Game too fast or just me?

I'm one of the backers for this game. I thought it sounded neat, so I backed it.

I can't play this game terribly well. I will freely admit that I don't play this game often, nor do I play many other RTS games, so I'm asking if the game is too fast-paced for anyone else, or just me.

An Easy AI can't kill me. I build out fast enough for that. I can't kill it either, though. It builds out way faster than I can. Partly because it knows a much better build order than me, and partly because I don't know the scale I should be building on. Is this game one where more than one of the same type of factory is a good idea? Do I spread my base out, or pack it together? Should I always be building units? How am I supposed to keep track of everything that happens? What happens when I have 30 constructors?

The closest game to this I have ever played is a game called AI War: Fleet Command. But that game gave me the ability to pause everything. This game gives me no such option.

How do you all keep track of everything that happens?

Welcome to the forums, glad you took a chance with this game!
I think this feeling is common to many players, particularly new ones. As you become more experienced with the game and systems in place, I think you will find it a bit more manageable, and even enjoyable
Don't forget that the developers are constantly trying to add ways of making it easier to do things, like area commands, picture in picture, alerts, pings, etc.
Also the final release of the game will allow you to pause offline games and presumably speed up/slow down, which should help if you are feeling overwhelmed.

Check out some videos of the game, and tutorials etc., and you'll soon find things easier and less stressful

Good luck, hope you have more fun soon

The ability to add to the chronocam where you can pause the simulation or even slow the simulation. That would be neat against the AI and maybe lan-party players.

What happens when you have 100? It's a multiplayer RTS, obviously enough micro will be needed. PA isn't too micro intensive, but if you're having trouble against a bot and the game already seems too fast for you, well, it won't work out too good for you later on.

yea but there's no denying in trying to make a "fast pace" Uber may have gone a little overboard, the number of planets to handle scales this problem up, even the best on Pa don't deny it.

I tend to have problems with managing my eco versus the number of fabbers. I never strike that balance just right and forget about things like having my commander always doing something. I either have way too many and no eco, or not nearly enough and too much eco. The problem is compounded when I try to manage multiple planets, but picture in picture has helped that. Especially with scouting.

This is exactly why i am glad that they have added in lovely features such as smart area patrol functions and build area functions as they just remove so much unnecessary management from the game and lets you focus on commanding your forces for a all out war across a whole system of planets. Because if this game gets as big as they say with 20+ players ect then they going to have to add more smart features to help the player control his massive robot empire and unit transport is going to be one of them.. I am glad Mavor is toying with the idea of a teleport just for naval although a teleporter for air is a no no for obvious reasons. Anyway setting t2 air up on a new planet is pretty easy and fast if you got a load of t2 constructors flooding out a teleporter gate so why have a air teleporter??

A lot of the problems new players will be experiencing revolve around playing on system that are too big for the number of players set.

The basic strategy of the game is: Expand everywhere, get more econ, get more factories, send hordes at enemy.

As for build orders and just generally getting better at the game, I suggest you watch some casters such as ZaphodX. Pay attention to their initial build orders, see what they do and when, and feel free to experiment and come up with your own tactics!

keep playing you will get better the more you get used to units, builds,etc. i was so bad my first 30 hours

We're all actually ninjas. We see all, track all, know all.

the game is actualy the fastes RTS out there even Supcom 1 is waaaaaay slower lol

Currently this game needs more micro and macro than any other game due to round planets.

Area control is key to winning, I find. The more metal spots you control, the more factories you can sustain in a constant build order loop. Getting off-planet the first and colonizing other worlds helps greatly with this, but even on a single planet there is a lot you can do.
You should always be building units if your economy can sustain it. Keep an eye on the numbers to see if it remains positive. If you have an excess, build more factories and make them churn out units constantly (you can set it to build your orders infinitely) untill you start to go to the negative. This game works differently from other RTS's where you have to gather 50 food, 10 wood etc. to create an archer and you can't order that archer in advance. There is no using up of resources to create something unless you have a negative economic balance.


If you have a cluster of metal extractors away from your starting area, fortify it with walls, laser turrets and AA turrets. That will keep away small raiding forces, or give you time to bring over your army to reinforce the area.
As for keeping track of everything that is going on, that is indeed a hard one. Picture in Picture can be turned on and that helps to keep you informed. But mostly you just have to keep scanning everything.
One thing that helps is to not just give a single order for buildings to be built to your fabricators or commander. If you select them, que up several buildings and defences, enough to keep them occupied for a while. If you are on another planet and you are alone, you could build some factories that churn out a decent amount of fabricators, and order them to build an extractor on every metal spot on that planet by putting down the build order for one and holding down the mouse button, then drag the mouse off the side of the planet. That will que up extractors for every metal spot on that planet. Give others large rows of energy extractors, and an air factory with bombers and fighters to patrol the entire planet. That will basically automanage the planet, though ofcourse you want to be checking in every now and again.

Try to automate as much in advance as you can, so you don't need to keep a constant eye on every single unit.
There is a lot to do and watch out for in PA, so eventually you are going to be distracted. Try to keep your enemy on his toes and watching out for every single direction so that he has less time to mess with you, but don't be too hasty in your attacks. A few defenses behind walls can stop most small armies, and you don't need to be wasting units like that. Probe for weaknesses, then exploit them as hard as you can. Once you've diverted your opponents attention, hit him from another direction, and he might not notice it untill you've put a hole in his economy. He'll need time to rebuild, giving you room to expand and create even more factories. You will definitely want more than one.

My advice is this: Storage. Infinity storage. As much as you can imagine and then some. Cover the planet in storage. It gives you an economic breathing room to slow down, have ups and downs without wasting or crashing. It makes the pace much more manageable I find.

Be warned - people aren't keen on metal storage. This may attract flak.


In saying that, I absolutely agree with you.

As long as your storage is filled to the cost of the storage +1 then it is worth it. They store about 1500 each, and cost 450, so you barely need to fill your bar at all for it to pay for itself.

Energy storage is more iffy but not running out is also worth it I think because of how important that is. You lose intel, you lose build power, and indirectly metal on it.

If you think you have the APM to keep your input/output in a tight range that never exceeds the default 1000 storage or crashes often then go for it. Very difficult though.

It's a difficult game to get to grips with at first but there are tools to make it easier...

My advice to allow you to beat that ai...
Start with 2 metal extractors, then 2 energy, then a bot factory. You can queue up commands by holding the shift key.

Set the factory to make 1 fabber, 2 dox and 1 anti air bot, and turn on the repeat option. The factory will then keep on going with that build.

Set your commander to make energy plants (you can drag a line to build a load of them, queue up 30 or so). Set your first 2 fabbers to go off and build metal extractors, you can drag a circle to make groups of them in one go. Use the dox and aa bots to defend.

Use the next fabbers to make factories, I'd recommend a couple of air factories making a mix of fighters and bombers (use the patrol command with the factory selected and drag a circle over your base, that will set up automatic air cover), and then lots (5 of more) land factories, bots or tanks doesn't really matter. Set then to make attack units and set them all on repeat.

Basic rules- keep your energy up, keep expanding and don't stop making units. The above isn't the best build, but it's simple and doesn't require god like apm. It will certainly give you a strong start against the ai. After that experiment with the higher tier stuff

for me one of the easyest way to beat the Ai is turtle like hell and expand while doing it

AI is prety bad if its going againts a mass aray of defenses like in many many many other RTS games.

Oh.

Energy storage is great. I had screenshots in a thread somewhere - I did one build order where I built energy storage before my first factory, and one after. I then went on to build an air factory and I think a certain number of powergens.

The one from before, I finished building my power gens earlier, as well as produced more units. Because I never energy stalled. The one from after, nope, it was a rubbish build order. Energy storage is a godsend, you should be spamming that as soon as you're filling it.


The issue with metal storage is that it costs 450.

450 is 75% of your next factory. Your next factory will keep your storage empty by default.

And running n factories at m/nx100% efficiency is more effective medium to long term than running m factories at 100%.

I.e. running 10 factories at 10% efficiency is in fact more effective than running 1 factory at 100%.

The reason being roll off time. 10 factories at 10% efficiency build a 10 second unit in 100 seconds.
1 factory at 100% builds 10 10 second units in 100 seconds, plus x seconds of roll-off time per unit. I.e. 5 second roll off time approx = 50 seconds total roll off time = 150 seconds to produce 10 units.
2 factories at 50% build 10 10 second units in 100 seconds. Plus 25 seconds of roll-off time.

Etc.
I.e. your eco should always be absolutely empty.

HERE is where storage comes in!

I have 10 factories at 10% efficiency. Assume they are all synchronized with one another. Assume they're advanced vehicle factories. My income is 45. My spending is 450.

For 5 seconds, my spending is 0. My storage fills up with 225 metal. My spending is 450 after that 5 seconds. For half a second, I fabricate at full speed (100% efficiency.) I'm building Levellers, I therefore spend 22.5 metal on each Leveller. The cost of the Leveller is now 427.5. My build efficiency is 10%, so I'm spending 4.5 metal per second on each factory, instead of 45.

It now takes me 95 seconds to build a Leveller. 95.5 seconds total. And that's true for every Leveller from my second onwards.

In a much shorter argument, metal storage is a mid-late game concern. It's for when the pumping action by your economy's fluctuations will fill up your storage beyond 1000 on a regular basis.
In the early game you should neither under-spend to fill your metal storage (you should always be spending metal on something), nor should you overspend to empty it and crash it beyond 50%. As a rough guide.



Hmph. I wish I could be bothered to make a video guide on how to beat the AI... maybe a steam walkthrough will do.