How do you expand quickly and efficiently?

Having played my first few games against other people today, it is easy to see how important it is to expand quickly. How do you guys do it?

I find it very hard to keep track of everything that's going on. I guess my playstyle might be that of a 'turtler', which clearly doesn't work. I try and build lots of fabbers quickly at the start and spread them out, but after a while i tend to get distracted with mini battles and so on.

Anyway, figured I'd start a thread on the topic of expansion. Tips would be welcome! Especially on how you manage all of your fabbers and stay on top of things. What hotkeys do you use the most? Do you have a checklist of things to go through every few minutes, for instance?

Hey! The question you ask is probably at the crux of succeeding at this game.

I'd strongly suggest watching a few of ZaphodX's 'casted game via his YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ZaphodX1

I've picked up some really great rules of thumb by watching games that will serve you well as you try to expand. It's funny what you say about turtling, because that's often been the complaint -- that's it's far too easy to win as a turtler by spamming an ever-encroaching line of catapults and such. The trick, though, is to beat those turtlers to the punch by out-producing them and overrunning their early defenses. Which is only possible if you have a strong eco.

Things I know:

A decent build order begins with 2 or 3 Mexs (Metal Extractors), a fac(tory), and then a couple pgens (Power Generators).

Always have someone at least queued to build another fac at all times. This will keep your production capabilities expanding.

Queue up lots of mexes!



Good luck!

Edit: also: www.pamatches.com has some great casted games!

The early game is a bit slow as currently the "egg" isn't enabled yet, and there isn't any early game wreckage boost.

Practice makes perfect, right now any playtime you put into FAF or SC2 whilst trying to play competitively (that only means "to win", no hassle.) will up your PA gameplay tenfolds. out of the two, I strongly recommend FAF as it will teach you how to manage PA's economy that is truely similar.

The standard build order right now is 1 Mex, 1Pgen, 2 Mex, 1 Land Factory, 2-4 Pgen, Air Factory, Spam Pgen.

Use your first factory to produce 1-2 scouts and some Fabbers, use the Fabbers to spread out and build metal as well as having 2-5 Fabbers working on factories.

As for expansion, the easiest way to do it is to imagine the entire planet as your base-to-be, and your enemy as in the way of that goal. Cut off your enemy's expansions with raids and forward bases on their metal, and fill in the gaps as you go. Next thing you know you won't have enough factories for all your metal.

My plan for games usually is:

commander: 1 mex, 1 pgen, 3 mex, 1 bot factory, 5 pgen, air factory, endless pgen
the bot factory: endless worker
the first worker supports the commander till it has made 4 over all pgens, after that it works together with 4 other workers to make mex, one after another. the 5th or 6th worker build supports the acu with pgens. The mex workers make a factory once you have get near a positive metal income after that continue with mex. The factory made is a vehicle factory that will make endless workers. In this phase take 3 of the newly build workers to make endless pgens. After that you take newly build workers to make 2 rows of vehicle factories (in different locations) .

After that it's play by feel of making more mex, pgens and factories.
Rules of thumb for how many workers on making pgens you need:

3 for each factory that makes endless workers
1 for each worker that makes factories meant to produce units.