Also of note, #zk-school in the discord is a great place to look at things. I'll knock one out now, maybe come back to the other later.
2388441:
A good way to balance your energy and metal is to just build a solar next to every mex. Long chains of solars don't get you much benefit early on- each one could have been a glaive. Plus, having a solar by a mex gives you a decent amount of overdrive income.
It seems to me that you're spending a lot of time managing your economy. A good thing to do is to just set your production to infinitely loop, and then mix up what's in that loop as you go. That would also save you from having to build 3 caretakers when you only have 1 factory and 1 caretaker worth of metal income.
It never hurts to build a single lotus at home by your factory.
The fight you lose at 3:30 should just come with experience. For now, if the other guy has more metal at a fight than you of similar stuff (raiders, in this case), assume you'll lose pretty badly.
Slings are an easy unit and they feel safe, but they aren't a very good one. They don't have splash on their attacks and they're very brittle. To counter ducks (raiders), you want riot units. For you, that's reavers.
4:30 - Losing your com here is mostly a function of how much dead metal you have on the field. None of the solars above your factory are doing much useful, and your opponent doesn't have any structures to justify slings.
You're at a pretty severe economic disadvantage right now- you and your ally have a combined 10 mexes, which is equal to what
Levin has alone. Aside from the metal tied up not really getting much value (extra solars, slings), you're leaving metal on the table without expanding.
Knights are good. Glaives are good. I'd make more of those. If you're going to have slings, you should be continuously poking at the enemy with them.
Worker downtime is a big deal. You have 3 constructors out on the field, but only 1 is doing anything. The other 2 could be reclaiming wrecks- units leave 20-40% of their metal behind when they die, meaning that if you and your opponent have a big fight and you control the metal (like you do at 13:30), you can use that to build a new army.
14:00 Hilariously jumpbots counter tanks brutally effectively. Build 3 moderators for every 1 placeholder you build and tanks tend to just kinda die.
I like the fusion you build once the lines are stabilized, but you need to have all the mexes built and connected with solar panels or wind turbines first. You and your ally are actually running two separate grids at the moment and it's hurting your income.
Utilize your cloaks a bit more. Try building a phantom. Just one. Sneaky sniper bois. They're slow as hell, but they're perma-cloaked and have a gun that can oneshot most light and medium units. Gremlins are also fantastic for scouting (especially if you turn their guns off).
As for how your opponent lost-
0. They never linked up their mexes or used overdrive. Also building 10 storages really hurts your economy.
1.
Neco19 never escelated past ducks. If they'd taken their map control and escelated into scallop/buoy, or even just gone duck/griz, you would have died.
2.
Levin was trying to do funny backline schenanigans with their tanks, which if those were glaives would 100% be a great idea, but tanks are too valuable to lose. (Also they were force firing a single spot rather than killing your ally at one point when they had the chance.)
There were multiple points where they could have killed you but they essentially waited long enough that you were able to build up a critical mass of good units (knights and glaives) and win.
