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| Halo Wars 101: Macro and Build Orders | |
| Posted By: Psychophan7 | Date: 2/7/09 2:27 p.m. |
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Macromanagement, or macro, is the act of spending resources on buildings, units, and upgrades. Macro also involves the management of your population and tech level. Effective macro facilitates an effective build order; A build order is simply the order in which you initially build up your base and army. The practice of macro and build orders are almost exclusively limited to the Skirmish gametype.
Table of Contents:• Basics • Gathering Resources • Tech Levels • Population • Your Base • Build Orders • Pacing: Fast or Slow? • Units: Infantry or Tech? • Notes BasicsYou start with one scouting vehicle and 800 resources. Your scouting vehicle is the iconic Warthog; It's fast, but it's only means of doing damage is through the ram ability. You're not going to be doing very much damage with your scout, as it's missing the chaingun on the back; You're also advised not to use the ram ability offensively this early, as it'll cause more damage to your own 'hog more than it will to the intended target. The Covenant start with a Ghost. The first decision you'll have to make is whether or not you're going to send your scout out, or if you're going to start on your base. The difference between these decisions is a mere 5 seconds; Those :05 can help tell you what your opponent is doing ahead of time, or these seconds can be put towards getting your first building completed. The second decision you'll have to make is based on your first: Do you use your scout to scope out the enemy, or to go collect the resource crates scattered across the map? If you're opting to build first, then do you take the time to queue up all of your buildings, or do you start your first and send your scout off? Something to keep in mind when you're making these initial decisions pertains to your base: Every building that you can build (at the start) takes :30 to finish, with the exception of the Fortress upgrade. Only one building will go up at a time, so you can queue two supply pads but the second won't start until the first has finished. The same applies to the turrets, although you can have a turret and building being built at the same time; The turret and building queues do not affect each other. So you could opt to get your first building going, and as it's being built you can send your scout off before queueing up more buildings. [Top]
Gathering ResourcesResources are the backbone to macro in Halo Wars. Without them, you can't build anything. You're as good as done if you don't have a source of resources. There are two basic mechanics to how you collect resources: Discovering resources, and recieving resources. You're likely to find resource crates scattered around the map; These resources are discovered, and you just order a unit over to them to begin collection. You can recieve resources simply by building a supply pad. There are four other ways you can acquire resources, but they're just extensions of these two core concepts: 1. Forerunner Supply Elevators: Forerunner Supply Elevators, or elevators, act the same as a supply pad. The only difference is that to recieve resources from an elevator you have to have a unit occupying it. Elevators are initially guarded by Rebel units; Dispatch them, and the structure is yours. 2. Collecting crates: You can take your scouting vehicle, or any of your units, and pick up batches of crates scattered on the map. Crate batches typically come in three sets of crates. Each crate set yields 30 resources, so a typical crate batch will yield 90 resources. Crates spawn in fixed locations that are randomized each match; There will always be two batches of crates on the path between bases on Chasms, but they'll spawn in slightly different locations if not on the other side of the path. 3. Killing Rebels: Rebels occupy each elevator and base expansion. Wipe them out and they'll drop a few batches of crates for you to pick up. 4. Recycling your buildings: Every building can be recycled to get resources back, at a 100% rate. The only exceptions to this rule are upgraded reactors and your main base structure. For the most part, supply pads are going to be your primary method of getting resources. They can be upgraded to give more resources per second too, but more on this under Build Orders/Pacing: Fast or Slow?. The Covenant recieve their resources from warehouses, so hitting those can affect their economy. IMPORTANT: Everything, except for Heavy Supply Pads (and Blessed Warehouses for the Covenant), gathers resources at a rate of five per second (r/s). [Top]
Tech LevelsYour tech level is your second limiting factor to your build order, next to resources. You can increase your tech level by building reactors, as well as by upgrading them. A standard reactor will increase your tech level by 1, while an advanced reactor will increase it by 2. Each reactor costs 250 more resources than the last. Your first Reactor will cost you 250, the second 500, the third 750, and so on. There aren't any buildings, upgrades, or units that require a tech level of 5. Your biggest decision is how to get to the 4th tech level. You simply cannot do a "hard tech" build (see Build Orders/Units: Infantry or Tech? for more information on this) by building two reactors first; Combined they will cost you 750 resources, leaving you with 50 and whatever you can discover. While each reactor built costs more than the last, it's not implausible to build all 4. Building 4 reactors will only cost you 2500 resources. Building 2 reactors and upgrading both of them will cost you 3150 resources. Building individual reactors is a "safer" route in that if you lose one, you're only being set back one tech level instead of two; Opting for more reactors means having to take other bases to maintain your ability to produce units and resources. [Top]
PopulationPopulation is the third item to control for your macro. Each unit produced will add to your population. When your population is too high, then you cannot produce more units. The only way to increase your population is to build a field armory; It has an upgrade—requiring a tech level of 3—that increases your population by 10. Lower tech units like Marines and Spartans use only 1 population, while higher tech units like the Scorpion or Vulture use 3 or 6 population (respectively)! The rate at which your population goes up is directly proportional to how many (and which) production buildings you have! [Top]
Your BaseGood macro does not come on it's own. You cannot simply have 2 vehicle depots and queue up multiple Scorpions and claim it is good macro. Ideally, you want to be producing units, upgrades, and buildings as soon as you are able to. You can produce units faster if you have more production buildings. You can produce more upgrades if you have more tech buildings. You can produce more buildings if you have empty building sites. Having more buildings is only helpful if you have each base organized. Moving to an adjacent building site to produce more units is easier than moving across the base to another site. Keep that in mind when you're queueing buildings. It's not impossible to rearrange your base to be more efficient, but it'll take more time to recycle buildings and rebuild than to get it right the first time; If you're trashing a vehicle depot stuck between supply pads to move it next to your air pads, then you're not only losing the time to rebuild it, but you're losing the ability to create vehicles! If you're planning on recycling supply pads to replace with something else, don't trash all of the pads and queue the new buildings in their place. Instead, wait for the new building to finish or almost finish before trashing the next supply pad. Doing this will mean that you're not foolishly losing out on resources, and that's good macro. [Top]
Build OrdersBuild orders are the heart of any RTS game. They determine what you're doing, what you're going to do, and what you're going to be able to handle. But they are not static to-do lists. They are not set-in-stone. A build order can change just as quickly as you can recycle a building. A good build order is not one that is all-encompassing, nor one that wins most of the time; A good build order is one that is easy to adapt. This is a sample build order: (With P/T/R counts)
This build gives you 3 'hogs, with guns, and 2 squads of marines. It roughly takes into account the amount of resources you're recieving as you wait for buildings and units to finish (discovering resources would allow you to do more). The estimated time between match start and "???" is 2:30. That's a moderately sized army. You could take that to an elevator or Rebel base and expand, or try to rush your opponent. What's flexible about this is that you could cut a 'hog for a supply pad, flamethrowers, or Marines and have a Pelican airlift your troops to the frontline if you wait an extra :05. But this weak against Covenant leader rushes until the gunner upgrade is finished; your 3 'hogs can do nothing other than ram the leader, and two Rams will take Regret's shields (as well as your 'hog!) Marine grenades, while more effective than their attack, are almost futile, as you're only getting one wave of grenades out instead of 3 or 4 to make it nice and quick. One or two flamethrowers should do Regret in nicely, though. [Top]
Pacing: Fast or Slow?Supply pads and Reactors control how quickly you can build up your army. It's not about your tech level per se, rather it's about the capital needed to get that tech level. Capital is a currency made up of resources and time. Thanks to the ability to recycle buildings, you're not going to lose your investment of resources; You will lose your time investment, though. One supply pad costs 100 resources, and takes :30 to build. They gather at a rate of 5 r/s. In order to break even on resources, your supply pad needs to be operational for :20 to recieve 100 resources. Upgrading to a Heavy Supply Pad costs 225 resources, and takes :10. A heavy supply pad increases resource production, but not by very much. Instead of recieving 5 r/s, you're recieving 5.5 r/s; A 10% increase in production! The :10 spent upgrading covers part of the cost of upgrading, so instead of having to make up 225, you only have to make up 175. But every second after the upgrade finishes, only .5 r/s goes towards making up that difference. It takes 5:50 to make up the cost of the upgrade, just using it's own increase. It could be argued that the time spent upgrading does not cover the upgrade cost, as the upgrade is both optional and the cost doesn't take hold until after it's finished building. In this case, 225 resources made up at a rate of .5 r/s would take 7:30 to break even. This is what sets the pacing of your game; By investing in the heavy supply pad, you're investing in a longer game. Even if you were to use the 10% upgrade as a sort of bank, where you can withdraw your resources by recycling the pad, then you still have to spend 3:20 just to cover the cost of rebuilding a standard pad. Add another minute if you want to cover the resources lost by spending the time to rebuild the pad. Building reactors is very much the same way. Building 4 reactors would take 2:00 and 2500 resources, just to get to tech level 4. Building 2 reactors and upgrading them would take 1:30 and 3150 resources. If those two saved spots were supply pads, then they'd produce 300 resources in the :30 it would take to build the last reactor. Reactors, unlike supply pads, do not recycle well. Upgrading the reactor and recycling it refunds only the inital cost of that reactor, which truly costs you 1200 resources. The optimal balance seems to be in building 3 reactors and upgrading 1, costing 2700 resources and 1:45. Of course, getting 2700 resources using 3 pads would take 3:00. [Top]
Units: Infantry or Tech?With tech and upgrades being as simple as having a certain tech level, it's easy to draw a line between what is low tech and high tech. A low tech build is one that focuses more on infantry. A high tech build focuses more on vehicles and abilities. Here's what you get with no reactors:
That is an infantry heavy build. The 'hogs are good for nothing more than scouting. Get a 'hog into the field and make a Pelican carry your infantry there. Or, mobilize an Elephant to get infantry out directly on the field. Now this is what one reactor adds:
This is the lowest of the tech (aside from having none), and all of it improves infantry potency. As you go higher up from here, tech begins to widen as infantry takes a backseat for vehicles to come into play. Marines, flamethrowers, Spartans, and Elephants still get upgraded up to tech level 3 (4 for Spartans), but there's more upgrades to be had for the vehicles and aircraft introduced at tech 2. You can get some nice anti-infantry scorpions at tech 2, those will help a low tech build. [Top]
Notes• I've only collected data for the UNSC so far. Notice how at the top it's the UNSC symbol? UNSC data only. • Some of my raw data is inaccurate, probably. I think I have the wrong times recorded for training Cobras, Wolverines, and Hornets, but I have until next 101 to fix those. • I figure that 99% of my data is correct, aside from those 3 units. • This was all gathered from the demo, obviously. A full analysis would come with the retail game. • Graphical representations of the tech levels is coming. • Do not take any of this as being concrete information. Experiment a little! • The format used for the build order is horrendous. Please, do not adapt it. There has to be a better way to communicate them. • There is no edit. [Top]
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| Replies: |
| Halo Wars 101: Macro and Build Orders | Psychophan7 | 2/7/09 2:27 p.m. |
| Nice work, but one error. | SonofMacPhisto | 2/7/09 4:38 p.m. |
| Re: Halo Wars 101: Macro and Build Orders | Hawaiian Pig | 2/7/09 10:35 p.m. |
| There we go | Hawaiian Pig | 2/7/09 11:02 p.m. |
| One question for the Covies | SPU7N1K | 2/8/09 12:12 a.m. |
| Re: One question for the Covies | Spec ops Grunt | 2/8/09 12:44 a.m. |
| Re: One question for the Covies | 7he grunt w/a plasma pistol | 2/8/09 11:06 a.m. |
| I see what u did thar | Spec ops Grunt | 2/8/09 12:49 a.m. |
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