Factory Complex

Do you know this situation? Where you are having everything, from ants to levelers, from orbital launcher to anti-nukes, plus +500 metal and +80k energy income.
You're having a good time, and you worked hard for it. Now you relentlessly swarm your opponents with T1 and T2 units. Then suddenly, a question forms in your mind:
"What should I build now?"

Obviously, you could just go on building more factories, building more turrets and stuff. More of everything. But why? It somehow just doesn't feel right. Doing the same thing again and again, just because it's good to have MORE of everything. At this point your gameplan doesn't evolve anymore. There's no necessity to plan ahead anymore. You just put down more and more of the same stuff, because there is no T3 for you to tech up to.

And it just feels wrong to me.

Now I'm not saying that T3 is necessary. And obviously there will be more unit choices for us in the future.
But how about a possibility to improve the factories that you already built by combining them into a factory-complex?

I liked the adjacency bonus from SupCom, because it forced you to think more about how to structure your base. What if (T1) factories would give kind of an adjacency bonus to eachother when built, well, adjacent to eachother and upgraded into a complex by an advanced fabber? You'd basically just combine four factories adjacent to eachother into one bigger building.

The desired effect would be that units would get produced way faster in those complexes, than in normal factories.
What are you guys thinking about this?

Greetings

I'd be against that since it only encourages players to pile factories closer together thus making them more vulnerable, but it is an interesting idea never the less. Orbital is sort of a T3 and it will continue to expand as release nears (along with everything else). As a result it's probably better to wait and let the upcoming units and buildings balance things out.

Yeah the extra vulnerability is a drawback. But I don't think that that's a bad thing. It follows the simple rule risk vs reward.

I'm more concerned about how it encourages a certain base setup above others. Maybe the factory complex should be an upgrade that can be built around any T1 factory to bring it's roll off time way down and increase build speed. That would allow T1 units to be produced at a greater rate like you suggested but without requiring a large amount of well defended space.

I hope they add that SupCom feature into Planetary Annihilation!

I can remember wehn I played first time SupCom, I build like "oh here is place and there etc" Nowadays my whole main base is linked together giving me the best bonuses "except power plants blow up, then you are fu**ed"

Now I know what I miss in PA :/

Yeah but that wouldn't be combining multiple buildings into one big one. And that's what I found cool about this idea. The idea came to me while thinking about building energy plants. It's a pain in the a** atm.
But what if there was a command that allowed your builders to set up a 3x3 block of energy plants in one click, instead of having to click nine times. I thought that would be a great way to reduce micro.

Then I thought about instead of having a T3 energy plant, you could just combine those 3x3 energy plants into an energy complex. And then finally I got the idea with the factory complex

Also it would be a great way to ensure that T1 units and buildings would be a bit more useful later in the game than they are now. And I think that this is exactly what the devs are aiming at (to make T1 still useful later in the game).

Think about it this way: Once you're able to build T2 energy plants, the T1 energy plants become redundant. Because you won't build any more of them, you'll just concentrate on building more T2 ones. The time you invested into building those T1 plants in the early stages of the game means nothing anymore. You don't even care if you lose those T1 energy plants, because their power income is getting overshadowed by how much better T2 energy plants are. And that's a shame.

Wouldn't it be nice to have that kind of upgrade for your T1 energy plants, and T1 factories later in the game? To make you care about them, and to make it worth defending them again.

While some macro style stuff for the late game could be cool, it does have a tendency of putting a giant goal for people to rush for.

And adjacency bonuses just force people to build bases a particular way.

The problem with Adjacency in SupCom was that it only provided one right answer for any situation, it didn't "force you to think more about how to structure your base" at all. Mass Extractor? Always surround it with storage. Factories, Only surround them with Energy Generators. Shields? Always surround with Energy Generators.

There was no choices to be made at all, and that's why we don't have in PA, it added only complexity, no depth.

Mike

Fair point. But I didn't really want to bring back the adjacency bonus like it worked in SupCom. I just liked the idea of combining multiple buildings into one huge complex.

And if the factories are still better in a complex then they were as individual Factories it still has the same problem of not being a choice, if it's better you have to do it because otherwise you won't be able to keep up.

Frankly I don't think it'll be a problem once we have more units and more of a strong distinction between Vehicles and Bots and a better functioning Inter-Planetary plus Spawning on more than one planet you won't just be mindlessly building units 100% of the time, because they'll hopefully be hard to transport en-mass between planets.

Mike

KNight sry but! Adjacency in SupCom is a problem?
It was one off the things many love and still love.
Or im understandig all rong?


There are five types of adjacency bonus each of which is provided by a different type of structure. These are:

• Mass consumption reduction, bestowed by mass production facilities
• Energy consumption reduction, bestowed by energy production facilities
• Mass production increase, bestowed by mass storage facilities
• Energy production increase, bestowed by energy storage facilities.
• Increased Firing Rate, bestowed by energy producing facilities.

For example, a power generator placed next to a factory will reduce the power consumption of the factory. Similarly, a mass storage facility placed next to a mass extractor will increase the mass production of the extractor. The adjacency bonuses a building is receiving are displayed, indirectly, through the +/- mass and +/- energy display included in the mouse-over details for a building (i.e. the numbers you see when you mouse over a building are different to normal if it is receiving an adjacency bonus). Additionally, a glowing linkage will connect two buildings if there is an exchange of adjacency bonus taking place between them. The bonus which is provided by a type of building will continue to be provided whether or not the bonus-giving building is powered up.

I dont see any kind problem ,its amazing how they have done this complexity tool.
You can agreed have it or dont ,its a choice and you got lot options to protect it.

I brought this idea up so you have MORE choices instead of less. Atm you don't have a choice whether or not to build T2 energy. Because if you're able to build T2 energy, then you will build T2 energy and not T1 or you won't be able to keep up.

With being able to convert a 3x3 block of T1 energy plants into a complex, you will have to choose whether to upgrade your T1 plants, or build more T2 plants. At least there would a be a choice then, where there is none atm.

Same with factories: Should I build more T2 factories or should I upgrade the T1 ones?
It actually makes you having more choices, and not less.

@kalherine, you didn't read my post. I never said that there weren't multiple types(give me more credit than that) what I said was that there only a Single Solution for any given situation.

Like with Metal Extractors, you never Built Pgens or Energy Storage next to them because Building Metal Storage was flat out the better option by a large margin.

Only until people figure out what the best option is for any given situation. It's not a choice, it's a calculation.

Mike

None of these options should be the best option for ANY given situation. They should be the best choices for different situations instead. Like when you have no T1 plants anywhere, then it should be wasteful to first build 9 t1 plants and then upgrade them to a complex instead of just building t2 plants. But if you have many t1 plants everywhere, then upgrading them first might be a good idea.

Same with the factories: It's basically the question whether you want more T1 units, or fewer but stronger ones. And you CAN balance that so both options become viable.

Exactly, that's not any kind of choice, it's just basic calculations where each situation has a 'best' option.

Mike

You'll always go after the buildings which bring you most income. There's no way around it. So are you saying that it's good as it is? Because atm T1 power plants lose nearly every meaning later in the game. I just wanted to make a suggestion that improves that.

Also your argument doesn't count for the factories. Because you can't really calculate whether massive amounts of T1 units or smaller amounts of T2 units are better (if balanced well, ofc).

Your argument is that you dislike being forced to upgrade your T1 factories into a complex, because if you didn't you wouldn't be able to keep up.
My argument is that you wouldn't have to do that. Because you'd always be able to just build more T2 factories, or orbital launchers or something else instead of upgrading your T1 facs. And you could balance the game so that there is no best choice, other than the one you make in your own head.

I never said the current system was good, I essentially said that trying to obscure the current system behind more calculations isn't a good idea. To be honest I think Energy is the perfect place for really push for different energy types like Wind, Solar, Tidal ect ect because they have built in limitations. Solar only works half the time, Wind might be spotty, tidal only works if there is a large enough object orbiting the planet, and would stop working if that object was removed.

So I do agree that there is a problem with the current setup, I just don't agree with your solution to the problem.

Also for anyone wondering what the difference is between a choice and a calculation, particularly in the context of Games should check this out.

Mike

I agree. That's the same issue I saw, but you explained it much better.

Ugh. Adjacency bonus, focus on economy, playing Sim-base. Boring!

"T3" is going offplanet, building orbital factories, or finding a big rock, and either building unit cannon on it or building engines and smashing it into the enemy base. Half-destroying the planet in the process. Awesome victory.

Really neat idea! I'll bring it to the team.