The Opening Build

Like I said before, this is something to dwell into, but I can't do it now.

I'm more interested in AFTER the first 3 minutes of a game.

When do you start making more factories? When do you get an air factory?

When do you get defenses? When do you start to actually make combat units and which ones?


When I play against the AI he always rushes me with something like 10 dox, while I have 2-5.
Does that mean I start building units a little too late?

Well in the current meta you should spot them coming in on radar, put up a turret and win. Your Commander can hold the base early on and fabbers can drop turrets every so often when placing MEX. So long as you manage your economy well you can speed build laser turrets no problem as needed.

I would currently aim to start on T2 somewhere between five and six minutes. The later you start it the more fabbers you put on the job. You can start as early as four minutes, but you really have to do a very specific build to make that work. The first things our your T2 factory should be 2-3 fabbers because T2 resources are that good.

It gets harder to make rules after the first few minutes though because it depends a lot on the map, your position, what your opponent is doing, etc. For example, I played a recent game where I spawned myself in mountainous terrain and went for sniper bots as they can shoot through terrain, combined with laser turrets to hold the chokes and moving to Pelters when he started bringing Shellers. While I held the line I poured all my resources (right down to pausing my factories) into a nuke, and got it off before my opponent finished his anti-nuke. GG. I had a plan and implemented it based on the terrain and my opponent's actions.

My rules of thumb for playing beyond five minutes or so would be:

1. Can you take more resources? Then take them.
2. Are you producing more than you're spending? Then build more factories.

After that it's just practice and experience. You can also look at PA Stats and when high level players get various buildings online.

mex, mex, energy, mex, air fac, energy, bot fac, 10+ energy with commander

No AA scouted: Air fac - 2 scouts, 3 bombers, 6 fighters, air fab, 100+ fighters
AA scouted: Air fac - 2 scouts, 9 fighters, air fab, 100+ fighters
- scouts should be able to take out an enemy fab but scouting is more important for bombers/dox raid

Bot fac - 3 fabs, 3 dox, 100+ fabs
- 2 fabs will assist the commander with the first 2 energy and then mex expansion
- 3rd fab will assist the bot fac
- 3 dox will raid
- next 3 fabs will assist commander with energy
- 4 minute mark should occur by the 4th fab, build a 2nd bot fac (dox production) and a vehicle fac (4 fabs and inferno/tank production)
- 5th fab will assist the original bot fac
- all other fabs will assist the 4th fab
- 5 minute mark, T2 bots after the 2 factories are done (will likely change to T2 air; the air fab will come out during this time)
- create energy with the bots making the T2 fac if less than 90% energy

If the enemy has no anti-air
Air fac - 2 scouts, 3 bombers, 6 fighters, air fab, 100+ fighters
If the enemy has no anti-air
Air fac - 2 scouts, 3 bombers, 6 fighters, air fab, 100+ fighters
No AA scouted: Air fac - 2 scouts, 3 bombers, 6 fighters, air fab, 100+ fighters
AA scouted: Air fac - 2 scouts, 9 fighters, air fab, 100+ fighters
- scouts should be able to take out an enemy fab but scouting is more important for bombers/dox raid

Funny, I can get away with doing mex->pgen->mex->vehicle factory without stalling (though I limit myself to 3 fabbers at first to avoid energy stall) Figure that the sooner I increase my available buildpower, the faster I can get my econ accelerating.

depending on what is around me, but generally:

com(build 2 mex, energy, mex)

if (1v1 && small planet) {
com(airFactory(bombers))
com(mex)
com(energy)
}

com(botFactory)
com(build 3 energy, storage, energy infinite)
1stFabber(build mex infinite)
2ndFabber(assist com)
3rdFabber(build radar)
if (!(1v1 && small planet)) {
3rd fabber(airFactory(fighters))
}
4thFabber(build mex infinite)
5thFabber(assist com)


After that it depends on the situation. sorry for the little bit of programming lingo, could not think of another way to express my "normal" build.

Well if the units assisting have already been made, then sure.
However, in the case where a factory is still making the units that have to assist something else, you may as well tell the factory to rally to assist something. This way you don't forget to manually task these units, and you don't have to manually retask the units that were already working.

I will have to try that.

The question isn't wether you can afford it but wether it is worth it.

The ten seconds you save getting the first fabber out is the same as the 10 seconds longer it takes for that fabber to build the 3rd mex than the commander making it.

That plus you are down the 3rd mex for 20 seconds for the commander to build veh factory ,18 seconds for fabber and roll off. And then 15 seconds to build the mex. Minus the say 7 seconds for the commander building the 3rd mex first. That's 322 metal lost and having both the same time.

This maths is done in my head on the train so subject to be wrong.

Edit; you will be half a fabber ahead.

Hm...

But that slows your expansion. Build power is a resource too.

I'd be curious to see this build order alongside a traditional build order. Sure. You don't stall. But you have fewer fabricators which means your expansion is slower.

Factory - 1 mex -1pgen

3 mex - 3 pgens - 4 engineers

1 pw storage - 1met storage

3 engineers to mexs, commander to 10 pgens.

4 more factorys.

You build a factory first?

You must stall out pretty hard.

No not really, i dont build any units until i have the rest to support it.

So you build the factory and it sits there doing nothing.

Why don't you build some economy buildings first so they can be generating revenue since the Commander uses more resources while building than it generates?

Building a factory first simply digs you into an economical hole.

Fair enough, but i cant really nail down a good opening build or start to play on the competitive scene until the economy is balanced out more. I see i made a mistake, the factory should be at the end of my first sentence. My bad lol

Glad I could help!

You should watch some of the videos from the latest tournament and look at their opening builds.

Generally, if the top players are doing it, we should be doing it too. lol

Ill get on tonight to see if my build is any good, havent played in awhile (working long hours)

Can anyone answer this question?

How do you place buildings so that your commander does not walk, but merely rotates his body?

I constantly have him walking past the template so he can build it.


I.e.

Obviously that would be much faster if he simply took a few step backwards to the upper left of the image.

It's an issue right now.

He doesn't just turn.

Here's my thread on the issue: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/walking-commander-is-a-problem.57915/