With the major changes that combat fabbers have introduced, I thought I could give an objective comparison between the different fabbers and factories, in terms of "cost to maintain 1 metal/sec". To get this statistic, I take the base cost of the fabber or building, add in the cost of the T2 power needed to support it (so if it costs 2K energy, I add 40% the cost of a T2 pgen), then I divide the total by that unit's metal rate. The result is an objective way to compare how much you'll need to spend in order to build things at a certain rate using different fabber types. So, on to the statistics! Remember, the lower the cost to maintain 1 metal/second, the better! T1 Ground Fabbers: 74 T1 Air Fabber: 88.444 T1 Combat Fabber: 30 T2 Ground Fabbers: 53.5 T2 Air Fabber: 60.926 T2 Combat Fabber: 63 Orbital Fabber: 84.545 T1 Land Factory: 80.375 T2 Land Factory: 46.075 Orbital Launcher: 61.72 Orbital Factory: 67.444 Note that, since this comparison involved support costs using T2 pgens, the costs using T1 pgens would be more favorable to the more efficient units (T1 combat fabbers, T2 fabbers, factories). Also, this comparison doesn't account for things like the greater assist range of combat fabbers, the speed of air fabbers, of the greater vulnerability of high-cost units. However, this does paint a pretty clear picture of why combat fabbers dominate the econ game. They're nearly twice as cost-effective as the next-best unit, and beat everything else even more decisively. I've heard Uber plans to block combat fabbers from assisting, which would obviously be a much-needed improvement to keep the other fabbers relevant. Beyond that, I hope other people find these stats interesting too!
I really think that factories should be considerably more energy efficient than fabbers. Probably even be flat out faster at constructing. That'll give players a massive incentive to build lots of factories rather than one factory with a bunch of fabbers assisting.
It does however reinforce a "there is one way to play the game and you're bad if you don't learn that" vibe. The way that I'd like to see things go is putting more emphasis on the capital cost of Engineers, essentially making them pay more for their mobility, rather than trying to strike some kind of ephemeral balance based on lathe energy efficiency. Of course efficiency can be used in some circumstances but by-and-large I don't think it's as easy to balance and doesn't really gain you much in terms of actual depth during gameplay.
As opposed to the current one where the only way to win is to assist your advanced factory with a bunch of fabbers? The game is supposed to be about massive armies. At least that's what they sold us in the kickstarter. Currently I still feel that the armies are nowhere near as massive as they used to be back during the glory days of early Alpha. I think that fabbers should be energy intensive, slow, and expensive. That way more strategy is required in expansion. Factories should be really cheap, and extremely energy efficient. That way we're building lots of factories, which in turns means we're making large quantities of units, rather than a small amount of powerful units.
@brianpurkiss Making Fabbers "extremely" energy inefficient means that expansions will be slow, plodding affairs that require an equally "extreme" energy farm. To build said energy farm you must expand, and to expand you need an energy farm. It's a vicious circle that penalises expansionists. It also reduces the strategic flexibility on the part of the player to effectively switch between different projects and seriously limits a Comeback from a down-and-out player. Its far from a strategy-neutral goal. Some people like to expand and I don't see any real reason to punish them for that. At the same time I don't want it to be the only strategy. I'd prefer PA stuck a balance between the two, rather than favouring one over t'other. As detailed in the Realm Commnuity Balance Mod, I'm favouring a "low-powered" lathe approach that keeps the energy efficiencies on a relatively level playing field, but encourages Factory building over Fabbers because it's more Capital intensive to use Fabbers as your build power. Factories have the edge over Fabbers because they're so darn cheap for the powerful lathes they contain. The "catch" is that Factories can only build select units, rather than being mobile and having a wider build functionality. I'm certain that the raw numbers aren't there yet, but that is the intent behind the changes the Mod is going to make to PA. While I think energy efficiency has its place, I also think that it's a "balance lever" that has so many unintentional side effects that arbitrary limits need to be put on it to stop it from either under or over performing, such as the one proposed by Uber at the moment that restricts the Combat Fabbers from assisting in construction. It doesn't emphasise their role so much as it hamstrings them into doing nothing else. It feels clunky.
A combat fabber that can't assist factories/construction would still be able to both reclaim and repair - which already gives it more flexibility than many other units. Furthermore, as long as it has the ability to assist, its ability to do its intended (??) functionality must be limited lest it dominate the econ game even more than it already does. Look at the stats I posted - right now, anyone who uses fabbers other than combat fabbers for anything other than initiating construction or (with air fabbers) for rapid-response construction, is putting themselves at a disadvantage. If the other fabbers are to be relevant for anything else, then the combat fabber needs some sort of change. If the T1 combat fabber can't assist, then that would free Uber to further reduce its energy cost, improving its ability to perform its combat-repair role. Also, it provides a way to differentiate it from the T2 combat fabber, since if the T2 combat fabber is the only one that can assist, that would make it useful for its long-ranged assist, rather than it being completely overshadowed like it is now.
Yes, I saw your statistics. They don't prove conclusively enough for me that combat fabbers cannot be balanced while keeping their ability to repair, reclaim, assist and construct. Breaking the internal consistency of lathe operation is not something to be done lightly, at least, not in my opinion.
It's more a matter of, if they keep the ability to repair and reclaim at the same metal rate as they assist at, then they will either overshadow all the other fabbers, or be weak at repair. Prior to the PTE, combat fabbers were barely ever used, because their repair abilities rarely justified the cost. Now, their repair is good enough to be valuable, but their assist makes the other fabbers nigh-obsolete. Unless they either can't assist, or assist at a slower rate than they repair, they simply can't be good at repair while leaving room for the other fabbers as primary builders.
Since on-the-fly repair is something that's been cooked up relatively recently for TA-likes, I'm not surprised that it has teething problems. However I'm not of the opinion that the teeth need to be forcibly removed with a sledgehammer; not as a first resort anyway.
I completely agree, I'm pretty sure it would be quite odd to not be able to assist in fact it may even go against the "what you see is what you get" idea as when a newer player sees a unit using a nanolathe I'm sure they'd assume it could assist; when it can't they'll be confused- at least for a moment. I agree with your statement on how 'clunky' it'd feel, I want to keep them; my only suggestion is to make them slightly worse efficiency to metal cost to fabbers. Say 3 fabs are more efficient than 1 combat fabricator which means that per metal combat fabs are actually worse than a normal fab as its triple the cost yet not exactly triple the efficiency. This would mean it'd need something over them, of course, something like more health for example. Just throwing out ideas.
It seems this has turned into another combat fabbers discussion thread... Gotta remind everyone that its not just their efficiency that makes them "broken". For example, they cost tons to make, and if you lose your first combat fabber / fabbers pair then thats as bad as losing half your base, even though they look tiny and not-that-important, and get killed near-instantly by a lone grenadier. WYSIWYG? Nope. Different factories have different metal and energy rates right? Think you might be missing a few values - not that I think the numbers you're figuring out are too important.
So, should Combat Fabbers be bigger? And perhaps able to withstand more than a couple of grenades? After all they're combat and support units, right? At the extreme, they could mutate in some sort of monstrosity on the battlefield (T2 Combat Fabbers?). I like this, Factory needs to be more efficient than fabbers, otherwise a Commander would use fabbers to build units as well. Anyway the two things need to have each its own distinctive role. But it feels wrong that a Factory (being way bigger, and more robust and efficient than a Fabber) costs less than a Fabber. IMHO it needs to cost more. What about finding a balance, where having more Factories and few assisting units, against less Factories assisted by more Fabbers are both equally viable choices? Perhaps each of them more suitable for different scenario. You have plenty of space? Then you go for more Factories, but you will have some sort of penalties (initial investment?) and benefits (decentralized production?); Otherwise you could go for the alternative, less Factories and more assistance, where penalties and benefits would be inverted or different, but you could still somehow compete. However, having more Factories should pay back better in the long run, so that to promote expansion towards mere turtling. With less Factories you could boost your production quicker, but in the long run, you would be overwhelmed by the player who built more Factories. Mmh... wait a minute, perhaps it is already like that?
Just curious Nanolathe, since you seem to like combat fabbers being able to repair and assist, what would you think of them getting a 6K power cost, but repairs not costing energy (incidentally, this would change its cost for 1 metal/sec to 66)? Seems like a possible compromise position.
I'd like to see it tested. (I would also like the potential options such a system would open up for modders too, so I'd like to see it implemented just for that purpose if nothing else.)
Personally I would like to change metal efficiency into metal waste %, so less efficient combat fabricators, fabers and factories would had waste more or less metal in process instead drain more power, it's especially true issue for combat fabricators.
That evokes a very particular, very vivid mental image that I find hilarious. Poor little fabber's build arm getting smashed to bits with a sledgehammer. I agree about breaking internal consistency being an issue- I think that if they did prevent combat fabbers from assisting buildings, then the fabber effect needs to be distinct as well, to convey the fact that "this isnt a regular builder'. Maybe 3 continuous beams that sort of undulate in a sine wave pattern, like the display of an oscilloscope or something. Maybe remove the ability of regular engineers to repair units, and give the commander both versions of the fabber. This way instead of breaking the internal consistency, you are just creating a new dynamic that can be balanced by itself. Yes, it is still adding a new mechanic, and that's often the cheap way to balance things as apposed to elegantly keeping a single system, but hey, it gives the commander something special (can repair units and build buildings), provides a cheap way to add a cool VX effect (fancy repair lathe beam) and addresses a balance issue.
That would actually be a very legit approach for combat as well as fast fabricators. Just ramping up the energy usage won't help since it will just render the combat fabbers unattractive. And neither would removing the assist functionality do! Let's just perform a clear analysis on the desired role of the combat fabber: It's main purpose appears to be a supportive role on the frontline, if this was a RPG than the equivalent role would be "healer". However, that's not its only role. It's also - as the name tells - a combat fabricator, intended to establish quick beachheads at all cost while temporarily supported by meatshields, as well as collecting scrap metal in field. So the ability to assist is essential, and so would actually be the ability to build additional basic defense structures like walls or basic turrets as well. However, this can't be balanced over energy usage. Ramping up energy usage requires a massive front-head investment in Pgens which again enables you to use even more attractive fabbers like the flying once, for the sake of their speed and the resulting time efficiency. This leads only to one legit conclusion: The current system to balance fabbers lacks at least one more variable which allows to adjust efficiency without enforcing investments in advance. Just as karolus10 suggested. Actually, this is quite an old suggestion, variability in mass efficiency in addition to variable energy efficiency. Changing the elemental mechanics of the nanolathe stream just for a single unit won't help, it will only render the unit into a highly specialized retard which most players won't even dare to try out at all. Remember, the guideline for specialized units is "Easy to learn, difficult to master". Which is the same as saying that units should all use the same mechanics, and if deployed in sufficient numbers, even the most unsuited unit could be used for a certain task. With variable metal efficiency, all builders would still act the same. Btw.: This can also be applied to factories vs assisting. Speeding up factories with fabbers instead of building additional factories at the cost of increased metal usage, but perhaps decreased investments in advance. This has yet another side effect: It requires players to choose the sweet point for the expected duration of a match. If the match is expected to be over in 10 minutes most, then assisting is actually far(!!!) more efficient than building more factories. If the game last significantly longer, then assisting results in a long term economical disadvantage. Nonetheless: It still works perfectly fine. Tradeoffs between long term and short term efficiency will is also relevant for other systems if more diversity is being introduced.
I rather think that with metal efficiency, energy efficiency would be redundant as energy consumption would be in fixed relation with fabrication speed... also using combat fabricators for accelerating construction could be a viable strategy if you had overabundance of metal at this moment and you want to reach certain goal right away, assisting with combat fabricators should be much more viable and cost effective (you invest in less generators than now and they are faster per it's cost than using regular fabricators) in comparison with regular fabrication units at a cost of additional metal and not energy as energy efficiency effects can be cancelled in later game just by building few more power generators and energy storage for "power buffer" for nearly instant fabrication, with variable metal efficiency we will not had to invest into more power generators but had to manage more finite resource witch is metal. Also I would like to tell few words about combat fabricators as I think that Tier 1 bots could had the same fabrication speed like Tier 2 ones but they would had worse metal efficiency and paper Armour, slower fabrication speed would only decrease their ability to "tank" damage and assisting potential in early game.
Energy efficiency is never redundant. You have: Mass cost - the actual cost for deploying a single unit, to be put in relation to the survivability, will eventually pay off Energy consumption rate - Similar to mass cost, but single time investment in case the unit gets destroyed/replaced, will eventually pay off Mass processing rate - Affects the effectiveness of the unit and therefore the perceived value Mass efficiency - Allows to define additional "mass cost" which will never(!) pay off. Last point is very important, as it creates a unit with a fundamentally different characteristic, as it allows you to shift the overall mass cost from initial construction or prerequisites to a future point in time. This forces the user to make an actual decision which can not(!) be made just based on the baseline cost efficiency number since the time component is directly involved. It actually makes it possible to make a bad choice, based on how the situation evolves.
I like the how the combat fabbers speed up expansion and this speeds the game right up, which is a good thing. but to upgrade factory production id like to see a fabber tower/plant to assist the factory rather than a combat fabers or even fabbers standing around it, its to much micro and its a bit lame there is a desire to pump out more units from the factory's, having a 100 factory's is not a cool solution.
