Engineers Boosting Factory Production

Hi all,

Do we have any idea if engineers will be able to boost build times of factories? I've been watching lots of supcom videos and I kind of feel like this is gimmicky and takes away from the immersion in the game. Like the devs are saying about the reason for no tech system and differing factions the armies are using the best technology already, so how could an engineer boost a factory? I guess what I'm asking is if this is going to be allowed in the game, because I don't think it should. If there's already a post about this please link it to me! I did my best to search for it but couldn't find it.

Thanks!

You can assist production in this way in TA so I am certain it will be a feature of PA. However in TA you were much more limited in how many could fit around a factory, no 70 engineer air factories in TA.

Except for flying engineers of course, of which you could have a theoretically infinite amount assisting in TA. I think it's confirmed that PA will have flying engineers, but it's also been implied that planes will not be able to clip through each other like in TA/SupCom.

The PA pitch specifically mentions swarms of engineers building stuff.

In TA i would build about 150 advanced construction planes and build rows of big berthas. You couldnt fit unlimited ground builders around an object, but there were no limits on air based construction vehicles.

With PA's no plane clipping, this would become a thing of the past.

I personally feel like TA's engineer system would be preferable over SupComs version, as to promote the use of factory's over engineers to produce units.

Where was that confirmed?

Mike

In one of the live streams.

And I distinctly remember it being said.

If you distinctly remember hearing that then you heard wrong or I misspoke. It's *possible* we may experiment with it but I'm perfectly happy to have a bunch of construction aircraft assisting.

And yes factories can be assisted (this is already implemented!).

Then I am mistaken

I am glad factories can be assisted, but can we make absolutely sure that factories are a much more efficient source of build power per cost than engineers? Testing permitting of course, but I am quite certain that multiple factories is more interesting than 100 engineers assisting one factory. When you build engineers you should be paying extra for mobility and the ability to build anything faster. A factory can only build items on its list, and can assist nothing, so building more factories is less flexible, but should yield more raw build power for less resources.

I think what people (including me) are worried about is a return of the 100 engineers around a factory that we see in SupCom
I hope you find another way of countering this, like having engineers more expensive and more powerful? Or do you not see it as an issue?

Why exactly is this a problem? I don't see anything wrong with pouring more resources into something to make it faster, and early on in SupCom at least it is already more efficient to make more factories.
Another thing that limits engineers usefulness is the time it takes for units to leave the factory. While I am fine with there being an absolute cap on land units production speed per factory, I hope the is something in the way of improving those units actually getting out, as they often got stuck.

Which is why this was most used on air factories, as the aircraft takes off almost immediately. This could be easily fixed by just making the aircraft take a couple secs to fire up its engines before taking off or something like that. It needs to have a rollout-time that is more like land factories to avoid this sillyness.

To me it just looks really stupid to just assist a factory, which is why I prefer the TA version where engineers were large enough, cost enough and has such a small build range that assisting with them was difficult enough that factory's were always better.

Id rather not see engineers being the unit of choice for boosting factory, but rather a assisting tower, crafted purposely for the job of boosting your build power.

It just seems silly to mention TA when that game was the worst in terms of assisting construction. There was no diminishing returns and conairs cost about 20% less than ground versions, not to mention one convec built almost as fast as a factory while costing a fraction.

Con airs cost roughly twice as much energy, but a bit over half as much metal, as construction vehicles. They also took twice as long to build, and were only half as good at building things as them. You also ran the risk of losing them all in one shot if they were stacked up and were hit by a missile.

However, I still think they became OP too easily. I think their build time needs to be make quite a bit longer, so a player trying to spam them would be out-gunned by someone building fighters - it would push their role more into construction only as opposed to building them purely for assisting.

EDIT: A bigger issue with TA assisting was the F.A.R.K. unit.

I'm more interested in learning why engineers assisting factories is gimmicky.

100 engineers around a factory is not a core issue with assisting. As far as I can tell FA assisting economics just scaled poorly into the late game in this regard.

If factories are more cost efficient than engineers there are many repercussions which may not be obvious.

• It is harder to make expensive units.
• Less flexibility in general, especially with other in-base tasks.
• Factories are no longer technology buildings, that is everyone will have every tech rather quickly. High tech units could afford to have massive build time but sideways tech will be accessible.
• Factories need to be weak or raiding is much less powerful.

These things could be desired or undesired but should not be ignored.

If someone says "I think we should do X because it solves Y" then I assume they are looking for the solution that impinges the least of game mechanics besides Y. Often the problem with X is not that it is a bad idea, it is that X does a lot of other discussed things. There are solutions which solve just Y.

Anyway isn't there an assist thread on the main forums? It already contains most of the things in this thread.

Other then the standard reply of that raiding is generally against a players economy.

TA factory's were designed in such a way that a raider unit standing at the factory's exit could continuously kill units being produced, even without actually damaging a factory.

Effectively disabling it.

Could PA have a similar system where raiders could lock down factory's but without actually having to try a kill a factory, and thus mess with the way their health is scaled?

Again i'm amazed at the lack of basic game style knowledge. It is far more effective to have just a few engineers assisting the quantum than loads as each extra engineer gives diminishing construction ability compared to the last assisting. It is far more efficient to have engineers on construction, assisting and all the other things that engineers do.

If by diminishing you mean linear then yes.

The alternative is that you mean adding one engineer to a factory with 10 engineers will increase the production by a smaller percentile (like 5% instead of 25%). of course these percentiles are meaningless and if you have it assist another factory (so two factories with 5 each instead of one factory with 10 and one with none) you end up with just as many units either way. Small differences get brought into this by unit placements and movements, especially with ground engineers, that is units have to walk off the pad, engineers might block the pad etc.