[Poll] Balancing Assisting

Edit: The TLDR proposed alterations to Assisting:

1. A Factory would never operate at more than 125% efficiency; 100% being the base rate it functions in a stable economy.
2. Each T1 Fabber Adds 2.5% Efficiency.
3. Each T2 Fabber Adds 5% Efficiency.
4. The Commander Adds 10% Efficiency but ignores Rule #1, granting the Commander a valuable role in boosting Efficiency to (potentially) 135%. This would be useful both early game if you needed to get a Rush out, and late game when building Halleys/Nukes/Anti-Nukes/T2 Units.

Results of the proposed changes/Further clarification:

• Assisting would remain useful for rushing out what you needed in a crisis.
• For Construction, the most efficient builder's base rate of building would be the one increased. E.g. A T2 Fabber's rate could be increased to 125% by 10 Assisting T1 Fabbers.
• Two Unassisted Factories would always be better than one Assisted Factory.
• It would take Four fully-Assisted Factories to have 500% Efficiency (4 Assisted Factories = 5 Unassisted Factories). Thus Assisting would still be a valuable tool if you had the economy to build power all those Fabricators, and didn't have the space for more Factories. Assisting would be MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE.

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The way Assisting works needs to change (in my humble opinion):

Assisting needs to change to a boost for:

• When your economy is in surplus.
• You are in need of units quick for a rush or defence - not to spam Nukes/Sniper Bots/Vanguards for an easy win.

Assisting shouldn't be a long-term solution (unless you have the eco to spare and are low on space for more factories).

Two Factories (of any kind) would always be more efficient than one, regardless of assisting.
What's required is a miminimum build time on Nukes (and everything else, but that's obviously far less noticeable as you don't usually send 200 Fabbers to assist making Doxen, though it would certainly help prevent rushing Snipers/Vanguards for a Micro win). Why build a great big beautiful army over the course of five minutes when you can build a Nuke in one minute and flatten whatever comes your way?
Therefore Fabrication needs to have diminishing returns. Yes we should be able to speed up construction, but only up to a point - and that point is that one Factory should never be more efficient/productive than two.

Time is the third resource in PA, and being able to near instantly build anything just because you have a strong economy destroys any need to plan ahead.
This way, if you were going to make large numbers of Nukes, it would not be by assisting five factories with hundreds of bots, but by building a tonne of Nuke Factories and hopefully having enough Time to make a potentially game-ending arsenal.
If that sounds risky it should. Nuke spam kills tactics, and building more robots should be our number one priority. "Self-Replicating Mechanisms of War!"

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Also, can we please have a Mobile Anti-Nuke [and T2 Mobile Flak]?
Currently I can't get an army across a map without a bunch of Peregrines.
And even then if I do, I get nuked.
And I use Teleporters.
They also get nuked.

This would also give Nuclear Mines a role.

Mobile anti-nukes would have to be pretty damn expensive, or single use.
Maybe even expensive enough to be made by fabbers instead of a factory.

I hate nukes, I am bored with them completely, where do I sign up?

One simple fix would be for the anti-nukes to be able to store missiles and be built in half the time as a nuke.
Their usefulness is limited by their range but give them ammo, and lots of it.

Maybe make them half the cost of a stationary anti-nuke, but one shot only?

IMO it's not that nukes are super powerful, it's that it's so easy to pump them out once you have a stable eco.

Yes. The way Assisting works needs to be based upon diminishing returns so that expansion is always better than assisting. I just want to see the kind of awesome ground combat that TA had and trailers for this genre focus on. Nuke spam remains the go-to tactic, despite Anti-Nukes being cheaper and coming with a rocket inbuilt.

so....build 50 launchers instead of 25 assisted launchers?

Can we also have an option that nukes+orbital makes general warfare obsolete? End game shouldn't result in the single use of anything, and instead culminate in GIGANTIC battles with multiple armies on many fronts. Why do I feel that there is a climax of actions and strategy half way through a match, and then a slow cold war till the end? Even in competitive play.

Very much so.

In the final 2v2v2v2 we barely used any ground forces. Most of our attacks were with gunships or nukes.

I really cannot wait for the upcoming balance changes to combat.

Not really:

• Nukes would have a minimum build time, so could not be churned out every minute. (They could still be sped up a certain amount by assisting.)
  
• Anti-Nukes would be cheaper and quicker to build.
  
• Yes you could have huge silos full of nukes, but that's expensive and if it took time you might care more about the army on your doorstep than the number of nukes you could ultimately build if you had long enough.

Time is the hidden resource in PA and needs to be controlled more tightly.
Currently Assisting with a buttload of Fabricators breaks Time.

Yeah, that's because a lot of people think there's a 1-1 ratio between nukes and anti-nukes. Even if you rush up an anti-nuke around your commander if you spot a nuke, most of the rest of your eco scattered around the planet is now in for a firehose of mass assisted nukes, crippling your economy until they can overwhelm your anti-nuke. Honestly the best response to a nuke is another nuke, if you can rush your nuke better, or desperately try a snipe. Considering how convenient nukes are as a resource sink, this becomes the case a lot of the time, which is obviously not fun.

Anyway, I fully agree with OP. There should be a one anti-nuke mobile unit that can't be assisted, and mobile flak so that T2 air isn't required if they have T2 air. The buff to T1 air has made this not so bad, but it's still an unfavorable confrontation for the ground units.

nukes really should be nerfed i think. i had a friend and al he did was rush t2 and then a nuke scouted com then sniped ruined a freindship

While I agree with this sentiment this would lead to abolishing assisting for factories altogether. Sure, there might be a sweet spot where you come out on top in terms of build power per mass but in the end this would still mark the end for effective and efficient factory assists. So why not go the full mile instead and get rid of assisting factories completely?
Personal preference notwithstanding I still think this is but a symptom caused by design and balance inconsistencies that still plague the game.

Because an Assist should be an Assist, not a substitute for having an entirely new Factory in my opinion. It wouldn't mark the end for effective and efficient factory assists - they would have an important role in speeding up production in tight spots (or if you have economic surplus to soak up) - just not to the preclusion of expansion. It'd also fix Nuke spam.

Sorry, should have made myself clearer here. I do not think that diminishing returns can be efficiently and meaningfully be conveyed by the user interface and as such should be avoided. Furthermore this would have cause significant improvements to performance (read: pathfinding) and aesthetics (read: visually appealing bases).
I simply think those points weigh more than the occasional use you could make of assisting in a pinch. Besides, if you can not ever exceed or reach the output of an additional factory there is little use of assisting in a dangerous situation anyway.

Possibly the funniest post ever.

I was about to make a thread myself titled 'the AI turtles too much [sick of getting nuked]' but you kinda beat me to it

I know the game still has balance issues but this kinda gets insane. Most games I played (only against the AI because I'm afraid of people) was like rush T2->build nuke->die. Those hordes of units you have? you could have better invested them into a nuke because spamming een couple of T3 turrets pretty much ends every invasion on land. Ofcourse, I did win a couple of times with a Kestrel spam or rushing to a nuke myself but that's not half as fun as making a gigantic robotic deathball and ending all robotic life on the planet surface

I'll just repeat what i said in simular threads,
I think nukes are Ok, perhaps even do more damage but ani nukes need alot more love so you really need to take out the anti nuke first like in supcom.

Making some things assistable and others not is not very logic in a game so I am pretty sure unassistable nukes is not going to happen. It would also mean anti's would not be assistable or nukes get worthless And if both are not assistable the situation does not really change much.

Since gunships are used more then bombers now I guess thats a hint the unit is too good.
I think the best way to deal with that is making gunships slow moving and a bit more fragile.

The main problem of nuke gameplay is that the nuke defense is the only unit in the game with the sole function of invalidating one single other unit and as such has no use whatsoever outside this very small scope. No other unit is as singular and thus boring in its role. Yet this most boring of units is also the most important one since it also is the only unit able to counter nukes. This creates an unhealthy focus on the single worst unit (from a design perspective) in the whole game and as such every imbalance (perceived or real) is of enormous consequence and quickly called out.

I for one still hope for asymmetric nuke play, i.e. nukes and nuke defenses adhering to different mechanics. Nukes could depend on manually built projectiles with primarily a high upfront mass and time investment - as they do now - while nuke defense could be a laser based defense with a low barrier of entry in terms of build cost but require large amounts of energy when they actually are in service. Couple this with an orbital unit that doubles as a solar energy collector and a relay for this ground based laser to turn it into an offensive tool and all of a sudden you have a bunch of interesting units that synergise and thus create gameplay options instead of removing them.
Plus, this would have the added benefit of completely circumventing the assisting-issue in this special case.

On the topic proper: Naive assisting in its current form is a staple of TA-style games and should be kept in PA in my opinion. The game should not depend on being balanced via this route.

We just need a huge cost reduction to regular anti nukes.

Such as to totally invalidate nukes?