Okay, let's get down to business. Which first, t2 or orbital?

You have an excellent economy. There are 3 planets. One of them may or may not be smashable. You are of course, trying to win. You are presented with two options, t2 or orbital.
also, orbital fabber or estraus?

If the "planets" are moons of the starting planet, orbital-first should get you a solid economic boost in a reasonable time-frame. Otherwise, T2 first is probably optimal.

In a 1v1, orbital fabber is likely preferable, since you'll want your comm for defense - in a team game or an FFA, sending a comm via Astraeus is a bit faster, and means that the comm can defend one of the new planets.

if it is a FFA if the "planets" are moons or not you should have orbital by 5 to 6 min from the start of the game. get your com off planet, then go t2. If it is a 1v1 it depends on your scouting info.

You would know by looking at the system info.

T2.
I don't know what an 'excellent' economy is, but the sooner I can quintuple it and start mass-building nukes, the better.

Personally I'd usually go orbital and a fabber. Get a quick gate up then sent masses of bot fabbers through and take it quickly. Imo that is a faster way than sending com via transport as it saves the time of building factories and so on.

The thing is- if you can get to orbital first and take both the moons, its very difficult for your opponent to get a foothold there once you have orbital fighters up. The key is to keep a presence on the main planet and keep harassing them until its too late. Then you spam nukes or halleys for the win (or if you can hold the gate on the main planet long enough send through hordes of t2 your amassed in safety off world)

Orbital. I personally never build the Astraeus anymore, preferring the orbital fabber + teleporter. If I go teleporter and you go Astraeus, I'm going to take the planet from you pretty easily even if I arrive a little bit later.

Once at the planet my build order is:
Air factory
Air fabber
All units assist the air fabber in making a 1-3 T2 air factories (depending on the strength of my economy at the time)
Make T2 bombers on global patrol
If they find anything, send ground units through the teleport to attack it
Make T2 energy (unless I intend to smash the planet)
Make T2 metal (unless I intend to smash the planet)

If you don't go orbital early, you will find yourself locked out of the other planets by people like me. Once the global T2 bomber patrol starts up, it's going to be very hard to break in, especially if the planet is scale 1-3.

Meanwhile, at the home base, I'm securing my defenses and still planning attacks of some sort. I don't move my commander unless I feel I'm in danger there, although I may move him once I have some other planet fully secured (including anti-nukes if it's a moon).

I see a lot of early-orbital people just give up their main base, which is silly.

Incidentally, I think it's telling that fights on other planets are rarely interesting.

By far what happens is:
* I get setup with T2 bombers and they can't invade
* They get setup with T2 bombers and I can't invade
* I show up late but they have no apparent defense plan and I just run over them

The longer you wait to go orbital, the more that second one will happen.

What almost never happens is:
* We have a good, interesting battle.

That seems to require we both show up at about the same time and both plop down decent defenses before either can overrun the other.

Hi Ben

I think it mostly depends on what kind of system you are playing on and how many players you are playing with (massive FFA or e.g. 1v1).
If you're playing FFA on small and crowded planet and it's hard to expand there, you should build a proxy base on another planet as quickly as possible (especially if we are talking about moon orbiting a main planet - in this case the travel time is very short, so you can quickly gain a big expansion). Also if there is an asteroid (halley-able planet) somewhere in the system, getting control over it should be your priority, because ownership of such object often determines your victory.
If it's about a 1v1 game, in my opinon it's better to invest in T2, since you are constantly putting pressure on your opponent and getting T2 infantry quickier than the enemy may tip the balance of victory to your side.

Hahaha, but seriously.
Probably T2, because a few T2 eco buildings in orbital will be easy to get.

Personally, I like to send my commander in an Astraeus, and have him build the teleporter. Meanwhile I'm building Doxen on the main planet, ready to flood through the gate when the connection is made, and my commander tosses up air factories to get intel and shoot down any landers. So far, it's worked every time, and I've killed many commanders that were caught unprepared for a bot swarm or shot down while trying to land. A big part of this working though is building the deep space radar to know for certain that my commander is the first off the planet, and knowing where everyone else is sending their stuff.

It's not that I give up as such it's that it's an insurmountable management task to build up one base while defending another without a good way to travel between places in the UI.

This should help you out a lot then:

1. To create a camera bookmark, hold shift and a number key
2. To recall a camera bookmark, hold alt and the assigned number key

I try to assign shift-1 for my main base, and shift-2 and beyond for any other bases I setup, often on other planets. And then I just cycle through doing stuff on each planet as needed.

I feel this is one of the most reckless things you can do, unless you're pretty sure that you are the first on the planet.

If I got there 3 minutes ahead of you, your commander is going to discover the place is occupied when the first T2 bomber discovers him and drops bombs on his head.

Shift-#: save current camera location
Alt-#: return to that location

I always point the camera north ("N") and then shift-1 my main base. Shift-2 the first moon base and now I can quickly switch between them.

In team games, I shift-# my teammates starter locations so I can keep an eye on them.

I agree. That's why I always build the deep space radar before I launch. I don't need to be the first to leave, but it should be close. And if someone is sending a bot fabber instead of their commander, I have even more time to arrive thanks to the super slow build of a single one of those. If it's a small moon I'm going to, I'm fairly confident I can beat an orbital fabber too, as long as I'm there first and I'm paying attention. The orbital fabber can build a teleporter faster than a commander, but the much higher energy drain can be pretty taxing for an early game economy.

Also, most people seem to send stuff into space then kind of ignore it. Often even when someone does get a teleporter established, nothing comes through and you get plenty of time to kill or reclaim it. I'm not sure if people realize that you can queue the connection before the teleporters are done, as well as queue troops to move through as soon as the connection is made.

T-2 Eco is better than the Orbital eco, and you can make T-2 Mexes, so if you have some Map Control go T-2, but in some cases Orbital can be better, like to make some Avengers and Blockade a moon

You get better bang for buck by being first to a pristine planet than you do by T2 first. If the system has more than one planet then orbital /teleporter should be your first goal imho.