I thought the new patch would balance combat fabs

The game is supposed to be epic scale. Massive armies. Massive bases.

Gotta pick a game direction, and go with it.

i hope your joking... can't tell if sarcastic with text.

I can't really understand your point, are you saying having units be NEEDED are good by giving the example of how you need factories and economy? If so then yes, you do need those, but I just don't think any unit should be something you absolutely must use to have a great boost in productiveness, it feels silly... I love having unit composition, and you should be rewarded for not using one single unit to win everything and instead using multiple units in congruence to all help your entire army as a whole. Combat fabs, nor any unit really, should be able to help in so many ways... Like I said before, it's possible to beat someone using combat fabs without using them yourself but it's a lot more difficult than using combat fabs too, and normally you just win because you made better strategic choices.

You thought wrong

I wouldn't say using regular fabs to assist is an entirely different strategy, more of an implementation of a strategy, which is 'using fabricators to assist factories'.

And its still necessary to build more factories because of roll off times. You just need build some number of combat fabs in addition to factories.

That said, I do agree with you. I don't think that combat fabs are healthy how they are, and I think uber is also very aware of that and intends on changing it.

Clopse is just trying to make a point that you can't really justify units being "balanced" or "OP" because it's a matter of opinion. Earth 2150 and Warzone 2100 were good examples of games with very static basebuilding. You built a factory then that factory put out units, and you used those units to blow stuff up. You blew stuff up to complete mission objectives or get more tech to make your base better, not to build more bases.

Planetary Annihilation is a game where you build bases to build units to blow stuff up to build more bases with a final goal of blowing everything up. It's different, not better or worse.

It's just that most of the community doesn't like the idea of a single unit being able to build mines, efficiently erect bases and win a Fabber v. Fabber conflict. It is putting too many apples in one basket. It isn't inherently bad or good, it's just that people don't like it.

Edit: At least I think that was sarcasm. My friend played with Clopse back in the Alpha/Beta phase and based on the casts she sent me he seems like a pretty versatile guy with regards to gameplay.

tbh after my original wtf is this **** with the combat fabbers. I actually really enjoy using them, makes the game much more fast paced they can do with a bit of tuning admittedly but still i much prefer the fast pace we have now where a games up and running with in 5 mins rather 5 - 10 mins dicking about slowly building up eco and getting that essential t2 fac up and running for the eco boost. And i know people go on about energy stalling but my issue is always running out of mass. I often end up where combat fabbers come in handy again and i usually have one on a reclaim mission following my armies hoovering up fallen units and bases. This way i can currently have swams of t1 with some heavy back up of a much smaller number of t2 tanks which is how i always imagined pa. Waves of killing machines backed up by a smaller wave of lethal T2 tanks and mortars!

if people don't like it, i'm pretty sure by definition it would be 'bad'. A unit as powerful as the combat fab in these builds is the kind of annoyance that ruins rts games. Now, obviously the game is not even finished, but i think the majority of this community would rather build massive bases than have a few OP fabs build an entire Soviet Army before 30 factories can build 30 units.

But the point is that the combat fabber, i.e. a unit that isn't intended as or designed to fill that role fills it. It's not a combat fabber, it's the greatest builder at hand and it won't even be selected as a fabber but as a fighting unit. Balancing the game and the economy in general is a separate issue that combat fabbers best be left out of in my humble opinion.

If you want infantry style medic go ahead, but is you want to balance the pace, scale and economy of the game then just tweak the numbers concerned with resource production and consumption.

i have NO problem with combat fabs assisting the construction of building and eco. My problem is that they can assist the factories, and i believe tripling it's speed. That is just plain insanity. Look at the tournament matches, everyone uses combat fabs to assist factories at a point in time. In fact, i doubt you could ever win a 1v1 against someone who uses combat fabs (and you don't). That is not the way to build an RTS game.

Of course I was being sarcastic. I want more units just like most people. I don't see the point in wasting money on more factories and energy silos when I could be building tanks with it.

Since alpha keeping your commander building energy for the entire game has been the main strategy. This is different and I like it. The one downside I see is that bases are smaller, so easier to defend and harder to attack without trying to steamroll through.

All they do is speed up the early game, make it more exciting and help you spend your resources quickly. If you make a veh assisted and air assist fabber would that be ok?

And bare in mind they are just 50 hp.

So, I wanted to throw a correction out: there's a possibility that we may not be separating the repair / health rates of combat fabbers. We're still looking at them, talking about them, and thinking about possible balance changes, though.

haha ok you scared me for a second. Sarcasm doesn't travel well on the internet.

Releasing the game with an OP unit is a problem. OP units right now isn't the game isn't released. Most these things just show us if we want a unit to take one direction or another.

Really, all of the units across the board needs balanced just sudden like right at release time.

How do combat fabbers not create massive armies?

As for massive bases, why did people generally not have that much more massive bases in the builds before the combat fabber buff? Infact, at the same timings, people have bigger bases now than they did before in the days of t2 rushing. 'massive bases' depends on more factors than just combat fabber build power.

You are right. And I never said just that one change will make for massive bases.

In fact, I've said the opposite. I have dozens of posts all over the forums with quite a few recommendations on a bunch of changes that fix a lot of things, more than just combat fabbers.

Combat fabbers do create massive armies, but they do it in an unintuitive and (I argue) game breaking way. When I can have three factories assisted by half a dozen combat fabbers just sitting there... and that is more economically feasible and faster than building 10 factories? I don't think that's anywhere close to balanced.

Except the game is part way released. It is being featured on the front page of steam on a regular basis and has been featured on quite a few major gaming websites. Yet, at times feels like an early beta game rather than a "gamma" game.

I fear people are buying the game, trying it, and then tossing it aside because of how rough it is. And most of these people won't return.

Yep, I'll be doing a whole balance mod at some point which keeps more side grades like this! So I've put a lot of thought into unit roles.

So at the risk of everybody crapping on me for this, I haven't been certain that combat fabbers are broken, and so I haven't changed them. And yes, Scathis and I discussed this. I'm going to talk about the factors for hesitancy below, but that doesn't mean I've made up my mind, I'm just discussing factors. We may nerf combat fabbers in one of the ways described, such as disabling them for assisting, changing their rate in assisting vs healing, or whatever.

Maybe you feel combat fabbers are mandatory for top level play. Maybe you feel metal extractors are mandatory too. Mandatory doesn't always mean bad to me, but I agree it merits reflection. The more the mandatory thing dominates the entire strategic arc, the more scrutiny it deserves. But if it's just useful and you should have a lot (like metal extractors), it may not be so bad. It still might be bad for other reasons, such as creating lame micro or something.

Ok, so what if we leave combat fabbers exactly as they are. People will find a time early in the game to build them and then there will be a lot. If we decided it was ok, we'd feel obligated to make them not suck for micro, such as fixing their selection issues (though I think selection is just its whole own problem regardless).

The main thing against it for me is that they are so good for fabricating that I don't think people are using them for their real purpose as much, which is keeping units alive in combat. People weren't using them for that before because they didn't heal enough to matter and the energy usage would tank the economy. They got this way by fixing that (with consequences).

So my intuition is that they will probably change, but I will be sad that they lose this additional cool role in the game.

Also, they were this way along time, and it felt like I did some of the balance streams and kept saying, "Have you guys looked at combat fabbers? They are so good, why aren't you using them." and then it suddenly blew up like I didn't know they are good.

Finally, we made a lot of changes to balance and pacing and T1 viability, and it was time to stop and let it sit for a while. Unfortunately, that means we have to live with whatever warts exist as people learn to adjust. Sometimes people adjust and we're in a good place. Sometimes even after people adjust things need more changes. Either way we need to see how people compensate, because the community is creative and you never know what they will find.

What he said.

I would like to mention that the reason for complaint, at least for me, is that Combat Fabbers are just leagues better than regular Fabbers. Buffing regular Fabbers would be enough, I think the issue at heart is Energy balance.