Isn't this kind of a step backwards? I thought whoever was in charge of unit design decided we weren't going to have tiers in which the higher levels are just stronger than lower levels, but instead have basic and advanced tiers that compliment each other. I kind of liked advanced fabbers having building restrictions, it forced you to keep T1 around. Now, with 1 adv fabber in an isolated system you can build your entire arsenal. Thoughts?
Fabbers is one area where having many T1(basic) units being replaced by a few T2(advanced) units is a good thing. In Supcom the T1 engineer was the most cost effective engineer, so you would end up having 30 plus engineers trying to build something. I have many bad memories of playing engy bumper cars. Engineering micro is annoying and having the advanced engineer be able to build some important basic structures can help mitigate that. Also having the the advanced engineer be able to build basic factories is necessary for planetary expansion.
T1 engineers are farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr more cost efficient. This just allows a lone T2 engineer to rebuild a T1 factory to access T1 structures, which is important for sending lone engineers to new worlds.
But that was the whole drawback before this change. If you sent a t2, you couldn't build cheap engineers or defenses, but you got orbital faster and had access to catapults. If you sent a t1, it would take you longer to get t2 and orbital, but now you were able to exploit the full economy of the asteroid and had access to your entire arsenal at the cost of time.
I fully agree. Just keep it like in TA where you had to keep T1 around aswell. Increases value of T1 throughout the game.
I'd prefer it if constructors each had as many build options as possible. Restricting build options usually just forces you to spend some extra time searching for the right constructor. There are few situations in which you will have T2 constructors and no T1 constructors. Instead of relying on tedious games of "find the right constructor for the task" I would prefer the constructors to be differentiated in terms of their abilities. This would give each a purpose beyond their particular build queue. For example (unless something changed recently) T1 Bot constructors are just better than T2 Vehicle constructors except that vehicle constructors are required for a T2 vehicle factory. I would prefer vehicle constructors to have some other advantage over bots.
Maybe googlefrog is right. Maybe homogenizing engies won't hurt the game. I doubt this game can be over simplified.
As I recall in TA, the basic constructor could build basic factories, advanced factories and basic structures. The advanced constructor could build advanced structures, BUT it could only build basic factories. In the last PA patch with adv fabbers only being able to build adv factories, it cut you off from half the tech if you were just dropping a single adv fabber on a moon. If it was done like TA, you wouldn't have the homogenisation factor of Supcom, and you wouldn't have the frustration of not being able to build a basic factory. With the TA system it becomes a three-stage system which supports itself in a nice way. You can always get to whatever tech you want, you just have to follow the (circular) tech progression.
In TA, advanced construction units could build their own T1 factory, not another (ie: adv kbot could build the T1 and T2 factory). They had this before at some point I recall, not sure why it was changed to T2 only, and now everything. I still find it funny that ships can build land factories, that's the job of air units!
preventing advance fabbers from building basic factories is having in a limitation just for the sake of limitation. doesn't make any sense, doesn't really offer any gameplay advantages, and it isn't even a very interesting limitation. having separate bot, vehicle, aerial, and naval fabbers that have separate capabilities is also a limitation, but it's a logical one and an interesting one, in that it compels the player to make both strategic and tactical choices at all levels. so, i for one welcome our advance fabber overlords.
I see the argument against having T2 fabbers being able to build all T1 factories, but I do think it would be fine if the T2 fabbers could build their own T1 factory. I think seeing how the change affects play is more important than numbers discussions.
It's been awhile, and you're right, I'm wrong. Adv construction units could NOT build their ADV factories, only their T1 factories. That's a completely different menu, gives T1 construction units more use. My main machine is linux so I can't re-install TA exactly unless I want to cheat using wine. Here's a good layout of the build orders. http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Total_Annihilation/Units
I love this update. It means we can send adv fabbers to other planets and they can build basic factories and then build advanced buildings. When they couldn't build basic factories, it meant if you sent an advanced fabber to a different planet, that planet was confined to only advanced buildings and only units of the type you sent over. We could make an argument for that's a strategy that you have to consider... But I like it.
