The unit counter system in Tempest Rising is the basis for combat between units of the three factions but to learn it you first have to understand the mechanics of weapon types vs armor in this game. So as one of my viewers suggested in a poll I ran recently on my channel, not only will I explain this mechanic but also give you many examples of how to use this knowledge in combat.

https://youtu.be/nEctDEoTAUs

So in Tempest Rising you have six types of weapon attacks which are Rifle, Rocket, Explosive, Cannon, Fire and Sniper, and you can see which attack type a unit has by hovering over the gun icon in its stats and reading the info from the tooltip. For defence against these, each unit and building has armor, shown as the shield icon. But when you hover your mouse over it, you will discover that different units and buildings have different resistances to each of the six weapon types.

This is how the system of unit counters is created in Tempest Rising and it is something I promised to fully explain in my previous tutorial, which you can watch by clicking on the card up here or the link in the description. So in this video I am going deep into this topic and will show you many examples of how to use this knowledge to your advantage when playing the game no matter if you are experiencing the story in the campaign, practicing against AI bots in Skirmish or testing your skill against other players in multiplayer.

To make this easy to understand, let's start with a simple example.

When I send out my engineer and my dynasty guards in a match towards the enemy base they got intercepted by two Havocs. This is the Tempest Dynasty’s light mobile missile platform and its weapon damage type is rocket based. While its armor is most resistant to rifle, fire and sniper weapon attacks. This makes it a poor counter to my engineer and dynasty guard units because their armor is best against the rocked weapon type which is the one Havoc uses. But on the other hand the Dynasty Guard’s weapon type is rifle, which is what the Havoc’s armor is most resistant to.

But what the Havocs are much better at because of their rocket weapon attack type is destroying Tempest Rigs Wheels, because that unit only has 25% resistance to this weapon attack type. The Tempest rig itself has the same low resistance to the rocket weapon type and so my opponent’s early rush with two Havocs can deal tremendous damage to my economy while I have no answer as I was preparing for a much different plan with my attempt to capture the enemy command center with my engineers. GDF’s harvesters are equally weak to rocket fire, so when facing that faction, you can rush a few Havocs and deal good damage to their harvesters too.

Building a missile turret can help somewhat in this situation as its weapon attack type is a rocket which the Havocs have no armor resistance to. But a turret has only limited range and Havocs can just move out from it. A better choice are Missile Troopers as they have high rocket armor resistance, and also have the rocket weapon attack type which as we saw Havocs have low resistance to, they can also use their Dash ability to run after Havocs and can’t be run over by light vehicles such as the Havoc.

Now I do need to give you those examples of how to protect yourself against an early or mid game engineer capture rush. The first is the simplest one: Don’t leave your command center at the starting location because the enemy player knows where it is. Pack it up into an MCV and move it, because then it becomes much harder to find and capture.

Second way is packing it up into an MCV at the moment the enemy is trying to capture it. Since it can’t be captured when in vehicle form. If you have turrets around your command center or buildings upgraded with turrets if you are the Dynasty faction that can help too, while with the GDF you can have a barracks garrisoned with a few Field Scouts next to it. Third option is using walls or buildings constructed all around the command center to prevent enemy engineers from having physical access to it. Feel free to share your experience with engineer rushes or other interesting tactics in the comments below.

Now let's analyze an often repeated combat situation between the GDF and Tempest Dynasty factions, because most GDF players you face in multiplayer will use this particular combo of units: Drone Operators, Sentinels and Hunter Tanks.

The reason why this is such a powerful combination is two fold. First the combination of weapon damage types. The Sentinel fires a rifle based weapon which is deadly to Tempest Dynasty light infantry like Dynasty Guard, Missile Trooper and the Engineer as their armor has 0 resistance to rifle based weapon fire. While its own armor is 50% resistant to rifle, fire and sniper weapon attack types. The Sentinel also marks hit targets and lets GDF gain intel by killing them while networked weapons do more damage to marked units.

The Drone Operators themselves fire a cannon type weapon while their drones fire a rocket type weapon. These types of attacks are ineffective against Tempest Dynasty light infantry but are highly effective against Dynasty light vehicles, like Havocs and Pillagers which have almost no armor resistance to these weapons. Even the Boar tank, a second tech level Dynasty unit, has low armor resistance against these two weapon types. But what it has are medium speed and the ability to run over Drone Operators en masse. Since its weapon is cannon based it won’t do much against infantry by firing at them, but the units it will destroy easily are the GDF’s Sentinel and Hunter tanks which have 0 armor renaissance against cannon based weapons by default. This armor can be upgraded a bit but it won’t make much of a difference.

Another way of defeating the GDF’s Drone Operators swarms en masse are Missile Troopers, Havocs or Dragonflies against their drones as their rocket based weapon types deal the best damage against drones and at long range at that, while Matchsticks and Hammerhands explosive and rifle based weapons deal the best damage to the human operators whose armor has 0 resistance to those attacks. Rifle, fire and sniper weapons are also 100% effective against drone operators but actually getting Dynasty Guards or Pillagers close to them is not going to happen due to weapon and armor interactions I have already explained. Matchsticks are also effective against Sentinels and their 25% armor vs explosive weapons.

When you learn all this you can see why I have had the most success countering GDF’s Drone Operators, Sentinels and Hunter Tanks composition with a spear head of Boar tanks which crush Drone Operators under their treads. Matchsticks also deal great area of effect damage to them all, letting Boar tanks blow up Sentinels and Hunter Tanks at range, while Missile Troopers, Havocs and Dragonflies can take down drones quickly while you need Hammerhands or Porcupine MLRS to deal with the remaining units.

Do note that basically all Air units in both factions have practically no armor to speak off, meaning they are very weak and the equivalent of a glass cannon in Tempest Rising.