Build Orders

The only thing that I wish there was some way to find is projects that are drawing huge resources. It's pretty frequent that you do something like rallying and infinite build queue of fabbers to assist a factory and then forget about it and 5 minutes later your eco is tanking and it takes a minute before you realize you have 30 fabbers rushing production!

That is a good point. Idle fabbers would be good to have a small indicator for. The idle fabber hotkey is great and I regularly check it to avoid idle fabbers but it only selects idle fabbers on screen so you have to scroll all over the worlds spamming it to be sure. It would be cool if it told you when there were idlers and you could click on it to be taken to them. That would be a good addition to my other thread, "Can I do this? If not, let's make it happen!"

Incidentally, the build I'm using at the moment is 3 MEX, 1 PP start with first vehicle factory building 3 fabbers, 2 AA, a few more AA/tanks, then straight fabbers and the Com going 3 PPs after the first factory, then alternating factory/PP. First fabber assists Com until 4th PP is done and then goes to MEX. Other two go straight to MEX. This gets out a decent amount of early forces and 3 fabbers is a great number for expanding. By the time the first factory gets back to fabber production I'm ready to up the ante into T2 or colonizing another planet and I have 4 or so more T1 factories pumping out troops. It's been working pretty well but I still haven't experimented much with air. I did find out, though, that while the fighters will land when guarding ground fabbers they do not land while guarding air fabbers that are building so they should be good for that.

Okay so i like your post and all but.... I just read your sig...If i was not moving tomorrow I would be on my desktop taring you up with anchors. just you wait. ima beat you atleast 4 out the the next 10 1v1's we have or i will host a tournament with as much money thrown at it as possible.

So, I played a bit with the first air build designed to get a fast bomber snipe on early fabbers. I wanted to retain the super fast snipe but get some good eco immediately afterward. Ideally, this could get you air dominance (if they don't go first air) and superior growth (assuming some fabber snipes). The best I came up with was 2 MEX, 1 PP, 1 MEX, Air Factory to produce scout, bomber, fighters. if you have an idea where they are you could skip the scout and go straight to bomber for an even earlier attack (how crazy is it that bombers have the same sight radius as scouts!?). Com then goes for 1 MEX, 1 PP, Vehicle Factory (air factory might be better if your opponent has no air) to produce 3 fabbers (first 2 go on MEX duty and third assists Com) followed by 5 or so tanks/AA and then you can choose to either invest in more fabbers or continue producing military units, depending on your style and the state of the match. After the factory, the Com should build a few PPs and then alternate PP/factory indefinitely. If you choose to go for more fabbers after the 3 then you will need to have the Com (assisted by these new fabbers) divert to something like 3 PPs for every 1 factory to compensate.

This ties into the main issue that has been brought up in this forum thread, which is how making too many fabbers can get you killed! So, after some thought on the subject I thought it would be worth mentioning a few things to allow people to think about this more analytically. As said before, each factory consumes power at approximately the same rate as one power plant and each fabber consumes approximately two power plants of energy when they are working. This is why the Com would normally make one power plant for every factory. But, when a factory is producing fabbers, you also need to make two power plants for every fabber produced to avoid shortages that will cause reduced efficiency and, essentially, render your extra fabbers moot until you fix it. This results in having to divert build power of your existing fabbers away from factories and onto power. Surprisingly, this seems to lead to the conclusion that more builders actually reduces the rate at which you can build factories! This is true but only temporarily.

Basically, you have to produce enough fabbers that you can have those fabbers continuously building power plants at a rate that matches the production of fabbers. At that point, each new fabber coincides with a new power plant without the new fabber needing to build it himself so his energy cost has been paid. Any fabbers produced by the factory afterward will be able to contribute their build power to factory production or whatever you want right away and will immediately be helping you grow your army. Offsetting 1 factory producing fabbers takes about 6 fabbers producing power plants. In other words, when you start producing the fabbers they are actually going to be a drain on your growth until you have made about 6, at which point they will begin paying off. This doesn't take into account the lost production time of the factory that made them which could have made 6 military units instead or the fact that the subsequent fabber production will still be in leu of military units so the new fabbers will have to contribute by making another factory before that is balanced out, so it actually takes a bit longer than 6 for payoff. Neverthless, they do help you eventually but you will be at a disadvantage during the transitionary time to anyone who did not invest in extra fabbers because they will have a larger army.

This dynamic is portrayed excellently in a game a I just finished watching between Matiz and Pt4h that is available in the replays in-game (if anyone is unfamiliar with the replay system you can find it by going to replays in PA and searching "most viewed games" and it will be 10 or so down the list and labeled with their names). Actually, Matiz even used almost the same build I describe above, much to my surprise! Anyway, Matiz goes for 5 fabbers to Pt4h's 2 early on and impact can be subtly observed throughout the match.
At 6:19 Pt4h is behind 3 fabbers but has 2.5 times as many military units as Matiz, 32 to 12! Properly utilized, this unit advantage could strangle the more economic player by denying all expansions. Pt4h attempts to do just that, to a degree, but loses his main raiding force at the time due to lack of present anti-air while the rest of his forces remain on defense. This gives Matiz the breathing room he needs during the transitionary time.

Matiz, for some time after this, is seen to be floating a good chunk of his eco that could have been more factories. Nevertheless, Matiz's superior number of fabbers begins to pay off and by 8:42 he begins pulling ahead in factories. By 10:39 Matiz is ahead by 6 factories, 9 fabbers and they are nearly even on units. Unfortunately, he had just seconds earlier lost an unprotected MEX field to Pt4h's increased raiding that cut his efficiency in half and ended up costing him what should have been his advantage. Watch and learn!

Hope this was helpful to newer players. Learning it has certainly helped me

i start with metal, metal, energy, factory, metal, metal...

So, new patch changed opening build orders dramatically! With the Com having far more resource production now, we can afford to open factory first! I've tested out a few builds. I tried a more conservative build that tries to get out a lot of T1 and a more extreme T2 rush build and variants on each.

The T1 build goes Vehicle Factory (which produces 3 fabbers, then military units), a second Vehicle Factory (to produce military units), then 3 MEXs, followed by 4 PPs, and then onto alternating Vehicle Factory/PP. The fabbers should assist the Com with the first 3 MEXs and then carry on with MEXs on their own. This was tested on a pretty metal rich starting zone but if you don't have 3 MEXs close to the Com just go ahead and send the fabbers off on their own as soon as necessary. Don't make the Com walk to help with the first MEXs. After the 6th MEX or so (varies with MEX layout) you should be making more metal than needed and I insert a radar at this point before carrying on, though you may want it sooner depending on the situation. In my tests, this yielded 18.5 MEXs, 4 PPs, 5 Factories, 1 Radar, 3 fabs, and 29 military units by the 3.5 minute mark.

This build as described above is a T1 rush build that just gets out a ton of T1 units fast. There are many ways to modify it. I'll start by saying that it might be better to have the fabbers assist the Com until after the second PP is finished if you have MEX points close to you. It causes a couple seconds of power shortage but gets the Com onto building factories faster. Not sure which is better because I'm too tired to test it further atm

If you want to be less aggressive and set up for more macro you can put the third factory onto fabber production and set it to assist the Com. That will slow you down for a while but you should have enough military units to keep the enemy on its toes for a while and it will pay off eventually, if you don't take too much damage in the interim.

You might experiment with adding in storage. Energy storage as the first building is actually viable or you can try getting it after the third PP or not at all. The more sloppy your eco micromanagement the more storage will pay off, though, and everyone gets distracted sometimes. You should also find out if you'd rather have your second factory be vehicle or air. There are benefits to both. Going air second will give you more scouting and you might be able to use bombers to pick off expanding fabbers/MEXs. You can also use fighters to protect your fabbers from the same fate (sometimes :0). If your opponent/s ignores air or is not aggressive with it then getting a few air fabbers out to do your MEX expansion is fantastic. They are perfectly suited for that task. I also like using them to sneak up teleporters near enemy bases. Vehicles strengths are pretty obvious. Tanks/infernos are pretty much the staple and can do good harassment of expansions and hem in the enemy. They also make better defenders.

You can also go for a T2 factory instead of more T1 after the 4 PPs. You might want to do a couple more PPs first since the T2 factory will take a lot of power and metal. I would suggest pulling one or two of your fabbers off of MEX to help with the PPs and factory since one or two fabbers is enough to keep the metal flowing. If there's a risk of losing them, however (which there should be against a good player), you might want to account for that. This allows you to get T2 units out relatively quickly, which are very strong.

If you want T2 really fast then you want the T2 rush build. This one starts with Vehicle Factory (to produce 5 fabbers, then military), 3 MEXs, then 3 PPs, followed by an Energy Storage, 3 PPs, and then the T2 factory. The fabbers should assist the Com until the 1st PP is done, then move on to MEXs, with a Metal Storage after the 2nd MEX they make on their own (5th MEX total). After their 4th independent MEX (9th total) they should begin the T2 factory that the Com will help with shortly seconds later (If the two groups happen to end up very close to each other after the 9th MEX it may be best to have them assist with the last PP before starting T2). The 5th fabber should assist the Com straight away. In my tests, this build resulted in 9 MEXs, 6 PPs, 1 T1 Factory, 1 T2 Factory, 1 Energy Storage, 1 Metal Storage, 5 fabs, 7 T1 combat units, and 1 T2 unit at the 3.5 minute mark. The T2 factory should finish around 3:20, with first unit out at 3:31 and 3rd unit at 4:01.

The point of this build is to get out a few vanguards very quickly and rush them into your enemy's base to wreak utter destruction and killing the Com if they are foolish enough to let you. You will have some T1 units to send along with them which I make a mix of tanks (to diminish kiting of the vanguards since the vanguards can soak up the damage while your own ants fire back at the kiting ants) and anti-air (for... well, anti-air). Your base should be small enough that your Com can defend most of it with your T1 units supporting where necessary. Vanguards are exceptionally hard to stop with T1 units and I haven't had a chance to rigorously test whether it's even possible to repel this T2 rush with a heavy T1 build such as the one at the top of this short novel. This definitely works best if you and your enemy are close because the travel time of the vanguards gives the enemy time to form a defense. If the enemy is at all far away I like to spam up an air factory and try to sneak a few air fabbers over to build a teleporter near the enemy and surprise them from a vulnerable angle with the vanguards. I would still send the first 2 vanguards at them straight away to act as a distraction, at the least. They still may be enough to do devastating damage.

The above build was for a pretty metal rich spawn but you can modify it for less by building fewer fabbers and PPs before the T2 factory. In fact, the fastest possible way to get a single T2 unit out is by building a single T1 Factory, a single fabber, and a single MEX and then put them both on the T2 factory. That gets you a vanguard at 2:49. The problem is, of course, that you end up with crap eco and can't support the T2 factory in the long term so it's entirely an all-in strategy. By the the time you finish the third vanguard you're already behind the timing of the 5 fabber build and it only gets worse from there. So, you can do this build with few MEXs nearby but, if you do, know that it's very risky and try to go for as many fabbers as you can reasonably support (dependent on the number of MEXs available) to mitigate this as much as possible.

Of course, you can also go the opposite way and make more fabbers and PPs before the T2 factory which would get the first few T2 units out slower but be faster after, say, the fifth or sixth or whatever. It's always a continuum between getting combat units fast with fewer fabbers and getting more combat units in the long run with more fabbers. Use your own discretion and consider your enemy's actions in your balancing decisions.

I haven't gotten around to trying a hard eco build that produces fabbers from two factories but I have seen a lot of people get away with it in FFAs (would be extremely risky in 1v1). If anyone has perfected such a build, please share it with us! I also haven't done any bomber rush builds because I assume that the Com's new OP AA has invalidated that approach. Perhaps someone can prove me wrong. I did find in a match yesterday that anchors apparently suck at hitting planes sometimes. I had a single bomber attacking en enemy teleporter directly underneath 7 enemy anchors and the all completely missed him for about 10 seconds straight! :0 Likewise, I haven't done a bot build) not that it would likely change anything) because, as far as I can tell, T1 bots are still definitively inferior. T2 slammers and bluehawks seem about equivalent to T2 vehicles in their own way but T1 is a different story.

Anyway, I hope that this helps some people get their feet under them in the new patch and inspires you to improve upon them or make your own unique build. Let us know if you find one that works!

Just wanted to make a note on T2 economy. A lot of people don't seem to understand when they should go for T2 fabbers and a lot of people think that T2 eco is the best thing ever. That is an over-simplification. There are good times to go for T2 eco and bad times so I just wanted to throw out a few key details that might help people make better decisions.

T2 fabbers are better than T1 fabbers. They cost 8 times as much, have 8 times the build power and 8 times the metal drain but the only consume 3 times as much energy. That makes them far far more energy efficient than T1 fabbers.

T2 MEXs are less cost-effective than T1 MEXs. They cost over 13 times more to build but only produce about 3.5 times as much metal! They also have only 5 times as much hit points, for what that's worth. This means that if you have a cluster of empty MEX points and want your metal income improved as fast as possible then you want to build the T1 MEXs up first and come back for the T2 after. It's only beneficial to build T2 MEXs when the MEXs are spread out enough that going back and forth to do the T1 and then the T2 would take so long due to travel time that it would make up for the horrible discrpency between T1 and T2 build time and pay off (including if you would need to send out new fabbers to far flung empty MEX points in order to keep expanding your T1) OR when you have expanded to as many MEX points as you safely can and need to get more metal without increasing your territory.

T2 PPs are more cost-effective than T1 PPs. They cost 6 times as much and produce power over 8 times as fast (though, they only have 4.5 times the health). If you're already negative on power then it might be better to make T1 PPs just because they will increase your power step-wise, giving you pay off more quickly which will help your efficiency sooner which will let you build faster, etc. However, if you're positive and just trying to stay ahead of the power usage (as you should be) then T2 is best.

So, I hope that will at least help those players who rush for T2 MEX when they still haven't built all the nearby MEX points, those who continue bulding T1 PPs when they could be using T2, and those that continue spamming out T1 fabbers when they could be spamming T2 and saving tons in power. Given that T2 fabbers are awesome, you might be tempted to always go for these first thing out of the T2 factory but you should consider whether a few quick combat units might be better. If you have a neighbor in an FFA who has stopped your MEX expansion you might think your only choice is to start with T2 MEX but maybe a quick couple vanguards could kill him and free up all those MEX that you can quickly build up with T1? If quick Vans could kill your opoonent in 1v1 then that's obviously a better choice It's very situational when you should start making T2 fabbers and how many you should make. It's back to the balance between quick military might and long-term. Again, use your discretion.

So, new patch basically just made doxs capable of being an army in themselves and people are spamming nothing but. I guess I have to address a build for massing doxs even though I hate this current meta. Fortunately, it doesn't require any extra testing. Just take the T1 rush build from above, replace all vehicle factories with bot factories and change the end queue from the Com and helpers making 1 factory/1 PP to 2 factories/1 PP. The reason is that bot factories spamming doxs take less power because the doxs build 3 times faster which results in a lot more downtime for the factory since it still takes the same time for the bots to walk off the factory floor. Thus, power is consumed at a lower rate and you can make more factories for the same number of power plants. This is also true for metal consumption so you can get away with a single fabber expanding MEXs. Use the others to help the Com.

You don't actually need anything but doxs right now since they have anti-air and can go underwater and have range enough to be main combat units. They even have enough sight range to be pretty good scouts. All you need to watch out for is when you have really large blobs shellers and possibly bombers can be dangerous. Hope doxs get changed soon so we can go back to unit diversity

*Edit: Forgot to mention that the T2 rush build described for vehicles also works perfectly well with bots and slammers are quite good at sniping commanders. They have 40 times the dps of a dox for just over 13 times the cost so if Com snipe is your goal use the T2 rush to get slammers rather than mass doxs.*

With the bot build then just have your commander building bot factories and 1 fabber building pgens. this is pretty balanced for the first few minutes.

You could do that but it's less efficient

Actually its comparative efficiency depends on how far into the battle you go. When you go bot factory only then you are raiding much earlier due to their faster speed. So any quick gains in early unit numbers can put you a long way ahead of a build with more initial fabbers.

Remember that for each fabber you have building factories/pgens then you need 2 pgens to support it - aside from metal constraints. The time to build the infrastructure to support lots of fabbers is really important.

i go bot factory, two metal, bot factory, bot factory, bot factory, bot factory, bot factory, bot factory, energy, bot factory, and bot factory. at this point, i usually lose so you probably don't want to do this.

I thought you just placed 20 bot factories in a row with your commander?

if somehow i live beyond the first five minutes, that's usually when i queue around 40 or so factories. then, i become the shadow in the night, the darkness in the light, the ender of worlds.

Ahem.. The ANNIHILATER of world's

ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX [B]ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ DOX ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ [B]DOX


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Sorry not sorry.

Haha, I bet you're the one pulling the strings behind these new dox buffs, aren't you?

I wasn't referring to the effectiveness of bots. I was just saying that splitting the factory and power plant production up between the commander and fabbers to do simultaneously is a bit less efficient than having them combine their efforts. Granted, it is less micro intensive to split them up and just give them a long queue so, if that works best for you, go for it