36. Resource Generation Costs, Performance and Output in terms of Siege Bots

Cost and output are measured in terms of siege bots per minute.

Energy is converted in accordance with Psalm 14 (Mass = Energy / 40)

Note that the T3 generator’s doubling time is one third of the T1 generators, but keep in mind that the price of the T3 generator is 51 times that of the T1 generator and that it would take 128 T1 generators to produce output equivalent to the T3 generator’s. Also it must be pointed out that the above comparison between T1 and T3 generators assume that all of the T1 generators come online simultaneously, however the price of the 128 T1 generators viewed as a whole would be much lower if the generators came online one at a time. This line of thinking suggests that output is lost during construction of the T3 power generator and to minimize this loss the player should focus as much construction effort on the T3 power generator as possible.

27. Fixed Costs and Variable Costs also apply to Supreme Commander

The cost of your siege bot factory is a fixed cost, the cost of producing siege bots is a variable cost. The total cost of your siege bot is the price of your siege bot in addition to the price of your siege bot factory divided by the number of siege bots produced. Therefore, the more siege bots you build, the less each siege bot costs.

siege bot cost = siege bot price + (price of factory / total siege bots produced)

For example: the price of a t3 land factory is equal to the price of nine siege bots; therefore, if you build nine siege bots, each siege bot’s cost is in fact twice it’s listed price. If you build eighteen siege bots, then the cost of each siege bot will be 25% lower than if you had only built nine.

The true cost of your siege bots will always be higher than the listed price.

The more siege bots you build, the less they all cost, including the ones that have already been built.  Production capacity is very important, but keep total costs and variable costs in mind; the more factories you build, the more each siege bot costs. Review Psalm 30 to read more about production capacity.

19. Point Defence < Walls + T1 bombers

Static defences are not weapons of victory, but merely a means of buying time in the event of an enemy attack.  Siege bots can always be used to attack, but a point defence building can not.  Hoarding any units in one’s base is the conceptual equivalent of building mobile point defence.  If one possesses an experimental in their base for defensive purposes without having multiple experimentals attacking their opponent; then it is a huge waste of potential.  Static defences are an inflexible and inefficient use of resources that buy time at best and go unused at worst. 

In terms of buying time, nothing significantly compares to walls.  For the price of a single tech two point defence, you could build 240 wall segments.  Build your wall segments in zig zaging lines to increase confusion.  While your enemy tries to navigate through or destroy your wall segments; you may move or build units to defend against the incoming attack.  Tech 1 bombers are cheap, impervious to fire from the majority of land units, move unrestricted to any part of the map, and deal more damage per second then a siege bot for the resource cost.

The essential advantage of tech 1 bombers and walls in combination, is that you will constantly whittle down your opponent’s attacking forces without losing assets yourself.