F2 is a good example for me right now. I joined the world at tick 11. I was alliancless till tick 40 and my conquer wouldn't liberate me till tick 55. Once he liberated me (When I place I like to place out the way where I can expand more solo) I built 3 ops straight away. A couple ticks after I built another 6 and just flew my spams right across the map (It helps that I started boosting blues at tick 50 I guess, can't say it's possible without boosting). At tick 100 I was in the top 50. After tick 101 I was in the top 10. By tick 200 I was rank 1 and have been competing for rank 1 ever since.

(and this is me playing after I said I quit BD. So I actually go out and miss ticks, not nearly as active as I normally would be)

Like I said, it's all about the rewards you can make from building the ops. If you can capture 3 ops and afford to raze them, you get your workers back for the one op. If you only manage to get 1-2 ops you can raze, but if you get a couple conquers, then these will replenish your workers over time. Even if you manage 1 conquer, 1 razed op, 1 mine/well, you will get your workers you spent back in less than 200 ticks (and your income will be increased from the conquer, well/mine, and res from razing the op) and this is much less than I'd like to capture from building one op.

In my opinion there are very few times when making an OP is the most strategic option. Because of the high worker cost, building OPs can be very taxing on a colony, and if used improperly can take a colony out of the running for the top spot.

1. When innitially expanding: Building an outpost to move squads to a cluster of lower level players or their outposts can be a vital tactic to expand rapidly and acquire conquers. That being said, the early round is the most important time to conserve workers and thus not overbuild your network. It is more strategic to plant your colony in a densely populated area where capturing OPs makes Planting them obsolete.

2. When at war: Spies are the most overpowered aspect of the game and are the biggest defensive threat to an attacking army. That being said, it is impossible to plant a spy fast enough to hinder an army if it is moving to a freshly built outpost. So it is important to place outposts rather than attacking over distances. Never attack a fully controlled OP and log off....An important thing to note while in war is that whoever is placing the OPs should pay attention to the distances they are placing them very carefully. With proper measurement and maximum distance 2 tick Ops, squads can quickly gain ground on enemies who are limited to movements to already built (likely not optimally placed) OPs.

3. When you are just too cool for school: When a player has an abundance of resource OPs, Crystals and conquers, there is a good chance that his/her worker production exceeds the amount of workers he/she actually needs to reach the 1000 worker cap. If this is the case, I find it very plausible to plant gate/radar/nuke OPs where needed to expand the network. I do not like wasting worker production when playing with the 1k cap, because hitting the cap wastes whatever workers could have been used later. So I try my best to make sure that my worker production stays level with the 1k cap right before it hits, so I am not wasting precious resources. That being said, there are times where I have 1200 or more workers, in which case this isnt plausible.

4. Camp walls: Camp walls are very efficient but are only really resource acceptable if you are using the tactic mentioned in #3 above.

Try to keep your OP count up over 50 if you are really playing a round, I prefer to have more than 100 but its obviously production permitting.

-Pete

...video you're playing well you'll most of the time not have to make ops.. If you do its not a huge deal I just think you should work around it if you can...