Multiple Bays per Factory

I put together this mockup to illustrate the point I'm about to make:


Above: The factory constantly stops production to make time for completed units to clear its lone assembly bay. This translates into lost production time, and in really strong economies, can be the main production bottleneck. This quirk also favours production of faster units which spend less time clearing the factory, and greatly favours air production due to their lack of collissions. This is how all the 'x' Annihilation/Supreme Commander games are currently like.

Below: Production of the next unit can begin immediately on the vacant bay while the occupied one is still being cleared out. Production switches back and forth and is a near constant. The result is readily viewable and dramatic.

Thoughts?

Frankly Roll-off time is part of a factory's balance when you have Assisting to account for, and even without assisting it's really just part of the time needed to build it, all that would happen is that overall construction times would be a second or 2 shorter, unless Uber arbitrarily lengthened them or adjusted other balance factors to match.

TL;DR - It doesn't actually matter in the end what you do, Unless Assisting is involved, then it matters a lot.

Mike

I always considered this as a way to encourage players to build more factories, rather than relying on one factory with a ton of engineers assisting it. With one bay, there will always be a point where building an additional factory would be more beneficial than adding more engineers to assist.

I somehow doubt the developers intented for this to be a part of balance, what with all the aforementioned quirks like why doesn't air production induce this, but that may just be me.

Ballanced Annihilation has this advanced player concept of building two factories(which aren't cheap) near each other and in the same general direcion your nano towers can point(nano turrets take time to turn) to mitigate the delay of factory run-off. But really, this is more of a micro-intensive tactic to overcome a hastle than a real strategic or economic incentive to build more factories(You're only going to build two or three, and no more than that.).

I like how it looks, it kind of makes sense from a "story"-point of view: Every faction uses the same tech because it is supposed to be the most effective stuff available, double bay factories look pretty effective, especially with engie assist around.
Gameplay-wise... well more production equals more units equals more fun, eh?

Air units A] Didn't have physics collision the same way land/sea units did and B] Air uits more or less leave by going straight up, of course it's going to take less time. And whether or not it was a quirky doesn't change the fact it CAN or might have been used for balance, heck for all we know Air is kinda wonky balance wise BECAUSE Roll-off didn't effect them in the same way? it's food for thought for sure.

Mike

I very much like this idea. Honestly I hope you can't assist in the construction of units. Building more factories should be a requirement. I think this is something Supcom 2 got right although I'd take it further and have no engineers able to assist in construction of anything. This allows you to balance build times of things like Nukes/Arties much more effectively. In Supcom 1, you needed a hundred engineers assisting your SMLs because they were balanced around you being able to do that.

I wouldn't go so far as to remove assisting. The idea I put forth has nothing to do with that.

I know you weren't suggesting the removal of assisting. I was just sharing my approval of the multiple bays concept, and further discussing construction/building/creation of units.

Neutrino has already confirmed that there will be factory and construction assisting in PA. Unfortunately, you multiple bays idea would destroy any balancing that assisting has.

On second thought I dont think this will change very much.
The production per factory will be higher, but the efficiency of assist will not be pushed up unlimited. In case of unlimited assist (=instantly build any unit) on a factory you will end up having to wait nevertheless, cause both bays are instantly full. You would just build 2 units instead of one before you have to wait, therefore reducing the wait-time by 50%.

The only beef I had with the roll-off time in SupCom/FA was that it was different depending where the waypoint of your factory was. It took quite some time for a tank to turn 180° on the factory bay and move out of the way for the next tank.

I like this, it would add to the feeling of an unstoppable war machine marching endlessly forward. I think that worries about balancing roll-off times are incorrect, tanks still have significantly limited speed and occupy a physical space, unlike planes in SupCom.

There are only 2 things I have to contribute here:

Firstly, if the reduced rate of production loss due to roll off time is accounted for when units are initially balanced than I fail to see how it makes any difference. In fact it creates a much more controlled way of balancing build time because, as previously stated, roll off varies depending on factory waypoints. Removing this means build time is the only factor.

Secondly, if everyone is using the same factories then everyone has the same advantage. In fact, when we consider the first point I made it's fairer all round. No one gains advantage by something trivial like setting a factoy waypoint in a certain way. I'm all for rewarding players for being clever and efficiant, but I don't think this is one of those situations. This sort of thing should be persistent across every factory for every player. Resources and build power control the rate of production. Not setting a waypoint. That always bugged me about building structures. Engineers weren't even smart enough to build at maximum range, choosing instead to keep moving until adjacent to the plot. This caused players to lose valuable time through unnecessary unit movement.

Care to explain why?

True enough, there would still be a certain production point where even two, three, four bays just isn't enough(hence why I called its production 'near constant'). However the threshold where a two bay factory would start feeling inefficiencies is still very high; compare that to a single bay where inefficiencies are immediately felt; and should you reach it, you only need half as many factories to make up for it. Going from one to two bays increases the production efficiency by a magnitude which diminishes when going from two to three to four etc.. Compare it to double tracking in railroading.

However, after reading through this thread, I'd like to think assisting won't be quite the prominent source of factory build power we see it now and you won't have to pump 200 metal per tick into a single factory. In either case the purpose of the idea isn't so much to crank the production efficiency to unlimited; but to eliminate the nuisances that only arise from having a single bay, like microing units to clear the factory floor as quickly as possible.

Exactly.

It reduces the amount of number-crunching required on the player's behalf without taking anything away from the game.

In Supcom, Cybran had a clear spam advantage as their hive could oversee multiple factories and thus didn't lose efficiency to rolloff time. Air units had a huge advantage here, as well.

Mass engineers were also balanced by being very juicy targets for bombers and artillery and all sorts of AoE. That didn't matter too much in Supcom because lolshields, but it was more noticeable in TotalA.

The biggest problem with rolloff time was that it was inconsistent. Different units and different factions lagged in different ways. Heck, even the unit's waypoint was a huge factor for efficiency. It'd be better for the factory to just pick the unit up and drop it nearby (or launch it skyward), so that no other factors can tinker with rolloff time.

So the idea is to eliminate and/or standardize the delay between unit builds by separating the build process from the disembark process?

I heartily approve.

It doesn't even have to be a second bay - the factory 'assembly line' could just shove the tank out of the way and be immediately ready to build the next one, and then the tank can drive away on its own time. Lots of animations / possibilities to make it look awesome.

You could also then have a unit that takes 10 seconds to exit (drive, float, crane, conveyor) the factory, but the build delay is only 1 second.

I like this idea. I don't understand what people mean about it screwing up balance.

You could also just have a piston/conveyor that quickly shoves the finished unit out of the way...might be simpler. EDIT: just realized like three people in a row said the same thing...I need to read threads more carefully. :?

I like the concept of preventing downtime due to units exiting the factory. The extra bays is one way to do it but having the factory quickly dump the unit out of the way is probably simpler. Who knows though, maybe with the flow field the units won't have issues navigating their way out of the factory and it can be used as a consistent balance mechanism.

I like the idea. Personally, I think it should be an upgrade. Not one that stops the factory (like the T1 -> T2 upgrade), but just something that drains resources for a while.