I thought the new patch would balance combat fabs

Equal Access is not the same thing as balanced.

Mike

Remove build Assist for Combat Fabber. Turning into pure cheese now.

cheese is something that relies on, and abuses your opponent having lack of information to defend it or punish you for it. That is, if your opponent gets information and reacts appropriately, you are almost certainly at a large disadvantage for doing it.

There is absolutely nothing cheesy about combat fabber economy. It's standard play. I love how people keep saying rush rush rush, when it's really just the stock standard, safest macro play. To expand safely, you need units. To get units, you need to expand.

The only real cheese this build is either air first or vehicles first. None of which rely on combat fabber.

I vote we double unit health and make the combat fabber repair only, can't assist in construction.

With double health, engagements actually last longer, and long enough for combat fabbers to actually make a difference. Right now repairing only matters with Infernos, Vanguards, and Slammers.

Doubling should be the least which should be done. Maybe even more.
(Except for Infernos and Vanguards - those are horribly out of place with their current HP)

Did you see the playtest video from The Realm's balance mod? They have double health and it looks like tons of fun.

Nice coincidence - watching it right now and also watched the beginning of the stream .
This is also why I said doubling should be the minimum. It looks fun but we don't know how much more (or less) fun tripling or quadrupling would be.

Did not uber mention in a video, that the way the balance things is to make it seem very strong, then gradually chip it down to a reasonable level. Balance in games is a challenge and not something that can be done willy nilly. Patients the game is still being developed, and they are trying out things weather its super cool or just odd we have to be patient

It looks only so much fun because they also changed a lot of other numbers in the same turn.

E.g. eliminating speed hack on all units, increasing health points in general and creating different unit roles in the vehicle and tech tree, rather than just going for "bots fast, vehicle armored, advanced even more armored" variations of the same archetypes. But foremost sufficient health points to be able to retreat and reformat with units before they get completely grinded up.

oh wow, that is pretty cool looking. I REALLY wish Uber would release a mod market for PA to test out scenarios in private matches with friends. Then, if the mod is useful or positively impacts the game, they could implement it into the actual competitive game. Come on Uber!

actually, no and a good example of this is starcraft. Why do you see so many builds at the high levels of play? Why isn't everyone 6 pooling, for example? Its because the game is balanced to a point where there is no one dominant strategy - every strategy has its weaknesses which can be exploited by a separate strategy. At that point it is not the strategy itself which determines victory / defeat but the player behind the strategy and the way that player responds to shifts in his/her oppenent's strategy. See the zaphod limit below

Fun fact, yesterday we played 3 major tests, out of those 3 I won 3 games building at least 80% Ants with not a single combat fabber in sight! Thought I can't account for my team mates! ;p

Mike

Actually we kinda to.

I commentated a match where they quadrupled the health of all units and structures. It was pretty bad. The micro was increased by a lot. If you sent an attack force to an enemy base, you had to babysit it. You couldn't give a command to move through the enemy base. The health was too great and nothing would get fully destroyed.

I agree that bulking up units would be silly for several reasons, but admittedly, an attack move command would theoretically deal with the problem of having to babysit an army moving through a base.

Um.... the problem with combat fabbers isn't their speed at assisting/repairing. It's their range combined with these factors. I nearly annihilated a foe that had an uncovered base by RECLAIMING it. It's like Warlords: Battlecry's conversion tactic all over again. If you assist a regular fabber yes it can near instabuild turrets after only a few combat fabbers are assisting. But these things can fight all on their own with the reclaim ability and they tear through enemy structures as fast as the flame tanks, but from almost as far away as the attack bots. Hell it even works on aircraft.

No idea if feasible, but altering the Combat Fabber's behaviour when assisting could fix the issue. Don't remove their assist ability entirely, but limit their efficiency and range to be equal to - or even below - that of a standard bot fabber. However, when they reclaim/repair, they perform at their current rate and fill their intended role.

Just my two cents.

Here's a fun Idea I haven't really explored: Build a fabber and a combat fabber to build stuff. Don't worry about metal as much as usual, at least until you have your factories running. Meanwhile, build a second combat fabber, and have him help the com build a metal storage. Have the combat fabber reclaim the commander. Just be sure to keep an eye on the coms health.