Unlimited Assisting, Game-Ending Weapons and Factory Redundancy

Spot the difference:




It's what we wanted versus where we're heading, and what we've gotten so far.

Planetary Annihilation is closer to Total Annihilation's spirit than its predecessors in the genre.
However, I wanted Planetary Annihilation to surpass the obvious failures of SupCom.

In SupCom (FA), Unlimited Assisting broke the late-game.
We ended up building dozens of Kennels and hundreds of Engineers so that we could build that one thing which would end the game; "Game Enders"; which we had to retrospectively disable in-lobby in order for games not to be about racing to build Nukes/Experimentals. Even then, the game became about building the most high-Tiered units possible. In this case, that means T3 Aeon Superiority Fighters/AA Gunships.

We wouldn't need to expand. We'd have a handful of factories, and hundreds of engineers all assisting that one factory.
Sound familiar?

This led to two turtled bases on either side of the map.
Which led to the need for Experimentals and ever-more expensive things for our hundreds upon hundreds of Assisters to build.
Never mind building armies.
Build five Galactic Collosai a minute.

Unlimited Assisting means we can build anything near-instantly. We don't need more Factories. We don't need to expand. We turtle and build our thing.
The game becomes a repetitive race to the top in which we only need one of each kind of Factory.
PA is superior in many ways to SupCom, but I fear it is slipping quickly and dangerously into the same Assisting-based Tiered combat and economy.

I saw those bots running around the jungle blasting at each other and my nostalgia smelt something glorious.
I don't want to have to use three hundred Fabricators to build something in a timely fashion.
Trying to balance any game element that is basically unlimited is impossible.
This is why we have Nukes being built several times a minute late-game.
This is why somebody can shut down an asteroid in seconds if they send 200 Fabricators through a portal.

It's why I had a problem with Air Stacking (something which Formations have put a limit on).
We need a some sort of limit on Assisting.

Otherwise build-times become meaningless late-game.
Nukes will not become balanced by being increasingly expensive. This just delays the problem.
Moving towards a Tiered system does the same. The problem will remain.
Games will just get longer and more repetitive as tactics and the need for T1 armies lowers, and the need to rush towards the thing prevails.

What happened to the phrases "We're operating at peak efficiency?" and "Too many cooks spoil the broth"?
Fabricators should not be a replacement for another Factory.

The proposed alternative, which I have suggested before and will suggest again:
(Edit: See this thread for where I originally floated this suggestion and discussed alternatives.)

1. Factories operate at 100% Efficiency by default.
2. Assisting can boost this up to 125%.

(edit: It should be mentioned that I'm quite confident in alternative economic balance solutions to this, inspirations for which we might gain from Total Annihilation.)

Thus, you can still Assist.
(I.E. Assist as in Help something get built faster; not build the thing several times faster than the Factory can build it by itself!)
This way we would need to build more Factories to build more units; not build more units (Fabricators) to build more units.


Two Factories should always be more productive than one.
I mean you don't get more cars made by doubling your employees, do you?

Please UBER, don't fall into the same traps SupCom did.
I want armies of robots going 'pew', not Fabricators and Tiered races to push out Nukes and high-value units.

Your faithful fan,
eroticburrito.

I agree with you, I think the main issue is figuring out a way to incorporate this that is immediately intuitive. What kind of visual cues do you suggest to indicate something is max assisted or partially assisted?

Fabrication streams changing colour - "This area is saturated, sending more Fabricators here will not speed things up any more."

Shift-queues could shade out fully-assisted buildings too as a tactical/overlay cue.

I like your thoughts and agree wholeheartedly

I very much agree with this statement.

Not sure what the best solution is, but something needs to be done so we don't fall into this pitfall.

I'd think increasing the rolloff time and bringing Advanced more inline with Basic would be a good start.

Maybe adding an efficiency detriment to assisting so assisting factories don't receive full benefit.

I don't disagree with you on the principal. However please be aware if you played ta competitively assisting a few factories was always preferable to spamming lots.

T1 factories could only be assisted by a single construction unit due to range limit. However there was no such restriction to t2 or air.

The main differences that made ta much more unit focused- allot less metal, everything was comparatively much more expensive. Units all had lots of health. Nuke silos could be mass produced but the missile couldn't be assisted. Anti nukes had unlimited missiles and massive range. Due to low metal income even at t2 wreckage was critical and meant you needed to expand and defend wreckage fields to boost your income if you wanted to win. There was no true game ever as even the mighty krogoth super bot could be one shot killed by a cloaked commander.

Having said all that I think the upcoming balance changes will improve the situation, as they change the proportions of the economy to be much closer to ta (meaning t2 is much more valuable).

Also with the correct setup pa feels very ta like, I recently played a few games of 'boxing' (10 com's on a r200 moon) and it forces you to work with a handful of units. Prioritising what to make and keeping things alive, felt like a small ta map- its in there!

I agree it is causing some serious problems in the late stages of the game - but honestly, in a 1v1, it becomes interesting when someone puts all their buildpower into one item. That item shouldn't be super powerful in that it will wipe the floor without skill, but one that, with the right usage, could scoop a victory from the jaws of defeat.

It's something I still would like to see in the game, to keep players on their toes at all times, even if they are in a winning position. I just don't like the cheap towers and idea that more powerful t2 fabs are needed. That will make it worse.

Doesn't assisting have a serious drop off rate in SupCom2 however?

I mean, it probably wasn't the best way of doing it.

But that was a selling point of the game, was it not? That you wouldn't bother to assist even on the few times you could?

Just wanted to point that out.....SupCom2 has a lot of problems, but assisting hasn't been one of them.

I have no real problem with unlimited assisting. what I do agree with you on is the race to T2 and the fact that T1 units have no value late game. They are barely valuable as fodder. The only valuable T1 unit late game is the fabber.

I think the core problem with the game at this time is the fact that T2 should be more focused on support roles for the core T1 units of your army. Things like mobile radar, radar jammers, and stealth (not cloaked) units. Orbital should be specialised for intelligence gathering and interplanetary siege.

Some important distinctions between TA Assisting and PA's there then. Thank you for pointing these out.

I still believe Assisting adds tactical depth to the genre. I just think that being able to build an asteroid-shifting engines and Nukes near-instantly is never going to be good for late-game tactics.
I don't think imposing restrictions upon high-value things makes much sense either. "Thou shalt assist this, but not this." Why? We should be able to speed our Nuke's/Sniper Bot's/Vanguard's construction up, just not to the point of an instantaneous materialisation.

Apologies. I never gave that game a massive amount of my time. Is the screenshot in my OP SupCom 2?

I agree.
However none of that is going to matter to the guy building five nukes a minute on the other side of the planet.
Also it makes little sense to me that a single Factory can output units faster than two if both are in a stable economy.

Yep.

Keep in mind that SC2 engineers can ONLY assist factory's, and even then a factory costs 3 and a half engineers, not the 20+ assisting those factory's.

It's just such a funny picture to me.....unless you are going for the reclaiming engineer death blob strategy, if you have the micro, it's soo much fun.

I agree. I still want Nukes and Assisting and Assisting Nukes in the game.
I just want people to need use armies rather than bunker down and use their Fabricators to build more Fabricators to build more Fabricators, all out of a single Bot Factory, simply to build Nukes.

I still say that an easier and more sensible fix than diminishing returns is to simply remove assisting entirely.

As the old axiom goes:
If you want factory spam, don't let factories spam.

That isn't actually an old axiom.

I really disagree besides the obvious numbers balance. It is only heavily assistant late game because of abundant metal, which btw is being increased price x4 and income x3.5. I think that's bad, but the number only needs adjustment nonetheless.

You don't have infinite assisting. You have multiple reasons not to swarm assist. And you would never do it if you were capped at 30 adv. fabbers spending your entire economy, I don't think an economy should ever support more than 30-50 fabbers running at once with factories. Right now, I usually only assist things with 1-2 fabbers per factory, 3-5 per adv fact, maybe 10-12 per large project, but thats it. Nukes and halleys are like the pinnacle of assistance, you can stick 30 just on those, but if it were capped by metal income, you would either not get extra build power anyway but would just use 10 a nuke or 20 if just 1 nuke or halley.

If you ran out of metal you wouldn't infinite assist things.

Ah I see. Well then it still applies somewhat, as currently Assisting leads to micro-intensive use of Snipers and Vanguards (those are the high value, build-to-win units at the moment).

I looks a tad absurd I agree.. I'd rather Factories were Factories and Fabricators assisted rather than being the necessity if you wanted to churn anything out.

I agree pretty much with the opening post of this thread.

At this point, it would be interesting to see what happens in game if fabbers couldn't be able to assist, but only repair. It might worth a try.

Well if like in SC2 factorys had a more efficient build power, then using engineers to build an army would be a little folly.

Of course the allure of assisting is the ability to fully control what your economy is doing by moving engineers around.

Just make the specialised builders (Factory and nukes) more efficient to be build in parallel then having a single one assisted.

So doubling the build speed of them with engineers is more expensive then just building additional factory's.

Giving people the choice between efficiency, and flexibility.

Less metal means less metal for my armies. I want metal.
Personally I build a Bot Factory, set it to build Fabricators and have them Assist the Factory as they roll off.
Mid-Late game I have an expansive economy designed for powering multiple Factories and building armies, but instead have to gather my 200 Fabricators and set them to work on a Nuke because that's what everybody else is doing, and if I use armies, the armies get nuked.

Well if like in SC2 factorys had a more efficient build power, then using engineers to build an army would be a little folly.

Of course the allure of assisting is the ability to fully control what your economy is doing by moving engineers around.

Just make the specialised builders (Factory and nukes) more efficient to be build in parallel then having a single one assisted.

So doubling the build speed of them with engineers is more expensive then just building additional factory's.

Giving people the choice between efficiency, and flexibility.

It's not an axiom at all. I think you may have use the wrong word there.

Also, my three and a half cents on the topic: Assisting should be a possible option, but not the best option for most scenarios. That's why I don't like either limiting or removing assisting as a suggestion.

I think fabricators should be far less efficient than factories in some way to discourage assisting without eliminating it, limiting it or adding in some obfuscating diminishing returns on how much fabbers can assist.

I think we should be able to assist as much as we want, but over-doing it should be a bad idea. It should be situational.

I also think the abudance of metal and the size of factories contributes to this problem just as much as current assisting balance in PA, as it's easier to send fabbers to assist factories than it is to queue up new ones, give them build orders after they're complete and then send the fabbers to do other things or to assist. One is one click, the other can be a dozen or more spread out over time. We have to wait until the factories are under construction to give them build orders after all.

Edit: Woops, somehow quoted the wrong post.