back to the factory spam

Well, but I think that we can agree that a single Anti-Nuke missile should be built quicker than an Interplanetary *Nuke* Missile

After all, we are speaking about two very different kinds of missile (with the Nuke being even bigger since it actually changes orbit).

Yes, I am familiar with multiple warhead jupiter icbm nuclear rockets, and the little box pod patriot countermissiles (which by the way have a 60% hit rate so they send two for doubletap).

However, antinukes are kind of huge, and nukes are kind of small, and honestly the nuke could be bigger being the important project it is, and making it bigger both decreases the chokepoint you could use to defend it and increases it's visibility to a player so they can prepare for it. The antinuke is alright, I find myself hassling with it trying to get it to fit in a triangular area of coverage at times, but if it were a little smaller it would be alright as long as it is in fact as visible as it is now just like the nuke should be larger for better visibility.

Well, I do not agree to such changes in strategy, but since we are in a gamma phase of the game, any kind of new testing is welcome
I propose that, instead of removing all the assist feature, the devs add "lower efficiency" for assisting factories
Let me make it more clear:
When you have a T2 bot fabber building or assisting a building, he consumes 30 Mps and that adds 30 Mps to the construction.
When you have a T2 bot fabber assisting a factory, he will have a reduced efficiency, for example 50%, which means:
it consumes 30 Mps from your storage, but only 15 Mps is being added to the unit/nuke.
With such system, if you have a nuke that costs 32k metal, and you fabber spamm to assist it, you will be throwing away 60k+ metal to build it
I believe that such way should reduce the amount of fabber spamm assisting and we can should see more factories spamm with few fabbers repairing around

Like I said before, I like the game the way it is right now, but since we are in gamma phase, testing is worth a shot

A way to do the above, without adding a complicated cost system, would be just to adjust the costs. Structures cost less, units cost more, fabbers build more slowly, adjust health bars where necesary, and wala, factories now build faster than fabbers so another factory cheaply adds 5 fabbers worth of buildspeed with much less energy cost.

I wouldn't even mind the other side effects, such as reduced unit numbers slightly, structures being cheaper in actual metal, fabbers being slower at assisting, factories being faster at building, units being balanced to be equally effective as are now, all sounds alright...

But, I STILL like the current assisting, possibly just with more roll-off times or something. Assisting is good, and this game already limits it to where I assist 5 factories with 1-2 fabbers each and never 1 factory with more than 3, and t2 fact. I assist 1 with 3-5 but never assist more without just building another factory. It is because 1 factory will instabuild with that much assist but units still come out at same times if over-assisted so it's wasted time.

I don't mind assisting since it is fun... it would not be fun though if one faction has a special fabber that would speed things up even more and another faction has nothing.
This is a big scale game, if you have the mass and energy... feel free to assist.

I don't see why these scenarios are worse.

1) In this situation, you could also say, that if you scout your enemy and see he has strong economy, you could adjust your strategy. If he then at some point gets out insta-nukes, his economy and his strategy must have been good. So why shouldn't he be able to pull off something like this?
2) Well the nuker is punished, because he has to react very fast and he has to put lots of eco into one single attempt to stop you. If he nukes the wrong place, he loses. And even if his defensive nuke is good, he can't build units in this time and you keep on building. He just gains time till your next wave, which you can split.

About the strategic aspect:
The last grasp for a snipe in such a situation is also hard to do, because you need intel, you need to react fast and you need a weakness of your opponent. I don't understand why you shouldn't be able to do something like that. Is it unstrategic to prepare for a last attempt? Is it not pre-planning when you get enough eco and storage to insta-build a nuke?
I also can't see your point with the reaction time. You say, when you know the nuke takes time and you scout it, you have strategic choices. Why don't you have them now? If you scout an early nuke, you know it will take some time and you also have the options you listed. And if it is late-game, you should know how threatening your enemies economy is, meaning you can pre-build antinukes at important locations or spread out your base.

Answer to your question: The strategy behind it is: "When is the best time to do this? Where do I want to assist? Do I have the eco for it?" Assistance is just a tool, you still have to use it right. You make it look like the game starts with endless buildpower and endless resources.


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There is one real problem with assisting: Combat fabbers can assist everything, so you can really insta-build everything. I think this should be impossible.

That is a good point, there is no strategy when you can do it all instantly. But that will occur with or without assisting. Construction mechanics would need to be changed, perhaps similarly to how Mike proposed.

As for the game being different, the reason is because we can try out all of it. Let's try both and see what works. PA is still being developed, with the help of a community, so let's see if the old ways really are the best.

Is it just me, or would this whole situation be a lot different if the Economy wasn't currently, utterly broken?

To me, mass assisting with inefficient builders is symptomatic of a larger problem.

That is how TA dealt with it- the downside however is that this physical limit *only* applies to land construction units. Unless Uber plan to implement realistic air collision boxes then air units can stack and are thus unlimited.

Yeah, you could have air fabbers sit to the side of their work.

I voted "yey" just because I think,

• the whole assisting idea as it's currently implemented is pretty unimaginative feature; and no it's by no means some "staple of previous games" there have been a ton of games with it; nobody ever made a fuss over it being a "fun feature"
• diminishing returns on assists is dumb and unintuitive; they should just have a max number of units that can assist and within reason, not "well infinity can do it better" the resource systems are hard enough to visualize as-is
• assist should be in the game but never go past 2x speed from it, or some other reasonable number—it should never be able to go to the silly extent of being just "leaving factory animation time"
• I mean, the hell do we even build factories for in this game? might as well put unit building on the workers if factories are just a "formality" to getting units out
• buildings should have a more interesting way of assisting then workers such as simply having toggles to just use different levels of power, eg. Lv1 power (1x consumtion, builds normally), Lv2 power (2x consumtion + 1000, builds 1.5 speed), Lv3 power (4x consumtion + 5000, 3x speed) — if building faster from one factory is really a key gameplay feature

Also, things like factories, nukes, anti-nukes and such should just naturally build faster then they do at the moment. Balancing infinity workers assisting vs no workers assisting is just really awkward both in the game's balance and the player perception of what options they have. We are people, not walking calculators.

Without the ability to assist a crucial project the whole game becomes a crapshoot of whether you built the right thing(s) by the time your opponent moves against you. If you haven't you're dead.

Then it's probably not a good thing to have critical projects be a thing then.

What on earth are you talking about? A critical project could be anything from a defensive tower to an anti-nuke missile, a fusion plant, a Halley or, yes A nuke.

Fast-tracking the production of any of these things is an important mechanic; it gives you flexibility in how you play and what you prioritise on a moment-to-moment basis.

The problem is that the economy is SO broken that such behaviour is the norm, rather than corner case. The vast majority of the time the player is asked to sacrifice nothing to gain this fast-track, as both metal and energy are only " limiting factors " before you get to T2.

You shouldn't need to rely on any one single thing to survive.

But I wouldn't worry about this dude.

Im a blatant assistist, I have never liked assisting beyond actually setting a building up.

+1 to if you have to rely on assisting to fix every other reactionary issue of the balance then the balance is wrong and assisting is just making it worse.

I would trade assist for more durable scouting and/or more timing sensitive gameplay any day. Yes there may be some bullshit to the alternatives but at least with all of them it's fun! Assisting is just boring and it kind of makes other things stale. Not to mention it's kind of mandatory to the gameplay to some extent.

Timing sensitive? You mean like Starcraft?

Also I completely disagree with the "mandatory to gameplay" sentiment. It's not a bad mechanic; the economy it relies on as a foundation is broken however.

I stand to my earlier statements but I don't particularly disagree with this point of view either.

I don't want a "build this and win" scenario but can we please stop with the "spam stuff to win" mentality? This isn't WWI, sneaky guerrilla tactics and surgical strikes should be just as viable as swamping someone with enough doxii to drown them.

Obligatory Monty Python reference:

Well what is the line between having a huge military, and spamming units?