Build Orders

Hey all! I have been trying to figure out the most effective build orders recently and I haven't been able to locate anywhere that other people are talking about them so that will be the purpose of this thread. If there is another thread for this purpose that I'm missing, please let me know. Anyone that has tried out some builds and found one or more that they think are strong openings is encouraged to post here. My main focus is 1v1 but builds aimed at any other matchup are welcome.

To get us started, I've spent a few hours the last couple days testing different builds to try and find the most efficient economic opener. I did my testing on a spawn with high metal density (same each time to eliminate the random variable of spawn environment) and recorded the number of buildings and units that resulted 3.5 minutes after start of building as a measure of success. Oddly enough, using these same builds in metal deficient environments hasn't adversely effected them much. Just means you produce a bit more military as a result of not as many resources being drained by the MEX builders due to their increased travel time.

So far I have tried starts from 2 MEX, 1 PP up through 3 MEX, 2 PP. I have tried getting a second factory very quickly, assisting production with the Com or fabbers, splitting up fabbers for building MEXs vs. keeping them together (no measurable difference resulted from this, though it does effect immediate balance of resources, i.e., if you need more metal income immediately, gang up on it!), mixing military units into the production, and, of course, many different orders of assigning tasks to fabbers.

For pure eco (to prepare for large scale production), the best build I've found thus far is 3 MEXs, 2 PPs, vehicle factory to produce nothing but fabbers continuously from completion, then Com goes straight to nonstop power production, first 3 fabbers go on nonstop MEX duty, 4th assists Com with power, and begin large scale production shortly after, as eco permits. This build yielded, on average, 23 MEXs, 11 PPs, 1 vehicle factory, and 8 fabbers. A start with only 1 PP has the same results and is all the same except with the first fabber going to assist the Com until the 4th PP finishes, at which point he switches to MEX. One caveat here is that I continued to focus on MEXs and PPs to the exclusion of military units longer than I would in an actual game (by around 3 mins there is metal income overflow that gets wasted without more production) so in an actual game I would pull some fabbers off MEXs and begin large scale production before 3.5 mins.

Of course, going pure eco is dangerous if your enemy is anywhere close at all so I have been modifying it with a radar after the 3rd MEX built by fabbers and a second factory from the Com after the 5th PP that builds a few AA to guard the fabbers and then tanks/AA. This results in the number of MEXs dropping to around 15 but you get a radar, second factory, and 3 military units instead, which should make you pretty secure. Going for the second factory any sooner than this always resulted in shortages that tanked the efficiency and weakened the build order but I haven't yet experimented with going for a military unit instead of fabber first to alleviate the economic strain enough to get out the 2nd factory faster so I don't know yet if that would improve it overall or not. I also plan to eventually test the builds currently being used by the "pro" players that are far more aggressive with far fewer fabbers. Obviously these won't do as well for eco development but will give more options for early harassment and defense.

I don't pretend to think that my current build order is the best, by any means. Nor do I know how it compares to the builds of the "pro" players, other than being more passive. It's just the best I've had the time and patience to find so far My hope is that others will do their own experiments and find more effective builds to share with the community. Since it is very time-intensive to figure out but also very impactful on player performance, I think it behooves us all to pool our resources on this matter

The current standard is metal > metal > energy > metal > factory. Commander builds energy, fabbers get metal.

Then make things that go boom.

Very helpful Brian, thank you

The current "pro build" is to get 2 early factories. One factory for harass and building and one for defending harass and or or attacking. The builds you mention are solid for building but don't play well in 1v1 games. I normally have a bomber in your base at 2 mins. The build I use this patch is, 3 mex, pp, air,pp mex, air, pp,pp, veh and then commander building some energy.

There is no right or wrong way to play but some ways are better depending on maps and your play style. Some people like myself prefer to rush really hard and try find timings. Then you have matiz that plays a safer type of play with constant expanding safe play until he knows he should be ahead.

You can have 50m and 5k less resources and still be producing more offensive units if the other guy has more fabbers. This is a key part of my gameplay; I need to find attack windows and have a limited time frame to squeeze or kill opponents effectively before getting into being steamrolled territory.

I would advise you to watch some of the kotp games from the weekend where both styles were shown. Matiz has a safer build executed extremely well were I have rush builds executed badly.

Tl:dr

Maps and your game style should dictate more your build style more than a one build fits all.

Nice post! I love reading stuff that deeply think and experiment with build orders.

Don't do anything but mex mex pgen mex. Any other combination of this is not as efficient unless there is walking time due to spawn. But in the end the differences are so small with your first 4 buildings it doesn't matter. You used to be able to do 2 mex 1 pgen bot factory for a very specific early grenadier timing on <600 radius, but cutting 3rd mex makes no sense anymore with the current air meta. The only no-no is don't do 2nd pgen before first factory.

So in terms of actual builds, basically, go with clopses if you're an air whore and like to yolo.

However, if you like tanks and more proper way of playing , go with air first hummingbird and scout his build. If he goes 2 air factory, then you match with your own and play the 'who can not lose their air fabber game'. If he goes bot first, thank almighty Scathis for the win he has provided thee and start lolbombering after an air fab + 2nd vehicle tank contain for his wasted time on aa turrets. If he goes vehicles first, keep an eye on when and how much he builds spinners (look for bomber chance or tank chance due to overcommitment to spinner), how many fabbers, and what his air fac timing is.

Or if you're confident in defending with 2nd vehicles you can do that.. but i wouldn't against fast 2nd air since you will have no air control and he can crazy air fab expand with nothing you can do about it. You would be crazy to think you can consistently kill his air fab with your 1 air fac to his 2.

You've also correctly identified the most efficient macro build possible (3 fab metal expansion into comm energy + assist), so well done! You'll find you can grade how macro someone's build is by how many fabbers they have expanding metal and how much they stagger this. If they goes 3 fab expand straight off, they won't be getting any real production going untill 5-6 minutes unless they decide to float tons of metal and play as if they only expanded with 1 or 2 fabbers. 5-6 minutes is very vulnerable against a more balanced build, you will be out harassed by tanks and air and lose all that macro.

It's up to you to seek a balance you're happy with between macro and unit timing. Personally I will do something like air first, +4 pgen with commander, then 2 fac, 1 pgen, 1 fac or something with commander. It takes too long to get the energy up to support vehicle fabricator swarms to build factories. Better to build the first few with commander instead and only find timing to start fabber swarming to some safe t2 timing after that. Remember that each fabber you build and use is basically 1 factory you could have had instead.

In terms of macro fundamentals, keep in mind that the goal is simply to spend more metal than your opponent - having lots of metal income means nothing if you have no energy to turn it into useful stuff. Each surplus wasted mex you build is basically 1 tank that could have been around your opponents base pulling his units out of position, forcing production, or killing his mex.

Therefore try to always reach for +0 change in metal while expanding as fast as you can. If you are -ve metal and -ve energy (which means you built too many fabricators), again expand on metal so that the metal change goes to 0 before you start powering energy. You're only -ve metal because your energy pipeline is allowing you to spend more metal than you have coming in. Ignore the build efficiency number, it's dumb.

If you're +ve metal, prioritise output and energy (if it's an energy bottleneck) so on so on. Alot of stuff always happens in games and you've got to be flexible with your build order, so make sure you first understand how to safely expand fast while minimising energy and metal bottlenecks. Doing that will naturally give you optimal build orders as a side effect.

Thanks for the input, Clopse! I am aware that the build as described above would end in pain against the sort of build you used in the tournament. I did not design it in mind for a match where the opponents know ahead of time where each other are and are going for balls to the walls aggression like you did waiting forever before making your first fabber If there was need for real scouting I believe there would be an extra 30 seconds or so delay on an attack, even for going first bomber that would make the timing of my AA more reasonable but I do agree that I should probably fit in at least one AA before the second factory to be safe. I plan to fiddle with that later.

Personally, I prefer less aggressive builds for the very reason that we saw in the tournament you mentioned. Namely, with a modicum of well timed defensive units peppered into an eco build, you can hold off the aggression and be ahead in eco, as we saw with Matiz. That much aggression seems to be relying on your opponent to make a mistake, which is a valid strategy but not one I like to rely on. My preference aside, this thread is open for all styles and I appreciate you adding your build!

I am going to experiment next with getting an AA out of the first factory and see if the corresponding alleviation on eco demand allows me to get away with an earlier second factory, probably go back to a single PP start as well. I think I'll also try to make the second factory air because I get the impression that a fighter can protect a fabber more effectively than vehicle AA (i.e. shoot it down BEFORE it bombs the target ), though I haven't had the opportunity to compare the two clinically. I'd love to go air first for more than just agression but air fabbers are just too vulnerable to fighters

Thanks! Glad to see that other people get all academic about these games as well

The reason I had one build using 2 PPs first was due to the fact that, for a heavy eco build, the 1PP start runs into some brief shortages that delay factory production sufficiently via low efficiency such that it evens out to approximately the same production even though you started the factory 1 PP later. Meaning that for a heavy eco build there is merit to starting 2 PPs BUT when you need to mix in military units early on (like any high level game where people will be aggressive) I'm sure it is always better to go 1 PP start since you won't have the same efficiency issue due to less fabbers.

I defer to your superior experience but I don't see that going 1st vehicle, 2nd air would necessarily mean the enemy would have free reign with air fabbers. I hear what you're saying about them getting air dominance but I don't agree that whoever has more fighters can keep air fabbers safe. The reason air fabbers are so vulnerable is specifically because fighters are not very good at shooting down other fighters before they can one-shot an air fabber. You should be able to protect your base with ground AA from the first vehicle factory and sneak fighters from your second air around to the enemy base and snipe air fabbers even if they have twice the air production. At least, that makes sense to me but, again, I defer to your experience because I'm just theory crafting here

I'm not sure that 5-6 mins is accurate for large scale production. I have all the eco I need to start massing factories around 3 mins with the build I described. Of course, if I just have the fabbers build a lot of factories then it may take a couple mins for a significant production rate to build up but, alternatively, I could just have them assist one factory, which gets units out a lot faster than chaining factories (at least in the first few mins). But, point taken that fabber timing determines production timing.

I agree that having the Com assist in the factories is helpful. It's just unfortunate that it forces him to walk because the darn things are too big to fit in with anything else It's a fine balancing act between getting the Com involved to get things built fast and keeping his walking distance to a minimum to avoid losing time on that high build rate. If only he could teleport I'd have him build everything! Usually it's best to just have him build PPs in a circle but making exceptions for the second or third factories is probably worth it. Not sure what you mean about equating 1 fabber to 1 factory though. They cost 1/3 as much as a factory so I assume you're referring to the rate at which they drain resources?

Not sure what you mean about the efficiency measure being dumb. Also not sure why being negaitve on metal AND energy would mean that more metal, alone, would solve the problem. If anything, it's more important to have positive energy than metal since they both effect efficiency but energy is required for radars and such to function, right? Though, metal is harder to come by since it can only be gathered at MEX points and, obviously, being balanced on both is the goal.

Indeed, this is exactly what I have been trying to achieve with my build orders; Quick expansion of eco (avoiding efficiency dips as much as possible) to allow quick mass production without becoming significantly vulnerable to early aggression. Much harder to do than to say, unfortunately As I said in my reply to Clopse, I've got some more ideas to test out and I will keep your helpful advice about the air factors in mind as I do. Thanks for contributing!

2nd pgen before factory ends up with wasted energy due to not enough starting storage. So you are spending early game timing for no actual real benefit to you. If you wanted 2nd pgen very fast, it is better to assist commander and powerbuild a pgen with your first fabricator before starting mex expansion. In early game, it is all about trying to 'get rid' of as much starting metal fat as quickly as possible to get the exponential growth kicking off faster.

Oh, I was talking about a more versatile air first build where you can scout and respond to your opponents build while still macroing with air fabbers pretty well.

2 air fac build is still scary, but if you can figure out a way to consistently defend it and not lose without also following with 2nd air, then I would be the first to sing your praises =D. Let us know how this goes with further experimentation!

Well, what i mean is that when you expand metal with 3 fabbers straight away, you float heaps of metal that must be spent to justify the 3 fabber expansion (going in 3 different directions) as opposed to just 2, or 1, or more staggered etc.

To spend that metal, you need fabricators quickly. But to use them, you also need energy. So if you are really playing for 3 fab expand income, what usually happens is you need to spend alot of time powerbuilding energy before you can really start spamming out the kind of factory numbers that make use of that large income you are getting. Ofcourse depends heavily on map, but on standard moon this is usually the case.

If you watch some of Matiz's games, you'll see that even he will sometimes float metal in the early to mid game when he goes 3 fab expand. It's hard to spend it all if you go for earlier factory timings at ~3 min.

Supporting a fabber relative to a factory is essentially 200+450 metal because you need to build an additional pgen to support it relative to a factory. 10/1000 vs 15/625. The upfront metal costs are the same, and they both have similar metal rates. I know the comparison isn't perfectly 1:1 but they are roughly comparable in that way. So for example, if i assist t2 factory with 4 fabs instead of 5, that leaves space for roughly +1 factory.

And yea, at first the walking seems like a problem, but with good factory placement in triangles of 3, you'll be surprised at how much more power you have both to swat his macro down, protect your own, force him to produce units, force him out of position etc. You're right there is a fine line though! I usually cross it in my eagerness to spam tanks lol.

It's actually really unintuitive and alot of people fall into the trap (quite understandably as well) of thinking you need to build energy instead of metal in these circumstances. Think of energy as a pipeline, and metal as water that flows through it.

Let's say for example I have,

• An energy pipe that can only fit 100 metal per second, accounting for average energy efficiencies of all the ouputs (fabbers/factories etc.) that are pulling metal through at that time.
• Income of 80 metal per second
• My fabricators are trying to pull through 120 metal per second
• 0 storage/reserves because that is just a temporal factor

In game, what you'll see is a green metal income of 80, a red metal spending number of 100 indicating your max energy capacity for carrying metal (not 120), and red -ve change in energy because I'm trying to pull more than I can get through the pipeline (120 compared to 100). Looking at these numbers instead of the build efficiency number tells me "hey I actually have enough energy to pull through 100 metal, so lets boost metal income to 100 first before worrying about energy".

If i tried to build energy instead, my energy will go +ve but that is only reflecting how much load I am trying to pull through the pipe compared to capacity. Fundamentally I am still only spending 80 metal per second and wasting alot of time staying at below pipeline capacity for longer than necessary. -ve or +ve energy does not indicate how much load I am actually pulling through from my metal income.

In this situation, to fix radar issues, i would need to micro units by stopping/powering off untill my attempted metal spending = metal income. By definition, that will then fix my energy deficit problem and radar will turn back on. At the same time, my economy has not slowed down at all, because the underlying metal spending rate of 80 hasn't decreased!

Now when i boost metal income from 80 to 100, I reach the equilibrium point at which if i increase metal income any more, I become energy bottlenecked and must now build energy! The red metal spending number will not change from 100, and you will get surplus metal. Just as I would not want energy when metal bottlenecked at <100 metal income, at >100 I no longer want metal as much as I want energy!

This is why the build efficiency number is 'dumb' imo because it does not tell you whether you are metal or energy bottlenecked. Infact, you could have a build efficiency number of 1% but still be doing macro miles better than your opponent at 100% because he has wasted/reserve metal, and you are spending every single last drop as quickly as possible. The build efficiency number is very misleading to the point that I would not pay any attention to it at all. Only metal income, metal spending, change in metal, and change in energy are important numbers I think.

Glad i could help somewhat! Keep us aprised of any new discoveries or interesting things! God knows we all need as much advantage as possible if matiz is to be finally dethroned.

How can it be that I just spent like 40 minutes reading a wall of text, and suddenly I'm all like I WANT TO PLAAAAAY!!!

BEST. THREAD. EVER!!!

Thanks a LOT for posting! Best read I've had for a long time.

Hahaha. Glad it inspired you

Guys, thank you for this thread, I think I finally got what I was doing wrong.
I am a new player obviously, about 20 hours play time, I thought I was doing everything right and I was still getting owned all the time except when I was playing against similar newbie(s) or got extremely lucky.

My mistake was overcommitment to economy. I was pumping fabbers like mad, and sending them build mexes everywhere while comm was building power 24/7, mostly to support fabbers I make. Most of the time my economy was in surplus and I thought that's good. Things is, my enemies haven't had such huge economy and they still had armies 5x more than mine.
I finally understood that I only needed so much metal and pgens to support all the fabbers I make, now I realized that I don't need this much stuff to support factory production. I tried expanding with only 2 fabbers and third one building factories, and comm mixing factories and just enough pgens to support my economy, results were astonishing. Like, I had more income that I could produce stuff before, this last time I had just enough resources to produce tons of stuff without economy stagnating and without wasting res I pump. Now I had huge versatile army, with enough units to defend, harass and attack at the same time, not even mentioning advanced units and orbital, that I could get quicker then when I had tons fabbers building stuff around.

I knew basic before, like always expand and always attack, it just that I was expanding more than I could produce offensive stuff. Now my eyes are opened, I think I can become a better player now. First few matches using things I learned were so much more satisfying then before.

That;s really great to hear I'm glad it was helpful. This game is somewhat deceptive about the benefit of eco advancement due to the fact that there is a storage limit and that building drains resources. In any RTS it is possible to go too hard on eco but the continuous draining eco of this game is certainly different from the usual discrete costs. I am still in the process, myself, of grappling with the issue you describe of limiting fabber production to get production rolling sooner because it seems like it takes about 3 fabbers expanding MEX to get all the metal progression necessary but continuing to build fabbers means that, in addition to the increased power drain from new factory production, you also have steadily increasing drain from the number of fabbers. On the other hand you don't want to be trying to keep up with just a few fabbers through the whole game... Very complex and unintuitive balance for me

I have noticed that the Comp also uses just 2 fabbers on MEX, Com on power, and then pumps military out of the first factory. It seems to be pretty efficient, though my current build still gets out a radar and 2nd factory plus a few extra units over it but I imagine it might be good with some fine tuning. Weird that it starts with 2 MEX, 2 PP though Let us know if you hit on anything particularly effective and good hunting!

I know that a lot of energy gets wasted during factory build with 2nd PP. That's why I didn't expect it to be any good and was very surprised when it ended up being as effective as the single PP build I was testing before! As I said, I discovered that it was due to the extra power income avoiding some efficiency dips that my single PP build was unable to avoid. I was doing 3 MEX, 1 PP with Com going to power after factory and first fabber going to assist him with the next 3 fabbers going to metal and that avoids shortages as much as possible but there are still some intermittent ones, particularly on power around the time of the 4th factory unit finishing and those shortages ended up slowing things down enough that it was no better than starting 2 PPs. I certainly wasn't able to get out the 2nd factory as quick with 1 PP.

Right, my bad about changing your first air to first vehicle I think the point about being able to deny crazy air fabber expanding is valid either way because that's just about having 1 air, 1 vehicle for your first two factories but it would probably by a lot more dangerous for your own fabbers if you went first air into air fabbers and the enemy got a 2nd air but you got vehicle because then you would be having to defend your air fabbers with a mix of fighters and vehicle AA and the vehicle AA doesn't seem as good. On the other hand, when I tried going 1st vehicle, 2nd air and using fighters to guard my expanding vehicle fabbers they kept landing on the ground while the fabbers were building, thus making themselves useless Worst feature ever! I wonder if they are able to guard air fabbers without landing because the air fabbers move around a bit when they build?

Indeed. It takes very close monitoring to balance the power production with factory production and is a bit of a pain but one would think that succeeding at it would give superior results. Never know with this game, though. It seems to defy my intuition as to what build orders should be best. It does seem to always put Matiz on top, however

Yeah, I get what you're saying and the fabbers costing a PP each to support is the crux of what makes finding the best build orders so darn difficult. In a very real sense, making more fabbers does not increase your production capability because every new fabber, while literally increasing your build power, forces another PP to be built and you're also wasting the military potential of whatever factory is making the fabbers. I think I probably just need to get myself out of the mindset of most RTS games where more workers means more income because they go directly to mining and don't drain resources past their initial cost. Very different system here that I have, clearly, still not entirely grasped the depths of

*Continuation of above post! *

I feel like I'm back in physics class trying to understand fluid mechanics or electric current for the first time Even more so because I'm not entirely sure if I'm getting what you're saying I follow the middle part about shutting things off when you're trying to use more eco than you have allowing you to operate a lesser number of buildings at full efficiency rather than a larger number of buildings at lower efficiency just being a redirect of the same resource income. And the rest also seems to jive with my current understanding of efficiency and balancing metal and energy income to be able to fully make use of both, aside from, "This is why the build efficiency number is 'dumb' imo because it does not tell you whether you are metal or energy bottlenecked." It seems to me that it does tell you what you need more of and the fact that someone with 1% efficiency can have more production capacity than someone with 100% is as simple as saying the first is attempting to use 100 times what their production buildings could fully support while the second has all their production operating at full capacity. It says nothing about how much income they have or how much production, only about the relation of one player's production capacity to their own income. Comparing that ratio between two players is basically meaningless. As such, it seems that the efficiency tells us ONLY about what we need more of

What you're saying at the start is only now beginning to make sense to me. If I've got this right, what I was not paying attention to is the fact that everything in PA has only a metal cost, not an energy cost. Therefor, the energy is only a secondary resource that is required to use the metal. As such, when you're short on BOTH resources it is beneficial to increase metal income first because increasing your ability to spend metal is useless until you have that metal to spend. Is this sounding sensible? So, in the example you provided where we are trying to spend more metal income than we have and we also don't have enough energy to support spending as much metal income as we're trying to, we should, ideally, first get our metal income up to 100 since we will be able to use all of that and then increase metal and power in step with one another so that we can continue using all the metal income that we're gaining. Right? So, is it that subpar power production effectively reduces metal income while reduced efficiency only redistributes the same income among the loads on the system? Love you for explaining this, btw

Hahaha, true, true

I seem to have written a novel by accident here Loving the discussion, though!

Wow, glad I found this thread! I've been (very counter-intuitively I feel) struggling because I produce too many fabbers! I've always had a factory dedicated to scouts and fabbers which has stalled my eco HARD! Well .. early-game anyway; my late-game's pretty potent! ;-)

I don't think the UI displays this info very well though - might have to look at some of the econ display mods.

[edit] In the space of an evening I've gone from playing Normal AIs to being able to handle Relentless fairly comfortably! I'll try whatever the last one is tomorrow

I too think that Eco UI needs some tweeks, at least showing total number of factories / idle factories / res they consume, same for fabbers, energy consumption of other structures and mex/pgen count. That way, you could clearly see what is driving you down.

Beating the absurd AI pretty comfortably now too

There's a shortcut you can hit to select idle Factories, so I don't really feel a need to display a counter too. As to the rest of it, I've a feeling a lot of it either is already in the new Tab display or will get added to it - we've just got to get used to it being there and utilise it properly.

For instance I don't really care about how many mex/pgen I have. I just want an easy way to see whether I consistently have surplus / deficit resources (so I need to build more mex/pgen), or if I keep having big spikes in either direction (so need more storage).

Yes, there is a shortcut to select idle fabbers and factories, but do I have to press it every time I want to know if I have idle production units? I want to see this information clearly.

After you get your mex, mex, power plant, mex, factory, mex, fabber, powerplant, mex, powerplant built I think a good idea is to build in cycles in the short time afterwards, until you get a feel for keeping your economy efficient (as close to 100% as possible)

For example, in a ~60 second cycle, build:

Aventail, Spinner, Aventail, Fabber - Built by initial factory in infinite cycle (it's 56 seconds worth of build time, plus additional time for the vehicles to leave the factory) - tanks and spinner escort the fabber to protect from raiding
3.5 metal extractors - built by first and third fabber (26.25 seconds for two fabbers to build 3.5 metal extractors, plus travel time)
1 x Factory - built by 2nd fabber (60 seconds to build a factory)
3 x Power plants - commander (45 seconds to build 3 power plants, plus movement, may be able to build AA turret inbetween)

So long as you are able to keep building the mex required before the factory is built, you can keep your factories and fabbers building constantly. Obviously if you cant expand quick enough you will need to assign your 4th fabber to mex.

After the 3rd fabber you can then decide any of the following:

Defensive structures
Assign x'th fabber to build defensive structures\radar etc, your growing eco should cover the cost for this fabber to build

Aggressive style
x'th Fabber builds/assists 2nd fabber to build factories. With this you will need your commander building nothing but powerplants (and possible assigning an additional fabber to help if you can't keep up) to cover the power requirement for producing units from 2 additional factories every ~60, and then assign another fabber to build at least 1.5 metal extractors per cycle.

Eco style
You assign a factory you have built to follow the same build cycle as the first factory (or change the build cycle of the first factory to include 2 fabbers), allowing you to build 2 fabbers per 60 seconds. For each additional fabber you build per ~60 cycle you'll need to assign fabbers to build just under 2 powerplants and 2 mex every cycle.

Tier 2 switch
If you think you will run out of metal early, assign an early fabber to build an advanced factory. Before the factory is complete, you will need fabbers to build 4 power plants and 6.5 metal extractors to cover its production costs.

If you need to go tier 2 eco due to lack of expansions you will also need to build 5 powerplants and just over 9 mex to cover the adv fabbers production. After this, you'll just want to keep your tier 2 eco building and have your existing fabbers assisting the adv fabbers being made.

Then you just kinda roll with it.

Obviously all of the above are approximations, but this system has personally helped me understand the economy of the game, makes me not stall by building too many fabbers early, but ultimately lets me manage my macro so I can concentrate on strategy instead. Even so, you can always change what a fabber does at any time, if you find you are lacking in one particular area, you can stop building a factory for 1 cycle to catch up in another area, or you just assign the next fabber to assist in the area of growth that needs it most. Assist the commander if more power is needed, assist the mex building etc. You can also power off factories until eco stabilizes.

That's awesome man. Well done I've been trying to manage 3 allied absurd comps myself but it's pretty tough to maintain any expos against that much raiding At least on single planet. Pretty easy to beat any amount of AIs when there's an empty moon to flee to Keep it up and let us know what build you settle on!