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Shouldn't I underestimate the metal loss?

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IDrankrifqifajarzain
4 years ago
I know that metal should be spent a lot but I am afraid if too little metal could slow down the production, even energy remains full.
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MDrankSparkezelPL
4 years ago
This is why we have priority setting, you don't want metal to be full because you lose it, sure you can store some metal, but try to never let it waste :)
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USrankKshatriya
4 years ago
I'm somewhat unsure of what you are asking, but in general:

You should be spending all of your metal as you acquire it, such that the metal resource bar appears empty. Yes, you can store some, but generally you want to build as fast as possible.

You should NEVER be limited by energy for build production. This is known as E-stalling and is bad, because energy buildings can be built directly, and it's easier to up energy production than metal.

In practice, you should expand your energy production throughout the game to match or be slightly above your metal production. A general rule of thumb is for every mex, you should have 1 solar.

Hope this helps :)
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USrankAdminSteel_Blue
4 years ago
The metal bar that goes default from 0-500 is a buffer/storage. The green number is metal mined from any source in the last second, and the red number is the demand from anything actively constructing. If you have a factory and 4 caretaker building something, the red demand number will be 50. You may notice that things build faster when your metal bar has metal in it, but that faster production is like buying stuff from your savings account money because your wage/salary won't cover costs this week. In this game there's no real benefit of saving money, so if your income supports 1 big tank every 30 seconds, there's no real reason to save the cost to buy it rather than just sucking every second of production until it is done. If your metal bar is at 0, saving metal to quickly finish the build later gives you 0 advantage. There will never be any lost metal if you keep your metal bar empty, it's only a savings account.

Hope this was relevant.
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EErankAdminAnarchid
4 years ago
(edited 4 years ago)
quote:
A general rule of thumb is for every mex, you should have 1 solar.

Consider: a second solar per mex pays back the invested metal in 98 seconds [?] while also providing you energy to spend the gains.

Meanwhile a new mex+1solar pair pays back in 80 seconds [?], not counting the time your con has to walk to get there and the increased risk of being killed in the wilderness.

So actually it is almost always a good idea to overbuild energy to 2x your metal income if you have even a bit of breathing room and can keep it linked.
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USrankKshatriya
4 years ago
EErankAdminAnarchid Are these payback numbers true for all cases or does it assume a particular mex income? Does the double solar strategy effectiveness change if the income per mex goes up or down?
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AUrankAdminGoogleFrog
4 years ago
IDrankrifqifajarzain production speed is limited by the lower of your metal income, energy income, and buildpower of your constructors. Producing something with 10x the buildpower as metal income (eg 19 Caretakers and a factory on +20 metal) doesn't make production any slower, but having that many Caretakers was a waste of resources.

The advice is to keep your metal storage empty because metal is the harder of the three resources to acquire. That said, "keep your metal storage empty" is only half the advice. This is easy to achieve by not taking any mexes. The full advice would be "keep your metal storage empty while increasing your metal income as quickly as you can".

If you have metal and energy in storage then your constructors will build at their full rate, but only for as long as it takes them to burn through your storage. This is not a good goal since only way to gain stored resource is to build slower than your income can support. You don't gain any resources by storing metal so it generally isn't done.

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EErankAdminAnarchid
4 years ago
quote:
Are these payback numbers true for all cases or does it assume a particular mex income? Does the double solar strategy effectiveness change if the income per mex goes up or down?

This assumes that you are adding a second solar to a 2.0 income mex. In this situation, payback time changes linearly with mex value, e.g. a 4 income mex will pay back 2x faster.
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IDrankrifqifajarzain
4 years ago
So, I just gonna build more energy sources than metal. I just worry about enemy acquire more mexes than mine.
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DErankkatastrophe
4 years ago
(edited 4 years ago)
if you are e-stalling and cannot use your metal to the full extend, it is useful to not take the mexes themselves but build defenses at them so you secure them already. you can cap the mex later then. but in general your focus in this case should be to get energy (and the appropriate amount of buildpower) as fast as possible.

i would really say that in the beginning, you should only have very slightly more energy than metal (like 1 or 2 solar more than you have mexes) and add energy later. i could never make use of too much energy in early game, but maybe it`s just because i suck.
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