They all should be equal. Exp:I build a navy and build a fab boat. You build a bot factory and build a fab bot. Mine can move 10x faster than yours. Both build at the same rate. Who is going to get eco and units up quicker?
They are about equal. An advantage like mobility has to be compensated by some drawback. Build speed and cost for example. If this isnt done, air fabs render everything else next to useless as they are equaly efficient in terms of speed and energy but have a huge advantage due to their movement speed. So, the one using planes to build would always get a bigger economy in a given time, why use something else then? Now fab planes are of great use when getting to places not acessible by vehicles/bots or having to get there as fast as possible. Might secure you important metal spots or gets defenses up at an important area but will cost you more resources. Is it worth that? You decide, thats part of the game.
No, sorry, but air units have too much mobility compared to ground and water fabbers. It has this trade off exactly as TA has done. This was well balanced.
The trade off for higher mobility is that they are easier to kill. They also cost 1.5* more then fabrication bots. They build at 0.6* the speed and they use twice as much energy to build something. So you need twice as much energy to support air fabricators, you spend more time/metal building them, and a single fighter can do a suicide run and take out at least 2 or 3. The only advantage is that they fly. There are way too many disadvantages to make use of them in most games.
While I do feel that air fabricators should have some disadvantage to compensate for the fact that they fly, current unit values make it so that air fabricators are barely ever used.
Given that they can build both on sea or land is a huge factor, I still don't see what you're getting at. With enough aircraft, you can quickly build a proxy base, perhaps a bot factory to create more bot fabbers to continue the work. In other words air fabbers are more for speed and support, not as a standalone fabber.
I understand what your saying. They have an advantage over other fabbers. What I am saying is that that advantage is drowned out by all the disadvantages.
Yes you do. You pay an extortionate amount. You only go for air fabbers when its your only option. When its impossible to use any other type of fabricator.
Air engineers are supposed to be used to reach places that the other engineers cannot reach. They are not supposed to replace the others when building up whole bases. Basically you send out air engineers to some hard to reach place and the first thing you'll build is a factory to spam more effective bot engineers.
Not to mention that Air Fabbers are really quick at grabbing mass. They have superior range, speed, and many more air fabbers can assist a building than bots or vehicles can. Out of interest, @OP, what would you pick as a good figure then?
If they should be equal then you suggest giving vehicle and bot engineers flying capabilities? Their ability to fly is a MASSIVE advantage when it comes to grabbing mexes from remote areas or overseas.
