Fabricators need a mental rework

in the long game, yes the differences between basic builders doesn't seem like much. but in the short game. when you have 10 metal and 1000 energy production initially. you will always go bot first unless the world is completely filled with un-passable terrain... and even in that case. Air/boat fabricators are just not that fun to use or build.

Oh yeah sorry, I'm not arguing against bot first.

The bot factory is just weird.

Here are bot fabbers - they cost 12 metal per second, they take 15 seconds to build, and they take 3 seconds to roll off the factory.

Here are vehicle fabbers - they cost 15 metal per second, 15 seconds to build, and they take FIVE seconds to roll off the factory.

When you assist a bot factory with your commander, you reduce the build time to 4.3 seconds.
When you assist a vehicle factory with your commander, you reduce the build time to 5 seconds.


I had a horrible moment with air fabbers...

I attacked with Ants.
My opponent started dropping missile defence towers down in my path with about 20 air fabbers

Uhm. What? The boat costs nearly TWICE as much to get that extra 20%. A 12 that costs twice as much is less than 10. Seriously.

This isn't a difficult thing to figure out.

Use the right terminology. Build power means how much metal they produce a second. No, you don't get as much bang for your buck. But bots can't walk on water. Also, fab ships build naval factories 14 seconds faster than bots, and build bot factories 10 seconds faster than bots.

And a fab ship can build stuff anywhere in water. Bots can only build around the edge

Stop. That's not how a streaming economy works. You do not have infinite money at any point of time in a spherical frictionless vacuum. Just stop.

No you don't. You put a little into the project at a time. You don't have to actually save up 32000 to build a nuke. It happens over a long period of time.

Uh huh. That would be very important if resources weren't FINITE at any point in time. A streaming economy does not change the simple fact that getting more for your money is better.

Why was the one poke at my argument against air fabbers, was one I addressed, and that was everyone brushes their teeth scrubs their pits and clips their nails using fighters?

Fighters are hella common right now, they are literally the only thing that counters air directly while other AAs merely migitate damage against air. If that wasn't such a big thing then air fabbers would be the obvious choice for fabbing anything if equally efficient at it. Even so, if equally efficient people would just dump massive cash into fighters to protect their air fabbers, and we would see fighters countering fighters trying to counter fighters.... I mean even more than we do now. I doubt we need MORE fighters.

I mean it is possible to protect air fabbers with air fighters, but then everyone will be using fighters to try to snipe fabbers and massing fighters to try to protect fabbers, when air is already heavily used as far as fighters go especially.

It's kind of pointless to say that.

If you can afford 6 metal per second to run the Naval factory instead of a bot factory, you should run the naval factory. It gives you much more potential to control naval than a bot factory does. And a strong navy can stop you getting into the water in that area.






Although after actually playing a naval team armies game, I totally see your point. They started on land, we started in the water. There's just no way a naval start can beat a land start. The land start can expand faster using bots, can support more air and more naval at any given point...



I still disagree with you though. That's not because naval and air factories cost more metal to build, and because aircraft and ships cost more metal to build. It's because naval and air factories are slower to build, fab ships and fab aircraft take longer to build and require more power to operate, naval factories require more metal to run, and the build speed of fab aircraft is just too low.

This is what i've been trying to say in the beginning. The start points can become imbalanced depending on the randomly generated land for opponents. Having more efficient engineers being on the side who spawns on land should be another reason to adjust the build powers of the other engineers to prevent this sort of imbalance.

Just want to insert a note here:

Adv Bot: 55oo metal
Adv Veh: 5410 metal
Adv Air: 3300 metal
Adv. Naval: 6600 Metal

Notice two things: First, Bot and vehicle facs cost pretty much the same.

Second, Air is exactly half of naval. You could build TWO Adv Air facs for just one Naval.

Think about that next time you want a leviathan. Also note that a Leviathan costs 8100 metal - which is more than the factory itself costs.

Wow.

Or maybe just balance spawn points instead? There's a reason why fabs are not the same in efficiency.

You keep using that TIME word again, and you clearly don't know what it means. The time requirement is based on cost. Cost is synonymous with a unit's overall power. If cost does not match the unit's power, it is a designer failure and has nothing to do with the economy.

Case in point: Naval boats cost over 50% more metal and require nearly twice the generators to provide 20% extra construction power. The overall extra costs make them about a third crappier than anything on land, for no reason at all.

I'd try to explain what's going on here, but I have NO idea what's going on in the dev's heads. Everything in the game is slanted towards assisting air production for some reason. The game is already extremely favorable towards air power. It honestly doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Previous games already taught us that low metal air was a horrible mistake. But let's do it again!

Well, which is easier, balancing the spawn points to be exactly the same from a randomly generated planet. Or balancing the efficiency so that all spawns can have a decent build rate at the beginning?

It's that note which shows you don't understand what I mean when I talk about time.

The Adv. Bot fabber costs 1000 Metal, 60750 Energy, and 27 seconds.
The Adv. Air fabber costs 1350 Metal, 121250 Energy, and 50 seconds.

You know what that means?

That means that if I go Adv. Air first, I require twice as much energy as you do, and you went Adv. Bot first. Plus, my first bit of T2 eco is 23 seconds behind yours.

It makes sense. Consider the system as a whole.



In other games where you have to save up to "buy" units outright, metal cost matters, because if something costs twice as much you have to wait twice as long.

In this game, if it costs twice as much, but you can afford the running cost of the factory, you can build a unit for twice as much that takes the same amount of time. So you don't have to wait at all.

I wonder if anyone else has any thoughts about this...

I trust the devs, that being said making the randomly generated spawns more balanced should be top priority for the release.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Which is the most efficient?

A: Spending 12 metal per tick and spending an extra 15 metal per tick whenever you want to produce a vehicle fabber?
B: Spending 15 metal per tick constantly and being able to throw up t2 vehicles wherever you like?


Because actually, from a player attention point of view, B is "more efficient".

Might be pointed out that in 58772 there were players at the top of the ladder who spent the full 27 metal per tick for the resource of both vehicle and bot fabbers.

Well of course they did, who didn't build vehicle fabbers?