Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factorys?

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

True enough.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I hadn't played enough FA to grasp this subtlety. I like the fact that multiple (same) factories are necessary to optimise unit production.

Flat balance exists in ZK because it does not have T1 and T2. It just has different factories. No tiers. All of the 11 standard factories can be built by the commander at the start of the game for the same cost.

There is one special case (strider hub) but it's not directly analogous to the tier system in TA or SupCom games.

In a game with the TA/SupCom style tier system, the cost and risk of upgrading to T2 has to be rewarded with units that are better than T1, or there would be no reason to ever upgrade.

In FA the difference between tiers is huge (so is the risk of upgrading). In TA the risks and rewards for teching up were substantial but not as large as in FA. I prefer the TA approach.

In ZK and, I think, TA, scouting is much more powerful than you describe it being in FA.

In ZK each of the 11 possible starting factories carries with it a few viable strategies. So, providing that your scout sees which factory your opponent has built (or any unit built by that factory), you can build appropriate answers to those few strategies.

If you were unable to see your opponent's factory choice for some reason then you would remain blind to many potential strategic possibilities, but it would be highly unusual for early scouting to fail this badly in even moderately competent hands, at least in ZK.

Typical early game flow in ZK is usually:

- Choose and build factory (first factory is free instant build) @ 10 seconds

- Build scout(s) and send towards potential locations of opponent(s) @ 25 seconds

- Meanwhile factory builds a constructor or anti-spam unit (or rush something) @ 30 seconds

- Scouts reach opponent and see their factory choice, try to kill some econ @ 40-60 seconds

- Tailor own strategy and factory build list to opponent's factory choice and any other important observations (commander loadout, are they com pushing, what's the factory building) @ rest of game commences

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I did do that. Even though they were hard to see in SupCom doesn't mean they will be hard to see in PA. From looking at the video displaying the terrain, cliffs have clear textures that makes them stand out compared to beaches for example.
In the Spring engine there is also the possibility to view elevation curves and unit traversibility. I should make a thread about it.

This is what happens in SupCom and it is largely irrelevant to the possibilities of PA.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Cliffs are visible, yes, but you don't care about cliffs, since cliffs are impassible to all land units. What you care about are hills where vehicles get stuck and bots do not. And remember that it's being mapped onto a sphere, so if anything it'll be harder to see than SC due to the distortion.

Unless it goes back to TA's transport dynamic (which would be a pretty serious step back), I don't see how they're going to make air units better at holding ground than drops without making ground units obsolete. Except flying engineers, but making those cost effective would pretty much obsolete the transport.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I made a thread about how to further visualise elevation and unit traversability.
I'd argue that it is even easier to see elevation on a sphere as you will see silhouettes of small bumps against the horizon and that they will be clearly contrasted against other background terrain even more than in standard topdown view like in SupCom. I played Populous The Beginning so I have experience from that game.
Most units in Spring games and Zero-K have major slowdowns as they get close to their maximum climbing capabilities. This means that kbots get the mobility advantage long before the hills get too step for vehicles and that the strategical importance between vehicle-traversible hills and non-vehicle-traversible hills is more fuzzy. I hope PA will include this aswell.

This also largely irrelevant to discussion about the number of factories unless you suggest that airunits and landunits should be in the same factory.