/predator shots, truly absorbing the damage the predator is supposed to be getting. All the while, if you included rocketmen as well, they will get their shots off and may even absorb more opponent shells. Lovely isn’t it?
Meatshields and damage inflicting units
The perfect example of this is the avatar and scorps; what you want to do is:
- Make sure the damage units get off their damage
- Make sure the damage units don’t get hit but the meatshields do
Hence you send the avatars in front and let them absorb all damage and let the other units kill of the opposing forces, this is also done with Desintegrators/tripods; just send the disints in front.
Another great example is Rocket Militia and Rifle militia for Nod.
Mixing
Such an important thing in this type of game; you want your force to be mobile and cover everything, it helps a ton, e.g Predators/Snipers/Rocket infantry – You now got a army that covers Air attacks ( Rocket men) , tank attacks ( Predators/Rocket infantry) / infantry (snipers). Other ways of mixing which are very effective too are:
- Nods infantry spam – Rockets counter anything not infantry based and the Rifle militia counter that too
- Scrins combo with Devestators and Tripods, basicly they got build up a strong anti infantry with the devestators and a strong anti-tank force with the tripods.
