combat fabbers assisting or not. let's debate.

Uhm yeah.

I was hoping we'd stick to the WYSIWYG and no random limitations rules.

this clearly breaks both, you see a unit with what's very clearly a lathe yet where he used to be able to do what every other unit with a lathe did, he no longer can.

as for the random rule, he can repair this this and this but not that that and that. That obviously being structures and assisting what they construct and this obviously being units.

Now before we go into an all-out frenzy of "hey, watch out! their lathe is so strong it makes using them on structures OP but if we nerfed the lathe they'd be underpowered in the battlefield" let's be constructive about this thread and discuss a new setup.

Let's take a step back and focus on ALL the stats, yes other units included.

I imagine a setup where without tampering with the lathe in case figures at all, we could have a combat fabber that's best when used for it's intended role, without having to cage the poor tiger in, here goes:

lets say we were to have a bot fabber at nanolathe strength 6 (made up stat, compare with real stats later)
we'd set the combat fabber nanolathe strength at 5 this way you're better off not using them for assisting
why use them at all then?
hold on! we set them to have much greater speed then bot fabbers and set all army in general to have more if not as much speed as the bot fabbers
lower all-round hitpoints and all-round damage evenly, should allow for quicker repair
slow down construction time but not repair time (every type of fabber)

now here we get into the realm of my extra ideas that i like less and that I much rather not have to use (because they get back into the realm of random rules):

We can also make the repair cost less for field engies.

We could make reparation and construction fab rate be different for field engies (same fabbing capacities as suggested above except it gets a boost when repairing units)

You guys have a try at it, maybe the answer has still not been found or thought of !

also I made a tracker for the broken animation since the change so if you could please go upvote it : https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-unit-database-v1-2-0.56261/

Remove the nano lathe and have the unit deploy mines rather then build them.

The give the unit a actual repair gun, not a nanolathe.

Might not have bothered reading all that.

I would like the option to have have combat fabbers assist/build stuff. Before you HAD to do it, now you CAN'T. I'd like a CHOICE!

Repairing a unit could be at the same metal speed but 1/2 energy or something *shrug*

The metagame was getting somewhere interesting too. Matiz was making really good progress with non-cf rush builds, so there did indeed turn out to be some kind of parity between vehicle first and bot first. It even seemed to go so far as to favour vehicles first as being slightly stronger than the cf rush. So even at 60/2000, who knows whether cf rush would have continued to stay a traditional no brainer choice or not.

Given that, the real question in my mind is whether cf factory assisting was too good. Where the first person who got their 3 factory + cf running sustainably could pump out too much of a unit difference in too short of a time. I think i was consistently always getting about 30 tank lead over people very very early. In that context, i would have loved to see cf build power reduced to something like ~30/2000 instead of an assist restriction.

That said, I really do hate factory assisting, not that they'll remove it.

So I can't wait for that mod!

#FactoryLinesForLife!

removing the lathe does´t make it a fabber anymore ... lorewise the lathe is for anything contructing and repairing ...
removing it for a pure pseudo repairdevice that is limited to not-in-production units and structures is nothing but arbitrary ... in that case turn it into a pure mine layer ... otherwise deal with it ... as multiple combat fabbers still can repair the same unit so the assist is still there

Well a repair gun, repairs, a nanolathes can do many things.

It's removing one tool from a swiss army knife.

Having a repair gun isn't arbitrary, if its not a fabber.

no offense ... but its just absurd to me .... considering lore and not gamefunction how should a repairgun (which just is a horrible name to be honest) be different from the nanolathe, how does that repairgun repair a big hole in a tank differently than the nanolathe with nanites does?
not to forget ... the nanolathedevices used by fabbers and the commander is inherently a supersoaker that sprays nanitemetal and forming the stuff it needed so it is like a gun if you want ... even if you were to create a unit that uses a divice similar to something like say the planetside 2 nanowelder ... what would there be so different between that and the lathe?
in RL welders f.e. are generaly used in production as well, just saying ... why should be a contructiontool be limited to repair only?

if they make assisting facs less potent than building multiple like was done in FAF than we will get those factory lines. I honestly think it's the best way too. If only to improve game performance.

Well a construction tool wouldn't.

However, if your the kinda guys who prefers a lore based answer, the repair gun would be a long ranged energy cannon designed to weld together the cracked hulls of tanks in order for them to be battlefield "operational" unlike a nanolathe that would require to slightly de-construct the area before rebuilding it to make sure that the unit is brought up to 100% completion by essentially remaking the units armour.

So combat fabbers would essentially conduct repair jobs with duct tape, where as normal fabbers would rebuild the damaged sections of a unit.

Over the long term these repairs might be insufficient, however as long as they can last for even a few minutes and allow the unit to move and shoot, the repairs are "satisfactory".

it´s not that i prefer lore ... but the thing is since we are debating this we should look at this from varius perspectives ...
now as i take it this " repair gun" isn´t as efficient, but considering lore and gameplay
why should they use a lesser version of repair that is more resourceconsuming when the lathe is more efficient for actualy the same resources (as i don´t see resourceconsumtion being neccesarily changed in game even if buildassist were to be removed ) instead of just having that stronger lathe? this seems just contradicting itself ..

Well true, but its more about speed repairing.

A combat fabber needs to get stuff running fast, where as a normal fabber can afford to use a slower but more effective spray.

Make the repair gun nanite stream blue, and say it has 'dumb' nanites. The blueprint for repair is encoded in the unit being repaired, so dumb nanites are told what to do when they get there. Green nanites are 'smart', the blueprint is transmitted with them. Dumb nanites are more efficient than smart ones because they can be packed more densely (because no blueprint, less complex). Which neatly wraps things up lore-wise, with a bow and a cherry on top

The Combat Fabricators used to be able to assist building construction, but that was removed in the latest build 67342. In my experience, I primarily used the Combat Fabs for assisting my assisting my bot factories to produce a large amount of bots fairly quickly. The Combat Fabs should have the power to assist in unit production, as it was more effective than using regular Fabricators, but that is all. It cannot assist buildings, only factories producing vehicles. It would also be nice if they could build walls also, as that is a Combat building that is cheap.

i think its better how it is now. its just a repair bot now, and not a construction assist bot. it makes sense in my opinion and is not too hard to understand

Well, one of the big issues here is this:

Fact of the matter is every type of fabber (commander included) has a nano-lathe, and no two different fabbers have the same schematics for what they can build. They are separated into different categories and while they all have some similarities and overlapping functions, they certainly all have specific things that they can (and therefore cannot) do. Consider that a vehicle fabber has a nano-lathe and can only build certain things which a bot fabber cannot build (and vice versa), and as such it is entirely plausible that a combat fabber could be limited in the uses of it's nano-lathe as well.

By arguing against this, you seem to be [indirectly] sliding towards an argument about the core nature of fabbers, a natural extension that "combat fabbers should be able to do things regular fabbers can because they all have nano-lathes." An argument that the nature of the game should be such that no fabber should be able to do something that any other fabber cannot do, which seems to be a bit faulty.

While yes, I understand that regular fabbers can assist production you have to take into account an important fact: each have a specific role. The primary purpose for regular fabbers is economy and factory production. They are designed with the express purpose to build economy and mass produce other bots -- in other words, expand the economy exponentially. The the primary role of a combat fabber, however, lies not in economic production but fully in combat *maintenance*.

It seems natural to me that being restricted to their specific purposes (especially considering that different fabbers can and already do have different things they can do/build with their nano-lathe) that a combat fabber should be limited in it's specific role in such a way.

EDIT: What I believe you are trying to say is that the role of a Combat Fabber should not be in combat maintenance, but in combat assistance. However I do not feel that your argument, "Because nano-lathes," was a strong argument for the above supporting reasons.

Why not just have a cosmetic difference, to sidestep the whole similar but different issue. Blue constructs, green repairs and red reclaims.

It also makes what they're doing more clear on screen. Rather than oh good, those combat fabs are assisting my comm, its oh ****, those combat fabs are reclaiming my comm.

Ultra efficient combat fabber assisting was a terrible addition.

If it wasn't as efficient/fast at building, then possibly.

Also, combat fabbers should auto reclaim wrecks near them.

Have combat fabbers repair units and buildings at a more powerful rate than anything else, and limit their efficiency in assisting production to below that of a normal fabber bot. The way I see it, this would make their use as a production assistant very limited, and force the player to use them as intended.

Reclaim is actually broken for combat fabs ATM. The code that makes them unable to assist prevents them from reclaiming, oddly enough.