Dreadnought guide - advanced

This one covers more advanced parts of dreadnought gameplay and gives you more situational intel.

We know dreadnought is the tough guy and anything that steps too close to it exposes itself to terrible damage.

Now you may want to know how to adapt to most match-ups and situations, and when to use situational abilities.

Middle Lane

In middle lane your role is pretty straightforward, get tanky enough so that you barely take any damage from most sources, and after achieving that or after recognizing you cannot mitigate damage cost-efficiently much further, get damage to at least be able to trade fairly well.

If you're against alot of missile rangers, you want to stack armor (aim at having many more armor ups than they have missile ups). When they have ultimates such as nuclear missile, you want to have Reinforced Hull, Emergency Shields, and speed. Reinforced Hull reduces all damage, nukes included (except torpedo burn damage and plague), Emergency Shields grant you a shield upon taking fatal damage, but on top of that, damage part taken by hull will also be greatly reduced. With this, either you push hard on your own if nobody can damage you seriously, or with your team to easily claim territory early on.

If you're against alot of supports, you want to get Reinforced Hull, possibly Repair Bots, Emergency Shields and gatlings. If you have alot of money, you can go for protective field aswell, but most often, getting damage will push them back more consistently than protective field would, as you'd get energy denied alot. You need 4-5 energy with repair bots as you will get denied, but the low energy cost and high cooldown makes it easy for you to use it every once in a while. When bots are not available, push.

If you're against alot of tanks, charges are generally good as you destroy both enemy and ally nearby creep, giving you and denying your enemies farm. Armor also works well against tanks weapons. Since you're fighting tanks, you might also encounter dreadnoughts doing the same thing, or colossus going for lance. Then you want to get protective field to further buff your armor, and mitigate ability damage, making you very tough to break.

Guardians are potentially your ultimate nightmare. Against a battle guardian (using acid, and eventually getting bonus damage on all its weapons), the best you can do is possibly push hard, go back when you can disengage, heal with repair bots, and go back in. Speed is also a good option to catch up with guardians, or take the fight to another place where guardian won't be.

But of course, you're unlikely to face only one kind of threat, and that's why you want to analyze what is the dominant type of threat, who is playing good, and what type of upgrade can cover the better amount of these threats.

Side Lane

Many of the ships above can also be sidelaners. For most, the way to counter them is the same, for some others it's more straightforward, although different.

Guardian: against guardian you want to push hard to gain territory (and thus farm). When guardian gets acid, you want just enough armor to make sure its lasers deal no damage to you, despite acid armor reduction. You want to also invest in Reinforced Hull, and heavily in speed and gatlings. Cutting in to assist shortly your middle lane while your armor is not reduced is good, as guardian needs to wind up in combat before being truly dangerous.

Frigate: Same as middle lane, except you have 2 choices. Either play like against guardian, armor, gatlings and speed and try to catch up and deal serious damage to it, forcing it back. Or don't invest in speed, but take more armor (and less gatlings), so you take about no damage from it, and you just gain ground by pushing, but you can't kill it unless it makes mistakes. Eventually you'll need speed anyways, and that's when you get to play aggressively.

Leviathan: Pretty much straightforward, push it hard early on, don't let it upgrade, armor will make sure it cannot do anything against you for a long long time. If it gets acid, get Reinforced Hull. If it gets bio plasmide, get Reinforced Hull and Protective Field. If it gets bile, get speed and gats. Whatever it goes for, armor and Repair Bots are never a bad idea.

Voidray: This one is trickier. You keep it shut down for a very long time if you play it right. Reinforced Hull is fine against beam, good against nova. Gatlings damage will outwit the health nova can leech. Speed makes sure it can't abuse your lack of mobility. You want to use your griffons to track it if it tries to get sneaky. Have a frigate or battlecruiser buy warp and mobility ready to chase voidray if possible. You'll most likely get ahead in term of farm, so your upgrades depend on the rest of your team. Play aggressive, always have an eye on your minimap. If you see voidray, fine, you know what to do. When you don't, assume it is in the worst spot possible. Either way, play aggressive, dangerous fights tend to favor the more earlygame compositions, and if your team dies in risky fight with this type of composition, it means your odds were probably not so good anyways.

Dreadnought: Tricky one too, many ways to play it. If enemy dreadnought started charges, you kite it and make sure your team knows he has it and is ready to cut in when he is. If he has gatlings, you'll probably lose with armor on extended fights, but you are more useful if both of you help middle lane. If you both have armor, it comes down to who uses gatlings more consistently and who's able to deny enemy regeneration, not counting in middle ships that can come and assist. Later on, if it has charges, you can deal with it by outspeeding it and moonwalking with more armor and gatlings. If it has protective field, find windows to damage it with charges, or just ignore him completely if he has no damage. If it has armor and gatlings, get charges and find opportunities to damage him, or get more gatlings. In both cases, high armor does great against gatlings. But again, uyour middle lane is more likely able to shut it down, so if you help middle lane pushing, it'll likely give it back to you.

Overlord: Early game should be in your favor. Push it hard, and try reducing his farm (check carrier part). Reinforced Hull, Repair Bots, speed and gatlings be good early on. A bit later, Emergency Shields and Protective Field will allow you to get your team some nice pushes. Even though overlord has syphon, it is hard for it to keep you permanently syphoned as you can disengage and wait til your Protective Field is ready for use before going back in. Cutting in may be a fine idea if middle situation is heated and many ships are damaged, as you can provide alot more tankiness and damage than overlord can, but if not, overlord contaminate and plague will shut it down fairly easily.

Carrier: This is mostly about OnBoard Fighters management while keeping your gatlings busy. Have them engage enemy interceptors while allied creeps are nearby and your laser battery is not in range of carrier. When you get carrier low on interceptors, it can't really farm anymore. Make sure carrier cannot get on top of you as your lasers will attack it, and leave its interceptors untouched. If carrier goes scouts, get 1shot farm and armor. if it goes barrage, get Protective Field and Reinforced Hull. If it goes interceptors, go armor, gatlings, and 1shot farm if you're rich. When carrier has no interceptors, that's when you possibly want to cut in and make a difference in middle lane. Bombardment is also a good early-middle game response if carrier goes for both scouts and interceptors.

When to use siege?

Siege recently got easier to use and get away with. Still the best situations to get siege are when you're playing against minions (corruptors, broodlords, tempests), and against alot of enemy rangers/squishy ships. If your fleet has more tanks than enemy ones, these tanks can cover you while you are sieged. Very often you want to target fire enemy siege creep, then overlord (it will come to contaminate you, if you damage it everytime it does, it eventually won't be able to anymore), then rangers or lowly armored ships. You don't necessarily have to siege enemy base, you can also siege in strategic positions like center cloud or in tunnel.

When to use cover:

Cover blocks the vast majority of enemy projectiles, including Mukes such as yamato, torpedo, seeker, emp, syphon, etc.. But also tentacles, nuke, blackout. You want to get cover when some of these projectiles are much more dangerous for your allies than they are to you.

When to use bombardment:

In fact, very rarely. Bombardment itself is good against many things, but the problem is your ship stops to cast it, meaning you cannot do your tank-for-the-team job when you use it. So you need situations where you don't need to stay in front. Against minions, and alongside another dreadnought and colossus are roughly the only situations you're sure to make it work. Getting it before you get Siege Mode is also a good way to farm up, but that should come very late.