Economy for New Players

[gnatinator]

Bumping for new players.

[Lord Arcane]

As a fairly new player (about 15 games now) I want to give my thanks for this thread. Benoker's writing on "motivation" was very useful to me when I first started out. I lost my first several games and after one of my opponents told me I sucked, I felt pretty down on myself. I might have stopped then if Benoker's post hadn't helped me realize that this was part of the new player experience and if I keep playing, I will get better. I knew these ideas intellectually, but it helped emotionally to see a more experienced player make the ideas explicit. I've improved a lot already since those first few games and even though queuing up still feels a little intimidating, I am looking forward to playing more!

[Hascins]

yeah keep it up *clap* *clap*

[sisso]

I don't know how update is this, but it have a very nice info

http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Economy

[Memnarch1113]

Hey guys. Thanks for the lovely information! I'm still getting the hang of the game, but I have two questions.

As I said, I'm still learning the economy's tips and tricks. When and how do I efficiently reclaim? I learned that I can use patrol on my engineers to auto-reclaim natural resources, but I'm not sure when in my build order to do it, when it would make the most impact on my economy or how many engineers to assign to it (or how to path them efficiently).

My other big question is about time management. After getting my initial base down, I seem to be at a loss for how to expand resource production, etc. I kind of run out of things for my engies to do, and I know that I don't have nearly enough of them. That, and I end up taking a long time to make decisions from then on about my economy, so I end up with very little time to plan military strategy. Now, of course much of this will come with practice and getting used to the flow of the game, but is there any nice kind of automation that I can do to make life easier just after initial setup? For example, at that point I mostly send my engies with only about one task, because I want to make decisions quickly, etc, but then I'm pretty sure I waste a lot of time finding the hoards of idle engies and re-assigning them.

I haven't watched those tutorials linked earlier in the thread, so if they explain all of this, just say so and don't both writing it all out for me. I'll watch them soon!

Thank you guys so much!

[ColonelSheppard]

Normally one of the first three engys goes reclaiming depending on the amount of reclaim and the distance to it from your starting location on a certain map. On bigger maps (>=10x10) you can set one factory to engy only and have a big patrol-order for reclaiming forrest and whatever else is on the map, on smaler maps you must identify reclaimfields that are worth reclaiming and send an engy there at one point, which which may be as soon as you have some avalible maybe after you got your second factory.

If you have too much engys then you either send them reclaming or build more units.

[Vashon]

At the point where you have 50+ t1 engineers, wouldn't it be less awkward to spend a second converting those into t3 engineers, for the sake of less movement bumping? 20 T1's should be able to snap out t3 engineers quickly enough that, in addition to the t3's themselves, that it takes more time or about the same just for the unit to leave the factory. And additional benefit to this is beefier and harder to kill units.

After 100+ T1 engineers....it just seems completely unwieldy when you could accomplish to same thing with a third of the units and with beefier/less killable units. Not to mention that space becomes a premium just for the units to move and assist, so you might as well just pop up additional factories and spread those engies around, thus reducing vulnerability.

200 t1 engineers is just plain f$$%# stupid IMHO, that much build power could snap out enough t3's to replace it so quickly that more time would be spent leaving the factory than constructing.

Also, unrelated, but would it be possible for engineering stations and such to auto reclaim wreckage in addition to auto repairing? Seems convenient.

[Hawkei]

At the point where you have 50+ t1 engineers, wouldn't it be less awkward to spend a second converting those into t3 engineers, for the sake of less movement bumping? 20 T1's should be able to snap out t3 engineers quickly enough that, in addition to the t3's themselves, that it takes more time or about the same just for the unit to leave the factory. And additional benefit to this is beefier and harder to kill units...

Thanks for the question. It is a good one. The reason why T1 engineers are used is because:
1. They can be produced by a T1 factory
2. They have the highest Build Power to Mass Cost ratio.

Essentially, they can be produced by a cheap "next to nothing" cost factory sitting beside your valuable tech factory. In order for your T3 factory to produce engineers it needs to spend time constructing them. This is factory time which will not be spent making T3 combat units.

The pro's for your argument are essentially that you can cram more build power around a factory with higher tech engineers. They are also less susceptible to taking damage from raiding attempts. However, I think you will find that the Build Power to Mass Cost ratio for T3 will be unacceptably low. The best compromise unit is a T2 engineer. Which (thanks to engy mod) it is quite easy to tech that "engineer making factory" to T2 and pump out T2 engineers.

In the case of UEF, I find that the "Sparky" combat engineer is very well suited to the task. Especially when assisting a T3 naval factory. As well as having more build power, and the ruggedness of a T2 tank. They also have a self defence gun which is useful against hover unit attacks. A group of well controlled Sparky can defeat any number of Seraphim floating artillery. Sparky is a very good naval support engineer, because, they can move quickly. They get out to the wreckage fast. Reclaim it. Kill enemy engineers and hover units. Then go back to the factory.

Infact, I don't think there is a time when you will want to spam T3 engineers for the build power. SCU's are more accessible, and provide a better option. An SCU with Resource and Build Power upgrades will provide economy and lots of build power, in the one simple unit.

[Vashon]

Teching up factories is a good idea in general, just for extra survivability. Other than that, yeah you covered it and we have our say.

I ain't budging past the 100-150 t1 Engies though. No concession will be offered ever. It's just too cumbersome for so many reasons. Pointlessly for Aeon thanks to the Sacrifice function.

EDIT: SCU's are another level entirely. If you are building those in numbers, you are not only sinking massive eco, but can afford to do so, which means roughly an hour has gone by or its a powerful stalemate with a T2 Stationary Arty, T3 Mobile Arty and Tac Missile duel happening everywhere with SAMs freaking everywhere.

[Hawkei]

Teching up factories is a good idea in general, just for extra survivability. Other than that, yeah you covered it and we have our say.

I ain't budging past the 100-150 t1 Engies though. No concession will be offered ever. It's just too cumbersome for so many reasons. Pointlessly for Aeon thanks to the Sacrifice function.

EDIT: SCU's are another level entirely. If you are building those in numbers, you are not only sinking massive eco, but can afford to do so, which means roughly an hour has gone by or its a powerful stalemate with a T2 Stationary Arty, T3 Mobile Arty and Tac Missile duel happening everywhere with SAMs freaking everywhere.

Not always. Consider that the SCU is not just a builder. Because when equipped with RAS, it is a walking Power generator and mass fabricator as well. With the build rate upgraded added on as well, you may find that these units are reasonably cost effective. Also consider that they can move, shoot, and walk under water. Tremendously increasing their survivability over engineer swarms and power generators. Sometimes, in FFA games, phantom, and the like. When a dominant player is spamming Strategic Artillery, the only answer is to have lots of SCU's with RAS assisting a T4 factory unit (say for instance a submerged Atlantis making Broadswords). This is however going to be inferior to a conventional base economy. Which is why you don't see it often.