We know there's going to be 2 tiers of factories and the general-specialization system is great, especially for the less produced Riot-Control, Stealth, Cloak, etc unit types. But I'm wondering if this is totally appropriate for units that don't have different roles but interact with the environment differently, e.g. hovercraft, spiderbots, amphibious. PA will offer a variety of environments which in turn will often dictate what units are most appropriate. It seems obvious that navy will be built on island worlds and air will be mass produced on very large open worlds. But I also mean that hovercraft will be more appropriate on swamp worlds, spiderbots in mountainous worlds and amphibious units on worlds with many lakes. What does this have to do with factories? Well I'm curious how the community thinks these different terrain-appropriate units should be treated. I would love to have an assault hovercraft, a spiderbot artillery and amphibious raiders but I'm wondering whether they should be considered T1 or T2. Should these units all be accessed via T2 Specialized Factories or should they have their own infrastructure e.g. a Tank Factory, Spiderbot Factory, Hovertank Factory with their own versions of analogous units. Should all these many analogous units be available to a general-purpose land factory? Do you want few factory types (Land, Air, Sea), few terrain-appropriate (Amphibious, Bot, Hover, etc.) units as T2 Do you want many terrain-appropriate factories (Tank, Bot, Hover, etc.) with analogous units (T1 raider, assault, artillery, skirmish, anti-air, etc. T2 specialized) http://zero-k.info/Wiki/UnitClasses Do you want few factories (Land, Air, Sea), many terrain-appropriate (Tank, Spiderbot, Hover, etc) analogous unit types (T1 raider, assault, artillery, skirmish, anti-air, etc. T2 specialized) In practice do you want access to many different unit analogues (e.g. T1 assault tank, assault bot, assault hovercraft, amphibious assault, etc.) and if so should they be produced at the same type of factory.
Not sure if serious... There's T1 Land, Air, Naval and Gantry structures, and T2 Land, Air, Naval and Gantry. These are separate structures that, like in Total Annihilation, do not "upgrade" from one to the next, but are separate structures entirely. You basically gave the choice of "Zero-K" vs "SupCom" without even acknowledging TA... which is basically what's confirmed from Neutrino and the rest of the Dev team. I am confused.
In addition to that, why do we have a choice between 'distinct' and 'similiar' units? Could you define how you mean that? I like Zero-K's system though.
I strongly dislike Zero-K's factory options. Unit's are thrown into factories higgledy-piggledy without much rhyme nor reason. The "Cloaky" factory doesn't create exclusively units with cloaking abilities. The "Sheildy" factory doesn't produce exclusively units with shields or shielding abilities... it has the Walking Bomb kbot in there... what the hell does that have to do with shields? Aeroplanes and Gunships are separate factories? Why?!.. and why are Aero-Transports in the gunship factory and not planes?! Yuck. What a mess... --- I'm sure there's a reason for all that... but do you understand my position? as a newcomer to such a game I wouldn't have a CLUE where to find the right factory to build a specific robot. Land, Air, Naval, Orbital Launch Gantry... that's all we need. Honestly Zero-K is confusing as all hell.
Well, I agree with that. Let me rephrase it then: I like the idea behind the factories; that is, 'spider' units, 'bot' units, 'hover' units... So we could have a 'Scorpion' Light Tank that has little HP but can crawl over mountains. A 'Tsunami' Light Tank that can hover and cross the water. Et cetera.
hi. i used zero-k indexes as a ready example. i'm not sure we need shieldbot factories or "athena" factories. but the gist of the latter choice is that there is little to no overlap between units within a factory but units from different types of factories can overlap. the former choice would be a few types of factories that have overlapping units but factories themselves do not have major overlap. I can clarify this in the OP.
Multiple factories with different units ofc. However zero-k looks pretty extreme in this regard. Air, land, navy with each a t1 and t2 is 6 factories allready. Imho enough. Add in orbital-factories? and other stuff I forgot and it will be more than enough.
Or you could have a T1 Land Factory which makes Tanks and Bots and a T2 Land Factory which makes "Specialised Tanks and Bots" So T1 Land Factory can make Assault Bots/Tanks, Scout Bots/Tanks, Artillery Bots/Tanks. A T2 Land Factory can make Hovercrafts, Spider Crawlers, Jump-Jet Bots and other very specialised types of units that do something unique.
Ultimately what should matter is the variety of units and how they interact with the environment. I'd love for there to be an assault hover tank that I can use in swamps or an assault Spiderbot I can use against my opponent's mountain base. Having 5 different T1 assault units though can make things confusing and while we may not have problems with navigating many units with similar functions I understand that it might hurt approachability. If somebody wants PA to be exactly like any other game they should go play that game. OP intent wasn't a push for a zero-k clone. I'm sure this has all been discussed in depth (based on nanolathes level of snark), so I apologize if I'm rehashing an old discussion. Edit: I guess nano beat me to posting but I wanted to comment on the point he made. In my opinion a full cache of environmentally distinct units can't be realized in a single factory without having upwards of 40 units. Now if you only have a single type of Jumpjet, Spiderbot, Hovercraft, Amphibious, etc unit that can work. But that's immediately ceding that you will not realize the full diversity of combat the game has to offer in every environment. Then again you could very well have a 40-unit matrix of by class for a single T1 factory. And perhaps this is what nanolathe means and what Uber has in mind. I just hope its navigable for new players.
That wouldn't really work. The bare bones of what I'd like (and what, in all likeliness, won't be made ) is a tank, an anti-air, and an artillery, in six or so different types. For example: Ordinary units / focused on HP. Say, tanks. Slower, shorter range, better damage (or rate of fire). Could perhaps come with the ability to crawl over mountains. Slower, longer range, better damage, slower rate of fire. Artillery-tanks. Faster, less HP, less rate of fire, perhaps more damage. Perhaps bots. Hover, probably with less HP or less damage or such. Invisible, see above. Sleek invisible stuff. And I could easily think of more 'flavours'. Perhaps give some the ability to fly for a short while ('jetpacks')? Or Mecha Tengu-like units, from Red Alert 3, that can transform between a ground and air based unit? Anyway, a massive amount of units. You'd probably need a scrollbar in a factory's interface. But having multiple (different) factories, each with their own flavour, adds some kind of soft teching too, which I'd like. I realise such a thing, in all likeliness, won't be in the game. But still, I'd like it.
Ya nlspeed, I agree and tell me if I'm misinterpreting this: You have 5-6 tanks with different stats useful in different situations without much overlap. And then have analogous bots, hovercraft, etc that have to be built at their respective factories. Building infrastructure would then be akin to soft teching. Gameplay wise there would be a stronger relationship between environment, infrastructure and strategy than simply choosing the appropriate unit from a single type of factory with many units.
sor for double post, I changed the OP and poll to further distinguish between the choices here. What I'm really asking is if you want to have a terrain-appropriate (hover, spiderbot, amphibious, etc.) variation of most unit classes (raid, assault, skirmish, artillery) and if you do whether you would like factory variations (hover factory, spiderbot factory, amphibious factory, etc.) or all of these units together as T1 "general-purpose" land factory units. I hope I articulated that okay.
I don't think a ZeroK type setup for Factories is needed for PA, especially if it follows the basic layout of T1 being General Purpose and T2 being Specialized. So for T1 you don't need all that many units, think of it like FA's T1, but either all bots or all tanks, same basic roles, some differences to accentuate differences in Unit type(So a tank unit might be more of a raider while the same Bot unit might be more of a short range brawler or something, it depends on how Bots and Tanks are differentiated) Then T2 is all the specialized units, the Spider Bots, the Hover Tanks ect ect and this works out even better if We /Uber can deliver on the ideal of not making T2 replace, only accentuate T1 units, so the T2 factories won't need powered up versions of the T1 units, we just keep building T1 units out of our old T1 Facs and focus on using the T2 units, with thier special movement types, 'abilities' and weapons to add the flavour and unique compositions. Mike
This is a good starting point, but there is most certainly room for overlap between the two major tiers. The only major requirement for making a T2 unit, is that it doesn't work well at T1. A bomber might be too good of a Comm killer, or a stealth unit might be too insidious. A flying constructor may be too effective at capturing certain key points or some other thing. Similarly, a unit may not work well at T2 and demands to come earlier in the game. It's a bit silly to not get your basic battle tank first thing, and it's tough to manage marshy maps without a strong hover choice. Most of this stuff remains to be seen. A simple adjustment in tiers can dramatically change the flow of the game. A reclaim bot is probably the most powerful example, because it works directly with your economy. If it comes early, then there is a frantic race to secure whatever wreckage remains on the map. If it comes late, then it is more useful for dealing with the aftermath of battles, while more generic engis handle the early game. Either way creates a very different pace.
Would love to see much more fantastic moment options in T2 for otherwise T1 combat units like spider legs or jump-jets. Allowing a T2 factory to produce a otherwise mainline combat unit that while out competed in a 1 on 1 with a T1 combat unit, they have much greater uses and strategys to their employment. Hammer vs scalpel.
OP was probably trying to express too many thoughts. Here is what I was getting at: 1) Should there be ZeroK-esque unit classes (e.g. raider, assault, skirmish, artillery, riot)? 2) If so, should there be terrain-appropriate analogues (e.g. tank, bot, hover versions of the above unit classes)? 3) Lastly should terrain-appropriate units be built at many distinct factories or in the land, sea, air framework? I'm hoping 1) is a yes and they also include Unit AI to automate things like kiting and dodging. I think 2) might be on Uber's radar but is obviously a more long term goal to flesh out with updates. I'm guessing 3) has already been decided by now - and it's likely it'll be a Land/Air/Naval or Vehicle/Bot/Air/Naval framework.
I'm liking the idea of a tabulated factory type thing. Few factories, which have separate menus for each type of movement classification for that factory (eg, Land has 4 menu's you can switch between, each with its own units. Hover, Legged, Track, Extra - extra would consist of things that don't cleanly fit, like units that can change to flying or something)
4th tab could also be amphibious e.g. moves on ocean floor I too like that idea. There would still be a necessity for T2 specialization with such a system, you'd obviously still want things like mobile TML (single target arty), Riot Control (T1 spam counter), Anti-Naval, Mobile SAMs, stealth, cloak, and any other type of support units for T2. The great thing about having terrain-appropriate analogous units though is that it enables you to play to other strengths than simply the binary "i have more units i should attack" and "i have less units i should hold position". Instead you'll be thinking "i can assault the mountain base with assault spiderbots" "i can siege the marsh base with hover artillery".
