Factory assist

Hello

I know this topic has been brought several times, but I'd like to insist on that feature which to me is very important : factory assist.

Factory assist is the possibility to assist a factory with another factory (of the same type of course) which result in the assisting factory to start building the same units that are in the queue of the assisted factory.
Thus you could assist 1 factory with 10 others and just update the build queue of the 1st factory and the 10 others will just have the same orders as they are assisting the 1st one !

I do not believe it is the most difficult feature to implement in the game, but to me it is a major feature especially for a game with the scale of PA.
When I have 15 factories and I want to change quickly the type of unit they spawn ... I'd like to be able to do it in 2 or 3 clicks instead of 30 to 45....

Thanks !

Edit : to clarify things : when I say Factory assist, I mean it in the way it works in Supreme Commander : a factory that assist another factory will actually share the same build queue as the assited factory. It is not assisting the factory like a fabricator does.
Each factory still build its own units, they are just sharing the same build queue : the one from the assisted factory.

Here is an illustration on how it works (as the queue is actually shared). Of course it also works with an infinite loop.

Well actually if you already have a bunch of factories you do know you can select them all, right? Then click "stop", and then make a queue.

Though I would love to have factory assist.

It'd be a nice feature to have, but not really a priority for me.

I wonder if this would be moddable...

That is true, but you still need to manage a group just for your factories, and keep adding your new factories to that group ... with the factory assist feature, you do not need to set the build queue for every new factory you build : just 1 click and it will automatically share the build queue of the assisted factory.

It just makes things easier (to me at least) when it comes to unit build management and give you more time to focus on battle.

You can, except sometimes I don't want to select all, and it'd be nice to have different sets of factories adhering to different build queues.

Factory Assist would make it easier.

Wouldn't you get diminishing returns because of the factory roll-off time?

No. Think about it, whats the difference in terms of production between 2 factories each with a queue of 5 Ants, 1 Spinner and 2 Infernoes on repeat and a second set of 2 Factories with one having a queue of 5 Ants, 1 Spinner and 2 Infernoes on repeat and the second factory assisting the first?

Nothing except that the assist scenario is a lot easier to set-up and modify and has additional features that are good to have to like using an assisting factory build units as needed without having to go back and set it to assist again.

Mike

Or or, hear me out. Select all the factories...

What if you want to manage 2 different build queues among your 60 factories ?
With factory assist you would just have 2 master factories with 29 assisting factories each !

And what happens if you want 2 different build queues going on? What if you want to just make a small change? What if you just need an extra 5 Fabbers?

The point is that overall, Factory assist as it was in SupCom was a great system and from a management perspective it required a lot less work/attention from the player to accomplish more.

Mike

Well you can actually click one factory, then shift click another, OR even use the selection box and select two factories out of a whole line. Then do the whole stop button, and queue.

I do agree though that it'd be very nice to see an assist function, but mainly because I hate my factories not being in sequence.

And that is still way more work to make 2 factories build the same thing when in SupCom all it took was a single click.

Mike

Take your scenario and simplify it:

• Let's say an Ant takes two seconds to build and 4 seconds to roll off from the factory. That's one Ant every six seconds from one factory or one Ant every three seconds from two factories building in parallel.
• Let's say having one factory assisting the other magically reduces the build time to zero. So, with two factories (one assisting the other) the build time is zero seconds and 4 seconds to roll off from the building factory. That's one Ant every four seconds from two factories.

That's what I mean by diminishing returns. The principle is known as Amdahl's Law, which basically says the parts of a job that can't be done in parallel will limit how fast the whole job can be done, even if there are an infinite number of workers.

As long as the feature is as easy for Uber to implement as it sounds, it's definitely something worth getting in before 1.0. Mid-late game management would get a lot easier with this feature.

I think you misunderstand what the author wants. The author is NOT suggesting that a factory with 12 buildpower give its buildpower to another factory so you have 1 factory with 24 buildpower. Instead, the author wishes that if you've got one factory producing 5 ants and a spinner in a loop, setting another factory to "assist" it means that the second factory sees that the first factory is repeating making 5 ants and a spinner, so it starts building as if you had set that factory to produce those same units in a loop.

The difference is, when you change the queue of the factory being "assisted", all the factories "assisting" it get their queues changed as well, reducing micro.

Except that's not how it works, the second Factory assists by building units from the Primary Factory's Queue.

Mike

You do know when we say "assist" we just mean copy build queue, right? It be the exact same as setting up two factories and making the same queue for each.

Oh, my bad; I misunderstood. Something like "linked build queue" might be a better name, since "assist" already has a meaning in PA.

Correct, and I made an edit in the first post to clarify that, I can understand that it's confusing.

Actually I called it like that because this feature already exist in some games such as Supreme Commander, and to use it, you select a factory, then you select assist and you select the factory you want to "copy" the build queue from.
But actually, it is not a real copy of the build queue, it is more a shared build queue.

While that certainly sounds like a useful idea I could imagine an even more streamlined experience.

Instead of given an order to several factories (or to one linked to a bunch of others) we could specify "production areas". These areas act like virtual factories and can be assigned a build queue that is a) copied to all factories in the area or b) distributed among available factories. Obviously, that global queue could be overridden for each factory if deemed necessary.

I could imagine something like that for fabrication units as well. You specify an area and queue all sorts of projects and the work is assigned to idle units in that area.

A system like that could possibly even consider resource consumption and not assign work if it would cause stalling. That might be going a bit far though for some people.