combat fabbers assisting or not. let's debate.

I've stated this plenty of times before, i'll try to keep it short.

Problem with the old cf was that uber wanted it as a "field medic" of sorts, out there with fighting units, repairing them in action. This goes along the lines of how they want to model bots after infantry in regular warfare to help differentiate them from tanks, so we don't have two similar sets of units, only difference being if the run on wheels or legs.

The old cf wasn't being used as uber wished so they buffed it, it was too expensive at what it did so it wasn't efficient to use.

With the buff they suddenly changed from being "field medics" to becoming an extra tier between tiers or something like a decoy commander (see supcom and TA) because of how it could assist with everything but was better at it than anything within comparable range. We did use them as field medics too in this build but their main role turned out to be a major re-balance of the games economy.

Now i'm all for uber balancing the game any way they want, but doing it via a field medic is very counter-intuitive and strange. If an extra tier between tiers is needed then ad it. If more efficient build power is needed the numbers of existing units and building can be tweaked. But adding a unit with a different purpose that turns out to have a hidden secondary use that changes the balance of the whole game is not the proper way to do it. Remember What You See Is What You Get? On top of everything, the cf wasn't even being selected like other fabbers by the game interface.

I'm glad the fix is in, and i'm looking forward to upcoming balance work from uber. Hopefully they will see what people liked about the new balance cf introduced by accident and take to heart why people liked them and still argue for them. Economy can still be tweaked a bit more in my eyes, but maybe that's further down the road, after combat balance rework is done.

Absolutely agree. I understand that some interesting, less-obvious strategies were emerging with Matiz's play, making combat fabbers seem less essential, but that was for small-planet, 1v1 scenarios. What about any other type of match? What about FFAs? It seems to me that when you allow combat fabbers to be effective economic boosters, you're introducing near-obligatory micro. That's not intrinsically a bad thing, but it does run counter to what I've understood one of the major premises of PA to be, that is, the "ultimate macro game". Yesno?

I think combat fabbers shouldn't be able to assist. They will either be objectively better than the regular ones, which will make them tier 1.5 and I don't think we really need that. Or they will be objectively worse, which will make this ability kinda pointless.

It would be easier for Uber to balance and for players to understand if they will be limited just to repair and reclaim (not even mine laying) functions. And WYSIWYG isn't really an argument: it's pretty easy to make it look and feel different.

alright so as you could probably tell from the OP my mind wasn't completely made up but I've come to change my perspective on things.

Maybe indeed for the sake of gameplay combat fabbers shouldn't assist.

it just ...feels weird. I really did like some of the other ideas in here like reducing assist efficiency.

If the combat-fab changes to be unable to assist and/or is worse at assisting compared to to how it was in the previous 66830 patch i'm modding the combat-fab back to how it was when v1.0 is released.

Combat fabs should auto-recalaim anything non friendly (though healing units is of higher priority)

Agreed. They auto reclaim in the RBM, and it is awesome.

Reclaiming really is an under valued tactic.