How does everyone manage to get so much so fast? I am always finding myself going up against bigger armies and bigger bases than I can build within 5 minutes. I tried getting lots of constructors at the start but then I died to raiding. The most effective thing I have found is to not morph my commander and build plenty of windgens/solars to make up for the lack of an E-cell. What have others found to be the best start? What would you consider worthwhile raiding? What is the optimum raiders/cons ratio early on?
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first you make some scouts while you build mexes, then some solars, radar and llt/defender then you send com to make mexes while u keep making raiders/scouts and then you make con when you have enough resources Depending on the map you make the con earlier or later, of course but the important thing is to have good intel and keep your cons protected (unless ccr)
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quote:
The most effective thing I have found is to not morph my commander and build plenty of windgens/solars to make up for the lack of an E-cell. |
I've been doing this recently. quote:
What would you consider worthwhile raiding? |
I'd gladly exchange a single raider for a single mex in first minutes. After that, rate increases. Of course, always best to keep the raider. :) quote:
What is the optimum raiders/cons ratio early on? |
5:1, imo. Partially shift-biased. If enemy manages to field more raiders than you get this way, then it's also enough to make ticks/roaches/riots viable, so do that. Also, overdrive matters a surprising lot, even early on, even in duels. Best thing to remember is to focus on important things. If you're building a mex and an llt with a con and commander and have only 10 income, you better hold one and finish other first. Which is more important is your choice made based on what intel you get from the raider parties.
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if i start in back, i very often dont morph ecell/beamlaser com but save some metal and make 3 solars (solars are a taste of me as they dont die to raiders immediately. if map is large and you dont expect raiders i do winds. in water i always morph ecell and torp.) if not starting at back i always morph to get laser weapon/ecell and gain time while walking towards the enemy (instead of staying to build 3 solars) to plop fac in his face. intel is very important. build a builder is mostly waste as first unit. 2-5 raiders and go out to look and possibly kill some infrastructure or protect own, THEN decide if you need a builder. also, at starting point i often do immediately a radar, some units later a small def building like a llt or 2 defenders. other progress is very situational. ofc if you have a "plan" with a "team", there are other options like rushing silly things etc...
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I'd gladly exchange a single raider for a single mex in first minutes. After that, rate increases. Of course, always best to keep the raider. :) |
Perhaps this is where I am going wrong. I often find myself losing ~3 raiders per mex, if I get a kill with them at all. quote:
If enemy manages to field more raiders than you get this way, then it's also enough to make ticks/roaches/riots viable, so do that. |
Now that I finally have a working alt+click this will become easier. quote:
Also, overdrive matters a surprising lot, even early on, even in duels. |
This would tie in with the E-cell or windgens thing, as the E-cell does not give overdrive. Is there any science to how many LLTs or defenders to build, and which ones?
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Is there any science to how many LLTs or defenders to build, and which ones? |
In duel: two llt is usually best in long run, so enemy can't hide in factory's shadow. In cheese: defender or two to kill first glaive before it sees what you're up to. In teams: two defenders so you get to kill raiders AND shoot avenger scouts down.
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Perhaps this is where I am going wrong. I often find myself losing ~3 raiders per mex, if I get a kill with them at all. |
Worth remembering that each dead unit in the other players base is 'free' metal too. It's a careful balance and the best players are the ones who carefully manage those early raiders.
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#1 tip: Put your factory on low priority. Your comm is making eco, so the faster that finishes, the more your factory can produce later. Mex your starting area, with a wind/solar next to each mex. Make enough e that the energy number in the corner is 1-2 higher than your metal income (Your starting metal will vary, so just keep them level). Don't bother with static-d until you've finished your starting eco and are leaving your base. Your comm and starting raiders (It's fine to leave them at home as long as someone is scouting) can take care of anything except a cheese (You want to spot cheeses early, so a scout or two is good, essential if no air player). Generally units wont even arrive at your base until this point, often it comes up just when the first raider arrives. Then push out. I often push after only 1 defender, as long as my flanks are covered I can control the area in front of my base and make my defenses as I push with my comm. I always go wind, but I'm a greedy player who has very good anti-raider skills. Put it up against the edge of the map if you can. This means he cannot hide behind it. Wind on hills is just insane, if you start on a hill always do wind. Don't morph straight away. E-cell is good but you should do it once you push out and your econ has gotten to the point that your resource bars are filling up even though your factory is running non-stop (this will be a bit more than +10). You'll have been expanding non-stop with your comm so you'll have a bit more metal than energy, the e-cell bridges the gap. This is also about the time you'll start running into big enemy packs and you need your weapon. Generally, don't make cons until you can support your factory going full-time, unless it's a really mex heavy map and you need to expand in two directions at once. Learn how to naked expand. This is where you just make mexes and don't defend anything and spam cons all over and your econ goes through the roof. Even if he raids you a little, your losses can often be compensated by the insane amount of mexes you'll have. THIS strategy is why you have to scout and raid, to keep an enemy honest. If you can keep an enemy occupied with your comm/army in the middle of the map and he can't get around you, just naked expand in the rear. In big clusterfuck team games, you don't want to pump raiders into the enemy. Scout a little bit (though the air player should mostly do this) with 1-3. 3 is enough to kill a player who pushes his boy out without protecting his factory, which is about the only time you're going to really make anything happen here. The map will be clustered with commanders, you won't get any raiders through. You'll need big packs of them to do anything, comm-killing packs, mostly they'll be ranging in the middle-space between your comm and his comm, and you should transition pretty early into units like skirms or assaults.
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quote:
This would tie in with the E-cell or windgens thing, as the E-cell does not give overdrive. |
this is correct. but i have to add something: you get overdrive anyway only, when you excess energy. so the e-cell boosts you to fill your supplys. in combination with some e-structures the overdrive comes earlier then. so its not as unuseful as this statement suggests. ofc while running with full e-supplies, the total overdrive is a slightly higher with the same e from structures than the cell. but 6e is not very much to impact like a sumo.
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I feel like insta-morph right at the start with ecell is pretty good, i almost always do it like that and i don't feel overwhelmed. 300 M for 3-solars-worth energy production and a weapon which helps a lot against early raids(like a shotgun) seems pretty fine to me. Using priorities is something very, very useful so never forget them. After plopping fac, i go 2-5 scouts (depends on fac and how much they cost) and after that well, if the map is huge after that i just go for a con which set ups some mexes and the grid. If i expect early attacks or the map is small then just 2-5 raiders and con after that. The grid is really important, i always care in team games to connect every base of every player because the income gets huge. I also like to order a con to build a fus with minimal priority, after a while it will finally build up, and it doesn't disrupt your unit production.
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About E-cell. It is still very good to immediately morph to an e-cell. You can skip/delay it on maps with good wind though. Otherwise, the overdrive you might get from the first mexes are not worth the investment in solars at the start imo. Compare the cost of the e-cell and the free buildpower of the E-cell with the cost and hard-payed-for buildpower of a set of regular solars. You can't beat that. Add to that, you can move your commander to the next set of metal patches quicker if it isn't standing still building solars. I usually don't try to excess energy in the early game. Instead i try to balance my energy reserve around 50% (old XTA habbit). If you do this and have an E-cell you'll have more metal available for mexes and units in the first minutes of the game. About defenses Try to build as few as possible. Every bit of metal in a turret is not spend on a metal extractor or a mobile. Try to rely on radar and scouts instead. Only if you absolutely need the turret, or you are sure there is going to be a fight in a location with 30ish seconds you put down that llt. About buildpower In the early game you'll have more buildpower than income. For the first 3-4 minutes you'll be focusing on one construction at a time. Stalling on a metal extractor when there is a half a raider in your factory is a waste! You should try to anticipate that and finish the mex first before starting the raider. So this "5:1 con:raider repeat" is bad (really bad) for the first minutes of the game. You can do this when your income has passed the +15m mark. (Or you put your lab on wait after a construction, which takes just as much attention) You put as much buildpower on a construction as you have income (often that is just the lab or your commander). All other mobile builders will be moving or reclaiming (on reclaim maps) during those periods. There is no point putting a constructor+commander on a construction when you have +7 metal income! Let that con finish it and let the commander move to a new location. Note that this doesn't mean you can't build constructors early in the game. when there are a lot of metal spots cons will be moving a lot, so it is OK to have that excess buildpower. About raiding I disagree with what was said earlier here. I'd try to keep my scouts/raiders alive instead of trading them for a mex. Of course, when you can kill one for free; go for it. But don't take unnecessary risks. I'd prefer to have that scout keep an eye on area's i don't have radar cover than to waste it on a missile turret. You can make an early raid into a rush. This is when you start out with, for example, 5 glaives. Then you can overrun a defender, take risks, kill eco etc. That is what such an opener is meant to do. When raiding you never NEVER try to kill the lab. It simply has too much HP. What you want to kill are: Constructors, windmills, mexes. Dont bother with the solars. Ppro tip: when you see a line of solars and you get a clean drive by with a raider. Give every solar one shot so they all fold. Do this with the setTarget command so the raider wont have to slow down. This will definitely stall your opponent's production for a couple of seconds.
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When raiding you never NEVER try to kill the lab. |
* depends on enemy responsiveness and type of raider used. Pyros and Scorchers can quite often pull this off very well, simply because they can kill the factory in a dozen seconds in optimal use case.
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This will be an exception and the result of a failed defense. Against a semi competent opponent you wont succeed. Do pyro's still block the construction of new units when they are shooting at the lab? This was unintended behavior iirc. If there would a way to kill the starting factory or commander easily in the early game it would be a flaw in the game.
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Nope, that is intended, the same way AoE blocks construction. E-cell starts are viable, and I wont say @spr1ng is wrong or you shouldn't do the e-cell start, but what he says about using factory repeat is going to massively impact your micro. I am a very high APM player, but even I use repeat/low priority, rather than 'wait' or a hotkeyed factory. He is right that letting your mex construction stall is one of the worst things you can do but low priority takes care of this nicely. (This is why I seriously opposed the 5 > 10 factory BP buff, it's just too much at the start of the game!). If you are over-building defenses and still keep getting raided, try playing veh and using slashers instead (you can seriously play with 0 turrets this way). They're insane riot units, like an llt/defender hybrid, and they work really well into mid game, though be aware that assaults eat them for breakfast and they're only really good against comms with backup (say, your own comm). Reclaim maps are definitely worth mentioning. You can afford a very early constructor on a map even with just trees, because you can spam out mexes and then reclaim trees to make up that e defecit, then when your eco starts to kick in you already have enough BP to spend it. Any map with a few hundred metal in rocks really is a different creature again, really a 'rush cons for noms' map, too.
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About that "high APM" what happened to that graph at the end of the game?
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I have often been trying to kill factories with the remaining ~4 glaives from a raid. I very rarely succeed but there is nothing else to raid. I think the LLT is actually a problem here. The Defender can kill 1.5 glaives but a LLT can kill 2 or more depending how quickly you kill it. Most raiders seem unable to make cost against LLTs no matter how many are on the raid. As far as I am aware the LLT is not meant to be an effective riot unit.
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LLT is a medium-range, perfect-precision, low-dps turret with a lot of health. It's an excellent riot, unless it gets really overwhelmed. Also, 1 scorcher kills it.
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LLT is a medium-range, perfect-precision, low-dps high dps turret with a lot little health.
It's an excellent riot, unless it gets really overwhelmed. |
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   TheSponge If you have raided everything and you have four glaives remaining, you've pretty much won. Retreat them a little way outside their base and use them to snipe any raiders/cons trying to leave. The only way the enemy can expand then is by getting riots or turrets, which will slow them down a ton and you can harass them the whole way, whereas you've free to expand naked as you please. (I assume you're talking about 1v1. If you're playing teams you don't need that many raiders anyway) Another tip: if you like playing cloakies, after the initial raid get a single cloaked unit and wander it up to their fac. That way you can see exactly what the enemy is building and prepare accordingly.
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LLT is to stop raiders. That's what it does. That's it's primary function. So yes of course it beats them.
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