Not enough Radioactive for dreadnoughts

[K]

New player here. After playing the tutorial and tried a game against a defensive beginner AI to learn all the units, buildings, etc. I jumped into a normal defensive AI game as PHC to applied what I've learn.

Intially the game went well for me, I was controlling 50% of the points, in terms of resources we should be mostly equal. I built amplifiers on all my points as I capture new ones. I built factories, sky factories, armories to keep up with my production. Soon I got 3 armies holding each chokepoints. And each armies are composed of 5-6 cruisers + 30-40 frigates + 10/10 fighters/bombers. My score was way above the AI after 10mins. However as I continue to fill my 3 armies up I've ran out of radioactives. There's simply not enough deposits, and so my radioactive count is also in zero. Which I assume hinders my production speed signficantly.

Now I can't build dreadnoughts to keep up with the arms race. So I decided to push all flanks with 2 of my armies to try and secure more of the map with one defending the closest passage to my main base. It went well initially as my army size was vastly superior. But then came the AI's dreadnoughts. At first it was just one and even then it managed to deal massive damage to my army, then with every one destroyed more follow soon after. Without radioactives I simply couldn't reinforce my cruiser count and could only spam frigates. Which meant I couldn't counter the dreadnought.

Eventually this went on for 15mins and soon my armies scattered, I start losing grounds I took on my offense and I was out of ideas.

So question. What did I do wrong? How do you transition into dreadnoughts? Should I have halted productions and pushed out dreadnoughts asap? Could I have built anti-dreadnoughts cruisers to counter instead? Radioactives were a constant problem for me, I could never have even a slight surplus. But how could the AI keep pumping out dreadnoughts with less deposits then me for so long? Post-game stat told me we have roughly the same amount havested over the entire match up until the point all my armies routed and I lost map control. Lastly, how do I use Amplifers and Refinery properly, I don't see the difference except Amps you build on the points? Do Refinery stack?

[bbc6rgf 57 ytty5 y xy w5gt]

Refineries stack so you could build a lot of them at a radioactive point and your income would be boosted quite a lot.

[tomasoltis]

also antidread dreads are cheapest in radio terms.

[Ticktoc]

Originally posted by bbc6rgf 57 ytty5 y xy w5gt:

Refineries stack so you could build a lot of them at a radioactive point and your income would be boosted quite a lot.

Basically this, you can pretty much keep expanding your eco indefinitely. You get more from your refineries the more extractors there are attached to a node, so focus on the largest resource patches (often HQ for metal and first radioactives expansion for rads).

I didn't see you mention the Amplifier boost either, which is well worth doing (unlocked with one of the orbital buildings)

[K]

Should I stack Harvestors as well then?

[Ticktoc]

Originally posted by Casval:

Should I stack Harvestors as well then?

Yup. You can also use engineers on your HQ to produce them faster if your economy allows.
Sub have two types of orbital boosts, one is temporary while the other is permanent. The latter is not as big a boost as the PHC one but it can be done 3 times on any single amplifier.

[K]

Off topic question. How do I know if my army need energy supplies? I usually just put 4 of them into composition, but I have no idea if that is enough. Also can SS repair units? Especially the dreadnoughts.