I've been playing this for a couple of days, and I almost always get killed in the first 10 minutes. Everyone somehow everyone already has 5 factories, and an orbital laser. I understand hardcore players don't want the game to be too easy. I play a lot of Devil May Cry 3, and a ton of fighting games, but still I have yet to get my footing in this game.
You could watch the replay after the game and see what your opponents are doing to build up so quickly. You could also join a clan and get people to help you out... *hint hint*
dont go for multiple factory production too soon and expand as vast and as fast as possible. take advantage of the fact that multiple workers means faster production of anything you want. make sure you never go into the negative if you do it would help more then hurt to stop the production of things to get yourself back in the green.
Build up your econ, if you want, watch a vid or two of play on youtube to see how they start off.... make sure you keep some power and metal income, and some storage too, to make it thru the ups and downs. One issue I had early was I always went all air, till I found out they build 40% slower and cost 20% more power to build things...air fabbers that is So you do pay for the mobility
To clarify a bit. Never go negative with energy as having zero energy reduces your metal production too. Go negative with metal though as you don't want to waste it.
I've been considering writing a noobs guide to PA thread. I'm not particularly good at the game, but good enough that I can beat most people I come across because they rush to Advanced with no economy. The idea would be to include the basics, like smallcpu posted above about having a slight metal defect and an energy surplus, or greendiamond with the focus on eco instead of teching. Also wouldn't hurt to have things like the fact that Ctrl+N shows the metal points as a green dot. Sound off if you would like something like this and I'll put some time into it over the next week or so.
Expand. Then you just expand. Once you expand after expanding, you expand again. Resolve conflicts that follow (meaning keep pumping units) while expanding until you can expand again, then, once you do that you need to expand. As long as you can keep up a good macro game (expanding your economy and military), and scout your opponent so you know what to build (this comes with experience), you will git good. You will not be good right away, nor will you become good by reading these forums or any number of tips you find online. Tips are meant as learning tools and need to be applied. The only way to become good is to play, and learn from your mistakes by watching replays to find what mistake caused your downfall. Many people lose the game in the first 5 minutes, but they end up thinking they lost 20 minutes later because they built air AA instead of ground AA, when really it's because their opponent had 10 mex's up at 2 minutes to your 5.
This 1000x When you are trying to work out how to play better don't look at your last mistake, look at your first. I don't know how many games where I have been at 10 mex (metal extractors) when my opponent is on 2 with 5 pgens. Metal is super, super important. If you don't have enough metal you will not keep up with your opponent. If you're not fighting over metal points with your opponent then one of you is likely waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead of the other (hint: it's the guy who expanded more).
Practice efficiently. Read the forums, watch videos (I can highly recommend ZaphodX's), absorb key points... and then immediately try and practice those points. This game has a lot of depth and complexity, and it can get overwhelming if you're not used to RTS games. So you need to focus on just one thing at a time, and improve that aspect of your game. Practice does not just mean 'play lots of games'. You need to actively try and improve an aspect of your game. That's not to say that playing a game for the sake of it is a bad thing necessarily, I'm just trying to say that you need to be aware of what you need to improve on. Talking games out with your opponent afterwards is always a good thing! rgturner's monologue about expanding is pretty much spot on. I found this to be the most difficult thing to do, and still find it hard, but I think I've improved a bit. Every minute you should probably be checking up on your fabbers and trying to expand to more metal spots, and then secure those metal spots with some form of defence, and better yet get some expanded radar coverage as well. With expansion, comes a better economy, and that lets you produce more units. Which is always a good thing. Expansion will also lead you into creating forward bases as well (e.g. you've secured a nice cluster of metal spots, so build some factories there and churn out some units). Scouting is crucial as well to a) find out where your opponent is (so you can build and act accordingly) and b) to find out what your opponent is doing. He might be turtling and building an orbital launcher to try and get off the planet. Or he might be coming right for you with a swarm of bots! Scouting gives you that edge you need to prevent disasters! If you have the units built, then you should be able to deal with the incoming attack. My specific, initial advice to you: look up 'build orders'. Your initial build order is probably hampering your game right from the start. Watching videos can be good for this, especially from the POV of one player (look for someone streaming their games). You can then watch what they're building and in what order. Good luck, have fun!
All great tips, im learning a lot myself.... I have found that I can expand decently and keep up with mex, but I get very 1D in my view of the map sometimes, also I have the knack of building a really nice econ, but not putting it to work as well as I should....often im crushing someones base and wonder, damn.....they have 15 T1 factories...... Though Im winning so obvious I did something right, at that point its mostly do to controlling some large areas of mex and my holkins are pinning him down. But when I loose its from being overrun by massive amounts of units I could never fathom of having lol I really need to get more into building units, even if some are just set to patrol around my base
I believe these guys have covered it.... replays, YouTube, expand...... stay out of the crash zone...if your numbers read zero on eco you know you're building at your current limit which you should strive to every game.... that takes practice though just play constantly, practice makes perfect!!!
I guess people (like me) don't get the basics of metal/energy economy so they can't effectively advance both in terms of territory and tech levels. Not everyone played TA or SC here. I haven't for example. I do understand that when you're on zero energy or metal things go slow but how slow exactly? If I stop some fabs I'll spend less energy so will I build actually faster or not? By what percent? If I have zero energy and negative income should I just stop all assisting fabs until the income becomes positive? How fast is metal being spent? I see the "price" of buildings and units but I can't imagine what it means for the economy in terms of income/outcome, I don't know how long it would take to build something. Also, I only see the metal "price", what about energy? I suppose it depends on fabs and they spend the energy while building something. But how does energy correlates with fabricating speed? 1:1? How much metal is spent per 1 energy spent on fabrication? I hope ETA will be introduced so these questions would be answered by the game itself without any math.
Zero is optimal. That means you are using the exact amount you are gaining and you're building as much and as fast as your econ can afford. It's when you get negative numbers that things start to slow down, unless you have some of the resources stored. Once your resources drain all the way, then the numbers effect your build rate, not before. The commander, for example, can build at a rate of 30 metal/sec and he uses 1500 energy/sec to do it (but he also produces 10 metal/sec and 1000 energy). This makes the commander the most efficient builder in the game. Bot fabers build at 10 met/sec and use 1000 en/sec, so do vehicle fabers. This means before you even think about using any additional fabers, you should have at least 4 mex's and 3 ep's. With the commanders production, this makes for 38 met/sec and 2800 en/sec, barely inneficient for one botfab/vecfab plus the commander. Check out the wiki for more on the numbers. Hopefully this helped
Thanks for the explanation! Now it's more clear. Anyway, ETA is a must and also some effectiveness parameter for fabbers like metal/energy ratio since it matters (for early stages when you have quite limited energy pool) and differs among fabbers as I see in the wiki. It should be seen in the UI without manual calculation.
It is in the UI, sort of. Hover over a Commander or fabber and in the bottom right it will tell you how much metal and energy it is draining. Sure, this is not a ratio, but some quick mental calculations and you should be able to work out that air is more energy hungry. I'm not sure what it's like in PA, but in TA (if I'm remembering correctly) naval was even more energy inefficient. That may just have been the total cost of naval though.
Navy seems more efficient than air. The units cost more, but the naval factory builds at a faster rate. On the wiki, it says a bot factory fabs at 12 m/sec and uses 675 e/sec, while a naval factory fabs at 18 m/sec and uses 925 e/sec. Air is the most inefficient; the factory fabs at 9 m/sec and uses 825 e/sec, and the air fabber! *Pfff, 6 m/sec and uses 1200 e/sec. So are you helping them? Giving them tips and telling them to come here?
nah they dont ask xD but if they would, i would tell them. For me its obvious to watch replays or game casts to get better
