Here I've documented 4 LSN tricks, that you'll no doubt use against me in a league game sometime soon :
It takes 4 seconds to fire a missile, right? And it takes 1.2 seconds to reload one, right? So you'd think if you fire 2 missiles you could reload one before the end of the turn and waste 0.8 seconds, right? Wrong. Well ... sometimes wrong, anyway.
Most experienced players know that shots actually leave your units' weapons about 0.4 seconds before the total time for the attack is up. So a grunt actually fires on 0.6 seconds, then he watches the shot for 0.4 seconds. Unless, that is, it's his last shot. Then all fire orders including that last 0.4 seconds are cancelled, and he continues with his remaining orders.
So imagine you have an MT with two missiles sitting right next to an HQ. If you fire 2 shots, the first takes 4 seconds, but the second, last one will only take 3.6 seconds. This leaves you with 2.4 seconds to reload two missiles. Repeat ad infinitum.
Except ... it doesn't work every time. I'm not 100% sure why, but there's a general agreement amongst the LSN ezboard forum community that all units pause for a tiny random time at the beginning of every turn, and this is blamed for the inconsistancy of the MT SuperLoader.
In The Grenadier's Bible (pdf link ... if you haven't read it, send me a league challenge) on page 79 Crank talks about coordinating units. Basically he says that if you plot a unit's waypoint on another unit's location then give it further orders it will approch the waypoint, wait for the friendly unit to move, then continue to carry out its orders.
You could use this to have a commander terrain fire at a wall while a grenadier aproches him then waits behind, with his next waypoint on the commander's location. Once the wall has gone down the commander moves aside as ordered. Then the grenadier moves onto his now free waypoint and then carries out the rest of his orders, probably going to a waypoint where the wall used to be, and then through to the next room to cause havok.
Unfortunately, though, this behaviour was changed. Now if you plot the orders above, the grenadier will walk up to the commander, then he'll skip the occupied waypoint, go round him, and walk right up to the wall while getting shot in the back by his ally. Almost exactly this happened to me and it wasn't a nice suprise. I tried to kick up a fuss about the change at the time, but then I figured out a way to duplicate the effect, so I shut up.
It so just happens that waypoints occupied by friendly units are not skipped if you plot a fire order on them. And fire orders are ignored if they end on the same waypoint that they start on (so the order is not even a line, it's just a dot). So, to cause the same behaviour as in the example above, you would just plot a single, point direct fire order with the grenadier at the waypoint occupied by the commander. This fire order will be ignored, but only after the waypoint is reached. Then the grenadier will continue with his orders as expected, moving through the wall and on.
Greys' energy is both a shield and their ammo. And when a unit has no ammo, any fire orders it encounters are ignored.
This means you can have your Greys run away when their energy is gone. You could plot 11 seconds of opp fire orders, then a waypoint behind cover. If your unit's energy is depleted by enemy fire before the 11 seconds is up, all of the remaining fire orders will be cancelled, and your unit will retreat to cover.
This works for all Grey units except the psyker, which will continue to try to fire even with 0 energy.
Most of the LSN tricks I like are based on exploiting the intended behaviour of the units in ways that are probably unintended and may not be immediately obvious to a new player. This trick's slightly different; it exploits the intended way that Test Orders and the LSN interface works.
When you're plotting and testing orders, all of the information you have is based on what your units have seen at the end of the previous turn. If you have a missile or grenade spotted, then during test orders you can see where it will fly and where it will detonate. And even more importantly, you can see the path an incoming warp will take (and if it detonates on that turn, its final destination).
Unless there's an obstruction in the way. Your opponent can fire a warp at you and stand a unit in its way at the end of the turn. When you come to test your orders you'll just see the warp smack into his unit again and again, and have no idea of it's intended eventual destination. But of course when the turn comes back his unit will move out of the way and the warp will continue.
Or you could do the same to him first.
