Early TEC trade ports vs. planet expansion

Depends on starting position but generally about the 6th or so planet I start developing a trade network. 2 or 3 trade ports don't pay off very fast but 4 or more do. Especially when you get proper string of them.

Okay, first things first: if you're playing below faster or without quick-start, then fast trade is seldom worth your time.  Unless the map gimps you and leaves you with few initial expansion targets, you'll almost always get more value of rapid expansion and spending your limited gold on trade just isn't a good choice. 

On faster game speed, it's entirely possible to have your cake and eat it, too.  It's possible to colonize in two directions simultaneously, demolish your capital shipyard, and have a 3-link trade route almost immediately.  Your initial expenditures will be 8-12 scouts, a colony frigate, two civic labs, probably an ice or volcanic colonization research, unlocking trade ports, building three ports, 3 planetary population upgrades, 1-2 turrets, and 5-7 extractors.  It's a little tight, but totally doable. 

Another approach is to immediately sink money into logistics on your homeworld and put up two trade ports.  I dislike this approach since the logistics upgrade is a massive expenditure at the outset of the game and anything but the most unforgiving start location should just colonize to get new logsitics space.

Back in Entrenchment, I subscribed to the school of thought that TEC's early trade advantage was no advantage at all.  Basically by the time you were seriously considering trade the cost of 3 (sometimes even 4) labs wasn't a big deal anymore.  In Diplomacy with faster speed, this is not true and TEC can get trade operational right away.  On a reasonably spacious map (random-small, anyone?) those ports will have almost paid for themselves by the time you're ready to start fighting anyways.

Scrapping my cap factory is definitely an improvement I should be doing.

In addition to trying to build/upgrade everything you noted, I've also been researching my first two Terran population capacity as soon as I can: it increases HW income from 19.3/sec to 20.2/sec and then to 21.1/sec (+0.9 credits per sec for each upgrade) and costs 400/0/25 and 500/0/50 - for each, cost is less than half a trade port, but with about half the income (trade ports give what, 1.8+/sec?) I think those are giving me the most difficulty in getting trade ports up in addition to everything else... but the rate of return on pop upgrades seems a bit better than trade ports.

I'll practice a bit more and see what happens.

And yes, I'm on Faster everything, quick start.

My TEC setup. Quick start, faster settings.

Akkan

3 Cobalts

Scouts on explore.

2 civic labs

scrap Capship fac once Akkan finishes, give Akkan colonize

take scope of map. If near ice or volcanic, go for those researches, if near multiple asteroids, build another Protev and colonize away.

Expand quickly.

Trade ports on each planet

sit and laugh as they pay for themselves and then some.

From there my strategy varies, if I am eco, I turtle. If I am on the line, I fleet up.

Cobalts aren't a good choice for your first frigate units I think - your priority should be killing the siege frigates so your colony cap or colony frigate can colonize so that you can build a turret and move on ASAP. You should be building scouts instead.

Light frigates have a 75% damage modifier against siege frigates (light armor) - scouts have a 200% modifier.

I don't have much of a problem with the general how-to-expand strategy - it's that when I'm expanding as fast as I can I find I rarely or never have enough funds for trade ports until later in the game. I'm still experimenting though.

I tried scouts. I have to build like 8 of them to get anywhere.

Building a turret is somewhat wasteful, IMO. Everyone's strategy should be different. This is a difference between our strategies.

It depends on how many siege frigates there are, but yeah, you need a lot of scouts. 1 siege, send 3; ---- 2, send 7; ---- 3, send 11.

I used to hate building turrets as well. I justify it to myself now by saying: the choice is between a one-time cost of 250/75/35, and maybe being pushed back one more planet. If I get my capital ship to colonize, build a turret, and move to the enemy's front lines ASAP, and subsequently acquire one or two more planets than I would have otherwise, I think the investment in the turret would definitely be worth it.

That's only my opinion though.

When expanding I rely heavily on scouts, so if I see the enemy isn't close to getting a good chokepoint i'll wait to milk some more Xp for my cap for some combat.  if the enemy is making for a chokepoint i'll rush for my position as well, In this way you will be on top of your game and can keep control of your priorities, and if you get your akkan to lvl 6 in the process, when the fighting comes down to it you will have quite a nice advantage. 

As a rule you should always rush for the center if you are eco, so you will always be building a few turrets.  Building a turret is worth the strategic planet any day of the week.  Its all about income per second.  If you have a stellar income(even if you haven't made a profit from your investment), and you find a nice desert and load it out with tons of factories, you will be a mean force.  In my opinion trade is the most important, it helps you to expand even faster.  If your allies need early feed, early trade is also very important.

The problem with strategy discussions like these is that game speed and map size completely dominate strategy...and people's intuition tends to be based on only the game speed and map size they are used too...

I would bet that most of the disagreement here is more from different game settings than actually different strategies...

Anyone who does anything on multiplayer (like me and basically everyone in this thread, most likely) probably plays on Faster everything, and Random something... if this is a bad assumption, please correct me.

The key difference between these strategies is speed.  Using scouts, you can clear the relevant militia units - namely Krosovs and Javelis - very quickly and set up your turret.  Once the Javelis/Krosovs are dead and the turret is down, you can leave to begin work on the next planet rather than clearing up.  That's the weakess of the frigate-based approach; you have to stay behind with your units to finish the clean-up job.  Although you save money by not building turrets, I'll end up earning that money and more because I was able to grab more planets more quickly.

As for the Arcova/Cobalt comparison, the cost ratio is about 2.5 Arcova to every one CObalt.  Damage-wise against a light-armored target it's 5.1 damage per Arcova to 7.125 per Cobalt.  This means on a direct pound-for-pound damage comparison against light targets Arcovas are 79% more effective than Cobalts. 

To put it another way, three cobalts will deal 21.375 damage per second to a light-armored target.  To get the same amount of damage out of Arcovas, you need only four of them, which costs significantly less than three cobalts.

Point taken.

Maybe I should try scouts. BTW, is it good to have scouts in MP games? Don't they die very quickly to Capships?

Also, if I got the first two points of the TEC laser upgrade, would that increase the efficiency of Cobalts to Arcovas?

7.125 * 1.10 = 7.8375

5.1 * 1.10 = 5.61

(Is my math even correct?)

I assume that the initial research cost would be too much to really justify the expenditure, so it must be better to go with scouts.

Thanks.

Having a whole bunch of scouts in backup (not with your main battle fleet) (like 20 maybe) can be very useful in fighting off enemy siege frigate swarms, and for doing quick raids on enemy colony frigates you spot, and also for killing enemy anti-structure cruisers. They can be a bit useful against a few enemy LRF but will die very quickly if the enemy has any decent number of them.

Cobalts and arcovas both use lasers, so any tech improvement to one of those ship's weapons will in fact help both...

Personally I don't always like relying solely on scouts because they're shit against flak (which happens to kill them fairly quickly)...I'll generally throw in 2-3 LFs with my scouts to help deal with those if I'm hitting on a well fortified ice/volcanic (you know, the ones with three krosovs and several of each other ship type)...but, that's only if my limiting factor appears to be AM on my colony frigate and not my ability to wipe out militia...the problem with turreting is that it doesn't necessarily prevent the militia from wiping out your colony frigate...sure, you can have your colony ship jump back, but then you lose a ton of AM and your entire expansion in that direction slows down...

It depends on the map but sometimes even building multiple colony frigates doesn't negate the issue...sometimes you just have to kill the militia, all of them, and sometimes you just can't wait for turrets...game speed is particularly important here, because the slower the game speed the less effective turreting is for expansion...

He was asking "would that increase the efficiency of Cobalts to Arcovas?", which it definitely would (but the cost for the research would be much more than the benefit would be, at least early game)

Although I used to often queue 2 or 3 LF for just that purpose (killing the neutral LF at asteroids so the colony ship didn't have to retreat), I realized that by the time all the militia in that well have been cleared, the colony ship waiting in the previous well probably already has a lot of antimatter (often close to 140) - so there's less advantage to clearing everything out ahead of time. (start the order to warp in at 172-174 antimatter to colonize as soon as possible without the colony frigate wasting any time)

I noticed that too and found a solution. Usually the enemy militia will all focus fire on one of your scouts (or on two scouts, with the flak's other banks). If you send that scout to the opposite end of the gravity well after all the enemy siege frigates are dead, you'll be able to warp in your colony frigate (with enough AM) and have it colonize without taking any damage at all (and will be able to warp out with only minimal hull damage, if any). After it colonizes and warps out, order it to warp back in as soon as possible - if the turret has started building, then the neutral militia will priority target the turret first, and your colony frigate will be free to sit in the gravity well regenerating AM and shields in preparation for the next planet, while the turret takes care of the neutral militia.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe you could have the colony frigate attack the LRM - that way you don't have to keep a couple of scouts behind to kill it! I haven't tried that before but I think it should work.

If you kill all the enemy siege frigates well before your colony frigate has enough antimatter, that's OK, just have all but one of your scouts go attack the next well, but keep one scout behind (probably have it retreat to the previous well) so it can warp in and lure the remaining militia to the other side of the well when the time is right.

The Colony frig has such a tiny DPS.

So does the scout, but a single one for each LRM can still kill them before the LRMs destroy the turret.

I generally only build 1 LF for that...1 LF, 2 scouts, and the colony ship have enough firepower to deal with the krosov and cobalt at your nearby asteroid...for speed, I'll send in 3-4 scouts initially but have 1-2 jump away and go scouting once the krosov's dead...

Additional LFs only serve to deal with flak on heavily fortified planets, and even then I'm talking only 2-3...

My problem with this is that it still requires you to warp the colony ship out...let's assume I don't start with a colony cap...the issue still is not colonizing the ice/volcanic by your HW, the issue is colonizing the next planet (and no guarantee it's a nice asteroid)...using scout tactics to buy time for your colony ship to get to the planet is easy, but if you jump the colony ship back (presumably to your HW) then you will essentially lose all AM (because at that point you're probably looking at 2 jumps to the next planet)...on faster speed, you can usually get a turret up fast enough to where the colony ship won't be completely killed and therefore can stay at your ice/volcanic...but if you aren't playing on faster speed then the turret will likely take too long, so either you bring enough scouts+LFs to wipe out the militia faster (which delays expansion), you retreat the colony ship (which delays expansion), or your lose the colony ship (which delays expansion)...

In my experience, wiping out krosovs and militia is a faster process than AM regen on the colony ship if you order it to retreat even once...

Granted, a lot of my games are on normal speed (where turreting does not work unless it's a beastly terran/desert)...but even in ICO games on faster speed the solution I like the most is simply using two colony ships + a colony cap or three colony ships...if you aren't a frontliner then you don't need the fleet supply, and if you aren't Vasari (which I generally am not) then you'll probably want the 2nd colony ship anyway for grabbing neutrals...depending on exactly how the map is, you can grab your first 3-4 planets fairly easily...if you stick with just 1-2 colony ships, odds are you'll get forced to retreat which is going to likely delay your 3rd planet (after you get the roid and ice/volcanic by the HW) and definitely delay your 4th planet...

The ratio of their performance remains the same.

Damage(Cobalt)/Damage(Arcova) == Damage(Cobalt)*1.1/Damage(Arcova)*1.1

Either way a single Cobalt deals 40% more damage than an Arcova.  However, a single cobalt costs 2.5 times more than an Arcova (give or take depending on your metal:credit conversion rate) so the Arcova ends up dealing 80% more damage on a cost-for-cost basis.

If you're willing to invest money in upgrades, you'll get the best value out of just unlocking the LRM and building that.  The 1st tier upgrades are very inexpensive, and on faster speed it's totally reasonable to pick up a few, but for TEC the armor and hull upgrades are probably your best bet.

A colony frigate is capable of fighting a scout or two.  Certainly it's low and not worth talking about in a major fight, but if we're talking 3 or 4 frigates duking it out over an asteroid field it adds up!

Colony frigs have rather good hulls, too.

All right. I've been practicing, and still have not been able to have enough funds to build a trade port until at least 10 minutes in, if I'm colonizing everything in sight. Planet research, development costs, and extractors are just too much.

On my successful quick-expansion tries (which are extremely difficult for me to pull off perfectly), I was able to buy my first trade port at:

10 minutes / 5 planets (lots of metal, no crystal)

10 minutes / 6 planets (lots of crystal, no metal)

10 minutes / 5 planets (lots of metal, no crystal)

The limiting factor is usually crystal. Credits are never a problem.

I have two ideas to speed this up a bit:

(1) Sell more metal (if I see I'll have a surplus) and buy more crystal. At the moment, I'm always selling 200 metal at the very beginning of the game (at the peak price) and buying 100 crystal at its lowest point. But this is still not quite enough to get trade ports up ASAP.

Problem: selling resources at a discount and then buying resources at a markup results in a LOT of waste. Perhaps it'd be better just to wait another 4 minutes or so. Then again, what else would I be spending all my extra metal on? Or I could just buy a bit of crystal with my extra credits.

(2) Start completely skipping Volcano planets until a few trade ports are up, unless there are no other real sources of metal income. The cost of the first Volcano is 1600/375/300 (more than twice a trade port, after research) and at peak tax income is only worth about 1.6 trade ports, plus (usually unnecessary) metal income.

Another option is to restrict my colony frigate to only colonizing one planet initially (instead of 2), but I don't really like that idea much.

I'll try some of these and see what happens.

On the other hand, I started with an ice and a volcanic nearby and got rolling in under 8 minutes.

Awesome.

Oh, right, I haven't yet mentioned that a key part of my early-expansion strategy is that my capital (colony) is always moving in the general direction of the enemy, no matter what gravity wells are on the way - I rarely feel I have the time to take even a slight detour, even if it's through a planet with nice resources, unless there's only 1 siege frigate.

My reasoning is that side gravity wells can always be acquired later, but that if you don't grab that front-line planet near the enemy, it's lost to you semi-permanently until (if) you can build up a decent fleet and attack.

While this may lose me a moderate amount of potential income in the short run (and inhibit my resources to build trade ports), it might be worth it.

Maybe not?

Strategy over Economy.

Tough decision.

I prefer the less offensive strategy, because my experience with wall rushing has been bad, e.g. I lost my Colony cap.

In general I'd have to say I agree with you...the problem is people easily forget to go back and take those planets (just a couple of scouts often is all that's needed)...I myself do this sometimes and I really hate myself for it...

The trickiest dilemma is if you have a heavily fortified terran/desert on the side...scout tricks usually still work, but I really hate having to abuse the silly AI and have them fly in circles...