Economic strategy

I'm wondering what the economic strategies of y'all are. By which I mean mostly how much energy you build, when you build it, what type, and is there any situation in which you won't immediately grab a mex?

Obviously you should have more energy than metal production, but other than that I have a hard time determining when to focus on the war, when to start scaling up energy for that sweet overdrive, and when to stop again because the grid is good enough.

What I tend to do ATM is, after some initial setting up, have the commander (sometimes 1-2 builders instead) spend the rest of the game building energy and any defenses I decide the main base needs. I usually give the first factory 1 caretaker early on to ensure most of the early metal is going into units. I stop adding energy to the grid when its yellow and most of the mexes that could reasonably be linked are linked.

Its probably an inefficient system, but it requires little attention so I can focus more in the fighting.

TinySpider you should sift through default unit states and set all metal extractors to start high priority. having the nanoframe as high priority treats all constructors of that nanoframe to be high priority. that's how I deal with it.

Steel_Blue I had no idea that's possible, time to be extra lazy.

you can downvote me but just because you don´t like it doesn´t change the fact that for expample if you talk about team-games:

- you don´t even mention your allies once in your post. what is the general income of them? You don´t need to build energy at all if one of your allies has already made 2 singus + grid.

- depending on the income and number of mexes on the map overdrive is less or more effective.

- if you try to gain metal by farming reclaim you might consider that it´s always possible for a third party to intervene, then your reclaim-farm turns into straight feeding and you have succesfully sabotaged your own team.


And: (this applies to both teams and 1v1)
To find the right time to invest more into energy: building bigger energy-structures takes some time, so you don´t want to build them too early or with not enough income/bp. Then, it should be a point in time where it doesn´t look as if you would need units urgently for the time you need to build your reactor. In Team-Games, that doesn´t only include your own front. All fronts should be more or less stable, otherwise your opponents can start ganking more effectivly since you can´t help your allies fast without giving up your own position.

Well, I was thinking of the average lobsterpot mainly. I don't usually play small teams/1v1 but if I did I probably would not bother with overdrive, unless the enemy was porcing.

Regarding allies and number/yield of mexes, the overdrive grid color contains all this information, as long as you link it, because the color is based on the relationship between the energy and metal on the grid. So I kinda let that guide the urgency with which I should build more E. That being said, if there is a small number of mexes on the map, you probably don't wanna build something huge like a singu.

Waiting to scale the economy when the game is stagnant indeed sounds like the ideal strategy to me. I don't employ it because I think I'd probably just end up forgetting to build E if I weren't constantly building it. Deciding when exactly the game is "stagnant" is also kinda tricky, specially in large team games.

Buy low sell high, exploit worker surplus value for ur own gain.

katastrophe I don't care at all for 1v1 and all my experience comes from team games and lobsterpots.

quote: - you don´t even mention your allies once in your post. what is the general income of them? You don´t need to build energy at all if one of your allies has already made 2 singus + grid.

Ally income is irrelevant to me. If my energy bar is maxed out it means I have enough energy and will focus on killing enemy to get more metal to use up said energy. At no point will I bother catering to what my allies need in terms of economy.

APM is a very valuable resource, if you're spending your metal on building economy then you're not spending it on making more units to use up your APM. If you're one of the most skilled players on the team then you should focus on making an army and controlling it to reclaim enemy resources, making only as much economy to establish a grid and keep your energy bar filled.

A noob will never be able to react as well to enemy raids, rebuild mexes in time or read a situation as well as you will. Let the noobs spend their share on eco, it will only contribute to your own ability to project APM. If you see a noob on the front, be sure to back him up with constructors to reclaim all his kills and dead units. Resources in hands of a competent player are much more valuable, up to a limit of their attention span.

On the contrary, you absolutely need to plan on your opponent making mistakes and exploiting them as best you can. There's no such thing as a game without mistakes, everyone makes them. I'm sure Manored doesn't mind us discussing a more abstract strategy layer for a bit.

Regarding team play, a very applicable quote from GITS: "Teamwork is never demanded/enforced for its own sake, but simply occurs naturally as a result of multiple highly-competent individuals all pursuing the same goal."

No amount of effort will turn a noob into a valuable player in the span of one game, if your goal is to win then you cannot waste effort on managing the economy of your allies. They have to know how to play before the game begins, at most take a glance over to make sure grid is connected.

I agree that player APM is valuable but you don't necessarily need to spend a large amount of metal to spend your APM efficiently. It depends heavily on your selection of units. Airplanes are very micro-happy, for example.

That makes me think that "how much stuff I can micro" can also be a thermometer of when to invest into energy. If you're feeling overwhelmed, improving your overdrive is a safe investment.

I'm not quite looking for an "optimal strategy" as I don't think anyone will know that anyways, I'm more curious regarding the strategies, cues and the like that people use to regulate their economy. Who knows, maybe I will learn something that I can use to improve my strat =)

Also, I'm gonna post this graph here from the wiki, because I find it immensely useful and hadn't seen it until recently (is it a recent addition?)



Really gives you a feel for how profitable building each thing is depending on where the grid color already is.

I like pylons because they usually don't get destroyed (they can stay far from stuff and enemy raiders usually won't target them because boom). They also require relatively little time and micro to setup.

I use some solar lines early on, but making them long feels like it eats too much micro and creates too many obstacles for your troops trying to move around (enemy raiders can also use them to dance out of the LoS of your units trying to catch them).

Windmill lines are cheaper and easier to setup, but I'm afraid of them getting cut and me failing to notice. Still use them sometimes where it will probably be safe.