PTE build 78071 now up

repairing those equals to wasting metal -and now even energy-

Your definition and my definition of wasted are very different then, it's as much wasted metal as building a new vanguard, except it's not a mile away!

Though I do agree that energy usage is going to just break their role again. =/

infernos and vanguards are the weird edge case as they don't insta die. But the issue remains that combat fabbers:
a) randomly repair "something". So you waste metal on repairing smaller stuff that is in the process of being overkilled.
b) tend to die really really fast anyway

That´s the entire point! So much in PA is not about the number of units but WHERE a unit currently is. It´s the same reason as the one for the Unit Cannons! POSITIONS MATTER!

In my eyes role of Combat Fabbers is mainly ruined because of one thing: YOU CANNOT TELL THEM WHAT TO AUTO-REPAIR AND WHAT TO IGNORE!!!
I don´t want them to repair Doxes that somehow managed to survive anything! Doxes Health is nothing that matters! (at least in my eyes)
Simply disable auto-repair for every Tier I-unit except the inferno could fix this, giving us a complete menu to select specific unit types might be to challenging. Oh, and Uber should give us a possibility to tell the combat fabbers to prefer buildings over units/ units over buildings!

BTW: I dislike having both Tier I & Tier II combat fabber as they nearly do the same job!

I've made a mod (anti-popcorn) that does just that, and I can tell you that hasn't been my conclusion at all.

What it really does is take a couple extra seconds before two armies are "committed" to fighting each other, but once they do, the battle itself rapidly escalates as more and more units close into range of the opposing units, causing the armies to die quite quickly still, especially once forward inferno lines hit each other (they actually are feasible with the extra range given to comfabs)

The number of units in play at any point in time might increase in the short term, but anytime someone, be it human or AI has extra units around, they are going to find a way to get them killed.

the advanced one adds turretcreep

And here we are at one of the game's core problems...

Planet smash still need a bit of work.

It's just because both planets entered a black hole

Yeah, I don't agree that repairing has no function. A skillfully maneuvered blob with a few infernos and combat fabbers can be really deadly. It does depend a lot on position, map, and unit composition though. This makes it pretty situational which is a good thing in my opinion. However if they had slightly more range I think this function would be more useful. Also not sure how it will play out with the new energy cost (even at the reduced level).

In anti-popcorn I gave comfabs double the range, which makes them work out really well in blobs.

if anything, the energy drain provides a somewhat needed nerf in the mod, though with vanilla units being much weaker they'll still have less utility.

I also imagine a range increase will be a lot easier for uber to do, rather than modify platoon positional stuff.

No, definitely not! It´s just "realistic" in the game´s lore to do Popcorn-Units at Tier I!

I was thinking the same thing!!

OP updated
PTE build 78008
- fixed UNKNOWN in friends list

I miss that friend.... He/she was pretty mysterious.

Did you have a party at build 78,000?

I did actually get that build, but it wasn't one that went out

What about when build 80,000 comes out?

Oh also, how does it take 43 builds to do one thing....?
RAVEN GET ON IT AND FIND THE SECRET STUFF!

Remember this is based on Uber's company-wide source control system. It might be Ikarus, it might be yet-unknown projects, or it might be invisible bugfixes or optimization in PA.

The build number is just the perforce change list number that it was built at. I could go in and make 2000 individual check ins of a single txt file with no changes in a completely different project (I'll go add it to the Toy Rush folder!) and the next build would be >80000.