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 back 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 too 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 on your miners, you will miss the opportunity to double mine and worse, the miner might make take two trips to finish an He rock, decreasing your economic efficiency.
Buying a refinery also insures you against having your economy delayed (not being able to offload) due to the possibility that your outpost meets 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 inadecuate (no base to offload, must return to garrison) 2. you could kill their outpost or it rips out (you lucked out and you can offload here) 3. they could both plant, making it a shared "dm" sector (risky/inadvisable to offload here)
