What is the community's take on engineering towers?

I almost always played Cybran, so I was a fan.

To clarify, Nano Towers?

I actually really like nanotowers- I consider Zero-K's implementation to be the best one made to date.

As mentioned in the 100 engineers thread, it is a question of cost per build power. As the scale of the game increases, factory base build power per cost should increase relative to mobile constructors, to compensate for the increased utility from mobility on larger maps.

Factories should be more efficient cost/BP for unit production. Otherwise we get one factory with tons of towers, and we want many factories, as it encourages building factories in different locations.

Long story short, static supporting build power is good, but watch the numbers.

I was specifically referring to this and this from SupCom:FA, but yes that would be the example from TA.

I disagree with artificially cutting the build efficiency of engineering towers just for the sake of encouraging people to build multiple factories. I'm more than happy to see my opponent paint himself into a corner by not expanding.

Expanding entails capping resource points, not necessarily putting factories down all over the map.

Also, how does having the nanotower's BP/cost be less than a factory's BP/cost constitute an "artificial reduction"?

I've seen a few posts that argued for diminishing returns, which I think is absurd.

I like engineering towers. I think they'd be better if they could only repair though. NOT assist in construction of anything.

Actually if the game economy boils down to the rates that resources flow in and out I'd rather have a bunch of nano towers next to my factories than a bunch of engineers assisting the factories, or a giant field of factories making the same thing.

Absurd is a bit strong.

But I think it's undesirable, sure the theory might stack up, but it's simply not intuitive enough.

I seem to remember Mavor saying in one of the videos (TotalBiscuit perhaps) that the rate-based economy is confusing enough for some people and he didn't want to make it any harder to understand by adding a whole bunch of hidden modifiers to the process.

Depends on who's definition. Open fields, dotted with occasional resource, is pretty boring. Fields of factories, artillery, and AA are much more interesting.

I would like to see a much, much more decentralised manufacturing base in PA (when compared to SupCom). Promoting the construction of factories everywhere by making engineers less effective is probably a good way of doing that.

Yes, exactly, "hidden modifiers". I really, really hope that PA minimizes economy micromanagement as much as possible. Forcing players to think about some kind of weird equilibrium for factories vs engineering towers just throws that out the window.

I HATE build-assist towers. They're just stupid cheaty-seeming things that allow someone to multiply the effectiveness of a factory and therefore keep their base small and easily defendable. In other words, they're a turtle player's wet dream.

NO TO BUILD ASSIST TOWERS. If you want to pump out units faster, EXPAND and build more factories. And/Or build assist with mobile construction/engineer units - they are much more useful - if you want to move your construction somewhere else, all those build-assist towers are now a waste of time, resources and space.

Auto unit repair towers that repair all units within range (one or two at a time) tho: sweet. They would be awesome.

Quoted for emphasis.

On the one hand I really like engineering towers, because they make a lot of things easier. Faster production, faster construction of buildings near them, easier repairing of units and structures...

But on the other hand, they can really break things. If you have a bajillion of them on a Factory or a construction site, you can simply instantly build things... which may or may not break things.


However, I think the concept of diminishing returns (i.e. engineers or engineering towers being less effective at certain tasks and better in others) is a bad thing. The engineer or engineering tower should be able to build and repair at its intended rate according to the specifications. There should not be hidden multipliers or anything like that. It was fine in Supreme Commander 2, since assisting worked differently there (no actual flow of resources, resources were paid up front).

I agree with this.

I don't think that is the normal definition of expansion in these types of games. It usually means to capture territory and resources. Sure you can expand your base but you rarely get to the point that you need to be aggressive just to secure more room to make structures.

Being able to hole up in a corner with one factory doing the job of 20 is not cool. You SHOULD need to take territory for more production facilities if you want bigger armies faster.

Turtling should still be a viable strategy, since there are people who enjoy turtling more than fast expand and such. This game should not force people to play as you believe is "right", it should allow for as many strategies as possible to attract a fanbase that's as large as possible.

Turtling is generally already discouraged by mass/metal being spread across the map, it shouldn't be even more discouraged by removing the ability to build units quickly in a small area.

I would like to argue that turtling in a tiny corner is bad, but turtling across an entire continent is perfectly acceptable.

Also, how does the turtle strategy work when playing across a solar system? Give the turtle one planet; let me take all the others for myself. The turtle is really short-changing himself if he doesn't take all the resources of his own planet. If he owns the whole planet, then why not build everywhere on it?