Upgrading Mexes

[Flynn]

I am wondering how people usually upgrade mexes in FA. On SupCom I found it quite easy to upgrade my mexes and before I knew it my economy "snowballed" and I had to build something before I maxed out on mass. However, it seems that they have changed the figures in FA and I find that my economy doesn't seem to grow exponentially after the first mex upgrade anymore. Today in a game I tried taking the first extractor to T3 before getting any of the others to T2 and it seemed to work much better than getting all the other starting point mexes to T2 first. Once the first mex was at T3 the others were upgraded easily in the same order.

[rootbeer23]

http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_extractor#Build_Order

note that the pause bug mentioned does not exist in FAForever.

[Flynn]

In theory it is the most efficient, however as any experienced player knows that takes up far too much time microing everything to T2 before going T3.

[rootbeer23]

if you can tell me how many t1 mexes you had i can calculate for you how much mass you wasted.

[Softly]

To cap one mex at t3 costs a total of 6300 mass, and an eco increase of +25

For the same cost, you can get 7 t1 mexes up to t2, gaining you an eco increase of +28.

Also you will get the benefits of the t2 mexes sooner than the t3 one.

[Flynn]

But at the same time it's not practical to upgrade everything to T2 and surround it with mass storage. The time it takes to do that you could have lost a battle due to not being able to micro your units.

[Softly]

I was talking about just upgrading them to t2, not even capping them, that would require 14 clicks total, spread over a period of time.

Trust me when I say you're much more likely to die due to a lack of tanks at this stage in the game, than a lack of micro due to an extra 10 clicks.

[Flynn]

Yeah, that sounds plausible, thanks.

[discoverer2k4]

What we need is an auto-upgrader and an auto-micro.
And an auto-strategy!

Flynn did you already tried to doubleklick one of your t1 mexes, so all of your t1 mexes will be selected? After that, click on upgrade and all your t1 mexes start upgrading -> than click fast but not too fast on PAUSE (some times they don't start with upgrading due to a lag or low simspeed I guess - later the engys don't know what to do ). Take 1 to 3 (or more) engys and let them support step by step your mexes. Choose how much you wanna invest into your eco by adjusting the amount of supporting engys or unpause one of the mexes.
you can do the same procedure for t2 -> t3 upgrade.

hf

[Flynn]

Good tip there, I'll use it, thank you. So are we gonna upgrade all mexes to T2 or just the ones in the base?