ok, while not my favortite faction, ZOCOM is ok..

what i really dont get, is, they r the suppoed "future" of GDI, then WTH happened to the rail guns?
i miss the rail guns, it was one of my fav upgrades, and why i have a little trouble playin with ZOCOM...dont get me wrong, the kick ass zone raider chicks r awesome in large groups, but still, i miss the rail guns...

although, i must admit, ZOCOM has the best full attack style garrison for the MARV..4 zone raider squads on aggressive mode b4 they get garrisoned, then set the MARV to aggressive, and u got a lean mean fightin machine, good vs armour, buildings, air, and not so great, but decent vs infantry...

zocom are somewhat underpowered. they have like only 2-3 ways of winning. There best way is the super predictable ZR+HH+Ap ammo+Ceramic armour which has quiet a lot of counters, 2 storm columns and 12 of those Zonehead are dead. Or some venoms and it's over, and so on. another way for them to win is an early game infantry 'push' meaning waves of infantry while doing dig in and pushin' forward and bringing newer tier infantry and vehicles in aswel.

Oh and to answer your question, no zocom are not supposed to be the future GDI, they're the anti-tiberium GDI and are introduced in act2 meaning they were part of the third tiberium war aswel.

not the future huh? thought i read that somewhere, but no matter...
if only they had rail guns, i cant for the life of me think why EA would take rail guns away from them..
but moving on, i would like to compare zone troopers vs their ZOCOM raider counterparts, side by side, to see who is best.. till then, we will just have opinions i think..

wikipedia says it's the future but when playing the campaign and reading the intel it's obvious that it's just a high-tech corporation and part of GDI that is on a mission to stop tiberium not to do with time.

rail guns were taken away to balance the game and basically ZOCOM work with sonics and weren't exactly meant to be a war based faction of GDI and then their sonic tech turned out as a decent attack and defense too. So they don't use rail guns.

As for Zone troopers vs Zone raiders I'll give my vote to Zone raiders, let alone they have AA capabilities, they're better at destroying buildings, and their attack against vehicles is Area effective so they can destroy 2 scorpions at a time. In bigger numbers Troopers seem a bit better than before first of all they don't suck so badly against buildings like they do in small numbers and they also seem a bit better than zone raiders against vehicles. But it seems that the advanatges the zone raider has are more but don't forget they both suck big time against infantry so I always carry a commando with them.

true that..
lucky commando, with all those ladies..lol

and thank you for the explaination Arch..
for money purposes, you could always just mix in riflemen squads, or have a few sniper teams, since the snipers r stealth, the enemy will almost certainly send infantry to try and deal with ur raiders, until the snipers pop em, but then its too late, and not only has ur opponent wasted money and units, but also time, a good yet reasonably simple infantry strat..off the top of my head, i might recommend a sniper team for every 3 raider squads..sound like a good mix?

as i said at my 1st post, an infantry "push" is one of zocom's ways of winning. Although you must definately have APCs, riflemen, missle squads and Pitbulls aswel. Riflemen have the dig in ability so you can aswel have a chance of continuing their push, missle squads are needed for AA and AV especially early on. APCs help for AA and garrison slot. Pitbulls are an all-round unit mainly for some scouting. Don't forget to give AA support, 3-4 hammerheads/Venoms and your whole beloved army is dead (there's a reason I reccomend missle squads and apcs.)

sorry to sound like a dipshit, im not a real big infantry player..lol

i find that im more of an armour kinda guy, which is why i believe i use GDI the most in the first place...
but, i do think ZOCOM wound be last on my list for factions to pick...yet i digress...

Infantry rush about 1 minute into the multiplayer map... yeah i had atleast five engineers taking over the two surrounding bases

I beat a brutal AI using infantry push, (I don't call it rush because in my tactic, you keep sending reinforcements and sometimes you keep back for a moment) you just need to be quick and be tactical, a foxhole with 2 riflemen squads is a deadly place for the enemy who foolishly loses 6 of his squads.

as i said, i just dont seem to have much finesse with infantry, but i have been working on it, and i can tell that i build a lot more infantry than i used to, that being the case, ZOCOM may be a good faction to try out...

ZOCOM really focus on infantry, their basic troops get an improved form of composite armour, tib field suits, which makes them immune to tib fields. Suprise infantry attacks across tib fields! It isn't something to get excited about really, is it?

well, to expect the unexpected is one of the essences of war, but an infantry push across a tib field? who would think to be prepared for such a thing? its not a bad idea, but i dont know how well it would work....

Don't know, though you might need some tanks in the event that you come up against anti-infantry defences, but it might well work, it's worth trying at least, to see if you catch someone off-guard. And I only thought of it while writing that post as well, I put it in for the sake of it.

yea, i think of a lotta stuff as i write posts too, then i go and try it...

and if u come up on some anti infantry defenses, you could always use the...forgot whats its called off the top of my head, but the emp artillery support power..then drop in some zone raiders to reinforce your group, also, using APCs to bolster ur troops defenses sounds good...

also, when i play against a computer ZOCOM, they seem to favor orcas..so u might try a manual orca strike on the defenses, then lead ur men in to attack..

I've told you before about this infantry push. It owns! Just keep using the dig in ability and you shouldn't have any problems. Base Defenses are not to be concerned really, at that stage the enemy is weak and you shouldn't attack in a rush, you can simply call in more ZRs and at then firehawks with stratoboosters and ceramic armour can EASILY finish off anything.

And the thing is, I've done this tactic many times so you can be sure that this works.