Multiple Bays per Factory

Call it an argument, call it a nerd fight, call it what you like. That's what happens when you throw an idea into a public forum. Everyone has their own opinion. For the most part people are just trying to help.

I agree it was a simple idea. Like I said, it was wrapped up within the first couple of pages. It probably didn't warrant 6 pages of discussion, but what can you do? There's plenty of people here and if they all just said "Hey, yeah that's a great idea" then it wouldn't be much of a discussion board, would it?

Posts on forum, complains when idea is discussed.

For real post this time.
I thought I was being second-guessed when I was referenced. I was just trying to clarify that. The nerd fight comment was about me.

*sigh*

Perhaps we agree but we just don't understand each other ?
The fixed build time I was speaking about is the rolloff time.
The building of a unit being decomposed in two phases:
First: nanolathing, as in TA/Supcom.
Second: fixed rolloff time.

I think it match with your idea:

While the idea of multi-bays as a core mechanic to deal with rolloff doesn't have too much merit because it's a big change to a minor problem, what might work is a purpose-built T2 spam factory with, say, 6 T1 bays that orders units in batches. It should be a more mass- and space-efficient source of build power than a regular T1 factory, trading efficiency for loss of flexibility. Mainly because T1 land factory spam in FA is ugly, but it's an inevitability if engineer assist isn't optimal.

Some example stats (in arbitrary units) would be:

T1 Factory
HP: 5,000
Cost: 100
Build Power: 12
Size: 4x4

T1 Mass Production Facility
HP: 10,000
Cost: 300
Build Power: 9x6 bays = 54
Size: 4x6

That's an interesting idea, but the mass production factory is clearly much more bang for your buck. There's scarcely a map in FA where you would want less than six land factories, so the single factory starts to look quite redundant.

But! It requires a bigger Eco to run so you can't make one first. Except that the more skilled players will micro their factory so that they don't stall. Even if the factory was forced to build six units at a time, every time, judicious use of the pause key could overcome this problem until the Eco could support it running at full tilt.

So the problems I see are: it becomes mandatory to make the bigger factory, and mandatory to spend time microing that factory in order to be competitive. It also very explicitly promotes spam, which may limit the number of ways to play the game.

The numbers are just placeholders in order to make the advantage of the mass factory obvious. In a real balance situation the advantage would be more slight (probably by a cost increase).

But you can't build one first, as I intended it to be a T2 building, and so requiring a T1 factory and a T1 engineer to produce (if teching up works like it does in TA, which is most likely given that Uber has implied a TA-like tech tree rather than a SC-like one).

Then I think it's a very good idea and would help to promote the idea that low-level units do not become obsolete.

Holy balls, 6 bays? That's a little bit on the crazy side isn't it? (I know that's just some random numbers picked, but still)
How about taking the T1 factory and have it branch to either be upgraded to T2 or get a second bay for parallel production of 2 T1 units at the same time (of course with an appropiate increase in build power).
Notice the "either". It helps with T1 spamming, but in order to both spam and stay flexible, you will have to use the normal T1 factory, which should prevent it from getting outclassed.

I see where the misunderstanding happened and it actually is my fault. In my mind I included the roll off time into the build time. Meaning I thought of it as part of the build time, which I didn't mention.

A minimum build time in this interpretation simply means, that after the construction of a unit is finished and it starts rolling off, the factory waits for a set amount of time, regardless of how fast the unit rolls off. Which basically is normalizing the roll off time.

I thought of this as an alternative to the idea in the OP, since the multiple bays visually suggest, that there can be parallel production, while his suggestion did not contain it.

Merely doubling the number of bays from 1 to 2 won't make a significant loss of flexibility. Six was actually me lowballing it. I had originally intended to say eight, because eukanuba was right in that on a lot of maps in FA six factories isn't even enough. There's not enough of a gap in performance between ordering single units and ordering pairs for it to be a meaningful choice except for the odd support unit. Six is about the minimum where you actually might care about being forced to make large batches.

Perhaps we could have a Michael Bay Factory that just explodes constantly? You could also get an upgrade where it pisses all over your childhood.

I still have to say that the TA method of factory's seems to be the most efficient when compared to the over sized factory's of SC.

Perhaps that's the model we should follow for PA's factory's?

The word "factories" has been correctly pluralised fifty four times in this thread. How did you manage to read the entire thread and not learn that?

Did that spelling/grammar error stop you from understanding the message?

No, but I'm honestly curious as to how someone can read a word over fifty times in 8 pages and not learn how to spell it.

Looks great, id like to have it.
Anything that makes the game look kewl is good for me.

Making factories upgradable is strategic in my point of view.
Dont want to loose a factory that has been investe to.

Someone call jurgenvonjurgensen.

We've got a code red.

Well played sir, well played.

I think six are too much, because to me it seems, that about three of them are enough for all your mass low-tier needs. I admit, there's nothing objectively bad with that, but I really like the view of a big number of factories producing at the same time, so I don't really want to cut into that a whole lot.