Red Alert Economics
Your economy is the most crucial part of Red Alert. Even if you know how to kill the enemy from every concievable way if your opponemt has a better economy you will always lose. Unless its due to a lucky strat someone didn't know how to defend against, its whomever has the best economy wins the game.
The basic structures that you must make to have a good stable economy:
Ore Refinery- One common mistake many RA players do is as soon as the game begins they immediatly deploy their MCV and they'll place their ore refinery anywhere. That's stupid. If you have any units other then your MCV at the beginning do explore a little and make your base near a good area of ore. Always place your ore refinery right next to the ore. You should have at least six of these.
Ore Trucks- Yes, the tests have come in! The ore truck drivers are proven to be on crack! (Is anyone NOT surprised?) Keep an eye on your ore trucks. Don't let them wander into enemy bases or let them go off to another ore feild. One of the most annoyingest things is that when one of your ore trucks finishes off an ore field it goes off to another ore field ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP! Make sure you have plenty of these.
Silos- Most of the time they are not neccessary, even when the computer is singing you the silos song 'More silos needed'.
Beginnings of the game- When beginning a game make sure you know where the nearest large ore fields are. If you start out with units make the units spread out until you discover exactly what ore fields are in the near vicinity. If you don't have any units you don't really have much of a choice but to build your base. After making your first powerplant build a barracks and while the ore refinery is building away scout with riflemen so you'll know the best spot to deploy the ore refinery.
Middle of the game- Always make sure that ore is coming in. If you're having any times where you have no money then you've go an economy problem. You either don't have enough ore trucks or the ore is too far away. As the game goes on build several ore trucks. Make sure though that you are also creating more ore refineries as well. If you have one ore refinery and have ten ore trucks then you've got some major problems heading your way. One thing is that your ten ore trucks WILL get stuck at the ore refinery (remember how the tests proved the ore trucks are on crack?). Also, if the enemy somehow blows away your only ore refinery then you're screwed unless you have enough money to make another ore refinery. As the game gets going build a couple more ore trucks then don't build anymore! (unless your ore trucks get destroyed in some fashion). From then on build ore refineries. The reason why you should do this is simple: the more ore refineries your opponent will have a MUCH harder time destroying your economy. Also, its more worthwile to build ore refineries then ore trucks. Ore refineries may cost more then ore trucks but remember that you'll get an ore truck included with every purchase of ore refinery. But you get to place the ore refinery on the outskirts of your base (closer to the ore) and your you'll start to have the best ore truck to ore refinery ratio of 1 to 1. This means no oretrucks will get stuck going to an ore refinery which will speed up the time the ore trucks will give you catch and further improve your economy.
At the End of the game- Near the end of the game comes a large economy problem. Most likely you've harvested all the ore around your base. Now your money runs out as you wait for your ore trucks to go across the map and back again with ore. The solution is simple, just build another base. Its advised you build another base as quickly as you can so you're sphere of influence will spread out over more of the map and ore. Build several ore refineries at your new base and you should have no further problems with ore. At the end of the game you should have at least eight ore refineries and ten ore trucks.
Conquer the Ore- This is something you MUST do. To conquer the ore, of course you will need a good economy in the first place to build plenty of weapons, but even the best economy will crumble if the other player has conquored the ore. Use boats destroy enemy ore trucks when they come near enough and build plenty of tanks to sit around in the ore, waiting for the stupid enemy ore truck to come up. The final act of games ends up who has more tanks/boats at the ore (whatever is left).