I never really played TA, only Supcom/FA, so I'm accustomed to only type of fabricator (sACU were functionally similar to normal builders if I recall correctly). I've been playing the Alpha a bit and I'm confused as to the different roles of the different fabs (vehicule, bot, ship and airplane). Can someone explain the differences between the builders, and in which situation they should be used? Also, is the best strategy to focus on one or two tech paths (air and vehicule, for example), or do you normally try to go for everything more or less at once, or everything progressively with an initial focus?
This should be in the alpha forum- go one level up, and you can post everything about the alpha there. however, in answer to your question(I've never played TA before) it would seem that havign the different types of fabricators is mainly used in unlocking "advanced" type units- essentially tier 2. commander builds factory factory builds fabricator fabricator builds advanced factory advanced factory builds advanced fabricator so yes, there are two tech tiers- regular, and "advanced". EDIT: to clarify, each type(bot ship air vehicle) can only build the advanced factory for its type. the advanced factories make stronger, more advanced units. I've also read that the advanced units require energy to fire their weapons.
Yes, I know all that. My question was for people who played a lot of TA and can explain the intricacies behind choosing a type of builder for certain jobs and choosing tech paths.
Why? It's a question about the game, not about the alpha per se. I'd be interested to know the answer too, yet I only have access to this forum. Why should information such as this - not concerning the alpha per se - not be here?
There really aren't any 'roles' besides the obvious. If you want tech, you need to build a factory, a con unit, an advanced factory, and an advanced con units. Con ships for building naval stuff, air cons for not worrying about pathing and mobility.
There are 8 factories at the moment, vehicle factory which produces threaded and wheeled vehicles (tanks), bot factory which produces legged bots, air factory which produces flying units, and the naval factory which produces boats. And you have the advanced versions of these which produce tier 2 units of the same "class" and can only be build by a construction unit of that class.
I know, but... Well, ships are on the water. Aircraft flies around, ignoring terrain. But both vehicles and bots move around on the land - what makes them different from one another? For example, are normal vehicles generally stronger but less mobile?
I think so, but I thought one required more energy and the other required more metal. I think it was energy for bots and metal for tanks. But I'm not sure about that.
Generally if you want to start fast you would build a vehicle construction bot since they are fast. The vehicle plant is a good idea for early game since you can also blitz enemies with vehicles at the games beginning. Aircraft tend to be expensive and time consuming in the games beginning and normal construction bots are somewhat slow costing you precious time. After you build a vehicle plant you would start building resources, windmills and metal extractors while making more construction bots. You will want to be especially quick since the other players could blitz you. Once you have a significant stream of resources you will start building some cheap units to go and stand perimeter. After building the units start building some medium and short range cannons you should be good for a bit.
Really? I thought bots tended to be more manoeuvrable and were able to traverse hills well, but that vehicles sported bigger weapons and could achieve a better top speed over flat terrain?
air fab- more mobility and advanced air factory bot fab-normal mobility and advanced bot factory vehicle fab-normal mobility and advanced vehicle factory naval fab-can move through water build naval buildings and advanced naval factory I hope that cleared up some stuff
There are obviously advantages for the different types. I used to play a lot of TA and my fav strategy was to build hundreds of advanced construction planes. Hot button them and they can support build anything easily in a large group because they could hover together... the lands units would bunch around and not all be able to reach. So big advantage there - fly straight to target, hover, hyper quick build, move to next target. I also built swarms of advanced construction bots to help on ground structures. The advanced construction bots could output a huge amount more energy than the lower level ones, same with vehicles. Bots could cluster together closer so slight advantage there... can get lots more foccused on same target. Will be interesting to see what output level the different units are capable off and therefore how fast each is capable of building. The commander obviously pours out a lot more resource than the others at the moment so hopefully we will be able to build back up commanders. One of the other things I loved in the old TA was static resource fabrication guns. Nanolathes I think they were called. They were so good to have scattered around a base. They could build faster than a commander and had long range so they meant your base was always super powered when it came to building. Having fun so far - cant wait to see what comes out next.
