The third part that no one expected! This first started out as a few points to update part 2 with but eventually grew into its own thing. In general there was a lack of a proper micromanagement guide for RUSE and this should hopefully fix that. Another difference is that this guide is less "curated" compared to older ones. What this means is that there is a lot of information here that is not necessarily always useful but which was included for the sake of comprehensivenes. While we don't get that many new players anymore, even the more experienced players should be able to pick up a thing or two here. Please keep in mind that a lot of this guide was written for scenarios where you are playing against competent players.

NOTE: For the longer parts of this guide, the key points have been outlined with bold and italic like this, for those who don't want to read the whole thing.

Check out part 1 & part 2 if you haven't already.

Recommended guides for new players: R.U.S.E Basics and Newb Air Guide

PLEASE NOTE:
This guide is a work in progress that will continously be updated for the coming months. As long as you see this text, that means that more updates are on their way!
Enjoy!

Updated 24/9-2020 (thanks Invisible Eyes for pointing out a mistake in the comments)

The below section is meant for team games where the enemy team has an airplayer as well. If they don't then consider it christmas and do whatever the f*** you want.

There is virtually no situation where you want to start with 2 airfields. A 1 airfield and 2-3 depot start is going to be the best option in 99.9999999999...9% of all games. Should you research advanced fighters or produce light fighters? This depends first and foremost on your nation and what the enemy air player is doing.

If you have weaker starting fighters than the enemy (for example italy vs germany, or USSR vs USA) then you should never start off with light fighters. The exception to this is if your opponent starts off with an airrecon (USA/UK/ITA/JAPAN/FRA are only nations who can do this), in that case you need to be quick to scramble in order to save your teammates trucks. Airecons are easy to spot due to their charactaristically slow speed. If you have the superior early fighters then you may want to build one to attempt truck sniping or to counter enemy early fighters. Finally if your opponent is UK and starts off with a paratrooper then you want to intercept what with a light fighter as well (unless you are confident that your teammates ground forces can handle it).

If you want to start with 2 airfields then one out of two things must be true for 2 airfields: A) Your enemy is air rushing. Or B) you want to conduct one yourself. In other words, you must have a clear idea why you need the 2 airfields. Now let's look further into each option.

A) How to know if your opponent is planning to air rush? Count his money! The number of depots and airfields by your opponent is the best way to figure out what they're planning. A UK opponent going for 2 airfields and 0 depots has 120$ left and the 0 depots is a clear indication that he is counting on an early win. On the other hand a UK with 2 airfields and 2-3 depots has 0-40$ left which isn't enough for anything past a paratrooper/hurricane/late spitfire research. When in doubt, just copy the opponents opening.

2 airfield 2 depot start: NEVER EVER do a 2 airfield 2 depot start. This is the worst start you can do as UK (or any other nation) and is totally pointless. If you go 1 airfield 3 depots your spitfire research will be 50seconds long but you will have good economy. If you go 2 airfields 1 depot you will be able to quickly spam out spitfires at the cost of slower income. A 2 airfield/2depot start gives you non of the benefits and all of the cons of the aforementioned tactics. Long term your economy will be hindered and short term you won't benefit from the quick spitfire research due to a lack of money to produce them. This applies to any other nation or build as well. You won't have enough money to utilise the extra airfield.

B) For early offensive strategies check out Lemieux's air guide.

Quick take-off of planes from an airfield is done by clicking their hotkey and then left-clicking anywhere on the map; repeating the process for as many times as you have planes. For instance if you want to quickly launch up 8 fighters; you would press X and left-click anywhere on the map then quickly repeat this process 8 times. Use this technique on one plane type at a time. Note that if you do it too fast there is a chance that the planes bug out and will launch 1 at a time instead. Try it out a few times to figure out the correct timing.

NOTE: You can turn on hotkeys in options to make it easier for you to use.

For fighters: press X and then click on where you want the mid-point of the circle to be. Do not move your mouse. Now repeat this proccess for as many times as you have planes. You must complete this process before your first plane reaches its destination! This can also be done by individually selecting planes and then clicking on the same spot, however using the hotkeys is obviously much faster. The purpose of this is to make sure all of your fighters are flying in a really tight circle. This is meant to act as a deterrent for when both airforces are of equal strenght and to significantly minimze the need to micromanage planes when fending off a direct attack on your airforce.

Note: If your enemy has a stronger airforce none of this matters.

It is an airplayers duty to ensure that his teams engineers reach their destination and build what they're supposed to. However it's often times not enough to just stand above the truck to protect it. Firstly, It takes time for your fighters to detect and engage an enemy plane. Secondly, once a plane has started their strafing animation, they can no longer be intercepted. This is why you should actively intercept any hostile birds nearing your teams engineers.

If you are a ground player, make sure to alert your airplayer with either a message or a beacon on the ghost of your building or the engineer truck whenever you build something. It's a lot easier to protect a truck that you know about!

Select your fake planes individually and shift-click them around the oppositions air space. Give your planes different paths in unpredictable ways and make sure to click enough times so that you don't have to revisit them after 1 minutes. This makes it more challenging for your opponent to avoid them and either forces him to constantly micro his own planes around or to build anti-aircraft.

On the ground, you can mix up fake tanks with your real ones. This means that when the enemy is attacking you, he will waste shots on the fake tanks, giving you a slight edge in the exchange.
A similar thing can be done in air, where you can even move back your real planes as the enemy attacks to make him waste ammo on the fakes, you can then move in your real planes to obliviate the enemy. If nothing else, using this tactic means that your enemy might hesitate before attacking you due to fear of attacking the fakes.

When a fighter locks on a nearby enemy plane, it considers itself in a dogfight. Fighters have enough ammunition for one* dogfight exactly with the only exception being one which ends quickly. Examples of dogfights ending quickly are those against a decoy plane or multiple fighters attacking a single plane. In both of these examples, fighters can engage another plane within their engagement radius. Fighters stop engaging the enemy after their ammunition runs out. If you give a move** order to an engaged fighter, it automatically depletes ALL of its ammo and usually leads to you losing that fighter.


* Supercrumpets confirmed that in the game files planes are described as having one (1) ammunition/magazine on them.

** Notice how it says move and not attack. If you give an attack order to a fighter that is mid-fight, it will NOT cancel its current battle or deplete its ammunition. This is very important for when you are in an airbattle and notice that some of your planes might be flying past the sides of the battle. In these situations you want to give them attack orders on an enemy plane, to not risk them losing their ammunition.

If you notice that one of your paratroopers is about to be intercepted, order them to drop just a tiny bit in front of their current location so that the infantry gets out before the plane is destroyed. Careful not to click too close to the plane, as it will then try to fly in a circle instead to reach the drop site. You may have to try this out a few times to find out the perfect range.

All air recon units in the game can be used to spot anti-aircraft (including the 600m range ones) without taking damage themselves. To do this, position your air recon so that the enemy AA is just barerly inside the edge of the recons range. This is specially useful for spotting AA units in towns which can then be strafed or pounded by artillery.

Anti-aircraft guns hidden in either forests or cities will reveal themselves if you fly above them. This can be used to bait them into firing and then either bombing them or using spy + fighters/fighter-bombers to snipe them. This works well on AA that is stacked together as theyre easier to kill and minimizes the risk of losing your own planes.

This is a mid/late game tactic for when both sides have built up a large quantity of administrative buildings. Bomber A.I automatically attacks nearby bunkers. One can use this to strategically place out a bunch of AA bunkers (or cheapest avaible bunker) in the hopes that if the enemey attempts a bombing run, their bombers will be wasted on bunkers. Ensure that your bunkers are placed far enough away from your buildings to avoid collaterall damage if they get bombed.
Note: The below picture is just to give you an idea of how and where bunkers can be built. You should generally, unless there is an imminent threat, have more admins than shown on the picture before you spend so much on bunkers.

The part of an airfield that has coloured buildings is the direction in which planes will take-off. Generally you want this part to be pointed either toward the enemy or to the side. If your planes take-off straight toward the enemy, this increases the speed with which you can get your planes up to intercept/attack the enemy. The downside of this build is that you'll need slightly longer landing times as your planes will have to circle around the airfield in order to land. A sideways airfield provides a middle ground between landing and take-off speed. Only if there is no other safe empty space left should an airfield be built so that it takes off in the opposite direction of the enemy HQ.
Airfields require a relatively large amount of space to be built. That's why you and your team should always plan ahead to keep as many viable airfield slots open as possible.

When starting out with admins, one should try and scatter them as much as viable. This is to ensure that even if an enemy bomber manages to reach your base, it will only be able to kill a single admin as opposed to ~3-5.
Since administrative buildings are so small, it is best to build them in places where no other base can be built. On certain maps (eg. treason) there is limited base space in general and airfield space in particular. There it becomes incredibly important to leave the big open (and safe) spaces clear for airfields and the somewhat smaller spaces for regular bases.

Below are two example pictures, the first shows proper airfield placement and the early stages of an admin spam, where they are scattered and built in places that no other base can be built. Meanwhile the airfields are all either pointed toward or sideways to the enemy. The second picture shows the later stages of an admin and air spam following the same principle.

If you have both air and ground units on the field that you want to select, you're gonna have to zoom in and out a bit. If you zoom out, you will only be selecting planes when dragging a box with your mouse. If there are paratroopers among the planes only the paras will be selected. To select your ground units you'll have to zoom in a bit toward the ground.

Credits Black for the suggestion.

When it comes to direct ground engagements, you want ALL of your units to be involved in the fight from the get go. Whether you are defending or attacking, you want your units to be facing the enemy in a line. When you select a stack the game automatically places units in a line, however you still have to do 2 things. First is to ensure the units are properly facing the enemy.
The example video below demonstrates an engagement between 9 rangers and 10 gvardiyas. The rangers win because the opponents infantry are poorly positioned.


Second, each line can maximally consist of 9 units. If you have more units than that it is a wise choice to manually move up the units in the back so that they are in line with the front units. Note that you may have to adjust as the enemy moves and attempts to flank you This is possible to do even when moving up and attacking.

Send in fake ground units periodically to make the hiding infantry/aa/at reveal itself then use artillery to kill them. The same thing can be done using singles of infantry. Useful for when you either can't use air or can't outspam the enemy with infantry.

Updated 24/9-2020

This section is meant for general tips & tricks that are too brief to justfiy their own section. In no particular order:

Be careful about where you place decoy RUSE's. They take up one of two slots on a sector for a long time, so always place them on useless sectors far away from the fighting. Usually this means the enemy's HQ sector or a sector toward the sides.

Admins need about 7 minutes to pay off their cost. If the game has a timer, don't build them if there is less than ~14 minutes left of the game.

If you hover your mouse over a unit then press the "tab" button on your keyboard, a stat image will open up showing detailed stats about the unit including their damage output against all unit types. This page is different and superior to the "RUSOPEDIA".

Decryption can be used instead of a recon to detect units under radio silence or engineers under camoflage. This is specially valuable at the start of games where you might not be able to scout your flanks fast enough and have reason to suspect that something is trying to sneak past you.

The ingame voice in RUSE tells you at times very valuable information that you may have missed. For instance it sometimes warns about the opponents use of radio silence.

Whenever an enemy finishes the research of a new unit, you can see a white animation around the base type in which the research occured.

This section is meant for tips & tricks regarding ground play that are too brief to justfiy their own section. In no particular order:

• Pressing "E" while having units selected makes them stop moving. For planes it sends them back to airfield.
  
  
• If your infantry/AT gun/AA gun are moving in their trucks, they won't stop to fire at supply trucks automatically. If you want to kill passing supply trucks you have to either select the unit and press E (stop button, makes them disembark) or manually order fire on the supply truck.
  
  
• The french SAU40 advanced medium tank has a 650m ranged artillery gun which the game incorrectly believes to be a normal tank cannon. As a consequence weak recon units within 650m of a SAU40 will try to move back 650m from the tank until they are "safe".
  
  
  
• A secondary HQ can be an extra depot or heavy tank. There's zero reason to make these on 1v1 and 2v2 maps, and should be thought through properly even on 3v3 maps and Treason(4v4). You usually only need 1-2 production buildings for the early game, so you might as well just build those directly.
  
  
  
• Everyone gets a new RUSE card at the same time.
  
  
• If your infantry are passing by a building with auto fire on (i.e attacking it) their speed will be lower. This can be important if you are trying to move past one base to capture the one after it, as you then need to turn autofire off.
  
  
• You can create control groups by selecting units and holding down CTRL + [NUMBER KEY]. You can then easily select that group by pressing the number you chose for it. If you press the number twice the camera will lock and move to those units.
  
  
• All engineering trucks are glued to roads except for bunker trucks. They may go off-road and even through forests.
  
  
• If you hover over a supply depot with your mouse, you can see the amount of supplies in them. Do this periodically on depots near the enemy to see if they've secretly taken any.
  
  
• When in the admin stages of the game, you can decrypt the enemy base (if it is camoflaged of course) to find out how fast he builds admins and where. This should give you an idea of how their economy compares to yours and give you valuable intel should you decide to bomb them.
  
  
  
  
• If you are trying to stop an engineering truck with an unarmored recon, use decryption. That way you can move directly to wherever the enemy tries to move their base.

When ground units are damaged they can't be selected together with healthy units. It can be important to zoom in and micro them individually to either make sure they retreat to safety or keep up with the moving attack, whichever fits the situation.

Split up your anti-aircraft units as much as possible. Clustered AA stacks are prone to bombing and even collateral damage should they be strafed.

If for some reason you must attack a siegfried or maginot bunker with infantry, then split up your infantry to attack it from multiple sides. Their flamethrower can only attack one side at a time.

This section is meant for tips & tricks regarding air that are too brief to justfiy their own section. In no particular order:

• Landed planes can be strafed by fighters and fighter-bombers. If you don't have a recon on the enemy airfield, use a spy.
  
  
• When attacking ground targets with fighter-bomers or bombers, zoom in and give manual attack orders as often as possible. Ordering to attack a big stack are usually not the best way to utilize your planes.
  
  
• Landed planes can be forced up with a well placed paratrooper or an air recon.
  
  
• Never place bunker near your own buildings. Bombers automatically target bunkers and AA bunkers always give away their position by automatically firing at planes.
  
  
• If an enemy AIR player captures your airfield, don't retake it! Place some units near it (ask a teammate if needed) and wait. You could also use bunkers here, but camoflaged bunkers need to manually be given fire orders. The enemy might accidentally build units at that airfield or land there (highly damaged planes land at the nearest airport and can't be micromanaged). Remember that this goes both ways, so don't capture airfields either if you are playing as air.
  
  
• Check the current score before and after big airfights. They can be too messy or close to visually determine a winner, and the score can give you an indication of how you fared.
  
  
• When you press a planes hotkey, the game will first select the landed ones.

Q: I get triggered and feel a lot of anger, hate and irritation by the fact that someone made a guide for RUSE in 2018. Explain thyselves!
A: Boredom & summer vactaion.

Q: I'm still triggered and feel a lot of anger, hate and irritation by the fact that someone made a guide for a dead game. Explain thyselves!
A: There's still some time left, let's enjoy it :) [steamcharts.com]

Q: I'm still still triggered and feel a lot of anger, hate and irritation by the fact that I can't win games for some reason.
A: Take your time and learn better reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Q: Is Cookiez being forced to eng this?
A: Yes, against his cute will~ <3.

Q It says 2018 above but now it's 2019, what gives?
A A guide of this magnitude, scale and quality needs a lot of time, care and attention to be properly written and achieve its full potential! (In other words procrastination.)

Q This guide doesn't look finished
A We are gonna continously work on updating this guide! The ambition is that this guide, together with the rest of the published guides will cover ALL of the combined knowledge of experienced RUSE players. If you have any suggestions feel free to tell us about them!