Metal to HP correlation?

With the emergence of Combat Fabbers, and the balance adjustments made in the last patch (v.59607), it has become more evident that the ratio of metal to HP is anything but proportional. The negative effect of this imbalance is most obvious in the picture that I have attached below (taken from Zaphod's latest patch update video), where you have 1 Combat Fabber repairing the damage to a single section of wall, which is being attacked simultaneously by about 100 T2 tanks! The T2 tanks are never able to destroy the single section of wall, because it is being repaired too quickly (the wall has 6000 HP and only takes 25 metal to build/repair)! So, in my mind, this raises the question...since it doesn't really make sense to change the way repair and reclaim work, should there be more of a proportional correlation between the amount of HP a unit/building has and the amount of metal that it takes to build/repair it? One thing is for sure though, and that is that the type of mechanic illustrated by the example below should not be allowed to happen.

why should it be balanced by an increased cost? why cant it be balanced by reducing the amount of hp that the wall receives per build power?

Solved in TA with dragon's teeth. The high health structure blocked pathing but was not very effective at blocking projectiles. It could not be repaired(it was literally a pile of wreckage) and was easily destroyed with a lathe.

You could do it either way, because essentially it achieves the same goal. What either making the metal cost higher, or reducing the HP essentially attempts to do is balance the metal per HP ratio. The question that I am proposing is shouldn't the ratio of metal (build cost) to HP be fixed, to normalize the effects of damage, repair, reclaiming, build speed, etc. across all of the units/buildings in the game?

So for example, no matter what is being built (unit/building): 1 metal = 100 HP (or something along those lines)

This essentially solves all of the issues that crop up (like in the example in my original post) when it isn't done that way. In my mind, the only reason not to create a fixed ratio between the two is if you are dealing with more than one kind of resource to build things with, because different materials would have different HP characteristics. However, that is not the case in PA. Everything in the game is built with the same resource, which is metal.

I do think that walls shouldn't have that much HP to that much metal cost. It's ridiculous.

I do like that idea. Walls being more about forcing units into a certain choke point rather than soaking up stupid amounts of damage.

But walls are only one, albeit the most glaringly obvious, example of the issue. This problem appears in almost every unit in the game, to varying degrees. The Fabrication Units are another example...the Fab Bots have 150 HP and take 180 metal to build, where the Fab Vehicle only has 100 HP but takes 225 metal to build. Not having some static correlation between HP and metal across the board, with metal being the only resource for building things, just doesn't make sense. It creates too many problems, and it is very easily solvable. Instead, the way to balance out the units' impact on the game should be to vary the build speeds of their respective factories.

You are right. There are quite a few problems.

Unit balance is being constantly worked on. Most of these issues should be rectified as Uber balances all of the units.

The problem here is that combat fabbers in their current form are basically just shields. The devs didn't want shields because they make it extremely hard to assault an area, but a few combat fabbers on patrol around a small base are more or less equivalent to SupCom shields. Hopefully they can work on the balance for this. Maybe combat fabbers could repair a lot of units at once with an AOE repair, but each individual unit gets repaired slowly. This makes them very useful between battles, but ineffective at stopping targeted attacks.

you completely misread what i meant. I thought we were talking about fabricators repairing walls? not about the stats of the walls itself. Hp per build power while being repaired. Two completely different things.

Well, but "build power while being repaired" is just another way of saying repair rate, and the metal cost of the unit is the only variable factor of the repair rate from unit to unit. Hence the issue. A Fabbers' repair rate and build rate are exactly the same. Now if they had a repair rate that was different than their build rate, then that would change things a bit. However, the metal cost of the unit not having a fixed ratio relative to HP would still present a problem in that case as well. An example of what I mean is, if the walls had a more balanced fixed ratio of HP to metal, then the walls HP would be something like say 2500 HP (using my previous example), not 6000 HP. So, the Levelers would have been able to destroy that wall much more easily and realistically relative to one fabbers' rate of repair. Now even that ratio is probably too high, but at least it would be the same relative to every other unit in the game, which I think makes more sense, and would make the task of unit balancing (with respect to build rate, rate of repair and reclaim rate) much easier.

Just for comparison, here are some current HP to metal ratios (higher numbers represent higher repair rates):
Walls - 240 to 1
Commander - 8.33 to 1
Ponder/Ant - .833 to 1
Leveler - 1.39 to 1
Scamper/Dox - .89 to 1
Slammer - 1.11 to 1
Sniper Bot/Gil-E - .37 to 1
Bot Factory - 3.33 to 1
Vehicle Factory - 3.33 to 1
T1 Radar - 3.33
T2 Radar - .833
Missile Defense Tower - 1.67 to 1
Single Laser Tower - 2.5
Double Laser Tower - 2.5
Triple Laser Tower - 2.22
Pelter - .3 to 1
Catapult - .22 to 1
Holkins - .17 to 1

Why are the ratios so different? There is no consistency. A quick look at the ratios above would suggest at the very least that the metal cost of units with high ratios should be highered, and the metal cost of units with low ratios should be lowered. In other words (using the Commander as a guide to set the ratio), walls should cost about 720 metal to build (6000/8.33), and Holkins should cost about 180 metal to build (1500/8.33). Obviously those numbers are out of whack, which means that walls are way too cheap, and Holkins are way too expensive right now.

Not sure that I agree to the comparison of combat fabbers to shields. I would think that the new Inferno and Vanguard units are better examples of shields in this patch. However, I think that an AOE effect for the repair area command would make sense. That way you would still be able to focus your repairs on single units when needed, like the commander.

It's still spending energy to defend against an attack in an area. The problem is the same as with shields; there is a minimum DPS required before you can do any damage at all. Any partial damage also regenerates quickly.

Yeah, from purely an energy cost perspective they are similar, but it's not really the same because one artillery blast can take out a huge group of fabbers before they have a chance to repair anything, for example. That was something that shields would have easily defended against. So, tactically they are very different.

This is what im saying though. The better option is to reduce (or even remove) the ability for walls to be repaired rather than increasing the cost which will just screw everyone over due to misclicks or automatic repair units.

Could we make replacing them (destroyed ones) easier as a result then?

I see what your asking for, and it doesnt entirely bother me. My feelings are that removing the ability to repair a wall is a better fit than increasing the cost a lot. If i _ever_ needed to make walls, it would be a quick line to block of an area, it doesnt matter so much if it has holes because i can just create another line.

What does bother me is the ability of the combat engineers to repair everything automatically. I dont want them using up my resources repairing walls when i can just rebuild them cheaper. To me, removing repair is the better solution.

I'll settle for not being able to repair walls so long as replacing one in a line is easy enough!

Well, I guess I'm not sure that I like that walls go up so quickly, but I could see the argument for that if they couldn't be repaired. Also, concerning the Combat Fabber, can't you just put them on conserve energy mode to keep them from auto-repairing? Not sure, since I never tested it, but that *should* work.

In any case, walls are only part of the issue though, and only addressing that one problem is a band-aid fix. For example, it's much easier in this current patch to actually reclaim a commander with a bunch of T1 Combat Fabbers than it is to kill him with a bunch of T1 bots or tanks (and the Combat Fabbers have more HP than either too!). That's because at the commander's current HP to metal ratio (8.33 to 1), the Combat Fabber effectively does about 125 DPS (8.33 x 15), while the Dox & Pounder only do about 20 DPS! 125 DPS is more damage than a T2 Sniper bot! That means that the Combat Fabber is the 3rd most powerful ground unit in the game (only behind the Slammer and the Sheller) at killing Coms! Also, they are the best unit bar none at taking down walls with reclaim (doing effectively 3600 DPS to walls). The only way to fix this, without changing how a ton of things currently work, is modifying the HP to metal ratios across the board. In any case, I'm assuming that they will take a harder look at this when they get serious about balancing things out.

Sure turning off Auto-repair would work, but then whats the point of the combat fabber?

And increasing the general health of all units is something that is often requested.

I only suggested turning off the combat fabber auto-repair feature, because you said that you didn't like it. In any case, you would still be able to repair things with it, but you would just have to micro the repair at that point, which might be an acceptable trade-off for you....not sure. Personally I like the auto-repair feature, because it reduces micro. Also, I guess I'm not sure how repairing a partially damaged wall would be more expensive than building a new one.

Edit: Also, increasing the general health of all units doesn't really address the issue that I've been illustrating, but increasing it for those units that have a HP to metal ratio that is less than 1 would be a good start.