Factory Complex

So game commentators are the be-all-end-all when it comes to definitions now?
And only 'renowned' ones at that?

Your standards are most amusing arachnis.

As WrongCat said, the game doesn't differentiate. You're projecting your own personal desires again without (seemingly) any knowledge of the technical aspect of the game itself.

Edit: If you actually had any arguments to address I would arachnis, but all you've got is your personal preference and nothing to back it up other than it's what you like.

Back to topic:

I'd like to make T1 power plants viable in the late game, but not by adjusting T1 and T2 to one another.
I also mentioned a way to do this earlier in the thread. But some people see problems with that by being forced to build structures adjacent to eachother (which people mostly do anyway, but whatever, they just don't want to be "forced", I understand that).

So maybe we should have a discussion about that? Whether an adjacency system different from SupCom would make sense in this game, whether it is realizable or not. And whether or not people want to see such a thing in PA.

Why not?

Tenacious, isn't he?

Because I don't see the sense to relativize T2 in making the two too similar. I think that you either want two tiers, where one is the one you're stuck with when you begin the game, and the other one a progression from that, or that you don't want two tiers. Anything in between would be inconsequential.

What is wrong with having T1 pgens be reliable/cheap, but low power generation, and T2 being several diverse options that give more power but maybe have other drawbacks (fragility, less reliability, larger size, etc)? This makes T1 pgens always useful because they are reliable/cheap, but you can still build T2 for increased energy while taking some type of risk.

I don't think there is any way currently to make T1 viable late game without changing T2, it will always be "build only T1", or "build only T2 as soon as you can afford it".

That's why I thought that there could be an upgrade for T1 to make it viable again. But people again had a problem with upgrades in general.

And there is nothing wrong with what you described there. But as long as T2 have better energy generation, no matter the side effects, we will always have the same T1 and T2 system as we have now. Where it is advantageous to focus on T2 to stay in the race. Those tradeoffs will only lead to more weaknesses to exploit thus more interaction and that's a good thing and I never argued against that.

It's a bad thing and we are arguing against it.

Could you imagine clicking through a vast field of T1 pgens trying to apply this "upgrade" to them? How would you balance this upgrade to allow T1 to be "viable" without it completely overshadowing T2 pgens?

Have you tried searching for those topics? You aren't the first to want/think of it and I've already linked you to at least one recent thread(twice) that talks about making sure that T1 and T2 Power options can remain viable throughout the game.

If you no longer want to talk about the topic you started this thread with, I'd suggest doing a new thread so long as there isn't an existing thread that doesn't cover the topics you want to talk about that already exists.

Mike

I wanted to make it so that a block of 3x3 T1 pgens could be combined into one structure, or at least creating some kind of connection between them through an upgrade. Before that I'd first introduce a way to create a perfect 3x3 block with a single click instead of nine clicks, to decrease micro and make it easier to apply the upgrade.

The balance question is a tricky one. I'd probably make it so that with upgrade, they generate a percentage more of what your total income is. So that it makes sense to build them at certain steps of progression, in favor of building more T2 pgens. But that you'd still favor T2 ones most of the time.

And Knight, why are you allowed to cross over topics, but I'm not?
Also I mentioned this when I explained on how I got to the idea with the Factory Complexes.
So please.

Percentage based energy increases?

Are you high?

Based on Total Income no less......

What do you mean?

Mike

If you make it really low then it won't cross your mind until very late in the game, where we will see a swap between building T2 gens and T1 gens in favor of T1 gens. But then again, the risk is higher too. If pgens of yours will get destroyed then having many T1 gens with upgrade will hurt you significantly more than having many T2 gens instead. Because the second one has a stable income, while the first one is dependant on the total income.

Why create some complex combining mechanic for T1 structures when you could just add a new structure with this function? I'm not saying percentage based increase is a good idea (the economy is already far too exponential as-is), but I think it would take vastly less development time to just add a new structure rather than figuring out some way to combine lower tier structures into more powerful versions based on their placement location, which the game would have to detect and verify. You'd also have to add some kind of new upgrade function with a new ui location... etc etc. It begins to get expensive compared to the alternatives.

It would take much less development time, and be more intuitive IMO, if there were simply T1 and T2 pgens that are balanced to always be viable, than to add in complicated mechanics that justify the construction of T1 by a mechanic that does not exist anywhere else in the game and is not intuitive or well defined.

Well like I said before, I'm not really the guy to balance stuff. I'd leave that to the devs.
But the alternative would be to make it more efficient to build the upgrade for T1 gens before building any T2 gens as soon as you reach T2. In a way so that it would just be a simple upgrade for T1s which you apply as long as you have T1 gens standing around, but so that it wouldn't encourage you in building new ones.

So that the upgrade would be cost efficient in comparison with T2 pgens.
But that building T1 gens + upgrade from scratch would be less efficient.

Also I didn't see an alternative, yet besides adjusting T1 and T2 to one another, which I dislike.

And why would I do it? Because it solves many problems, including micro.

That's you're counterargument? You dislike it?

Why do you dislike this option? It is a far easier alternative to implementing new gameplay mechanics. It is intuitive and easier to understand. It requires no new visuals. It has less micro (upgrading structures 1 at a time is micro heavy, upgrading them all at once is inefficient). It keeps the current visuals clean (is this structure upgraded or not?). The mechanics are easier to balance.

What are the downsides? I'm not trying to rake you over the coals or anything. I don't think your idea is necessarily bad, just that there are far easier and less complicated solutions. Would multi-structure upgrades be cool? Sure. Would they solve the problem? Maybe. Are there easier ways to solve the problem? I would argue yes.

Simplicity is key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

Roflcopter, I gave a pletora of explanations why I dislike it earlier in the thread.
That just proves that you didn't read them.

I mean adjusting T2 to T1 forces me to think of why there should be T2 at all?
It forces redundancy instead of preventing it.

Also the easiest route isn't always the best one.

Then you wouldn't mind enumerating them to counter my argument? If you have already written them, it should be a trivial matter to list them out, should it not?

Not to be an ***, but I've read through the thread already, I'm not sure to which points you are referring.