That... wasn't obvious.

I like the stacking, the mexes seems to be designed to be stacked, the t1 in middle with the t2 on both sides, basically putting more extractors on the building.

It's possible to do when placing a single mex, easy to turn the "build t2 mex" into "build t1 mex then t2 mex". Area commands have no easy solution, as doing it as above would be "area build t1 everywhere, then area build t2 everywhere".

He he he

I realised this without ever having played the game.

Wow .. I knew you got both icons when you build an advanced mex over a normal (noticed it when they last updated the strategic icons), but I never noticed you actually had both mexes at that spot still, nor that they both gave income! Sounds like a massive bug to me, specially if you can build normals over the top of advanced!

It's game design, the Metal extractors were always designed to be modular, with one fitting inside the other although i'm not sure if that was ever demonstrated visually very well. Regardless each metal spot can support 1 basic and 1 advanced metal extractor simultaneously.

This is better than having to replace the t1 mex, as the t1 mex continues to give production whilst the t2 is being built. Otherwise you take a drop in metal income *right when you need it most*.

Basically, the T2 mex gives pretty bad amounts of mass, not too much more than the T1 and is far more expensive. That is why they stack.

I vastly prefer PA's way over supcom, upgrading stuff is annoying micro.

And building twice over same spot isn't micro?

If you'd want AMEX on empty spot, and be efficient, i.e. minimize walking, you'd have to queue MEX/AMEX, MEX/AMEX on every single spot, area commands would only allow you to build one type, then another, which means walking back and forth between same spots.

Issue with this though is you should have *already built* the t1 metal with t1 fabbers before making the t2. Also as there is no restriction on order (e.g. you can place t2 before the t1 if you like) you can simply use 2 fabbers

And what if I just invaded another planet /other side of same planet, where I have no basic mex?

You can build an advanced extractor without a basic one.

This has been in the game for months, many months.

Well i don't know about anyone else, but when colonising a new planet or area i tend to queue up basic metal extractors first before I have the means to send t2 fabbers to construct advanced buildings. Or i'll send a group off to build advanced metal and grab a few t1 fabbers from that group and change their orders to build t1 mexes. (Having the larger group of fabbers waste time travelling between metal spots to build t1 mexes is hugely inefficient when you could do that with a far smaller group of fabbers. Although it would definetly be beneficial to be able to select building of t1 and t2 simultaneously instead of in cannon.)

Besides to answer your question yes it's micro but it isn't as annoying. Upgrading mexes is in another league in its entirety, micro levels quickly reach absurd when upgrading mexes, building t2 or t1 or t2 and t1 metal using area commanders is quick and barely requires any micromanagement at all, especially if there are no enemies on the planet to intercept and disrupt your area commands.

On metal spots, you can build 2 different types of buildings, one basic mex and one advanced mex, the basic is cheap and produce an acceptable amount of mass. The advanced version is much more expensive, and generates a bit more mass(it think it is 4.5x higher cost at 2x mass production, or something like that). They can co-exist, but can also be built separately to each other. If an enemy attacks two co-existing mex, they have separate health bars, with the advanced one always being targeted first.

That's exactly my point. Naturally, you want both.

Honestly, I like the stacking mostly because of how well the two models fit together.

Among the first things I do is send out a T1-enginer team to grab all the Mex spots with T1 extractors.
Among the first things on T2 I do is send out one T2 engi to get the Mex spots with T2 extractors. Then I order the T1 team to support the T2 after they are finished.

100% T1, 100% T2, 0 micro. And I got all the T1 possibel build before I really start building the expensive T2.

Normal:
150 Metal/+7 Metal = 21.4 seconds till cost is in
Advanced:
2000 Metal/+24 Metal = 83.3 seconds till cost is in

You should always place T1 first as they are just so much more cost effective. But long term you need T2 to fuel T2 building/factories. Especialyl nukes eat metal (and 3 powere generator outputs) like it was cornflakes.

Of course you can area build all t1, and area build all t2. I am talking about effective way to build. If you want to be effective, you have to minimize traveling time, and this assumes building T1 and than T2 at the same spot without moving.