PTE Allows Us to Go Factory First!

perhaps a good balance would be if the bot factory could be built first (being more useless in the long run). An air factory requires 1 pgen and a vehicle factory requires 1 mex before being built. This gives bots and naval a small head start over other starts with obvious drawbacks being less range/strength.

I feel the head start would be near nothing since building a pgen or mex takes only seconds, especially with a commander.

Only if build times stay exactly as they are.. but yeah maybe 1 of each or 2.. just something other than a simple bot vs vehicle choice would be more interesting.

My feedback, love it!

Need to experiment with various builds to give more detailed feedback. But, I love the ability to go factory first.

This will increase the game speed significantly and reinforces rush tactics as a dominate early strategy.
10 minute games will now be 7 minute games, 7 minute games will now be 4 minute games.
It will force us to play on bigger maps if we want 20-30 minute bouts, I hope the servers are ready.

I predict that "AI is OP" threads will rise by 100% if this change goes through.
I am a RTS veteran and it will take me a few days to get a feel for the new pace, but new players will be crushed at record times. Although this change pleases the top 2% of players, I hope it doesn't discourage the rest.

You are right, everything shifts.

But what do we lose?

Sitting and waiting for metal, metal, energy, metal, factory.

All this does is get rid of the opening energy buildings.

If anything, this will make it easier for casual players since casual players don't have to figure out the optimal opening build for the first economy buildings.

Don't think this is a good idea for a few reasons

1. Why would someone go factory first?
   a) because it is more dominant or even comparable in strength to a standard macro
   b) because it allows good rush that has big tradeoffs
   
   we can't under any circumstance let outcome a) be true because you must maintain the counter-relationship between macro and unit power. So why make changes that increase the risk of this occuring? Air factory first and bomber rushing is going to become just silly given the counters and timings available.
   
   I also don't see how b) is any less the case in the current meta. Taxman for example recently showed you can skip pgen for inferno rushing to punish macro heavy builds. It will hurt you though, as it should.
   
   
   
2. When it comes to the opening, everything is way more dependant on energy than metal. 3000 energy is just crazy and allows you to rush not just 1 factory, but 3 or 4. Mex is cheap to build, pgens are not. Someone said games will now last 7 minutes. I think they will last either way earlier than that against uninformed newbie players, and way longer against informed players. You're going to get alot of new player turn-over in the future because of this direction.
   
   
3. As noted by previous posters, this will not open up build variety, only speed it up, and potentially even narrow variety as volatility increases.
   
   
4. Stepping away from the mechanics, I always liked the feel of coming from a place of economic weakness and needing to spend time building to economic power in strategy games. Time to scout the map, get into a rhythm etc. I don't think being 'bored' of the repetition is a strong enough arguement on it's own, especially when it's coming from players who have played the game for a long, long time.

You should try The Realm Community Balance mod. Its implementation is a little different than this, but you can go factory first and it is awesome.

The thing I like the most about going factory first is... factory first. Units start rolling out and we don't need to sit around and wait, doing nothing, for the first 4 economy buildings to finish.

This doesn't change "rushing" at all. All it does is remove the first 45 seconds from the game.

The idea is excellent, the implementation sub-par and the methodology poor. Increasing com eco generation means that factory first is the only option because the eco normally built in the opening builds is integrated into the com. Increasing com storage is better because you still need to build eco structures to become even in eco usage and production, you can simply afford to be negative for long enough to get out the factory.

It's a very good change, because right now, starts are plain boring.

I have a little suggestion that might help diversify starting strat:
Since commander generates surplus right from the start, it might be a good idea for game to start with zero metal and energy in storage? You can still build factory first, but it might be a good idea to drop one mex or pgen, or storage.

What do you think guys? It genius, right?

But then you'd be negative o.o

>30 metal per second and 3,000

I thought comm uses 30/1500? If that is correct, you won't be negative.
You will gain energy constantly, and you will gain some metal because of walking/turning time, no metal income during comm building. I see first real choice: mex before or after factory, totally not mandatory.

Oh well then. Go efficient commander.

I'm really not sure about this change at all. Ignoring the 2-3 minutes saved from the beginning where you eco up, this makes some really fast rush strats viable in all types of gameplay. Hell you could go t1 fac > t2 fac almost immediately in anything other than a 1v1?!

Why does everyone think it'll make all sorts of rush strats or whatever?

It removes the first 35 seconds of the game that are the exact same every time.

So take a normal game timeline, shave off 35 seconds.

Viola.

Its not that straight foward though as simply removing a few seconds from the beginning.

3000 Energy allows me to expand using a single fabber building mex and a commander alternating pgens and factories. I would very quickly have a huge t1 force in your bases without having to do any intelligent macro at all.

I agree with elodea. You have pretty much listed the concerns I have with it. I can imagine people building air factories and spamming out bombers by getting the commander to assist to bombers being built. If your opponent goes vehicle factory first and you can find them quick enough (easy to do once you learn the spawns) then they are dead. So with this boost in eco, everyone will likely be forced to go air first, just because of the mobility they have in dealing with and instigating early threats.

The low eco as it is currently (kind of) gives you a small window that lets you decide which factory to start with (yeah I know bots need a buff for this statement to be true), as there is generally more time between subsequent factories being build.

As it stands, with the current eco issues, your commander must solely building eco, as you cant afford to have him assist or build more factories until your eco catches - so you can't really do a rush attack like I imagine you can do on the PTE.

I'd have to see for myself though

I think I'll post the eco changes made in Statera for reference.

Coms use 60 metal/second and 2000 energy/second. They generate half that. Their storage is 1.5 times what it is in Vanilla.
T1 mex cost 225 metal and make 5 metal/second.
T1 pgens cost 450 metal and make 1000 energy per second.

To be fair this may not work with the base game, because of the cots in PA.

But I agree with you on the fact that it'd probably be better to increase storage rather than lathe speed/effiency.

well what are all the changes besides planets glancing off eachother? O . O