There's a difference between gameplay and lore. Lore doesn't need to affect gameplay. Some people prefer that it does, but at the cost of the gameplay. If that's what you want then that's fine. That's your opinion and my opinion differs. I think gameplay comes first and lore fits around it. PA has no real lore, it's new. And I'll explain why it isn't a stretch to have buildings that can unlock blueprints for t1 fabbers while also fitting "lore". For gameplay, build times and costs can be adjusted to pace the technology and economy to be exactly the same as how they are today. So the argument against getting rid of t2 fabbers is that it would go against non-existent lore and doesn't make "sense" because of "magic". Why can't you make up something to fit the lore that you care so much about? Why can't the fabbers get new blueprints sent to them via wifi once a factory is built? Makes sense to me. How could a commander know exactly the terrain and atmosphere on every planet in the universe? He doesn't. He only knows how to build the most basic stuff because they're small enough to work in any environment. Factories must research the terrain and atmosphere to design blueprints for advanced buildings that will function in the environment. There you go, there's some made up lore for you. There doesn't need to be "magic" involved at all. A plausible story can be made up, but it's just a STORY. Why should it impact gameplay decisions? It shouldn't! Please stop arguing against gameplay suggestion because of lore. If you don't like a gameplay suggestion because you think it's bad for gameplay then please please discuss it! But if you don't like a gameplay change because you can't come up with a way to make it fit the non-established lore then please go away.
Thing is, by upgrading t1 fabbers to build t2 stuff, you completely overshadow t1, which is something the devs have said they don't wanna do. By having that extra step to build t2, t1 can still maintain it's validity because any t1 factories you build will never be able to build t2, and what point is there in building a factory that you won't keep using? And most of the point of the game is to build econ to supply factories to constantly build units.
I'm fine with agreeing to disagree on the importance of gameplay and lore marrying up. I have no doubt it can be made to work, the question is why do it this way? This method has been chosen to match the games' predecessors. We know it works so you need to argue why the other way is superior. So far, you haven't really given any decent reasons for this, these are the arguments so far: Selection/distinction of T1 vs T2 fabbers. Undisclosed "UI problems" "less clutter and less useless units laying around" UI issues at this stage are moot. As for the third point, how are T1/T2 fabbers made useless? I'm really failing to see the problem here. PA isn't the first game to use this system; it worked fine in both Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. Having a gameplay element that is disjoint from lore is a very valid reason for not wanting a gameplay element. These sorts of things are what makes games feel "gamey" as opposed to feeling like the game exists within a plausable world.
Lore Excuses: A Commander knows planet terrain before he lands because of a long-range scan, that cannot detect enemy units. This is because all units use some sort of cloak/jam, which can only be detected by unit-mounted sensors. Kinda like Sonar. T1/T2 Fabbers are separated because blueprints aren't just a few thousand polygons, but rather are a few tetrillion polygons/stored as complex point cloud data, and as a result are several million terrabytes in size. Due to the fact that they actually have to have working internal parts that is. I can't imagine a Nanolathe is a very simple thing to build. Receiving several million terrabytes of information over wifi would be impossible unless you were beaming it using something like super-duper-gamma rays to carry the information, and even then it would mean a massive breach of security unless the data was encrypted, which would mean an even LARGER amount of information being transferred. But that's all moot because PA is designed to stand up on gameplay instead of story. Yes, story is an invaluable element, but you must admit that SupCom would have been just as good without a story, primarily because the story as shallow as "These bad guys are building a planet-kill death-weapon. We gotta STOPS THEM!" This is also probably the reason SupCom was somewhat of a niche game. Half of a game is the story, and if you pass off on half the game... Yeah.
I have stated some of these earlier on page 1 and have stated number 3 numerous times. 1) It is difficult to determine what tier a fabber is at some zoom levels 2) Selecting a group of t1/t2 fabbers does not bring up the building ui 3) Their existence can be removed without impact by changing some numbers around, therefore the only reason t2 exists is because of "lore" and that isn't a compelling reason to keep them around Do we really need 8 different types of fabbers?? (2 sea, 2 factory, 2 bot, 2 air) Requiring t2 fabbers to create t2 buildings is arbitrary too. So is a tech tree. They both fulfill the same purpose, but one is more convoluted (t2 fabbers in case you're slow). Who cares!? Why don't we have 24 fabbers instead? Sounds smart? **** lore. It ruins games.
1 & 2 are due to an incomplete UI. No gameplay changes should be made to accomodate this. 3 is not true. There are strategic impacts to limiting construction to a smaller number of engineers. Performing a strike on an enemy firebase for example could focus on T2 fabbers, greatly reducing construction potential and delaying the building of T2 units until the enemy build another T2 fabber to replace it. So lore isn't the only reason they exist, nor can they be simply replaced by giving T1 fabbers the same build options and tweaking the numbers. Avoid the personal insults. There is already the precedent of T1 Factory > T1 Fab, so how is T2 Factory > T2 fab convoluted? Lots of people care. Otherwise we wouldn't have tanks fighting, we'd have square blocks. Having tanks fits into established norms that people can relate to. Lore exists to explain deviations in-game from IRL reality, so that the universe is coherent and makes sense. This not only allows a greater sense of immersion, but makes it easier for new players to pick up the game and infer how things work without having to learn a bunch of arbitrary game mechanics. Avoiding lore in game design is a cop-out, and results in a poorer game. There are also gameplay reasons for not having "magical" upgrades. See threads on the GPG forums regarding SupCom 2's research system, and how having tanks get upgraded in the field is such a bad idea.
