Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factorys?

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

If there is the risk to have too many similar units, with many factories, there are other ways to differentiate them.
For example, they can have similar types of weapons : hovers can have mostly beam weapons, bots have pewpew lasers and unguided rockets, tanks have mostly ballistic projectiles... You have multiple small projectiles vs one large AOE one, guided missiles vs unguided artillery, there are many ways to give a unique flavour to each factory.
They can also be differentiated by weight class, speed and acceleration. For example, tanks may have low speed and heavier (more HP and higher price) units, bots have slow acceleration and high max speed, spiders have light weight and great acceleration...

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Basically every RTS game has different tech structures for different units. SC2 terran for example barracks (bio), vehicles (mech), and air. So that's three different factories even for a race that has a grand total of something like 20 units. Needing different factories to build different units is all very normal in a RTS game of any kind. TA and all it's different evolutions have always done the bot, tank, air, sea system.

Why would you want to change that?

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I agree with doctorzuber, I think TA and enough factories for its units. Since PA Will have orbital units will add an extra factory. Bots, Vehicle, Air, Sea, Orbital are what I think they need, maybe a hovercraft factory IF there is enough units to make it worth it.

And I assume there will be 2 of each type of factory (tech1 and tech2) that is 10 factories alone. Well if they do it TA style anyway. 12 if they put hovercraft in one alone but I don't want a factory for 3-5 units maybe upwards of 8 or 10 would deem a new factory worth it.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

10-12 factories is to much, if you present players with that many "choices", then they will stick with their favorite 4-5 factories (as thats how much as they can remember) and will never use the other ones.

While it is true, that Zero-K had the right factory for every type of gameplay, most players only use a very small subset of the provided unit set.


The number and choice of factories should be done in such manner, that you will only have so many factories, that all factories can be used by a single player in a single game. (Not necessarily using all units from those factories, but at least the factory as such.)



That leads to a simple conclusion:

Don't separate bots, tanks and hovercraft. They all are land-units and if they were to be separated then by tech level only (basic unit roles in one factory, assistant units in a different one).
This makes only sense since you will usually combine one basic unit role with one advanced unit (like tanks + AA or assault bots + stealth or arty + missile defense) so you will always have both factories running in parallel.

As for amphibious "factories", no need to make a separate factory for amphibious units, just leave it to the player whether he wants to produce amphibious units in a land type factory or in a naval factory. There is nothing wrong with having factories which are capable of producing more then one basic unit type or units being producible by different factories. I would even go as far as saying, that amphibious "ships" like the Cybran destroyers from SupCom should be producible in land factories too.

Gas giant are not much different from normal planets, except for the fact that you don't have ground or naval. You can just go with the normal air factory, there is only one unit type which should be present especially for only-air-planets: AA-gunships to fulfill the role of the heavy tank/bot for securing. However, this unit type could also be interesting for normal planets, so there is no need to make it exclusive.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

If you have factories for walkers and for talks, then you have to have factories for gunships and factories for aircraft.

You also need to have factories for submarines, and factories for surface craft.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Separating hovercraft from dedicated land units by putting them on their own factory does actually create the strategic decision of whether or not to go hover first or land first on rivers maps, and whether to go air first or hover first on archipelago maps. Whether to air first or land first in FA was highly map dependant and one of the better examples of strategic decision making, and is something that should be encouraged in design. That naval first was never an option was a result of the lack of underwater starts and the fact that you never wanted to lose the initiative by moving your commander before starting building, but if there are underwater starts, ideally one should have to make the choice of hover first, air (maybe seaplanes, but they were a bit of a failure in TA) first or naval first.

TA kind of messed this up by making hovercraft not on the Commander's build list, so hover first was impossible. And SC couldn't create this distinction because its hovercraft replaced units for certain races so it was never a choice to get hovercraft (meaning they also had to be balanced on land only maps).

On the other hand, the Kbot/Vehicle distinction was rarely a map-dependant choice, and so it's less of a decision to make. In theory heavily forested hilly maps favoured kbots, but this didn't really work out like that in practice, and the differences were smaller than the differences between, say, having Slashers and not having Slashers.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

While I think tanks and bots should be in a single factory, hovercraft should have their own, and it should be amphibious like the units it creates.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Personally I would like to see 5 factorys:

Mobility Factory:
Land: Producing fast cars and bots/heavy bots
Sea: Producing hovercraft

Armor Factory:
Landroducing tanks and heaver tanks.
Seabed: Producing Amphibious tanks and Bots

Air Factory:
Land: Producing heavy and light Aircraft
Seabed/Surface: Producing light aircraft
Gas: Producing Very heavy aircraft and heavy aircraft (Light aircraft cannot weather the storms)

Navel Factory:
Sea: Boats and Ships
Gas: Zeppelins and Airships

Rocket Gantry: Orbital satellites and transport rockets

*Amphibious units also accessible from land based versions, but in less variety.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Would that actually be 10 factories in a 2 tier system?

Also one of them may make bellybuttons?

It sounds like an arrangement I could live with though, although obviously I prefer my suggestion.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Preferably yes, although some mixing with your idea might be good.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

One thing I specifically like btw is context dependent buildlists depending on the environment a factory is placed into. That's awesome.

Also zeppelins.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Defiantly zeppelins.

And I feel like context dependent build lists will ultimately allow players to use a large variety of strategy on any theater of war.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

You mean that if you build a factory on land instead of sea, there are units it won't be able to build, despite said units going both on land and on sea?
This is bad design.

If you want factories building different units depending on where they are it should only be units that can navigate only there.
For example, a light surface factory would always build floating amphibious vehicles, but it would build non-amphibious bots only if on land, and light water-only boats only if on sea.
And the looks of the factory should change whether it is on land or on sea. So the player is aware of the difference. Particularly important when the player is planning to build it, they will see if the placement will result with a land or a sea factory.

Such a concept could work if done well, and be quite original. If it is not the one selected for PA, it could make it for an interesting mod, also.
We could have, for example, seabed/bot, submarine/vehicle, boat/tank, ship/super-heavy... (note that nothing prevents, say, a ship factory to build specific submarines, but a submarine factory may have the advantage to be underwater itself)

For air, I wouldn't use specific build-lists, though. If some units can't be used in a specific environment (like planes in airless worlds, or airships outside of gas giants), then they should be regrouped in a factory, and said factory not being buildable on said world.
Similarly, hover should probably be treated like air here, as hover simply ignore terrain. It would be the reason to have a separate hover factory, then, its use would be more flexible.

And hovers are immune to torpedoes and possible other underwater-only weapons. This, by itself, justifies them having their own factory, as it will prevent lots of confusion about why they can't be targeted by torpedoes while another amphibious from the same factory can.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

With VTOL everything, airships are just slow weak large targets. There's about as much reason to build them as there is to build trebuchets and ballistas to support your guided antimatter artillery.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

See airships as the equivalent of ships, but for gas-giant : big, slow weapon platforms. And probably moving somewhat below the "air" layer. They don't have to actually use good old Archimedes to stay afloat, just good new magitech.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I wasn't sure If it would be a good idea to allow this but (Conflicting unit types) but I am overall neutral to the idea.

And the Hover units depends how they hover, personally I refer to modern day hovercraft rather then a type of floating tank, but that's up to balance I suppose.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Every one of your comments I read of your makes it seem like your really angry, but that may be a side effect of your profile pic.

But I see the effect of advanced technology and the buoyancy of thick gas giant gasses to allow for literal floating ships.

Slow, but a lot better at holding ground (Or air) over more nimble airplanes and gunships, and with the necessity to use more AA weapons may leave VTOLs (If VTOL makes sense in a gas giant) as a weak swarm type of unit.

Like flying zerg.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I didn't read the last two pages, but my opinion can be summarized easily:

In Supcom, kbot labs were missing. But there was so, so so much land space in Supcom, that you didn't have any problems when it came to space and putting down labs.

In Total annihilation, space was always a problem. The kbot labs took up the least amount of space, and the kbots could traverse everything much easier.

Therefore I vote for having both. Kbots were able to traverse tough terrains and spaces much easier than vehicles, but they were killed quicker due to lack of armor that vehicles have. If you have limited space, it's much better to go the Kbot route (hence, smaller labs).

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I think the hovers not being available as 1st lab is a cool design (though the alternative is ok too).
In an archipelago they're often the best ones to use by far, so forcing you to think of ways to get there asap or with good economy is interesting. Do you go sea -> hover, air -> hover, land -> hover (to gain map control, to attack, and to build econ respectively), or not go hovers at all? That's interesting.


And also with Veh/Kbot I think they should aim for a terrain-based distinction first and foremost. Like bots being good around hills, for one. Then make maps that are balanced for both, but they'll excel at different things and different areas of the map - that's interesting, since it's asymmetrical but yet balanced. Then later you can opt to just go for 2x factories of one type, or have them both, or go air... You get the picture. Main point is that there's some sort of fundamental difference at what the factories excel at, speed vs strength is another good way to distinguish them.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

It's more the terrain issue for me. Some planets should be more bumpy or mountainous than others, or more importantly have a mix of flat/bumpy/mountain terrain.

Then it's a decision of taking vehicles (good on flat) kbots (good on hills) or spiders/insectoid (good in mountains). In mixed terrain you may need all 3.