Stage Comparison Chart

This post provides an overview of the current stages for each faction, focusing on team games and players ranked around 1300-1500. While using the units well is important, we haven't assumed perfect execution. The lists are organized by stages rather than strictly by tech levels. For example, the T4 stage is not only referring to T4 units but to a typical lategame army including T4 units. Note that they vary from list to list.
The color coding offers an idea on where your faction should focus on and which stages you should only remain on for as long as necessary before transitioning.
Dark Green: The tech stage is very strong, it's often recommended to stay on them for a longer period of time or to transition to them quickly if possible.
Light Green: While still being a decent stage, it is not one you should rush to.
Yellow: It's an acceptable stage to remain on temporarily but weakens over time.
Red: These are stages you should aim to transition out of as soon as possible. However, this does NOT mean to skip them entirely; for instance, skipping Aeon T1 entirely isn't possible. Instead, aim to build the minimum necessary and progress to the next stage.
This was made in collab with the trainer team

The lists above do NOT rank each faction. For a chart which directly ranks the factions in each stage, I'll refer to the list FTXCommando made:

If you are actually going to raid with labs then I'd say the selen is the best since its cheap, fast, invisible, and a scout.

The reasons I put it red were that it was mostly referring to teamgames. Since you usually have fewer expansion (1-2) to go to, the raid opportunities are less compared to 1v1s. this means that usually a tank is around somewhere, due to selen's low dps you can often stall enough time and wait for your tank to arrive. (on top of the vision nerf it received a while ago)
A different reason I had in mind was that selens can't shoot out of transports. When talking about higher ranked lobbies 5 engi + 1 lab drops are quite common where you use the 'ghetto' to kill a few of the enemy engis. Yet I can see why you'd say this argument isn't that great as we changed the range from 1500-2000 to 1300-1500.
Still the main reasons I decided to keep it red.

You label Sera T0.5 land as red for no LABs but UEF T4 air as yellow for no T4 air

@deribus said in Stage Comparison Chart:

You label Sera T0.5 land as red for no LABs but UEF T4 air as yellow for no T4 air

Novax is artillery, not air. It's not even in the air layer.

@deribus I originally marked it as red as well. The feedback was that instead of just using the T4 units, I/we should use the tech stage itself. Since UEF has some strong T3 gunships, you can build them against larger armies or to clear out bases which results in the change from red to yellow. Red would mean you're prob going to loose the moment you get into the later air stage which isn't true.
Seraphim has no other options at T0.5 (except sending a really early tank but you only see that in some high ranked ladder games), therefore red.

Selens are rubbish compared to labs. You can stick them on mexes and hydros which can be annoying but they take so long to kill an engy it's laughable. Two of them together can work. Their radar range seems very short now too and AFAIK they can't shoot from transports either. So I'd prefer any of the other factions labs and a dedicated scout any time. I am pretty rubbish at faf so it could just be me though.

Just to give feedback:
They can't shoot from transports, yes.
Putting them on mexes is annoying, but the moment you realize a mex isn't being built, you can attackmove the engineer and it'll automatically reclaim the selen besides not being able to see it.

Yep I knew that. I was sort of replying to Thomas but I think it's likely he was just being contrary

They are the cheapest and quickest building land unit that kills undefended engineers at a reasonable speed. They still kill an engineer faster than it can build a mex. The low cost and quick build speed means it is less risky to send out selens for raids, but they will still get a kill in most cases that a lab would get the kill. In the past, Seraphim truly had no labs and you could take advantage of that by not defending your engineers. Now you have to be extra defensive of engineers against seraphim because they have effectively the cheapest labs.

Obviously they are not good for killing engineers defended by tanks, killing other labs, or going in ghettos. And of course I am primarily talking from a 1v1 experience, but there are team game maps where early labs and selens could have a significant impact.

Thomas I appreciate the reply. I still think that essentially you need 2 to be as effective as 1 lab and that costs more (and takes more apm). I will perhaps try building a few more and getting better at my micro

The first post says this focuses on team games. How does it differ for 1v1?

Also I don't see Cybran T3 land being that bad. Mass bricks are very strong.

@reckless_charger They are and the recent range buff made them even better. However, the lack of mobile shields is a big disadvantage which gets abused quite a bit in the higher rating range.

@reckless_charger
1v1 and teamgames are different bc

• Lab usage
• Amount of expansions
• Spots (Dedicated air spots etc)
• Multiple ACUs running around
• Unit shift from T1 (ladder) to later stages (teamgames)

Cybran has the main problem that they lack shields. What isn't a huge problem in 1v1s becomes impactful in teamgames as usage of AoE (Arty, Strats, ...) is way more common there and the ppl have the apm to abuse stuff which they would not have in 1v1s together with one scoutstream countering stealth.