I thought the new patch would balance combat fabs

A dominant strategy sounds like a good thing to me. You just need lots of different kinds.

I totally get what you're trying to say, by the way. We're definitely looking into combat fabbers. I expect we'll see numerous iterations of different balances in the future.

I get it, my man. Let's have a discussion instead of thread-shitting.

You can't have "lots" of dominant strategies.
Dominant strategy is just that - dominant. Omnipotent. Supreme. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!! etc.

Dominant strategies are a bit boring tbh, unless theirs multiple... but then there's no actual "dominant strategy" as there multiple affective strategies. Combat fabricators ARE possible to beat, but it's just too difficult to win without using them... You shouldn't NEED to build anything to get a huge buff in power. They should be viable, everything should, of course- but nothing should make winning the game much, much, easier. I've beaten someone using them, but it's so much harder without using them...

with any rts game, for example, supreme commander, one of the best rts games ever made, had so much variety and had A LOT of strategies. I see your point Brad, but honestly no rts game should have a dominant strategy. It just becomes the same thing over and over again. I guess the factions in sup comm are a good example, a large variety of units with similar objectives adds balance and variety at the same time. But, i guess the hard thing is to find a way to do that in PA without making separate factions. But i can say for sure, that the first step is to nerf combat fabs, or have them only able to BUILD factories and structures, not assist.

I never used Combat Fabbers until recently

Uh, wow.

Yeah, they need a nerf. I know there's calls for discussion on it but I don't really know what more there is to say that isn't redundant. They are insaaaaane.

What about mines?

what about them? I didn't say anything about them?

If they can't build nor assist on buildings... they wouldn't be able to build mines either I assumed, unless they programmed it to have an exception.

What about, instead of just nerfing their abilities, you made access to them more difficult for example by making them T2. That way you still have to get your economy/base/army going without them, but once you get to them you can A) afford them, and B) massively boost your output, as should be the goal once a game starts getting down to it. I dunno, I'm pretty new to the game, just an idea.

Well there actually are T2 combat fabricators... I'd go more having the T2 fabs area heal with a slower repair rate, whilst T1 combat fabs repair very fast but on one unit at a time, t2 would be good for large forces, t1 could be better for repairing higher healthed units. (Actually it may be better to be the opposite.)

i said they would be able to assist the construction of buildings. Never said they would not be able to build mines

That'd be pretty cool.

Why not balance energy to metal consumption ratios overall instead? Or make regular fabbers as good as combat fabbers? Like instead of adding a layer of "fix" ontop of the existing system just tweak it a little. The problem is (as stated in previous threads) that they are the best builders but aren't intended as builders, this makes it strange is so many ways.

If you want me to elaborate more on what i mean with metal / energy balance read this -> https://forums.uberent.com/threads/what-is-economy-balance.58470/

If you want to read more about what i think about combat fabbers read this -> https://forums.uberent.com/threads/about-build-power-and-combat-fabbers.59483/

I won an AI game a while back, 1v4 by Area Reclaiming the enemy with mass combat fabs. They really are quite aggressive fabbers.

As for the topic of OPness, there is a difference between a Dominant Strategy and an Optimal Strategy. Optimal is what you see in SCII, DOTAII, LOL games where players have a general logistical plan to follow which will result in a high degree of resource-time efficiency. Dominant is... Say do you guys remember the PeeWee? Or worse yet the Flash Tank? That was a Dominant Strategy. Something that *everyone* can use as an easy way out. The resource-time efficiency is incredible, and not only that, it has a very low cost for the most important RTS resource - attention. Or APM if we're going to be competitive.

So why is this not good? Because it creates predictable (read: the opposite of emergent) gameplay, where going into a match, you are expecting to be besieged by Combat Fabbers. So you ready a counter to Combat Fabbers (let's assume there is one, which there isn't aside from using Combat Fabbers yourself, which is what scientists and philosophers refer to as "not cool"), we'll call this counter an Antifabber. It is a hard counter, and blatantly does more damage to Combat Fabbers. So, expecting to be attacked by a force containing Combat Fabbers, you mix Antifabbers into your army. If you encounter Combat Fabbers, you're ticked off after a while because you realize you do this every single game. If you don't encounter Combat Fabbers, you're still pissed off because you didn't need to build those Antifabbers.

So yes, blandly OP Units are bad because they...
A. Result in stagnant gameplay - Objective theory
B. Piss people off - Qualitative observation

Something I think that people don't realize, and what I think brad is trying to say, is that there are different types of OP and not all are necessarily bad.

So, lets say doxen where simply invincible. That would be bad OP- they would invalidate lots of other strategies.

In the current case, of strong combat fabbers, what strategy do they invalidate? None. They simply add a step that increases production potential. They supplement all other production strategies.

I don't think combat fabbers should stay that way because its a rather unintuitive use, but I do think that a stationary lathe tower with similar or even enhanced building power might be a good idea.

My suggestion is to move put the T1 combat fabber to the T2 build menu.
I don't think I have ever used a T2 combat fabber, how do they rank on the OP scale?

Combat fabbers do invalidate other strategies. They invalidate building lots of factories and they invalidate using regular fabbers to assist.

Your unintuitive is a big reason as well.

They're really great, but not as efficient per cost as normal combat fabs. I've used two advanced to help me build my first nuke ever in the latest patch. Basically good but not as OP because they cost a lot of metal..

So building lots of factories and energy is a must? I want to be able to win a game using just one factory. Needing 10 factories is BAD.

Come on guys.