Turtling with t2 mex trumps map control and expansion

They provided far too few resources in the early game leading you to just stand around waiting for mass to accumulate so you could build stuff. Very dull and drawn out buildup, the game was designed to have more early resources. In flux that would of course just mean standing around at -20 metal a lot while things build at snails pace, rather than waiting for accumulation.

At the end game they ended up giving you so many resources that you could not possibly use them all. And I mean that literally, I've had every buildable square on the map covered in factories on infinite loop and still the mass was stuck at 9999999. It removes the need to capture mass points, and it removes the limit that resources impose on you.

That is pretty much the case with T2 mexes right now in PA, you would not want to compound that issue even further with extractors that level up and also ruin the early game.

Yeah, in a FFA......If you know what you are doing you will pick a nicer spawn.

That's why the point is a weak one. But I get your drift.

1) Player A did not expand. That is the main assumption we are going with. Is expanding better than consolidating? Player A does not have the same metal income as player B.

2) This isn't number of factories. This is number of mexes.

3) Player A and Player B both have the same amount of energy (Vehicle factory - 675). Adding 3000 energy means player A has a build efficiency of 18%. 1st tank takes (150) / (45 * 0.18) = 18 seconds to build.



Is expanding better than consolidating?

No, consolidating does give you an extra boost. Short term. Until the fact that your opponent owns the rest of the planet means something. Depending on how good your opponent is depends on how long that advantage lasts for you. Sometimes it is literally no time at all.

Sometimes unavoidable in large FFAs, where you only have one nice spawn to use, and a lack of valid rush build options make commander march practically suicide if other players are paying attention. You need to consolidate the catch up metal before your opponents use the advantage against you.

I thought this too.
Then everything changed when I played multiplayer.

The point still remains. I liked how matches worked in the older patches - most games involved every single mex on the field (even in a 1v1) because of the desperate need to expand. I want to go back to that concept. The best way to get there, I think, is to nerf T2 Metal. It will LOWER the maximum metal you can have, and force you to expand.

That's not to say turtling is NOT a valid strategy - because it CAN BE. The thing here is that turtling shouldnt work when you have only ten mex.

I've seen plenty of players like mattrmunson rush T2 Air in 5 minutes with 6-7 mex (and they still can) and steamroll the enemy with it. Even the best players out there. And it is nigh on impossible to counter due to distance required, mex invested, and the fact that nothing can kill T2 air right now except T2 Air.

Oh wow! BMB got something correct for once.

PA starts you with very little, and it takes a huge amount of resources to get your initial base set up. This means you need a LOT of resources to work the early game. However, that same early game surplus creates a late game excess which is difficult to manage.

TA solved this problem correctly. TA's early game was provided by wreckage and the Comm's storage, which gave the initial resources needed to run a base and start attacking. TA's late game gave a good amount of resources, but not too much to overwhelm players. Supcom started its game with wreckage as well, but buried its exponential issues with exponential units.

How is that any different from PA's current metagame? All my solution involves is a reason to take more than 5-10 mex in your base and rush T2 air.

What about replacing both Basic and Advanced mexes with a hybrid one, buildable by all builders having its metal income somewhere between Basic and Advanced? It would decrease the amount of inflation late game while increase the amount of metal early. Your metal economy would be directly proportional to the amount of mexes you hold, thus forcing expansion.

Make metal points rarer. Then make T2 metal extractors either consume large amounts of energy, or only be be buildable on special "deep" metal deposits, of which only a few exist per planet.

The same could apply for T2 powergens. T2 could be geothermal and only buildable on rare thermal points.

well they just super boomed the eco. 1-2 expansions, based on their size, will be sufficient enough to power a good sized war machine. That, is not good.