Common mistakes made by noobs

[noobymcnoobcake]

This is a list of common mistakes made by noobs and these are often game losing

Not expanding
This is the biggest mistake you can make. You cannot win if the opponent has map control and 3/4s of the mass points. They WILL out eco you and WILL crush you and there will be nothing you can do about it. You cant win against such odds so dont put yourselves in them.

Not reclaiming
This one is also huge. You have no chance of winning against an evenly matched player if you do not reclaim. Some maps there is tens of thousands of mass to reclaim and if your opponent has many times more mass than you there is no way you can win no matter how skilled you are.

Not scouting
Yes I can forget to scout sometimes but the cost of a scout is far less than the cost of getting your mexes TMLed or sniped by gunships. Do it or lose.

Too much eco
If you eco early game you are either getting killed very soon or giving up map control and getting killed later. The best way you can eco is by getting map control so you have to make sure to do that.

Not using ACU offensivley
Your ACU is worth 2 engineers in your base or 20 tanks on the battlefield.

Too much mass and not enough energy or buildpower
When people have a lot of mass the start upgrading mexes only to find the have no buildpower to spend that mass and no power to do anything fast. As a result of this the mass is wasted and wasting mass is sometimes game losing

Building T1 mobile AA
T1 mobile AA is really not any good so dont include it in your swarm. It does not hurt to have a few in your base however. It is near useless against T2 gunships and bombers will sill get a single pass anyway. Put the mass into interceptors so you can get air supremacy of your own. T1 battles can be really close. If you have a few AA and not tanks and they don't then they win, get that mass and can upgrade a mex. Also don't sent T1 tanks in battles they cannot win.

Not having tac missile defence
You should learn this one soon after it happens. Having mex sniped is not nice and will lose you the game.

Advancing with a commander far out early into the game with no support
I love chasing people down who do this. All the enemy needs is 5 t1 tanks and an ACU and they can just chase you till you die and its GG. always have backup and always have a scout assisting a commander (also helps stop you running into t1 pds).

Building AA in chunks
Spread your stationary AA out around your base. This makes it much harder to kill and bombers cant damage 5 or so in one pass. Gunships also have to fly around and kill each one and this takes extra time giving you more time to shoot them down.

Not having an interceptor spam on 10k+ maps
You cant win the game with ground AA only because to cover the whole map is more than what it costs to attack the whole map. Do build a mix of stationary AA and interceptors but don't neglect either. Inties are also a good counter to mercys and T1mobile AA is not.

Not having any templates
Save a mex storage template, save a template of t1 PD surrounded by walls. Saves a few clicks and lets you do other stuff

Other sugestions from different players

Building T3 mex instead of T2
First upgrade all mex to T2 then T2 mexes with mass storage, then only after T3 mex.
the T2 economy is much more efficient
the exception being, you can start sooner T3 mexes when you have a lot of energy / mass to spend
and a t3 mex can be easier to secure than a remote T2 mex. - Alcide

Get the basic BO right
I have seen Noobs start a game with their ACU building Mexs and PGens, don’t! Get an Air or Land factory down first, if you don’t your build rate will be inferior to your opponent’s who will be building, reclaiming and expanding even before you have built your first unit. - X-Peri-MENTAL

Pgens round mex
There is little point putting PGens around a Mex. Leave the Mex clear for mass storage later. you save 1 power if you have 4 t1 pgens round a T1 mex yet storages grant you 50% extra mass. You can use pgens to help upgrade mex early on but only when there is huge reclaims on the map. Also once the mex is upgraded reclaim the pgens and build storage. Only put storages around T2 or T3 mex.
- X-Peri-MENTAL

RAS
The ressource allocation system is extremely efficient and cheaper than T3 economy.
aeon and seraphim can have 2 upgrades on the ACU
when you are about to build a big economy, you really want to use the RAS. It can pump out enough power for A T3 air spam but make sure you have at least 1k+ power before upgrading or it will stall your economy - Alcide

Not microing ACU when t1 arty is present
This one wil lose you the game in the first 10 mins. Another do or die one - arandomuser

Placing TMD right by the shield base
Tac missiles have a bad habit of slamming into the shield the moment before the TMD kills them. The best way to prevent this is to build the tac missile defence as close to the edge of the shield as possible - arandomuser

These are just the basics. They will not make you like zock or luxun as that takes thosands of battles. Supreme commander is the most complex RTS ever produced. This exepent guide created by pink covers all levels of play and if you jave the time i highly suggest you read it. http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=27171
Guide link added by plasma wolf
if anyone can think of any more please add them

[Gyle]

Ignoring T1

I find this one pretty common. New players have played the campaign and played games with each other and subconsciously are aware that T3 units are the ones they are used to playing with and have the stopping power they are looking for to defeat their opponent. This leads them to making the two aforementioned mistakes of ecoing too hard and not pushing for map control. If you don't build T1 and T2 units you will be defeated by T1 and T2 units.

[noobymcnoobcake]

Yep and did that myself. First online game was far different from the campaign and I think the campaign actually makes you WORSE at playing the game because it gets you into the wrong mindset. As does playing with other AIs

[Alcide]

the point about mobile AA is arguable, there are many cases where a few of them within the spam is useful.
it can kill the mercies, the t1 cybran AA is very good.
On some ladder maps, I believe you can try to go without air factory and use only aa to counter your opponent.
The beginners are very likely to eat a lot of mercies

[noobymcnoobcake]

Mobile AAs use is very limited. I still generally don't built it unless it is a 5k 1v1 map and the enemy is getting a few jesters or something and I dont need an air fac because you need little AA to cover whole map. It does have its place but that place is not as big as most people believe. The counter to early gunships is an interceptor swarm then flack. If you don't have either when those gunships come out then its over. To kill mercys you need about 10 of them and they need to be far in front your ACU.

[X-Peri-MENTAL]

I have seen Noobs start a game with their ACU building Mexs and PGens, don’t! Get an Air or Land factory down first, if you don’t your build rate will be inferior to your opponent’s who will be building, reclaiming and expanding even before you have built your first unit.

Oh, and there is little point putting PGens around a Mex, I have seen this done too, leave the Mex clear for mass storage later.

[noobymcnoobcake]

Yes that first one is quite big because people copy the AI. After a few games this is generally ironed out. Agreed with the pgens thing. The adjacency lines are misleading. People see them and think oh good must be doing something.4 t1 pgens round a mex save 1 power yet 4 storage generate 50% more mass.

EDIT - can I put your suggestions in the main post? I will credit them but it just saves a load of looking through posts

[Alcide]

there is a common mistake with the T3 mex.
you usually want to build as much as possible T2 mexes with mass storage, then only after T3 mex.
the T2 economy is much more worthy, by far.
the exception being, you can start sooner T3 mexes when you have a lot of energy / mass to spend
and a t3 mex can be easier to secure than a remote T2 mex.

[noobymcnoobcake]

Yep this is very very bad mistake. IF you crunch the numbers you can see the huge inefficiently of T3 mex.

[Alcide]

the ressource allocation system is extremely worthy too and cheaper than T3 economy.
aeon and seraphim can build two of them.
when you are about to build a big economy, you really want to use the RAS.