I find them severely overpowered. Yes they are more expensive then the normal builders but for that price they are both much faster AND more energy efficient. So if you innitiate building with one normal builder but finish it with a combat builder you end up spending much less time and energy(!) That bot costs like 3.5 regular builders while consuming 2 times the power and working 6 times faster. Which makes it trice cheaper on energy. I propose either make the bot less eficient (or slower) or make the regular non-flying builders more energy eficient (I actually find them being too inefficient). If I'm not wrong one generator in Supreme commander could power one builder. In this game a regular builder needs two generators for itself. Alternatively you can make REPAIR bots only able to repare but not build that would totally settle this.
There's lots of threads on this topic. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/i-thought-the-new-patch-would-balance-combat-fabs.60264/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/combat-fabbers-remain-broken.59744/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/about-build-power-and-combat-fabbers.59483/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/combat-fabbers.59485/ I think the current trend on the forums is simple. Combat Fabbers are broken and they're making the game un-enjoyable to play. Right now it's, "use combat fabbers or lose." That is bad. I propose we not allow combat fabbers to assist in building, and make basic energy plants produce a little more power, and make factories a little more energy efficient.
I don't think we can pick and choose what's ok to have to build and what isn't. It's like saying build fabbers or lose is also a problem. What is the main problem with them? Is building units instead of infinite fabbers a bad thing? Is energy too expensive? I like them. More units quicker is more fun for me. Not having to have your commander just build energy for the whole game is a nice change.
1 it gives me two kinds of fabbers i must have manage and control. Normal fabbers initiate building and combat ones finish it 2 lets say I wann run tanks not robots. Vehicle factory doesn't have it's own combat fabbers so I always must from building Bot factory and build fabers with fabers even if my target is tanks.
Hmm yeah I don't think I know how to discuss this with you. For one, you just tell the combat fabber to assist the fabber, that's not too difficult. For 2, you most likely will need all types of factories, as tanks are better at fighting, bots cheaper faster and have better aa. Also better at killing walled turrets. Air to snipe combat fabbers and protect yourself from snipes/ bombers. This plays good as you need to get good unit composition. If you think this is a bad thing then We can agree to disagree I suppose.
The only problem i have with cf's is that they speed the pacing up too fast for their metal cost. Which is not really a problem in and of itself, but the result we are getting from this is that the best strategies tend to come down to who can get a sustainable 3 factory + cf set up the quickest. Basically, you can optimally rush units while macroing. And optimally macro while rushing. It comes down to 1 cf expo train only, because you won't have the build power to viably make use of 2 cf expo trains worth of metal. Which really only leaves one viable build, which is 1 cf macro train and 2nd cf factories unit spam. This problem you can get rid of probably by just decreasing cf build power from 60 to something lower so that you are granulising the build power a bit more. (or increase energy cost so that effective metal build is less). If you do this, you get results like a) viable air first and other strategies that don't rely on cf first b) 2nd cf on macro as a viable option, because opponent cannot spam out so many units at 4-5 minutes. And because you will then have timings to make use of this extra metal, instead of it going to waste. c) the 2nd air timings for bombing cf's actually hurting unit production because you won't have as much metal up by then. (you don't need a lot of metal or energy currently to sustain 3 factory + cf). *d) Less volatility between factories with cf and factories without cf. That is, if your factory cf gets sniped while your opponent does not, it probably shouldn't be as relatively punishing as it is. Maybe it's just me, but i prefer gameplay choices that have tradeoffs, and different openers that depend more on how the players respond to each other. Instead of this one optimal build that everyone must do or else be at a mathematical disadvantage both in the macro and the early unit production. In particular, i rather enjoy the dynamics between macro based play and cheese based play. Currently i don't find the cf's provide this kind of dynamic because they have so much build power for cost. Should they have better build power and energy efficiency than t1 bots at 10/1000? I believe yes they should, but maybe not as much as 60/2000. Final note: i don't think restricting combat fabbers to repair only is a beneficial change at all. It fails to actually address the problem (repairing is basically the same as building), and gets us back to the t1 energy bottleneck of previous builds. It is a short sighted change.
