My aim is to setup general guidelines for players of all skill levels to improve their economic ability to fully realize the military strategy of their choosing. These guidelines are not meant to be a play by play for specific maps and settings. An basic example of what I am trying to avoid is, "Always build land/air factory first then 2pg". A generic concrete build order such as this is good to know, but will not always be optimal. Knowing all of the options to get power and units along with their benefits and costs is more useful for players who wish to decide their own effective build each game. Hopefully, suggestions will provide insight into how players make their build choices.
Basic knowledge is certainly welcome. Everyone should know that having at least a single t1 factory to produce engineers is essential for effective gameplay. If someone has ever been victorious against an equally skilled opponent without building a single factory, I would be very surprised. As obvious as building a t1 factory as your first structure is, I will not discourage posting similarly basic build order guidelines. Widely used build orders often have advanced testing before eventual adoption into the metagame.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are many factors which players may subconsciously consider before a game starts. Opponent's rating for ranked, the individual opponent's tendencies, game settings including map and starting locations, the competitive nature or lack thereof in a particular non-ranked game and much more all may influence your build order. Deciding on a general gameplan and a flexible build order to execute it is a valuable resource to have going into a game.
A quick note about mass and energy for new players. You have a reserve for these resources, your early build order should prevent either from reaching 0. If you are spending more than you are producing and have no reserves, you should probably prioritize a current project until its completion while puasing the others. Often stopping a factory is a quick an easy solution. Sending engineers or the ACU to reclaim usually is a better choice. Those units will then stop spending and begin prodividing resources.
My early build choices are mostly based on nearby sources of energy and mass. Distant wrecks, rocks and to a lesser extent trees are also very important to consider. Reclaiming is often the best source of early mass and energy. However, it requires your ACU to be occupied so you probably want some engineers to reclaim the less hotly contested wrecks. Opponent ACUs will often be present near central juicier reclaimables so if you choose to compete for those you usually will need your own ACU or at least a sneaky engineer with a scout and military escort for faster non ACU hostile units.
The best option then seems to start producing engineers as soon as possible and to consider whether it is worthwhile to travel your ACU away from its starting base after producing little more than a single factory. If you are unfamiliar with a map, simply have your ACU selected while building your first factory and mouse over anything that looks like a loose boulder or blackened wreck. The bigger the rock or wreck, the more mass is available for reclamation. Some wrecks have so much mass it may cause you to reach your max mass storage. This extra mass will be wasted if you do not have teammates for it to 'bleed' to, but at least your opponent is denied that same mass if you snatch it from under his nose. Still, you should find a way to spend mass more quickly in this case. In choosing what factory to produce first, land/air are often the two choices as naval requires delaying production of engineers while you move to water. If you are seperated from your opponent(s) by water or impassable terrain, then air is often the best choice as land units may not provide any immediate benefit.
Reclaimables may be sparse on some maps and are finite in any map. After deciding on what factory to build, you must assess how much reclamation will supplement your early income and how long it will last. You will need to build power generators and mass extractors if you are unable to reclaim one or both of those resources. As there are only a limited number of mass spots, I prioritize filling those first. I build just enough pgens to use along with my mass income. It is good to consider power demands of projects and Acu overcharges in the near future when deciding if you have enough power production and reserves. Power tends to fluctuate much more than mass due to overcharge, certain upgrades and opponents killing them during raids(even if spaced to avoid collateral volatile explosions, pgens tend to be more clustered than mexes, and raids can kill a large quantity in comparison to some of the singular mexes). It is sometimes best to play it safe and build extra power for these reasons. If reclaiming large amounts of mass from wrecks, you will need to find a way to spend it, which may be difficult in the very early stages of the game. You will also need the power to use along with it. I often find myself reclaiming large wrecks with my ACU, reclaiming a few trees with multiple engineers and using the two bursts of resources together to upgrade mexes or the ACU if engineers are getting the wrecks instead(for very large wrecks, your ACU can reclaim along with the engineers until you are nearly full on mass storage-then you can start an upgrade on the ACU and assist with the engineers or have the engineers continue providing reclaimed mass to fuel an especially mass intensive upgrade). Reclaiming mass often allows you to upgrade mexes and get your ACU a quick upgrade, do not underestimate the power of getting these before your opponent. Mass reclaim is often the deciding factor in early map control and the advantage can be carried all the way to a likely victory. For this reason, reclaim order is arguably just as or more important than structure and unit build orders.Statistics: Posted by Myrdral — 16 Jul 2012, 15:32
]]>