After going more in depth with the Zero-K factories, it’s time to look at some more generic – but still extremely useful Zero-K cheats and tips. This complete strategy guide will help you become the ultimate commander in the game and keep on winning.
Although we haven’t managed to find any actual cheats for now (but we’re looking!), we have some tips and tricks to share. Hopefully these will help improve your game and strategy. Because we all know how difficult it is to beat even the easier difficulty modes!
So without further ado, here are some Zero-K tips and tricks for all players, but especially beginners.
Early game usually decides the winner
Most games are won in early game or at least decided during that period of time. That is when you should do two smart things and do them over and over again until you master them:
1. Expand to get as much metal as possible, BUT make sure that you are able to defend your territory, otherwise you’re just wasting resources. Don’t be greedy and over-expand, but don’t play it too cautiously either!
2. Keep attacking and harassing your opponent, not allowing them to do the same. Send troops to hinder their expansion progress and have them either retreat and play a cautious game or at least expand slower than you do.
If you manage to do these two things early on, then you will have an advantage that will build up like a snowball and help you win the game easily.
Focus on Metal early on, but don’t ignore Energy later
Although Metal is extremely important early on and remains important throughout the game, eventually Energy will become very important as well. Don’t forget that basically everything except for building requires Energy, so having enough of that later on is extremely important. You don’t want your shields or cloaking devices to fail!
Factory choices
We talked about this in our factory guide, but we have to say it again here. Choosing the correct factories is extremely important in the game and even though there are some better than others generally speaking, each of them has both Cons and Pros.
Therefore, I recommend sticking with your original factory early on and until you can really support a second factory. This is why this decision – choosing the starting factory – is extremely important.
Later on, when you build your second factory, build it either to fill the holes that your starting factory has or to exploit the holes in your enemy’s defenses. The latter is a bit more aggressive and can have great results, but when playing against a skilled enemy, it’s an extremely risky move because it leaves you very open as well!
Be smart when placing your defences
You won’t be able to build an impenetrable defence, but you should build one that’s tough to break where the enemy will most likely attack.
There are always easier routes that your enemy will most likely choose as their main attack areas, and that is where you should build heavy defences. It’s safe – or at least usually safe – to build light defences in the other areas to make sure that no sneaky units will get int.
It’s difficult to explain how to focus your defensive building placements, but if you have this in mind, you will start to see attack patterns as soon as you start building up your base and you will know what to do.
Mobile defences are also extremely important in the game, so make sure to take advantage of them as well as of Air units!
Additional Attack tips
When attacking, make sure that you really have a high chance of success. Usually, it’s best to try and surprise your opponent with your attack, but this is more difficult to be done than it is to be said.
The only thing you should do in order to guarantee your win is to hit your opponent’s weakest spots with your heaviest units. This will cause massive damage on their side and little damage to yours, giving you the chance to expand more, build more and get better.
Eventually, doing this over and over again will see you become large enough to simply overpower your opponent and be able to go for a full frontal attack without worrying too much. Of course, this requires a bit of practice because your opponent will most likely try to do the same thing, but if you do practice and understand the strengths and weaknesses of your units, commander AND are able to take advantage of the map type, you will come out victorious.
Take full advantage of your Caretakers!
Caretakers are really great because they can take the role of a Constructor, but with a much better range. Therefore, make sure to take full advantage of them!
I recommend building these mainly behind your main defence lines in order to help repairing your structures and make your base difficult to break; also, you should build them near factories for the obvious reason: to help build units faster!
Master your Commander
This is obviously the most important unit in Zero-K and your decisions surrounding your commander will have a great impact on the course of the game. Therefore, mastering your commander is essential for a great, successful battle.
First of all, you should take advantage of the different design options that you have for creating your Commander and have them specialized for the various map types that you are about to play. Different commander types would be helpful in some situations, but less helpful in others. Having them ready-made for any type of scenario saves you a lot of time and plays an important part in your quest to mastering Commanders.
We’ll have a complete guide to Commanders published later on because they do deserve their own, stand-alone article, but until that happens, here are some more tips and tricks regarding Commanders in Zero-K:
– First of all, make sure that you read the extremely helpful Wiki entry for Commanders. It gives you a complete overview of the Commanders and, at the moment of writing this article, is up to date.
– Keeping your Commander alive early on in the game is the biggest challenge, but it’s a bit easier to prepare for your enemy’s moves by looking at the factory they have (some will most likely go for an early attack, while others are very likely to not go for your commander), the type of map that you play on and how much risk you take. I usually go for the high risk/high reward method to expand quickly, but you can have some massive blows and horrible losses if things go wrong.
– Later on, the Commander is no longer as important, so you can just use it as a bait to trick your opponent into wasting a lot of their military power taking your Commander down. If that happens, you can launch a massive counter-attack and have great results. This works almost always under the right circumstances (the right commander type with the right enemy).
These would be our tips and tricks for Zero-K. If you have other strategies to share, don’t hesitate to let us know by commenting below,
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If you want actual cheats go to https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/index.php?title=Cheats
Once cheats are enabled there’s also a “cheat menu” button available on the top left command bar.
Either way, I like this guide much more than simple cheats. Maybe for a newbie, playing skirmish and putting a brutal ai on their team is the best cheat, because it lets them observe the ai’s play.