That's a matter of opinion, however this wouldn't be an issue in PA as all teams will have have exactly the same units. This wouldn't be a problem if the nanotower's were programed to repair units first and boost factory production only if no damaged units are within it's operational range. In supcom building these nanotowers was extremely costly for mass and energy, so the counter was to attack your enemy's mass points and stall their economy. I really think in a game were all sides have the same unit options, we need lots and lots of choice over what units we use to keep stratagy diverse and to keep the game interesting.
I think it's redundant with engineer. I don't really see any advantage that is not related to a user interface problem.
i don't think so. PA has different grades of versatility, mobility and efficiency between engineers, which keeps one option from being necessarily superior. Less versatile, mobile engineers are more efficient, it would follow that an immobile engineer would be most efficient. nanotowers are immobile like factories but more flexible so while more efficient than mobile engineers they should be less efficient than factories. PA has 10 different constructor units at the moment, why draw the line at 11?
It would exchange the engineer's mobility for increased health, range, and buildpower, just like turrets exchange a combat units' mobility for the increased health, range, and damage. Neither is any more or less redundant than the other.
You can't choose where your enemy will attack you, the immobility of a turret is really a down side. It's no way near comparable to a repair tower that you can choose to put just beside the factory you want to help.
turrets allow you to choose what you will fortify, much in the same way nanotowers allow you to choose what you will add build power to. you can continue to build power generators and factories near turrets and nanotowers but eventually you'll run out of space.
Well, you could always help the factories you've build. And if you're stuck because you couldn't think further, it's your fault. I'm not saying that immobility is not a downside for nanotowers, just that it's not as much as people claim.
I find it interesting how everyone is worried about factory assisting, by if you look, nobody is assisting factories right now even though factories are less efficient than Engineers. Why? Assisting doesn't reduce Rollout Time. If you have one factory you are assisting with a billion engineers, your 9 second rollout time is exaggerated because that is a lot of time te Engineers are spending not building when they could be. If you build more factories, you always have a 9 second rollout time. Most people have excess metal anyways, it would be a good thing to get some factory assisting up in this hizzy.
Roll off times actually undermine factories and not assisting engineers. Once engineers have a modicum of intelligence they will be able to switch between assisting adjacent factories and minimize their downtime while factories must accept the diminished efficiency.
I'm not sure with what people you're playing but I usually are between -10 to -100 in the red with metals (fluctuates due roll out of units). (At an income in midgame of +500 or more.) If you're wasting metal, build more factories and more engineers. Also I'm always assisting factories with one or two engineers to speed them up. Assisting and building multiple factories isn't an either/or decision, you can easily do both. And thanks to the large size of factories they waste all the time with moving between them... I don't really see that as a problem and I also doubt that we will get such intelligent engineers. -------------- But as has been mentioned, this is an UI issue. The proposed purpose of nano-towers is something that can and should be solved through UI improvements (area commands, repair/assist toggles) and not through the addition of a building.
Honestly the only reason I ever have a metal deficit is because I need something done instantaneously and use all the Fabbers at my disposal to finish it, causing an energy stall, which in turn causes a metal stall The issue is that Fabbers and Factories use up waaaaay too much energy, or Metal Extractors produce waaaaaay too much metal. And considering that a single tank takes 3 rounds to kill, either unit survivability needs to go up or energy use needs to go down.
Mitigating the downtime from rollout will be a much smaller issue once fabbers aren't ignorant to factories while on patrol.
