Give me a reason to go vehicle first

Right now you will always kick off with bots or air (ignoring sea maps). Air gives you great scouting and rapid expansion, but is risky because your fabbers are incredibly exposed. Bots meanwhile give you some fantastic raiding possibilities combined with a more efficient fabber.

I would never go vehicles first.

It's not that the fabber is bad, it's the same as the bot one now I think, but it's than the factory has no good early units. The Alleged Tank is simply too slow, either to harass your opponent or respond to raids. The skitter is nice, but the firefly is better.

I'd like to have a third opening option.

It would be pretty nice to have a third option.

I go vehicles first sometimes on close quarter matches, but that's about it. They're just too slow for when spawns are farther apart.

But... I kinda think I'm fine with this. Vehicles are slow. So therefore they're only really valid when you're close. So build the vehicle factories close to your opponent.

I agree with you here. If the vehicle fabber was slightly better than the bot fabber, you would have to make an interesting decision.

I go vehicle first for skitters. To raid I make bots factories later.
Skitters themselves are not that bad at raiding though. Their speed and vision range is a big plus.

i, being a tank man, will now go ahead and state the following:

for me, it's not that i go tanks themselves first, but rather, i invest in the fabbers, so that when the time comes, i already have the right fabber to build the T2 tank factory. when the fabbers are done building, i roll out the tanks.

sure, i know bots are faster. but 1v1, tank either wins, or does enough pain to doom the bot.

i also go tanks first for the immediate ability to build the Guard, because i want to be able to crush early attempts at fortification. bots become rather useless if the enemy's defenses are up and running.

while the tanks are rolling out, i am typically securing my immediate perimiter against bot raids. a few isolated mex's are acceptable losses. my main fortress is not.

you don't defeat an enemy JUST by skirting and raiding his outer rim.

you strike at the heart, and my tanks are perfect for the job. even if the first wave fails, the enemy knows i am coming for him, and straight at him, and likely retreating to his fortress to prevent its fall.

on the other hand, he may prepare a counter attack. but by the time my mixed tank armies are fully diversified, they are a force to be reckoned with. many players try to steer their swarms around or away from the mixed unit death block of tanks rolling in. and if his bot numbers are just THAT great?

well then that's when i typically do one of three things:

1 - fetch air support

2 - prepare nukes and/or heavy artillery, and brace for impact.

3 - if i can, i get the hell of the bot infested planet, and nuke it from my moon base

So skitters are a viable alternative to air scouts?

Really? I'll have to watch your tournament games

Vanguard skitters Ants and vehicle fabbers. The vehicle factory is more efficient and builds quicker.

When did you become a fan of Ants? It might be more efficient, but aren't Doxs the unit you want early on, not Ants?

And T2 tanks don't have anything to do with which factory you build first, unless there's some amazing T2 tank rush I haven't seen. You could simply build a vehicle factory as your third factory and build a single fabber. Boom, T2 tanks ahoy. I mean, I prefer T2 vehicles but I still wouldn't go vehicle first.

if u want ot harass your opponent bots are best to go for with the dox. If you don't plan on harassing, instead go defensive eco build, u might want to go vehicles. So when u get that economy u can steamroll with t2 tanks. One mix I would like to try but always fail getting around too.

That is mixing repair bots with tanks. Not sure how well that would work, based on how fast certain units die.

There's one reason, a very good reason:

One word:

Skitters.

I like going vehicles first. The engineers have more health and the units produced are good for initial raid defense before I get up my bot factories early game.

Also, Skitters.

Clearly I need to try this out.

Tank factorys are really, really good when massed into a mighty steamroll.

6 or 7 will have enough vehicles rolling out to build a mighty hammer with which to annihilate a enemy's main base.

And then you get to T2...ow man, no defence in the game can stand against your horde.

I have no issue with the factory, I use tanks a lot, I'm looking specifically at first factory.

Lol

I have a solution but you won't listen.

Two things no one has mentioned:
Vehicle fabbers have 100 vs 50HP and imo it's noticeable.
Vehicle fabbers tend to block way more - too many assisting a t2 engineer.

So maybe go vehicle fabbers for some surivivability early then switch a bot factory to fabbers to get lots of build power that can stack quite well.

That's not true as far as I can tell.

http://www.nanodesu.info/pa-db/62165/table/builders.html

Evidently not, I sure thought it did when I checked.