ACS - Faction: Iron Coalition

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Faction: Iron Coalition

Punch them in the face and kick them in the back

Faction basics refresher

Information taken from CC_03

Health		Ships		Weapons		Economy
Ship hull[1]	100%	Top speed	100%	EW range	100%	Starting money	87.5%
Ship shield	100%	Acceleration	100%	PW range	100%	Payday	$525
Ship shield repair	100%	Turn rate	100%	PW damage	110%	Mining speed	85%
Station hull	115%	Torque	100%	Missile tracking	100%	Miner capacity	75%
Station shield	115%	Sensors	100%	Missile damage	110%	He3 yield	100%
Station hull repair	100%	Signature[2]	85%	Energy	120%	Research time	2 minutes
Station shield repair	100%	Ripcording[3]	100%			Research costs	100%

1  ·	Standard ship hull is 90%.

2  ·	Note that ship signature is divided by this number, so a higher number is better.

3  ·	Note that ripcord time is divided by this number, so a higher number is better.

Faction unique traits

• Outposts and teleports are given heavy base armor class (ungalvable).
• More ammo and fuel capacity.
• Rescue probe available for scouts ($250 each).
• Miners can ripcord (which may lead them into danger).
• Miners can unload at techbases (however faction does not have refineries available at all).
• Ships that require money to purchase (bombers, capital ships, etc) are reduced in cost by 20%.
• Slow preparation times for constructors (2 min for OP/TP, 4 min for tech).
• Standard small class ships (fighters, interceptors, and stealth fighters) comes preresearched, so they're available as soon as the techbase is built and/or upgraded.
• Cost of techbases upgrades are more expensive and need a minute longer to finish.
• Can build a shipyard without the prerequisite techbase.
  • If a techbase is already built then the shipyard starts with Light Class already researched.
• All stations can rescue eject pods.

Tactics

General Philosophy

This is not a sneaky faction. This is a bruiser faction. The only way to win is to be super aggressive. You cannot allow the opponent time to do anything productive. Tactical is your worst enemy. You must push constructors and take/hold sectors adjacent to opponents miners. Be forceful! IC is the heavyweight boxer of the allegiance world. Don't dodge! Just shove things down people's throats.

Ideal settings

Medium total money. Normal Resources.

Expansion

Expansion is played the most and likely should be. You have two options

1. Push one outpost, hold that outpost, and upgrade Expansion as fast as possible. Once you have hvy ints, get HTTs as soon as possible and smash one in your opponent's face. You will succeed.
2. Push a second outpost, or even third, and be aggressive on miner/constructor offense with basic ints and mini2. This is likely to be more successful. It gives you multiple launch points for your HTTs when you eventually get them.

The weakness of Expansion: large maps. If you're playing IC on beachball, you picked the wrong faction altogether. The strength of IC is the ability to swarm and hit hard. With a large map, you cannot swarm and cannot expand for your life; your miners are just not fast enough to compete with Giga or other expanding-minded factions. The large map also gives the enemy the time to go Tactical (if they have any sense) and kill your miners instead.

Supremacy

DN 4.6 improved IC sup by making the models smaller and using the adv fig gunmounts for all figs. While most people will go IC exp, IC sup is actually pretty good. You cannot be galved off the map, but you sure could galv the other team. You benefit from missile and shield perks. Your miners can rip, so you can buy Enh Miners and expand with multiple Teleports. That said, I don't offer sympathy when you are being gunned down by Rixian Heavy Interceptors or the like. Against factions such as giga, IC sup is ok.

Tactical

The Tacspansion strategy is most often used with IC. When you build your Tac, you immediately have Stealth Fighters. They're not super stealthy, but they can get the job done in the early game. If you plan on committing to Tactical as a primary tech, I wish you luck. You have the worst stealth fighter in the game. If you're not getting the job done, you can try to get Stealth Bombers to end a game. The missile damage bonus in some ways can make up for your unstealthy bomber.

Tacspansion

If the enemy doesn't look as though it's going to bomb rush you or go on an aggressive streak, go tactical and rape their miners. The effect of loosing all miners will cause the enemy to bomb. At this point, you need to have mini2 ints to stop any bombing runs in their tracks. If the enemy is aggressive and hitting you pretty hard, go expansion to hold them off. Get your mini2 ints up to defend, then get a tac going so that you can destroy their economy. Idealy, you want to go tac first to hit their econ as fast as possible, but go exp first if it's the only way you're going to be able to stay in the game.

Anyone can command IC and win. It takes an aggressive commander to win with IC consistently. I cannot stress this enough. You will lose if you do not take charge on the offensive and hit your opponent on the chin. You need to knock them out.

Supyard (Supplemental Material)

This is the way IC shipyard works: if you buy a shipyard without having a tech base, you get nothing until you research medium class for 18k. By buying medium class, you obtain all light class ships (corvettes, attack carriers, and freighters) along with medium class ships (frigates and assault ships.) If you choose not to upgrade the shipyard to medium class and purchase a tech base instead, you immediately get the light class ships when the base builds. You will still need an additional 18k to get the medium-class basekillers. While this seems an overwhelming nerf to the once-dominant IC MF rush, it grants you the following opportunity.

Buy a supremacy center as IC, followed by a shipyard after your initial outpost and TP are built. Continue building (and expand with) teleport receivers across the map, and make sure you run an efficient economy. Use your supremacy and shipyard to expand further if necessary. By purchasing both a shipyard and sup, you gain access to IC enhanced fighters, which (despite the hitbox) are great swarmers with their high energy, PW damage, and missile damage bonuses. So what do you do?

You dispatch attack carriers. IC attack carriers also benefit from the faction-wide energy perk, which make them extremely effective small rip receivers. Dispatch one attack carrier to their mining sectors, and support it with enhanced fighters. Your fighters should be all over their miners, forcing the enemy team has to make a very, very costly decision.

They can try to defend their miners against enemy reinforcements constantly ripping in to a skycap-turreted carrier (with IC damage bonuses). At best, their miners will be trapped in base and likely die. If they decide to focus on the carrier instead, they have to overwhelm the turrets, large shields, prox and fresh fighters and scouts are ripping in. Even if they kill the $3,200 attack carrier (easily replaceable), they lose all of their miners. It's a win-win scenario. It makes IC devastatingly powerful in pick up games, where it's very easy to get your team in fighters and swarming with the promise of easy miner kills and boosting kill bonuses.

Comparatively speaking, missile frigates are far easier to stop, far more expensive, and significantly less devastating than such a drastic blow to a team's economy. Corvette's the only benefit a corvette has over an attack carrier is the pilot's access to better weapons, along with a higher speed and reduced cost.

Credits: Weedman, Shiz, Night (supyard strat)

Door guide

The following door guide shows the general orientation and location of different factions base doors, assuming you don't rotate the F3 command view.

When selecting which rocks to build on it is helpful to know which way the completed base will be orientated, you want to have your green door facing your (possible future) teleport receiver and somewhat protected versus enemy TT/HTT. The red door you want facing towards an aleph that leads to the enemy miners, or towards a target like an enemy base (especially if both teams are building their cons in the same sector at the same time).

	Garrison	Outpost	Supremacy	Expansion	Tactical	Shipyard[4]
Iron Coalition	←← →→	↑ ↑	↓ ↓	↓ ↓	↑ ↑	⇦⇦ ↑

1  ·	Large arrows indicate capital ship (and smaller) access, small arrows for small and medium ships.

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