Suggestion: Ratio based infinite repeat + factory assist

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by scode, November 30, 2013.

  1. scode

    scode New Member

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    The most common pattern for me is to have groups of factories building a certain combination of units. Aside from factories assisting other factories, I think it would be awesome if PA supported a twist on the usual "repeat forever", which is to support infinitely building units to certain ratios. For example, I might queue up 10% anti-air and 90% anti-land for an army.

    Preferably this would work in a streaming fashion such that you'll build e.g. 1 anti-air followed by 9 anti-land, followed by....

    Currently, the best strategy for building lots of units in lots of factories seems to be to select all factories and click the build orders. The problem is, because they don't share the same queue, you end up with 20 factories building *just* the one type of unit, followed by switching to the other unit. While the appropriate ratio is achieved eventually, there is a huge variance in ratio in the beginning and you may find that you need your units only to realize you mostly have just a single type.

    (Alternatively perhaps I've managed to miss some convenient way of doing this.)

    Relatedly but probably going over the top: How about having build queues as first class citizens de-coupled from factories? You'd manage build queues in their own right, and then tell factories to participate in build queues. Now you can easily change your build queue without fiddling about finding appropriate factories etc. You also don't lose the build queue config as you lose factories in battles.
    stormingkiwi likes this.
  2. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Ratios would be nifty.

    Since we build so many factories in PA, you could also use the factories for your ratios. If you want 5 ants for every fabricator, have 5 factories making 5 ants and 1 factory making fabricators.

    Nifty idea, though that'd be quite the UI challenge.

    Why and how would a factory assist a different factory? I don't see how that would work or why you would want that to happen.

    When you select all factories they actually do share a build queue. Anything that you add when selecting all factories gets added onto the end of the factories you selected.

    I don't understand your last paragraphs.
  3. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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    It was a great system in SupCom, much easier to babysit one Factory queue and have your other factories use it's queue instead of babysitting 5-10 or more queues.

    Mike
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  4. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Interesting. Didn't know about that feature, and I played SupCom.

    But less efficient due to rollout time, just like with fabricators.

    Adding on a few fabricators to assist one factory helps. But you're much better off having your fabricators spread out amongst all of the factories rather than all on one factory. 2 fabricators per factory across 10 factories is more efficient than 20 fabricators assisting 1 factory.

    However, a vehicle factory has a build rate of 15 per second, and a fabrication bog has a build rate of 10. While a Vehicle Factory costs 600 metal and a fabrication bot costs 180 metal. So if you want assist power, you're better off building fabricators.

    However, I guess I can see some merit in it. If you have factories on one side of the planet, far from any opponents, having those factories assist factories that are near your opponent would be nice.

    All in all, there's only a few situations where it would be a viable tactic... but in those situations, it would be pretty helpful. It'd be better to increase the build speed of the factories near your opponent rather than have the unit be built far away and drive a far distance.
  5. Bastilean

    Bastilean Active Member

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    Mike tell me if I am wrong. I haven't played with this feature. Should play more FA.

    Factories in SupCom that assist one another are NOT actually assisting the same project. They are just sharing the queue of the assisted factory, but they are building their own separate units individually.

    This was beneficial, because you may not want every group of factories in the game on the same build queue.
  6. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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    ......what? I don't think you understand the system.

    FacA has a Queue for 5 Ants and 1 Spinner on loop. If you tell Facs B, C and D to assist FacA they will pull from FacA's Queue and also use it's rally point(s) as well. As an added bonus this system had a nother benefit as well, Lets say you needed extra Fabbers, you could tell Facs B, C and D to each build 5 Fabbers which they would easily do and use thier rally point(s) for it and once completed they would shift back to assisting FacA.

    Mike
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  7. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Oh...

    This whole time I was reading "assist" as "assist like a fabricator."

    There should be a different name for it since "assist" already applies to fabricators helping build stuff.
  8. Bastilean

    Bastilean Active Member

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    It's just easy to use the same command button, because everyone knows factories can't assist. :confused: :D
  9. kalherine

    kalherine Active Member

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    Dont teatch them too mutch FA system they might like:D

    You can have 10 factories when only 1 is make units ,you just give order to 9 make the assistence to that 1 build factory, and in 2 sec all 10 are doing the same without you worry and with the same order build,that is something PA could have.

    Like build power, with 1 click push the left mouse you can make 100 Power generators or other thing.
    In PA you have to constatly click to build moore then 1 power or other thing.
  10. scode

    scode New Member

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    Yes, the assisting I was referring to is the type where a factory will build based on the other factory's queue.

    In fact, this works pretty much like what I meant w.r.t. having first-class build queues managed independently of factories. The difference is that in SupCom, the build queue was essentially a specific factory that you assisted. By first-class build queue, I meant something explicitly exposed by the interface as opposed to being implied by factory assist.

    However, factory assist is likely supremely more easily implemented and gives *almost* the same functionality (mostly the difference is the factory can die, and when having factories assist you need to find the correct factory to assist).

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