[52512] Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

as of build: 52512
___________________________________________________________________
Many thanks to godde for providing the original spreadsheet that
inspired me to go from a silly .txt file to this. His thread is here
and has some interesting efficiency stats.___________________________

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... sp=sharing

The spreadsheets are view only, but if you have a google drive you can just "file -> make a copy" and edit to your hearts content. The yellowed areas are the only thing really meant to be edited, and those are for the number of each fabber assisting to make x unit/building

Sheet 1: Fabricator Stats
*How many of each tier mex/pgens are needed for each fabricator.
*Build power for each fabber

Sheet 2: Factory Production
*Unit costs for each unit from each factory
*Base build time, using only the factory
*Total energy consumed by the factory
*Build time adjusted for the number of assisting fabricators
*Total energy consumed with factory+assisters

Sheet 3: Fabricator Production
*Building costs for each building from each fabber
*Base build time, using only that fabber
*Total energy consumed by just the fabber
*Build time adjusted for assisting fabbers
*Total energy consumed by all fabbers
*Commander assisting commander is marked in red. Avoid if your interested in single commander/army calcuations

Anyways, I'm gonna try to keep this updated/confirmed for each build. Basically this is just for mex/pgen planning (sheet 1), and looking at what happens with assisting, and looking at build times (sheet 2/3). I'm not looking at efficiency or anything, just requirements and time.

On the to-do list:
*keep updated

"Changelog":
* Added radars, and artillery buildings that can attack ground.
* Added sonars.
* added nuke / anti-nuke to factory page
* removed nuke laucher from commander build list
* Added orbital launcher factory to mex/pgen calc sheet and factory sheet
* Added orbital launcher to adv. fabbers on fabber sheet
* Added walls/AA towers to adv. fabbers. Should be complete as of 9/3/2013

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

Thanks man, this is helpful to have all in one place. Can't wait for metal spots to be finished so we can start playing for real (outside gentlemans ladder) where this will start to really matter.

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

Added radar and artillery units that can fire at ground to the list.

If anyone can tell me how much energy defense turrets (AA and las) use, if any, that would be cool! Also, couldn't get the anti-nuke to fire..... so no energy use on that either.

Sonar's next on the list.

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

Added sonars. And a thanks to godde for his spreadsheet that inspired this one. His has more efficiency focus tho, and takes into account things like rolloff. Mine's more of a raw numbers to produce constantly without pause, and build time calc :mrgreen:

Anyways, time to do some more testing!

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

Updated advance mex numbers. Now current as of 50355 :mrgreen:

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

Some really interesting data to be seen here. I had no idea there was so much variation in the energy efficiency of fabricators!

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

this is nice. i wouldn't ask you to do further analysis but i suspect the metal cost to build power of factories and engineers will be an important statistic in developed matches. that will decide whether we have a division of build power (factories for units, engies for structures) or whether engineer assist will dominate again.

even if the energy consumption is higher on engineers, energy consumption can be thought of as a hidden metal cost (the metal cost to create that much energy). comparing the build power and (hidden) metal cost of engineers and factories would give us a better idea of efficiency. less versatile units should be more efficient. air engineers, for example, should be the least efficient while immobile factories should be the most efficient.

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

I believe godde's sheets had quite the analysis on total metal cost for the unit and everything like pgens and mexes to power it.

I might add another sheet with an overall energy per metal for all the fabrication units/structures, but it could be pretty hard since basic things like pgens and mexes would have varied values for that depending on which fabber built them. And that kind of thing propagates :shock:

Either way, I'm just happy that people wanna view stuff like this :ugeek: :mrgreen:

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

Something I was thinking about this morning: This spreadsheet can also be used to figure out perpetual build orders. Say you want to perpetually create vehicle factories without stopping:

from commander:
pgen = 15s
vfact = 20s
(total 35s)

from 2x vehicle engie:
2x mex = 30s

That should keep power/metal ahead of the vehicle factorys, so every new one can produce constantly from creation, since they "need" 2.1 mexes and a pgen to run non-stop. Since the commander needs 3 mexes/1 gen and each vfab needs 1.5 of each, you need a total of 6 mexes, and 4 gens, plus the initial factory for the engies is 8 mex/5 gen.

3 mex/3 gen for the engies would take the commander 75 second to build and the factory could produce 2 enies in 30, so building a few skitters/ants in the meantime would give you a chance to build the infrastructure for the engies.

Build order could be:

gen -> mex x3 (for commander)
gen -> factory -> mex x2 (20s, for factory) : produce 2 skitters (20 seconds)
gen x3 (45s) -> mex x3 (30s, for engies) : produce 3 ants (45s), 2 engies (30s)

Rolloff time would prolly mean you would be ahead with mex/gen production, but you could just cancel an ant if you have 3 gens around the time of producing the second ant. With mex points now IN the game, travel time is a thing, so this might not be as big a deal.

Then: spam mexes with engies, spam gen -> factory with commander.

To be able to spam the same sequece with just engies, say if you wanted to put the commander on just gen production, you would need 5 engies, 8 extra mexes and 8 pgens. As luck would have it 8 pgens from commander = 120 seconds, the same time it would take the 2 engies to produce 8 mexes If you did this with 4 factories UP, then ctrl clicking one of them into each queue in the timing of the last 2 gens = perfect!

Advance factory would require at least 6 (taking into account roll off time, 4 more than regular) mexes and 3 gens (2 more than regular) at least to produce constantly and would take 3 engies 92 seconds to produce, in which the 4 engies producing mexes would build 12 (!) and the commander would produce 6 gens, if he only produced 4 gens (60s) and 1 more vehicle factory (20s) then 8 (or 9 if we round up) of the 12 mexes would be needed, leaving 3 or 4 extra.

So, build constant factories, and time advanced ones for when your mex engies are traveling between groups of mex points, so you don't get TOO far ahead in eco.

Phew. :shock: :ugeek: :mrgreen:


Also, as you get more energy + from the 200 extra the commander/2 fabs don't "use", and the 25 extra the you can build radars and such to slow mex building a little so you don't get too far ahead in eco. they're only 300 energy a piece for the normal ones

All that from some number crunching. It prolly wouldn't work for **** in game, but it would at least be a starting point LOL! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

^^ This is exactly how I play and it seems to work very well. What do we think the optimal thing to do is when you get t2 fabbers out? As far as I can tell, all t1 fabbers and the commander move to assisting factories and t2 fabbers pick up the gen/fact spam and the mex/defense spam.

Edit - with regards to the opener, I believe this is optimal: Mex, gen, mex, fact (makes a fab), mex, gen, then commander moves in to gen/fact production. Your energy will drop to zero exactly as the first gen finishes, and you get your factory out slightly sooner than if you always stay in the green.

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

I usually set my commander to assist the first t2 factory, since he's pretty efficient. I mostly just use a single t2 fab for radar and such. There's not too many t2 buildings that require a t2 fab that really do much right now.

The one thing to remember with this sheet, is it doesn't account for rolloff or travel distance. If you had your comm constructing alternating pgens and factories, and you didn't spread out the pgens, you could prolly get away with 2 mexes instead of 3. The reason i don't take rolloff in account is that it's something that's expected to change radically.

Actually, all the test runs i did with my build order resulted is way too much excess metal and energy because of this!

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

Tbh it feels to me like the high roll off times are here to stay. Its actually going a really good job at simplifying the game away from assist spam and towards a more factory dependent base.

This is a going to be a huge tool later on in beta balancing when we are teaking unit costs between aircraft, bots, and tanks. The 'locked energy' cost from fabbers/factories has the weakness of removing a tweakable variable for unit balance purposes (energy cost/build time).

With high roll off times making factory spam the best option, you can safely 'tweak' the efficiency of the factories nanolathe to balance the three unit classes without fear that players will just spam assist to curcumvent your efforts with high efficiency fabbers.

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

roll off times actually encourage assisting because engineers with some intelligence can transfer their build power between projects while factories cannot. for example, a group of engineers assisting 2 adjacent factories.

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

Ahh indeed indeed. Such high APM requiring advantages are definitely bad for the game. That's a hard one to solve.

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

idk if APM is the problem, in supcom and spring idling/patrolling engineers would move between projects if they could. they were somewhat smart units and i like that.

the solution is simple though. make factories more cost efficient than engineers. right now there's 2 stats of interest, metal cost per build power and energy consumption per build power. with different metal costs and energy consumptions this may seem tricky to compare but it's not. for all intents and purposes energy consumption can be treated as a hidden metal cost, that is the metal that must be invested into energy generators to produce that much energy per tick. The straightforward solution then would be for factories to provide cheaper build power for (hidden) metal cost. in general it makes sense for less versatile buildpower like factories to be more cost efficient. so static buildpower (factories, nanotowers) would be more efficient than mobile engineers (vehicles, bots, ships) which would be more efficient than air engineers.

Re: Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadsheet)

Updated for 50742 (edit: now COMPLETELY UPDATED :shock: :lol: missed out on the adv bot fact cost........)

Re: [51118] Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadshe

"updated" for 51118. No econ changes this time, so pretty easy. Also added the build number into the title for easier reference in case anyone stumbles upon this and I haven't updated to new build yet.

Re: [51853] Alpha Fabrication Number Crunching (w/ Spreadshe

Updated for 52853 :mrgreen: Link has changed. If you've bookmarked the old one, it won't be there :shock:

* Added nuke launcher to commander, but listed as (temp)

Added in the nuke & anti-nuke launchers as factories, so now it actually IS updated!

Updated for 52168. Basically just had to remove nuke from commander build list