Help for the n00bs

I'll release a mod that does something amazing so that everyone downloads it, but hidden inside will be a secret code that crashes the game if the player's name is clopse!

now now... whats will all the hate on Clopse he is a good guy ^^

PA Matches has a Tutorials section.

Of course he is! I don't mind being the evil one as long as I win.

Thanks but those are as helpful for me since I already have most of those basics down. Other players would definitely benefit from that though!

Just a warning, this is a few builds old and so some of the guidance is very much out of date. IMO.

I'm adding new tutorials every week and am trying to add content that helps both new players and experienced players.

This is probably the most vital advice provided in this thread. You always need more energy than you think and you should always be building power gens. If you haven't run across this problem it means you haven't been building enough fabbers.

Power is the key to the game, and while MEXs look like tempting raid targets it's energy that will really screw your opponent.

I you want a quick guideline, use your commander to build an air factory to build a scout with, and a bot factory to build infinite fabricators with, after that your commander can build endless amounts of T1 powergens(if memory serves right he gets a cost reduction on building that specific structure). The order in which you get those first buildings varies with patches, atm many people seem to get 3 mexes and 2 powergens before building those two factories, then infinite T1 powergens.

When you get fabricators out you can use the first handful to build mexes and assist the comm in building power if needed. Around the fifth fabricator I like to queue up a bunch of factories to crank out units. I'm still learning myself, but a common mistake in other beginners I see is not building enough factories. They eat relatively little resources compared to fabricators, and 9-12 factories assemble armies very rapidly! So build away. :>

Also helps to watch tournaments, and streams/youtubevids from good players. If they taught me anything it's to go for the throat and be agressive. Imagine your commander is in a state of constant rage, a Chaos Marine as it were.

is this true? confirm? very good info! (i've been basically doing this anyway - setting the comm to build lots & lots of t1 energy)

epiphany moment! i've been assisting my factories w/ fabbers to crank up production speed, when I should be using those fabbers to spam more factories! i think that's my big mistake so far...

Commander has the cheapest Metal to Energy building soo the fastest builder for the least energy

and more factory's are good but putting fabbers on the factories work too other then the roll off time, try both out see what you prefer xD

I would just suggest to watch @zaphodx videos, and play the game (1v1 / FFA)

Take notes when you lose and even when you don't. Your analysis of the replay should take as long or longer than playing the actual game.

• If I lost how did I lose and why?
• Was my eco bad and why? What can I do next time to prevent/better that?
• Was I keeping up pressure?
• Was I expanding like I needed to?
• Was I scouting like I needed to?
• What can I do to better to early raid?
• Was I defending against early raids like I needed to?
  
• How was my starting build compared to my foe(s)?
• (FFA) Was I playing mind games with my foes?
• (FFA) Did I make sure not to agitate multiple players?
  
• Where were my foes weak and how could I have exploited that?
• Did I attack from multiple directions and did I use combinations of units to get the biggest bang?
  
• Did I get off planet as fast as I needed to? (Only in FFA ~6-7 min)
• Was I micoing my units to get the biggest bang for the buck?
• Did I jump to t2 like I needed to / did I jump too fast and decimate my eco & production?
• Did I jump to Orbital production when I needed to (why, why not)?
  
• And most important now: Did I have prevention measures in place for t2 air raids?

Haha feckers. I think the best way to get better is to copy a good players build and adapt it to your speed or gameplay. Gandalf has a really nice build that doesn't require much apm. It's a pretty safe build too for 1v1 matches against most players. Believe he streamed yesterday which shows the build. Twitch.tv/planetaryannihilation I think is his stream.

When watching people play a few mistakes I notice are people spending a lot of time walking their commander in the early game. Especially early game the commander should move as little as possible whilst building for first 5 minutes at least.

Radar is extremely good now and helps a lot if you are not so good at the early raiding game.

Only go air to protect when necessary. If you don't have the apm to manage it is a waste of apm. More so now as the com has become a great bomber sniper. T1 of course. Rumour has it t2 is op.

Never crash your harassing dox. They took a while to get to the enemy's base so should be respected.

Edit: Wow apologies for the font. I blame my phone and my fag fingers. Haha fat.

Always be building power generators.
Metal extractors are important too but not as much once you get T2.
Harass the enemy so he will waste his metal on defenses.
Build more units.
Go T2 air as soon as you can.
Once you have T2 air spam bombers but keep them in one place till you have a fuckton.
Once you have a fuckton of bombers find the enemy commandeer
???
Profit!

Other nice ideas are having at least one air and naval factory autobuilding into an infinite patrol or fighters and narwhals over the entire planet and then ignoring that part of the game while you focus on the land war. If the enemy isn't a noob however you will have to make a more focused approach. At very least that should be the minimum you do. Ignoring air or naval is a deadly mistake.

1 - you invite him on a night out

2 - you by him lots of beer and shots

3 - once he can barely stand up you challenge him to a game of pa....

Assisting T2 and orbital iS very much worth it due to the higher factory cost, build time if the factory and build time of units. It's no use with t1 however.

And then he still wins and you find yourself descending into a spiral of shame and self-loathing.

Ive found using Picture in Picture for scouting quite handy. Set my Scouts way points then follow him in the PiP using the T key to track him. Leaves me microing my base without having to keep checking on him.

I strive to have a minimum of eight factories, all with a fabber supporting them. Its possible to do both, and create a horrific stream of units. The other night, in a 2v2v2, we had someone cowering in his base with some 14+ factories all spamming explosive bots.

He was the last guy alive, and couldnt move out of his base at all, or expand and had literally run out of space to place buildings. Whilst he was stuck there we claimed another planet,and covered it entirely in tech 2 metal extractors and Tech 2 power and finished him off with *several* nuclear missiles as by then he had turtled hard.

Was a pretty leisurely game from then on out, as he had spent all his metal on static defenses and an antinuke (which is useless against clustered nuke spam, even in high numbers).

You flatter me clopse. haha I am up to teach anyone, anytime, unless im not able... well then thats my problem. just try and get ahold of me inside PACE TS ot Realm TS, message me on forums or irc. im around. just ask me and we can do a crash course on what in the world your doing wrong and what you need to get better at.