Economy,spam and game progression

not the case. you dont need radar to win games... I think most of the games that i played last had me stalling energy the whole game, but thats only because i can play without the need of radar. And since units werent affected by energy stalls, it didnt hurt me much.

I'm hoping the intelligence war has a bigger part to play as the game progresses

OOOO SHOTS FIRED

I think the "100% spam" trend that's been happening lately is a bit silly. It usually beats 100% turtles. It loses to "aggressive turtling", which is what I do -- I build probably half or less as many units but I spend a lot on Pelters and Holkins. I'll do enough spamming to get units out there both to backup my defenses and to harass the spammers (by running past their swarms into their base, which usually has no defense if you dodge the exiting stream), but at least half my economy is focused on artillery, orbital and nukes. I build T2 bombers with 8+ unassisted factories and T1 fighters with 5+ unassisted factories and start blowing up anything they have that's nice.

Meanwhile their swarms are getting wrecked by a couple of Holkins and a relative handful of Pelters. It's not hard to stop them from getting into even a very spread out base, especially with bombers to provide backup.

As long as I don't accidentally starve my power (which cuts my radar), I can usually hold them off with one hand.


Pure turtles lose to spam because they aren't building any units to reach out with. You need a decent attack force to take advantage of the spammers' unprotected metal and energy gens, not to mention to backdoor their base. And you need to scout to see where to do this.

But "aggressive turtling" beats spamming pretty consistently because you have enough units to hit them where it hurts and their spam (especially if they stick with T1) is mostly being killed before they can accomplish anything.


Probably the best thing spamming does is demonstrate one way that PA is distinctly different than games like Starcraft: you shouldn't be afraid to just send fabricators out to build factories in the middle of nowhere. It's not a big loss if you lose it all, but it could potentially win you the game by giving you a large force relatively quickly to attack from a new direction with. When I build advanced air factories I basically dot the landscape with them and build up defenses to encompass them as able. If some spam gets in and kills a few, no big deal. The bombers I got out of them in the meantime probably did more damage to the spammer than he did to me anyway.

Basically, it's silly to ignore PA defensive structures because they are absurdly cost effective in moderate concentrations. Too much unit spam will kill your ability to quickly build them, though.

I don't think we disagree much on this but just to clarify, the most common way to make people stall was to harass them and kill their energy production. New players didn't understand the importance of early harass and wouldn't harm my economy. And while they stalled my eco grew exponentially because with metal makers you could build economy production. Like i said, a very punishing feature for new players.

All I'm doing here is trying to get across that uber didn't include an cost of energy to run metal extractors because it was, and for all i know still is, considered a too punishing feature to have in the game. I agree with them on this point but if anyone would like to know more it's all in the original economy thread i linked in my first post in this thread. It has plenty of uber devs posting in it.

I think you're misunderstanding how the economy works. If you have 24 factories and no metal income, you will never roll a single tank out of any of those 24 factories.

If you're at 200 metal income and 2000 metal production, you'll roll them out slowly (10% speed) and meanwhile be totally crippling your ability to build anything else (which will also be 10% speed).

In the end, 400 metal income is going to make more stuff than 200 metal income regardless of the number of factories the 200 metal guy has.

I think it mostly helps people organize themselves and gives the illusion of effectiveness when their 24 factories finally produce 1 tank each and now they attack with a clump of 24 tanks instead of wheeling out with 6-10 at a time.

I think this thread is an excellent time to draw attention to the importance of in-game visuals to represent a concept.

At the moment, the nanolathe streams only visibly and noticeably appear to thin out when you're in really cripplingly slow economy territory, say sub-30% build efficiency. You should probably be panicking a bit before that point.

If we take the assumption that nanolathe particles are currently operating on a linear relationship to build efficiency, perhaps they ought instead to operate on an exponential curve basis, so that there is a more noticeable drop in particle quantity earlier on in the stall.

I didnt say i didnt use intel. i just prefer to use patrolling planes to know enemy army movements that relying on radar. Intel already plays a pretty big part, just not radar.

This is a combat game. Not SimCity. Having the game balance focus too much on economy makes PA turn into not a combat game.

If you think PA is all about "spam more units than your opponent" – then you must not have played too much.

Superior strategy can beat a superior economy. This is seen through matches that result in snipes, someone with less of an economy taking over the greater economy, and massive flanking.

I submit this match as evidence:


I'm losing, but I flank around behind and turn the tides and pull out a win.

I really love that there are enough game recordings by now that they can be used to back up an argument.

im sure i could find a recording of myself that backs up spam is all you need...

A wall of lazers and pelters doesn't do anything, I can testify to that.

Except you use superior tactics.

What a couple of lasers and pelters (plus radar) REALLY does is lets your 20 Ants handily win against the incoming wave of 50.

That's why I say the winning playstyle is "aggressive turtling". You can't JUST have static defenses, especially early on. You need units that can rush in to support areas that need it.

But the Pelters will do plenty of cost-effective killing if you can buy them some time with your own tanks. (One feature I hope PA adds that TA had: unit kill counts. I just like to mouse-over a cannon and see that it has "296 kills".)

Did you forget anti air support? Was it a single wall of lasers? Were your pelters backed with radar? Were they coming at you with levelers? Stalling on energy sucks, stalling on metal, not so bad, as long as it's not something crazy like -5000.

A lot of the gripes I'm hearing are people who really seem like they got their butt kicked because their opening build isn't correct, and the first 5 mins of a game are almost the most important, I'd even take it to the first 10 structures built are the most important when in a 1v1 match... Even in team armies, if your on a small map and don't build properly, there's a good chance your going to get reamed. It could even be the fact you tried to go T2 to early... Which I see a lot.

Tldr: there's a post about opening build order, it's an important read. Also watching the videos out there will help with build order and general tactics.

No its not. You should be ashamed after the way i defended you about shielding.

That's pretty rude...

The opening build is so irrelevant if someone gets you for having not done the first five minutes then relax it doesn't matter, have another go. Put simply play forged alliance for a few day and then come on the server and rip people to pieces, this game is undisciplined economically it makes the whole game far to easy.

Hi cap

If that's your thoughts on opening build order, I think I found out the problem on why your getting ran over by tanks.