No Assisting

Edit: This post doesn't reflect my current opinion anymore. After putting more thought into it, assisting remains a feature I don't really like, however I can also see its appeal.
So take this as me playing devil's advocate for a more extreme position on assisting.
Especially the fourth point I mention is an important aspect, which I think needs more discussion.


In SupCom engineers could assist a factory in order to increase its production rate.
While you can add diminishing returns to balance it and the flow-based economy also keeps it in check, I still think, that it is a bad game mechanic and should not be in PA.

Why do I think this way?
First: It keeps bases rather small, since it reduces the need for a bigger amount of factories, seeing that they are smaller than factories and even provide further use.
This makes space a smaller factor when basebuilding since building a lot of factories isn't really required unless you follow a swarming strategy.
Not having assisting would promote building bigger bases and therefore make the surrounding terrain more important. An other aspect of this would be, that in order to expand their base, players first have to establish control over the area where they want to build, which could introduce more positional gameplay focussed around map and area control or denial.

Second: It devalues higher Tech factories. By the time you get your first higher-tech factory you usually have quite a number of engineers. Since higher-tech units are normally more expensive you aren't able to support to produce a big number of them so the need for multiple factories is already quite low. If players can instantly up the production to the level they can support and even beyond that, you won't see more than one higher tech factory. Especially since assisting is a lot cheaper than building an other expensive factory.

Third: It is one-dimensional. It provides benefits with no drawbacks. Having building faster suck resources faster isn't even a drawback, since achieving the same production rate with multiple factories would cause exactly the same amount of resource consumption. Not even that the engineer can't be doing an other task is a drawback, because assisting is actually the most consistent beneficial thing they can do, seeing that building, reclaiming and repairing are all more situational tasks.
My point is: It is too much of a Skinner box and too less interesting.

Fourth: It gives players too much flexibility. There is one aspect, which keeps assisting from being a no-brainer. It allows players to shift the focus of their production around, e.g. by pulling the assisting group from an air factory to a sea factory. However I argue, that this is no point for assisting but rather against it. The ability to change the focus of your production so easily basically makes your group of assisting engineers a universal factory. While this amount of flexibilty would ba a good thing in real life, it is rather harmful to the strategic aspect of a game. Good strategic gameplay comes from having multiple options with none being clearly better than the other one. A lot of flexibility allows players to deal way easier with the consequences of their decisions, which makes good decisions less important and therefore having a good strategy in general becomes less important.

While this is all I have to say against assisting in terms of increasing the production of factories, as far as I know the term assisting is also used for building structures with multiple engineers, which also allows for faster construction.

My take on that is pretty much the same: Losing a structure isn't as bad if you can replace it within a few seconds. Giving this a bigger impact on the game encourages players to take more care of their buildings and also rewards more aggressive players, since picking off something is worth more.
Losing Mexes which are farther away from your base also becomes more painful, which I think also encourages more gameplay focussed around the map features.

Assisting may be a cool feature, but after all I don't think it causes good gameplay. Rather the opposite. So in conclusion, I would like to not see it in PA and hear other people's thoughts on it.

Get out.

Assisting is one of the things that makes TA/SupCom unique. The ability to shift your economic focus from one field to another is absolutely required. Limit it based on space, and nanolathe distance like TA. Eazy peazy.

This has been discussed to death, and you've brought nothing new to the table. Why not go read the old threads.

I could save you some time though, you're bad and wrong.

This is yet another terrible idea which has already been comprehensively beaten to death. Read the old threads if you want to know why it's so bad.

I searched for other threads on this, but I didn't really find anything except for people mentioning it when discussing other topics.

Does anyone have a link to one of them?

EDIT: You are looking for this.

The search on these forums is ridiculously bad. It's a lot better to use google and add a site:forums.uberent.com/forums

Anyway, this topic should get you started viewtopic.php?f=61&t=35489

Another good idea, is for people to sort by replies and have a read of all the heavily discussed topics.

I do agree with his point though that it gives “too much” flexibility. However I happen to like it that way. I’ve never really been taken by the build order obsession in RTS titles; one thing I loved about supcom is being able to wage war with anything and everything I wanted, rather than having to focus anywhere specifically. It was about tactical positioning and troop usage rather than just what units you decided to build.

I disagree that flexibility is a bad thing. After all just because you can change your tactics, doesn't mean the mass you've already spent on one plan can be retasked easily. Resources are the right place for limiting flexibility.

Having instant access to counters I think can be argued to be a bad thing, however like I said, I still prefer it that way.

I think the alternative would require slowing the game down too much. Keep in mind instant isn't actually instant. The fastest you can build for example in FA an anti nuke would be 30s to a minute for the building and longer for the missiles. Having scouted the nuke a few minutes before launch I believe should allow the opportunity to defend against it.

Keep in mind though, most competitive matches don't have anywhere near that level of build power they can move at a whim.

You never actually have instant access to useful counters unless you are winning the economic war by an utterly huge margin. If you have the economy to drive an instant counter to some threat (say you can build TMD fast enough to prevent a TML snipe attempt) your opponent has the economy to instead launch a larger, more powerful threat which will take you more time to counter (you need vastly more mass and build power to put up anti-nukes at the last minute). The flexibility gives you a window of opportunity in which you can scout a threat and build a counter - it does not let you ignore intel and just spam counters to whatever your opponent does.

I know the mechanics behind the flexibility points in the OP. I just don't think assisting gives too much flexibility.

With assisting people pay for flexibility. Say you have too bases. If you want to be able to spend all your resources in one of your two bases then you have to build twice as many constructors in each to make an instantaneous switch. Constructor logistics limit your flexibility and your flexibility can be increased by spending more on constructors.

I like the ability to buy flexibility, itlets you choose how much flexibility you want at the expense of other factors. It is an interesting mechanic to balance in an RTS. Removing assist would force everyone in to a single economic layout.

The instant access to counters imho makes the usage of units much more important rather than having an I win button if someone doesn't have the right amount of upgrades and invested in enough the counter. Time is the factor. The way to beat this is proper timing on both the defenders and attackers side. Makes it more of a skill based game no?

I think the problem these people have is that they only have one plan of attack at a time. It's easy to counter a guy who suddenly decides to only sends planes. If someone sends planes while amphibious units circle around and there is a nuke being build, that greatly decreases the chances of successful counters.

NO

That is all.

Since the resource you invested into the constructors could also have been invested into the fixed buildpower, techs, combat units, power generators and metal makers, or something to reduce the opponent's time for reaction (having transporters or teleport gates to increase the travel speed, building some factories on frontline, having some radar jammers to hide your plan, better defense against enemy scout units etc), I don't see much inherent problem in assiting.

But I do think factories should have more build power than the constructors per cost to restrict flexility.

Ihmo, it should only be a trade off.
Engineer for flexibility and factories for efficiency. It allows peope to choose between multiple strategies.

Assisting is a great mechanic and should stay in the game. If anything, assisting should work for even more areas than construction (like the beam cannon+obelisk of light in CnC). If you don't like it, a hundred other games have static build times.

Assisting should only be removed for specific game changing weapons, such as nukes.

I support the idea that there should be diminishing returns for engineer assistance, and that goes for every engineer assisting the same target.