Commanding 101 for newbies
This guide is intended for newbies who have just downloaded the game, maybe flown in a few games, gotten podded (blown up) a bunch of times and perhaps have gotten tired of some guy yelling in bold chat all game long telling them what to do. Maybe you are thinking: "I want the commander's seat, I want the bold power too!". Well you have come to the right place. I'll give you some basic openings (yes, like chess) that will help you avoid crippling your team's chances at winning right from the get go.
First things first. Do your homework beforehand. Pick a faction you have some experience with. Do they have refineries?, can their miners rip?, what are the particular perks and nerfs of the faction? You can find the answers to these questions by pressing F1 and navigating to the appropriate faction. Having knowledge about your faction (and your opponents) will help you decide on what to research and how aggressively you might want to expand.
Next, look at the game settings. Do they look normal? What does normal look like? Here are some settings you want to pay special attention to:
game type: conquest starting money:? total money:? map connectivity:?
What map are you going to play on? Is it a big map with many sectors? How many pilots do you have at your disposal? Who is your opponent? Are they new like you or are you severely outmatched? How about your team compared to theirs?
Alright, enough questions, let's go to some answers:
Part of your job as a commander is to win the economic war. Without a good economy, your choices are very limited both in technological research and being able to create new constructors to assert greater map control. So it is crucial to make sure that your first few He loads come in in a timely fashion, allowing you to purchase your tech con. This is why, unless your opponents suffered some initial setback such as losing a miner or an opening con or had to plant them short, you would not purchase a 4th miner. Timing is important, because, if your opponent is bomb rushing you, it is unlikely you would have enhanced tech up in time for the first bomb run (even if you made just 3 miners... much less with 4). You would however have enhanced tech should they try to bomb again and your team would be in a much better position to be able to defend.
Thus, we begin by talking about how to get your economy on the right track.
If your faction is able to make refineries, you should make one. You would typically build it one sector behind your outpost so that your miners are able to drop off their helium quickly. One could argue that if your first three miners have enough total capacity to finish an entire sector by double mining then they could just offload at the outpost instead but unless you are very vigilant of your miners, you will miss the opportunity to double mine and worse, the miner might make take two trips to finish the last bits of an He rock, decreasing your economic efficiency.
Buying a refinery also insures you against having your economy delayed (not being able to offload where you had originally intended) due to the possibility that your outpost could meet your opponent's outpost, in which case a few things could happen: 1. you could lose/rip out your outpost because your constructor defense was inadequate 2. you could kill their outpost or it rips out 3. they could both plant, making it a shared "dm" sector (risky/inadvisable to offload here)
In the first case, your miners will have to return to your garrison to unload. This isn't so bad, if they all manage to survive the trip, but keep in mind that you are, in essence, "backtracking". Your miners will have to walk for a third time, the same path (from garr to a sector next to home), to mine... while your opponent continues to mine "forward" without wasting mining time due to having to travel additional distance to get to He rocks or to unload.
In the second case, you have lucked out and if you had gambled and had skipped buying the refinery, you can put that ~3k towards the 4th miner and have your existing miners unload at the outpost without suffering an enormous delay to building your tech con.
In the third case, you will thank your lucky stars that you have decided to build your refinery because now, you will have money coming in to make your next game changing decision: to bomb or not to bomb. Regardless of the merits of early bombing, having that refinery built gives you the option to set the pace of the game. Suppose you did not have a refinery and your miners had to backtrack to unload at the garr... even if you wanted to bomb, you would not be able to... at least not until the delayed miners have reached your garr and by then, your opponents would have enhanced tech to defend or would've already launched their own bomber while yours was still researching.
Tip: Many games have been lost by commanders insisting on buying bombers well past their window of opportunity to bomb (ie. when their econ is already delayed). Here are some likely scenarios and their consequences: 1) If you lose your base in the shared sector because they were able to buy bombers earlier, then you will have no map control and nowhere to effectively put to use the 10k worth of research you wasted on bombers. Your opponents economic advantage will continue to snowball especially if, after failing, you insist on flying 1-2 sectors to bomb enemy bases as all your pilots are tied up supporting the bomb run instead of finishing the map and/or attacking their miners.
2) Your delayed bombing fails because your opponents have enhanced tech and subsequent bombing attempts will only make matters worse by giving them higher KBs. Your opponents are ahead in every respect: research, map control, econ. Your team will have to make do with Tier 1 tech vs enhanced (Tier 2) and are likely to have to go up against Tier3 shortly after, making all their tasks (probing/deprobing, miner o, miner d) all the more difficult.
