How do I not overbuild power?

[Evan_]

I often watch casts or replays of pros and when I take a look at their power income, their power is just barely balanced, perhaps at -17 and shooting back up a bit when air production pauses. I can usually balance the bars for the first few minutes, but the transition from t1 to t2 and from t2 to t3 seem to sting the most.

Replay of my most recent ladder game is 5416101 (I waited until I won a game so I don't appear like a total noob). I was fine for the middle part of the game, but for the rest was either stalling or massively overflowing.

[nine2]

My non-pro advice:

Techniques to not overbuild:

Know how much power to build in the first place (one pgen for each fac, 4 for each air, 3 for each pair of building engies)

Only build a small amount of power at a time (like 4 pgens) - Don't make a line of 100 pgens

Be aware of the trap. The problem is you are crashing -150 power ... you already have two engies making power so if they stopped you really need less. If you smash out more pgens quickly it will look like you need 400 power. Dodge the trap by rushing 5 pgens and then re-evaluating. Or pause air and build 5 pgens more slowly. Or rush 2 pgens then build 3 slowly.

If you are already balanced then its not hard to say how much power you need... if you decide to build 3 more land facs you need 3 more pgens. If you get a lot of reclaim you need X more pgens. At each point when you are already balanced, it's not that hard to guess what you need for your next step. It's only when you are in a massive power stall that its hard to work out exactly how much power to build to get you out of it.

Techniques to fix it after you overbuild:

A cheat way is just spend your power by adding more air facs. So if you are +200 then build two air facs and you are balanced.

Or you could reclaim some pgens.

Or get an upgrade

Or overcharge heaps

The problem with all of these ideas are you didn't really choose to get in this situation ... you have less units than the other guy because he spent his mass on units and you spent yours on energy. So you had better do something to even the odds. Building lots of air might make your eco perfect but you already had less land units and now you will have even less.

If you think about it after your first t2 pgen you are probably overflowing quite a lot so its the perfect time for t2 radar / upgrade / massive air commitment

[lextoc]

If you've got time for it you can keep an eye on your power the whole time and build a couple of power generators each time you're going to stall. That's on small maps, on big maps I usually have 1-3 engineers on power the whole time until I get a t2 power generator. Obviously, on big maps with few mass extractors the technique for small maps applies and vice versa.

Advice above applies to 1vs1 games.

[codepants]

Know how much power to build in the first place (one pgen for each fac, 4 for each air, 3 for each pair of building engies).

This.

If you know exactly how much you need, it is possible for you to only ever build that much.

Noobs tend to just build power until they have too much.

Pros know how much they need and build exactly that much, sometimes a little less and rely on reclaim or roll-off time to make up the difference.

Also, if you need to focus something, pause other stuff. For instance, if you are doing an ACU upgrade that takes -200 power, you can either (1) build 10 pgens or (2) pause 2 air factories. (2) is much more efficient, for hopefully obvious reasons.