Tips, Tricks, and ... Secrets (shhhhhh)

**RTS General**

* You can first click and drag to your mouse to select multiple units.  If you want to select a subset of the units you selected (select all fighters or all workers). Press the Ctrl key and click the unit portrait of a unit you want to select. -Save Your Game after you set up a base or before you attack an enemy fleet or base. Also use multiple save files so you can go back two saves (you never know how bad it will get!). The game also has two autosave files that generate every five minutes you can load if needed.
* When you have a group of ships selected press “S” to stop the group of ships from moving so they can auto attack ships and mines sooner. You can also click the stop icon in the army window to stop your ships.
* Set Rally Points(R) – When production building(s) are selected click “R” or click the flag button in the building window and click with your mouse where you want the built ships to be sent. If the ships are close to where you want them, it gives you more time to do other stuff and can help you position your fleet effectively.

**Game General**

* If you set up a new base for mining asteroids.  You can press F1 to select an idle worker and right click that worker towards a Resource Asteroid in that base to have them move there (if you select miners to go to a resource asteroid they will start mining immediately!).
* To improve your early mission economy start missions mining Metal Asteroids so you can build more workers. Ideally you will have more than 8 workers mining mental and workers mining Helium-3 so you can research Extraction Operations as soon as possible at your Mining Station. Extraction Operations costs 200 Metal and 200 Helium-3. If you have more than 12 workers on a resource asteroid patch you will need to build additional freighters to pick up the resources or research upgrades at the Resource Stations to move more resources.
* Build two base ship production buildings (the earlier the better).
* Use static defense buildings in generous numbers and in good positions (to protect your resources and base entrances).
* Buildings in front can absorb incoming fire against buildings and units behind them. So you can build Supply Silos and other buildings in front of your Barricade Satellite or KEIKO Sentries to soak up some enemy fire and hold out longer.

* Arsons and siege ships are more effective when they are behind their own buildings. The buildings block incoming fire. So if an enemy Arson is behind a building, just move your ships so you have a line of sight with the enemy Arson and the building won’t block your weapon’s fire.  This also means your siege units have more defense when placed behind your buildings because the buildings block incoming fire.
* Use your heroes and protect your heroes, if a hero dies you have to restart the mission!
* Don’t take too long to raid enemy bases as they can send stronger waves over time and the mission could become more difficult the longer you wait.
* Your bases are vulnerable when your ships are attacking and not defending.  You want to scout enemy positions and look for additional resource asteroids with fighters. Many times you will have your fleet in a big ball. Scouting with fighters will help you make better decisions of where and when to send out your main big fleet from your base.
* Your fighter ships attack in swooping attack patterns, you can micro them so their flight area stays in front of their target by switching off between:

a.      Clicking the target to attack

b.      And right clicking an area in front of the target. This will have the ships fly to the front of the target.

This will make sure they don’t complete the circle loop and fly behind their targets. This will help them not fly in range of defending enemy ships when they are attacking a structure if needed.

* If a ship or other defensive building is behind a supply building just fly behind it and then select attack on the defensive building like a Barricade Satellite. This way less of your shots will be blocked by the Supply Silo.
* If your carrier is about to blow up the fighters become vulnerable like units on a transport. So if things get dicey you need to eject any docked units by pressing the small fighter graphics in the carrier unit window, the Undock icon in the unit Window, or you can also press the undock shortcut key U on your keyboard so all the fighters leave the carrier and don’t get blow up when the carrier explodes.  Also cancel any fighters in production in a carrier that’s about to blow up, the resources don’t get refunded if the carrier explodes.
* If you have damaged fighters you can put them in a carrier and the carrier will heal them.  Playing a Federation this will save some of your Pasture energy so you can use that energy to heal other stuff.
* When you attack enemy bases.

a. First Focus on luring out defensive ships and destroy them.

b. If there are other ships still in the base, focus on destroying the siege ships: Arsons(Sylon), Teller (Federation), Harbinger(Athrael), Havoc (Thorun).

c. Then destroy the defensive structures.

You can just slam into enemy bases, but you will lose more ships.

* When dealing with a large group of enemy ships, try to divert some of the enemy ships away from the main fleet by entering the vision of some of the enemy ships. It is easier to beat two smaller fleets than one large one. If the enemy ships are in your base you can also divert some of them away from your base so you can have time to make more ships. Same for enemy ships located by a deployed siege ship like a Sylon Arson or an Athrael Rector. Moving away or falling back will help you split the ships and maybe catch the siege ship in an undeployed status.
* Use strategic retreats, ships with follow you if you are in their vision.  This will allow you to do convert ambushes or ship ambushes.
* Cheat codes can be found at https://five-nations.fandom.com/wiki/Console\_commands

* When you attack enemy bases with capitol ships, make sure they have fighter support and repair support as their Anti-fighter weapons might not be that strong.

* You can save a mission and then quit mission and it will tell you the game time. This can help you work on mission timing for attacks and rushes.

* In some campaign missions you can destroy high tier buildings and the computer won’t rebuild them so you stop them from making higher tier ships the rest of the game. There is a mission in Chapter 3 where if you destroy the Fleet HQ, that Federation player won’t be able to build Avengers or Tellers and they are much easier to beat then.
* You can use big ships such as Argas, Kutuzov, Installator, or Gatherings as blockers for ranged ships behind them. They are very wide ships so they will block some income fire launched at the ships behind them.
* Micro badly damaged ships to the back to be healed.  Enemy ships will sometimes over target damaged enemy ships or Hero ships. You can use fast damaged ships as bait for enemy ships to pursue.

**Attacking Sylon Tips**

* Careful when attacking Sylons their Aegis defensive buildings and Glooms have Gravimetric ray weapons that ignore shields.
* Sylons have multiple vessels with cloak so when fighting them you need defensive buildings with sensors or ships with sensors.
* Arsons can melt Orcas and Hurricanes and it is better to attack them with bigger ships like Hailstorms. You can attack Arsons with your Orcas, just have the Orcas attack them from different angles so the Arson splash attack doesn’t hit them all.

**Attacking Thorun Tips**

* When attacking Thorun with fighters, you need to be careful when attacking Zoners, Vanguards, Grinders, Flagships and Breakers. When those ships explode their Anti Matter Reactors detonate and can damage or destroy your fighters in the area.  If possible have a different ship do the kill shot or have one fighter do the kill shot in the case of Zoners so you only lose one fighter max.

**Thorun Tips**

* Grinders can only attack buildings, however their weapons don’t get blocked by buildings so you can target defensive structures even if there are buildings in front of it.

**Attacking Federation Tips**

* Be careful when Fusion Reactors explode, the structure’s explosion damages ships within a small range. So you don’t want your fighters flying around the enemy Fusion Reactor when it is about to blow up. Only have one fighter do the kill shot or use a ship with a long range to destroy the building.

**Zhogarn Tips**

* Instead of flying a slow Argas to a new base, you can just move a Spawn there and build the Argas at the new base from the Spawn.

**Hotkeys**

Use Hotkeys!!! (Ctrl + 1 - 10 on keyboard to assign selected buildings or units to the numbered keys on the keyboard).

The Hotkeys I use are

Ctrl + 1 = Command Station (Select the Command Station and press Ctrl + 1 to set your Command Station to the number key “1”. So when you press 1 on your keyboard it selects your Command Station.

A. Once the “1” control group is selected (pressed) you can type R and click with your mouse where you want the Command Station to send workers (set the Rally Point). You can set the Rally Point to a resource asteroid to have your workers start mining immediately!

You can also click the Command Station to open the building window and click the Rally Point icon in the building window of the Command Station and then right click where you want to set the station’s Rally Point.

B. You can have multiple buildings under the same hotkey. When you build a second Command Station, you can have both of your Command Stations be in the same “1” control group. Once the first Command Station is selected press the “Shift” key and click the new Command Station with your mouse.  At this point the user interface window should show both Command Stations being selected. At this point, you press Ctrl + 1 to have both of these Command Stations accessible under the “1” control group.

Ctrl + 2 = Ship Factory (once you have two *Ship Factories,* press “2” and Shift + Click the second Ship Factory so both Ship Factories are selected on the screen then click Ctrl +2 to have both of the Ship Factories under the “2” control group.

Ctrl + 3 = Merchant Port

Ctrl + 4 = Dockyard

Ctrl + 10 = Research Center = I like to keep my unit upgrade hotkeys separate from my unit production hotkeys.

You can learn unit “Letter” shortcuts to build units faster, build buildings faster, or use spells faster where you don’t have to click the icons. UNF Trinity shortcut for the Flechette Missile ability is “E”.  The Command Station shortcut to build workers is “E”. And the Ship Factory shortcut to build Hurricanes is “N”.