To all new players: expand expand expand!

Imagine 3 engies constantly building mexes. and a couple of engies constantly building power. With that resource capacity by the time my opponent is finishing his "rushed" T2 factory I got 10 T1 factories up and running and attacking his base with tanks. Not to mention I already destroyed a couple of outer mexes plus engies by raiding bots.

You have to first build a T2 factory. Then build t2 engie. Then build a t2 mass extractor. That takes too long my friend.

Besides. If I scouted you and I am noticing you are not expanding, I can start teching too. Because I have a bigger eco I can easily outtech you.

No sir, turtling is a bad baaaaaaad idea.

i gotta say "yes, the gap sure is big". It could be halfed imo.

Can people please clarify what Mexes are? I thought they were metal extractors, but @clopse says to build 4 mass, mex, energy, 3 mex, and a bot factory. If mexes are metal extractors, what are mass, and why would you build so many of them first?

mass or "metal" points. that's what mexes are.
it's lingo.

by the time we can decently communicate on PA the game, this lingo will have circulated and everyone will know.

in this case it's actually drawn from FA.

I dunno what you mean by "building so many" I don't really realise as I generally try to grab every last one, not only on the planet but in the system.

MEX = Metal EXtractor or Mass EXtractor in SupCom/Forged Alliance.
Mass = main resource in SupCom/Forged Alliance.
Metal = main resource in Planetary Annihilation and good old Total Annihilation
SupCom players are used to call it "mass".
Confusingly enough people might refer to places where you can build MEXes as mass, metal, metal patches, metal spots, mass spots or simply MEX again.
I vouch for calling it metal patch but usually it is clear from the context.

Turtling is fine, although it's not a great tactic, as you should always expand, it does have it's usefulness is certain situations.

For example, you spawn near 3 big mass deposits, 15 lets say in total, and you're playing a 5 player ffa on a scale 3 map. What do you do? You sit on them, and use those resources to tech up. Far easier to defend clumps of resources, than many 1's from raiding dox's.

That's the real 'issue' here. Defending multiple points from fast dox's is a nightmare, so they don't bother, and they focus on what they can defend. In a 1v1 situation? turtling will end you. BUT..in a mass player FFA, it can save you, with a bit of luck and/or placement.

Err sorry I screwed up. I meant metal storage. It just seems strange that clopse's build order was 4 metal extractors, one metal storage, energy, 3 more storage, and a factory...

storage allows you to withdraw bigger lump sums from the bank.

I like them for energy too, but I seem to be alone in that

Mass = metal.
Mass extractor = metal extractor

Just from different games... same concept.

? i play a lot FAF setons too,so i got the same nick there hummm im already try to see who you are

So that guys build order is one metal extractor, energy, followed by 3 metal extractors, followed by a factory?

you want to always be building metal extractors if you can, it depends on where you spawn if it's better to do a few mexs (metal extractor) and then go for a factory or do one and a factory (i.e. quicker than sending your comm to each one)

I love that Pa has defence's that are actually worth building, In my experience tho winning is getting the right balance between offensive and defensive play.

And yes build more t1 factories a large t1 tank rush is gonna do some damage. bots are also great but do get chewed up easily by laser cannons. There real advantage is in there speed so keep 'em moving

Use the in game movie tools to find out how you got beet.

Watch out for nukes, one nuke hit on your power gen's and you're in a stall that is hard to break. Wish anti nukes were a little cheaper.

oh god its IKatherine... the 1000 FAF player 'that is not pro'.
You are in PA too. Lets hope that if we play its not a water map....

The whole argument is that you should not have a bank to begin with.

I like it - I prefer RTS games like this, where there's technically less emphasis on managing the economy (i.e. you can queue up ridiculous build orders for when you have the resources) and more of an emphasis on managing your army and so on.

I still don't understand why its bad to have stored metal and energy.

Choose:

a) 10k metal in the bank
b) 40 ant on the field, marching towards your enemy.

Obviously a is pretty bad compared to b

So banked money = resources you could have already used to make an army to win the game.

I see. But what if you have both?

then why don't you have another 40 ants instead