No more: 100 engineers around a factory

Production assist is essential for the series. It is an important strategic factor and provides the possibility to act and react in a mutch more flexible way. So keep it in !!! :shock:

I'm sorry, what?

This is what you call 'clear construction feedback'?

Seems obvious to me theres a lot more build power on that lower factory than the upper one.

lol, I agree.

Nice strawman If all you need to do is change from building tanks to mobile AA then yeah either way works. It's not quite so easy if you need to change from producing tanks to aircraft, or navy, or TMD, or anti-nukes. The whole point is that engineers provide additional buildpower that can be assigned to any project, as long as you have at least one structure/engineer capable of starting the build process. That's the flexibility you lose if you ban (or nerf to oblivion) assistance.

What unnecessary commands? One assist command to a group doesn't exactly require korean starcraft pro APM. Pathfinding shouldn't be an issue in PA either as Neutrino has confirmed that they are using something at least as good as flow field. As for clutter... I want good gameplay, having a pretty base is very much secondary.

I have a half-baked idea that could be interesting. What if PA were to really break precedents for TA/SupCom, and have extremely inexpensive and high build power factories? Instead of building one factory in a base, it would be completely standard play to have a quite large number of production lines, even on relatively forward and exposed bases, simply because the factories are so cheap and build so fast.

The real issue here is what is the value of a single unit. In TA, the value of a single unit was actually quite high (relatively speaking), regardless of its cost. It made sense that units would be constructed one at a time.

Let's suppose for the sake of argument that in PA it is completely normal in a base to have ten, twenty, perhaps even more, production lines in a small base. In a large industrial center you might have 100 or more production lines. Units literally roll off the factories in batches, even waves from large bases.

No more does constructing just one air factory constitute "going air" because that's not going to give you that many planes when you get right down to it. In order to seriously "go air" you are going to need to build quite a few lines of production for planes. The ratio of production lines becomes as significant as the ratio of units you order to be built out of them.

We also have largely solved the assisting "problem" and also greatly simplified production, as constructing more production lines is the obvious way to increase your unit production. Assisting might make one line faster, but there isn't really much point in having tons of engineers stacked up on one factory. Might as well build another factory, or if you really must assist, spread the workers out among factories.

With UI enabling giving orders to the entire complex of factories, like establishing a ratio of 3 tanks to 1 artillery to 1 anti air, repeating forever, will make this extremely convenient. And it would even be straightforward to expand your infrastructure, with the new buildings just becoming a part of the existing factory complex.

Yes and suddenly you've locked yourself into a very particular strategy with a lot of difficulty changing as the situation merits it.

Not that I'm against lots of factories. Indeed in FA at least there was a lot more factory spam than I think you're giving it credit for. It was cool to see so many factories pumping out lines of units. But you need to be able to respond to changing threats and adding engineer build power to factories allows this.

You've only locked yourself into a particular strategy if you are very focused on one type of production, and making that kind of commitment should be an available option, if a strategic error.

How committed you are also depends on the options available from the various factories, as well as the actual raw BP from each factory. If factories were relatively inexpensive to run individually, then having idle super-cheap factories would not actually be that big a deal.

I agree that engineers allow you to quickly retool your production. I fully and completely support allowing unlimited assist, but I do think that tweaking the numbers to make hardcore t1 engineer spam less efficient is necessary. You should be paying for that flexibility to retool your economy.

You should have the option to construct an ultra-efficient, but very strategically one-dimensional industrial base.

Then I think we may actually be on the same page for once.

And yet you missed the fact that there's 3 engineers that aren't working at all, and that there are a few assisting the top factory too, and there's no indication that the engineers assisting the top factory are sucking down way more energy than the ones assisting the bottom one.

But, that's ok. It's a clear construction feedback to have no information other than 'that factory has more build power'. Silly me.

Did I say that? From that low res pic its hard to tell anything except theres more construction beams heading to the lower factory. Those 3 engineers could be heading off to start another job for all anyone knows.

I'm not against adding more UI cues to make it easier for everyone. I'm just not happy with changing the way engineers work to achieve it.

Let me put everyone's blargh to rest with a single comment.

Infinity engineers around a factory allow you to build better units faster. However:

ENGINEERS ARE MORE SQUISHIER THAN FACTORIES.

Just think about it; Factories come with copious fucktons of armor plating and structural fluff, giving them enough health to rival an Experimental Unit. One errant Arty shell on a factory with 100 engineers, and now you've lost all yer engies.If you have a field of energy-generator-assisted factories, one errant artillery shell hits, and all the factories are still there, still churning out K-Bots.

Conclusion: Engineers should be more mass-efficient than factories because if it was the other way around, no one would want engineers anymore.

You cannot build mexes with factories.

Your argument is invalid.

No one has replied to what I said earlier, and it erks me that there are so many voices trying to limit con-assisting structures/unit construction.
It seems like the word "engineer" is being abused here. Why not call them Con Units, as they are? TA did come before Supreme Cmdr anyway =)
I didn't play SC much at all, it didn't have the same flavor as TA to me. I played TA since 1998, and 1999 online, I feel like my view on the matter is important to realizing the spirit of TA in PA.

TA was not all about "Con Units", though it was a particular style I really loved about the game. Not for the sole fact of guarding out things quickly, as much as the ability to cover a map quickly and fill your mini map with your own colored dots. But you'll notice on many large/medium land maps people end up building lvl 1 veh plant and just DT a single con unit behind it to assist the build speed of the plant, without any major unit build-acceleration involved. The reason for that is there are so many other things that you can spend your micro on, than queuing up a bunch of cons to assist a plant building Samsons.

Someone mentioned on here about the flexibility and CHOICE of how you want to design the infrastructure of your base. Whether it is a highly speed-built set of fewer plants, or mass-plants with few, if anything, guarding them. I think the freedom and option to do either is very important in a game that should keep creativity and gameplay always evolving. If you look at TA today, its played very different from when it was a few years earlier, and that gameplay was different than a year or two earlier than that. The game has constantly evolved because of the freedom and availability of playstyles such as what we are discussing right now about con-unit assisting structure/unit building.
It is an awesome thing to see in TA, when you get a bunch of F.A.R.K.'s to guard an Adv Kbot lab for faster pelicans, or Adv. Air for faster hawk production. It never seemed out of control in all my years of playing the largest maps while macroing huge forces at the same time. It had its balance. if you have the resources, to spend, why not have the option to push the envelope? This is what makes a great RTS, the ability to push the thresholds till you realize there really aren't any, and that the most consistent, and persistent and committed player can win, whether he has more metal or energy than his adversary or not.

I've seen Pic come back against Preen on a map where Preen had advanced bombers, and Pic had 1 construction aircraft, an array of radar towers all over the place, and his cmdr. It was brilliant, I wish I still had the recording. That is the brilliance behind TA, because it was not just about who had more metal or energy income, but it was how you used it.

On a side note, TA is probably a bit different than super comm because I think from my limited exposure on it, there is a great deal of balance that goes into expanding most efficiently, while creating an offense or defense or scouting raid, at the same time as balancing out your mex/energy income. It really comes down to skill applied, turning it nearly into an art form. This makes makes RTS competition the most thrilling kinds of games you could ever experience. There's no other feeling than that of a really closely matched RTS game, where you are engaged in a battle of wills to counter the attacks of your enemy, at the same time as growing your war machine in a perfect or near perfect balance.

Key point of fact here is follow TA's legacy, it came before many popular RTS's, and its legacy needs to be revisited again, because it works, and that FINALLY the long standing players of TA will have their voice be heard.

-Shollos

Go away.

I don't even want to clarify, but I will for your sake with an easy to understand scenario:

*it is lategame, two players are left from a 4v4 teamfight, they have expanded and consolidated all they can, are locked in an equally balanced land//naval war, air is also completely equal*

Player One: Builds arty after scouting and noticing his enemy left his facs unshielded

Player Two: Realizes Player One is building arty after scouting, ramps up land production to steamroll

Player One: Finishes arty, bombards factories

Now, if we have engineers+factory: Engineers asplode, factory is useless, player with arty wins

Now, if we have just factories: Factories survive for-*******-ever, get shielded and repaired, send out land dorce and destroy player Two with a superior land force due to a mass advantage.

Simple fact is, Factories that are more cost-effective are lame and remove a degree of strategic choice.

Keep it up shollosx, your opinions as a long time TA player are valuable.

Thanks Zordon!

[quote="mushroomars"
I don't even want to clarify, but I will for your sake with an easy to understand scenario:

stuff stuff blah blah stuff
[/quote]

Inventing nonexistent scenarios just to support your argument is a bad habit all across the internet. Please, people. Stop it. Its annoying.

It seems most common in online gaming. "Well if he did this and that, then I could do those, these and the other kind and win and you're a bad person and you lose the internets." Ugh.

Whats wrong with just making an argument and trying to support it? "Engineers need to be more cost effective, because factories have the advantage of more defense." See, that wasn't hard. Of course, it ignores that engineers also have the advantage of mobility and stacking, which has been demonstrated time and again. I personally would prefer the role of engineer swarms to be diminished, but thats an opinion. There really isn't a right or wrong to this issue. I cannot think of a single time in TA or SupCom where a swarm of engineers have royally screwed the game balance.

Unrelated comment: you know what phrase has never been uttered online in the history of the internet? "I can see your point and I have changed my mind."

Mushroom, your argument looks like this symbolically:
P
Q
R
S
If T then U.
If not T then V.
Therefore A.

Your conclusion simply does not follow from anything that precedes it.

You are correct that if there were shields, then you would be more resistant to artillery. That's about the only thing that someone can infer from that story. And that applies equally to both factories and engineers.

And even if we admit everything you said, including the conclusion, why would engineers being vulnerable to artillery have anything to do with the argument over whether factories should be more efficient BP for cost than mobile engineers?

Mobile engineers are mandatory no matter what because you need them to construct economy. Factories should, logically, be more efficient at building units because it is the only thing they do. Building more factories means more units. Building engineers can be used to build more units by assist, but because engineers are useful for lots of other things, they should be less efficient for cost at unit production than factories.

He was pointing out that health is a factor, it's not just mass cost to build rate.