When you select a group of fabricators of different types you will find that none of the buildings will be available. It would make life a little bit easier if when you select a group of fabbers, the UI will show you every building that you can make with that combo. I dont know if they dont have plans for it or if they have just not added it, just throwing this at the forums I searched for this and couldnt find a thing, so i am starting a new post It is really a very small thing but if the idea of this game is to be macro, this small thing can actually be quite annoying.
I'd be tempted to log this as a bug on the tracker, however I'm not 100% certain it should be a feature. In my mind certainly, but whether it's planned...
The selection of multiple units need to work well. There's no reason selecting multiple types of units should allow some way to control their unique abilities. How exactly we go about that, we don't know yet.
Well, if we had a better indicator of what units were currently selected, we could highlight per-type, like Starcraft 2 does, and cycle through them with the tab key. (Control groups also remember which sub-type is selected when they're made)
TA didnt show any options either. It would be nice to be able to select from the entire group of build options of a group of construction units, but the construction unit(s) that is able to build the selected option needs to start the construction with the other unit(s) assisting. That requires some work.
you have touched my pain point! This happens a lot to me, I usually have over 30+ fab aircrafts with an adv one which gets lost in the crowed. it is very frustrating to pick it up and build something advanced. What if we give them rank/priority. a mix of basic/adv air = adv air wins the menu a mix of air/land = air wins... something like this or extend the UI menu to include all build options. in all cases, please do not leave it as it is now.
It's simple. Have tabs of buildings for each type of fabricator available. Then whichever tab you use(it indicates which unit is used) then all others assist that one. That way with only one or two clicks you can shift between the fabricators and their build capabilities and build accordingly
Why do we need different tiers of fabbers? Isn't it enough to restrict T2 buildings until an advanced factory is built (or the sea/air equivalent)? I really see no justification for t2 fabbers at all. It's just confusing and annoying.
T2 fabbers build faster (assist T1 units to build T1 defense FAST). They also give you access to T2 tech, like Radar and ECO, which with limited metal spots matters. It creates a more dynamic flow in-game. I for one would hate to see them disappear. Though T2 is where it should stop. Although it seems like orbital will sorta be this games "T3" in terms of the stage of gameplay.
I understand all of that. I'm asking, why can't we get rid of T2 fabbers and force T2 factories as a requirement for T2 tech and adjust the build times however makes sense. I'm not a fan of having useless units sitting around which introduce difficult to solve UI problems. Problems such as identifying at a distant zoom level which tier a fabber is or the problem of selecting a group of fabbers only to have one sneaky bastard in the group not of the same tier which prevents you from seeing the building menu UI and then being forced to try to pick it out of the group so it stops screwing you over. There are solutions to those problems but they're just not as elegant as removing the problem entirely. Build times and build costs can be adjusted. I don't see any need for the added complexity of tiered fabbers. Complexity for complexity's sake is not cool or fun. I mean, unless you like doing things like reading books backwards and only speaking in latin.
I endorse this heartily. Actually, this in one of the features of sc2 that I totally missed, till like 3 months ago. And I've been playing that since shortly after release. It was just never....... obvious enough. Tabs (and using the tab key) make this more obvious. Also, it lets you choose which builder you start with, solving the "commander can't make t2" issue, especially with control groups. This just seems a little to "upgradey" and allows quicker t2 without having to build any more economy to handle it. If you have enough mexes/pgens for the t1 fabs, you don't need any extra, unless you want to build stuff from the building. Needing econ for that building and the fabber to make t2 stuff, paces the game a little better IMHO. You would be cutting out the time to build econ, and the fabbers to build t2.
Because factories don't build advanced buildings, advanced fabbers do. Most other RTS games have a concept of a tech tree or similar methods to bulk upgrade existing units or buildings of a type. TA / PA explicitly avoid that, a unit is what the unit is. So building an advanced factory doesn't magically give existing fabbers the ability to make other advanced buildings. You still have to spend the extra resources to build adv fabbers. Think of it more like you've built a ton of Ants. Now you build an advanced factory and all your Ants turn into Levelers. Now either you just got a bunch of expensive units for "free" or the vehicle factories now only build Levelers and not Ants but they cost the same. This game's economy model is explicitly designed around the need to expand your economy production to support a large army without using something like supply depots to artificially cap unit counts. We are going to include the concept of explicit upgrades, at least for metal extractors. That's more a streamlining of the current build mex > destroy > reclaim > build adv mex gameplay flow to build mex > build adv mex to reduce micro rather than for tech tree purposes.
If T1 factories were the req. for T2 factories then everything would be exactly the same as it is now except you wouldn't need to build 1 fabber because the commander could build the T2 factory. The only time that would be cut out is the time it takes to build 1 T1 fabber. So, increase the build time of the T2 factory by 10 seconds? Economy is completely irrelevant here because the only thing that would change is the 10 seconds to build a T1 fabber. You still need the same economy to support T2 factories either way. Also, who the hell would build a factory and then a T2 factory straight away? That would take longer than building a factory, resources and fabbers to assist. Once it's finished you wouldn't have the resources to build anything out of it anyway. "upgradey"? What do you call the process of having a commander build a factory so you can build a t1 fabber to build a t2 factory to build a t2 fabber to build a t2 turret then? I call it lunacy. A T2 factory should require a T1 factory to be built. A T2 turret should require a T2 factory to be built. There, now T2 fabbers can be removed. Simple. Yes and this causes some pretty big UI problems. So PA deviates from a tried and true concept for no benefit because..... a unit is a unit? You need to tie that logic together somehow. Edit: I'm not arguing for existing units to get buffed whenever a tech tree is unlocked. The only thing I'm arguing for is for fabbers to have buildings unlocked via using a tech tree simply so we have less clutter and less useless units laying around. I am NOT arguing for buffing any existing combat units or buffing/nerfing any economic aspects. Why is it magical? Maybe the commander and fabbers don't have the tools necessary to build a T2 buildings without a T2 factory? Maybe they beam in pieces from the T2 factory to make the T2 buildings? Who cares, gameplay doesn't need to be tied to a realistic backstory. Why can't I "magically" build a T2 tank in a T1 factory? It looks like there's room for one, but the answer is, you just can't. You're not crying foul over that. Then raise the cost of T2 buildings slightly to offset the time and resources gained by cutting out advanced fabbers? That's not even remotely what I'm arguing for. I'm talking about combining the T1 and T2 fabbers by using a tech tree to keep economic requirements exactly the same as before but with one less unit type cluttering up the game and making it difficult to build anything without resorting to slopping UI tweaks on top to fix the flaw. And you haven't played much sc2 because that game is far more focused on expanding and economy because resources are limited. The unit cap in Sc2 is there for many reasons, none of which have anything to do with this topic or with what I'm arguing for. I agree that we need to be able to select all units at the same time and tab cycle through them, but not because of the t1/t2 fabber problem, but because that's just a great UI mechanic. But it doesn't solve the problem of having to cycle to t1 or t2 separately to build specific buildings. It introduces a way to do it faster, but it's still a hindrance and we don't need more barriers between what the user wants to do and how easily they can do it. To be clear, I'm not arguing for the economy to change at all. I'm arguing against the existence of tiered fabbers. Nothing justifies them being in the game because they can be removed from the game without impact by using a tech tree and making some build cost tweaks. Tiered fabbers just get in the way.
That should be music to everyone's ears. Are you leaning towards the mex upgrading itself, or requireing a t2 fab to build "on top"?
I call it tech progression, and something that can be tuned for game pacing, and something that allows t1 to actually not be completely overshadowed by t2 really quick.
Removing t2 fabbers would not make any impact on the game if the build times and build costs were adjusted for that change. Imagine the tech tree described and then imagine all of the build costs and resource costs adjusted so that the game plays at exactly the same pace as before. That's what I want.
I disagree, having a structure-based tech tree is an arbitrary starcraft-style balancing kludge, and makes no sense in the PA lore. Why would a factory have blueprints for structures it can't build, and why would this magically upgrade all your fabbers instantly (potentially on another planet)?
The commander has all the blueprints for everything his faction can build inside him. He builds a factory, say land. That factory has only the blueprints for its land units, and all the blueprints for everything a land fabricator t1 or t2. Then you build a fabricator T1 from said land factory, it has all the blueprints for everything the factory had. It builds a T2 Factory. That T2 factory only has the blueprints for the T2 tier of units and buildings. It builds a T2 Fabricator and that T2 fab has the exact same blueprints. That's how it works so far. Why the commander is doesn't just build T2 stuff himself? No idea, makes absolutely no kind of sense, seeing as how he has to store every blueprint himself. I'm guessing its a .zip file of some sort, and as such it can't actually access it, but has it in its memory banks. So really, building the T2 factory would just allow the t1 fabs to have access to that secondary memory block, with the T2 blueprints in it. Or at least, that's how I'm seeing this work, if you go for having just one tier of fabricator. If you don't, well... memory storage issues would be the only thing I can think of as to why these super advanced robots couldn't all build everything anyways. Especially the commander.
To use an analogy, I may know how to make both basic and advanced tools, but I need to make and have basic tools in order to make the advanced ones. Just because a factory builds a unit that makes advanced structures doesn't mean it has the capability to do so itself, and even if it did it shouldn't affect existing fabbers magically.
I totally agree, it shouldn't effect existing fabbers magically. I'm just saying that would be the basis behind having 1 tier of fabricators, that the tier 2 factory unlocks those blueprints. Everything built in the game is made using the exact same tools though. That green nanobot stuff. As such, anything that has the blueprints available should be able to build anything they want with it. That just makes sense based off of what they are, and what they use to make stuff. Now, if everything is partitioned off so that for the sake of efficiency only certain things have access to certain blueprints, then -shrugs- okay that's just how the robot army's have found works best, so they stick with it. Main issue, really is that building any t2 building with a t1 fab is well, a crazy long process. I can see where they wouldn't want to have that happen, so they keep the two different tiers separated like they do. One would think at the least though, that the commander would have access to building everything any fabricators on his planet can build though. I mean, it can control them all, stands to reason it can use the blueprints they have available without having to have them start the construction. Especially since it builds things more efficiently than anything else available.
