2. Spread your units out. A wall of XTs is very pretty and intimidating, yes. We're all impressed by it. But spawn have more area-effect weapons than any other species. Goo and splatters multiply in effectiveness when you form that thin gold line. Drones and buzzers are able to attack bunched units more efficiently; they don't have to run between targets, and every second spent running is a second not spent biting. Near misses by spikers turn into hits with tightly packed units. Queens are able to eat more quickly and restock the army if boddies are all adjacent. Bunched units are bad.

3. Overlapping fields of fire. This is important, and goes along with point #2. Drones and buzzers tend to gang up on the closest unit they can reach, then move on when that unit is dead. If you have set up correctly, you should be able to shoot those drones and buzzers off your leading unit. If you have set up incorrectly, the spawn units will use your XT or AI as cover from your other units. When you move into a defensive position, every side of each fighting unit should be in the line of fire of at least one other unit. This is particularly critical with AIs. An AI is extremely powerful individually, but it's also large. If it's out front, you can easily end up in a situation where your other units cannot shoot around it, and it ends up fighting the whole battle alone even though you have half a dozen XTs in range. A well arranged battle formation can shoot drones off an AI's back as quickly as they approach; a poor formation will be limited to eating popcorn and placing bets on the ultimate victor.

4. Reload often. Very often. Between goo and drone rushes, machina players will frequently, and suddenly, find themselves in a position where they must stand and fight for many turns at a stretch. It's better to reach that point with 75% of your ammo remaining than 25%. Any time a unit is doing nothing, or is reaching 50% of its ammo expended, carefully consider sending it back to reload. A machina player should have a steady trickle of units moving back and reloading, then replacing other units on the front lines

5. Use missiles liberally. Spawn don't heal, and recycling means point for you. Infliciting 2 points of damage on a marine unit first would be useless; a medic would fix it the next turn. But inflicting those same points against a drone can be very helpful five turns later, when that drone tries to eat your AI and escape with its life. Also, spawn are FAST; you will generally have to fire a missile long before you see the unit it might hit. Therefore, fire lots of missiles. Even in close combat, XTs and AIs are far more explosion resistant than spawn units. Don't be afraid to use missiles near your own units, if the payoff is large enough.

6. Repair your units. Spawn will generally rely on wearing your forces down over time. Contrary to most species, it's often better for an AI to spend its entire turn patching up a damaged XT rather than shooting at drones. There's always another drone rush coming, but you have a very finite number of XTs to beat them back with. Don't let winning battles make you lose wars.

7. Put tough units out front. It's easy for spawn to attack the outlying units, hard for them to attack units further back without hideous casualties. Make sure the outlying units are as hard to kill as possible.

8. Kill goo spitters. Goo spitters will ruin your whole day, given a chance.

9. Taunt spikers. They have very finite ammo, and unexceptional accuracy. Make them waste that ammo. Hunters are particularly useful for inducing a spawn player to shoot off his ammo for no gain. Fly in circles; corner dance; spell out insults on the map. Making a spiker fire off all his ammo is exactly the same as shooting him until he dies. Either way, a point for you.