Uber devs and balancing.

So you like spam in all its forms, except that you intensely dislike spam when it comes to engineers?

Isn't that a bit of a double standard?

Why single out assisting engineers for your ire?

By spam we mean building only one type of unit, yes?

Building an egregious amount of one unit type is how I would define spam in this context, usually it's a given that the particular unit is overly cost-effective when massed in sufficient numbers.
That would include factories, turrets or mobile units.

I am not completely against engineer spam, but spamming factories is even better than spamming engineers
Also I am just making very general statements that probably have a lot of exceptions that are really far beyond the topic of this thread.

EDIT:
I am not even sure about what I would define as spam. Probably just generally build as much as you can of a certain typ of unit(group, does not have to be one unit can be one group like "factories" as well)

I suppose engineer spam wouldn't be that bad id they couldn't really do much straight up.

And/Or you could increase the cost of engineers, dissuading you from attempting to spam them out for the sole purpose of assisting a factory. That also makes buildpower more of a rare and precious commodity in the early game, thus dissuading assisted ComRushing and wanton expansion that's basically unpublishable with the current cost of engineers.

The casualty from that change is the breakneck pace of the current early game expansion rate.
Some people might consider that a good thing. I know I do.

This sounds to me like you are suggesting to increase the price of factories (less factories) and to increase the price of engineers as well.
So less units? I think you can guess what I think of that

Not less units, Shallower curve. You get the same amount of units eventually... it just takes a little longer to get there.

My goal is slowing the pace of the game. I'd keep most other units with fast build times, just not engineers, factories or anything else with buildpower.

Why wait in front of a package of cookie when I can have them now?

Because eating them all as fast as you can leaves you feeling sick.

If they were to change the balance of fabbers, I think I would like to see everything doubled. Twice the build power and twice the cost means you can send them out alone to build mexes. They rarely ever get used alone as it is.

I was thinking about keeping their buildpower the same, but quadrupling their upfront cost.

That is......interesting nano.

Not a fan of fabber blobs?

So, in the playtest the other day my tier-1 bot spam didn't work out as well. Granted, I dominated the initial starting planet, but John played smart, left the planet, and came back and crushed me with superior tech. Also, if you caught it, Adam was able to basically destroy my base with three battleships.

John keeps everything in front of him as he balances. He's a pro. It's probably important to keep in mind that when these changes go out in the wild, we can adjust values and behaviors after the fact, too. Balance is fluid like that, especially in beta. If something's OP and it's not supposed to be, it'll be tweaked.

Very strongly against them igncom1.

I'd also like to;
1, incentive people being more careful with their buildpower
and
2, give bombers, raiders and other strike-capable units into going after more than just the Commander.

If buildpower is made a resource in-and-of-itself then it becomes much more of a target for an opponent and is yet another strategy to potentially go for; cripple their buildpower, rather than just their economy or just their Commander on the first go.

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Brad, Thanks for the reassurance on that, but I think the issue isn't so much that people don't trust Scathis to know what he's doing, (I certainly believe that he's got a good grasp on things considering his previous projects) but whether he's flexible on the direction the game is taking and willing to perhaps explain his reasoning for said direction. After all we're all anxious to give input, but ultimately if it's against the direction of the game it's fruitless proposing ideas that don't contribute to that vision.

This game is already incredibly slow by RTS standards. Its not too bad since we only play on small single planets, but when the 'full' game goes into effect, you can expect even longer games. Im not sure longer games makes for a better game.

from when i was playing just before christmas, i was having a hard enough time getting enough fabbers out to satisfy my expansion. Late game sure, fabber blobs could probably be removed for another mechanic, but in the early game, build power is already limited enough.

Thanks for the reply Brad. Much appreciated as always. For what I have read he has been doing the balance along with Garat from the beginning. And a lot of the changes that have been implemented seem lazy and under thought.

From your games that I have seen it would appear that you guys aren't so sure what is op and by not seeing how these units are op it makes it harder to balance.

Scathis' process is to make some balance tweaks here and there, but primarily start with a focus on unit roster: getting more unit types in the game. Thats why you see things like combat fabbers, massive orbital changes, orbital platform, flak cannon, t2 bots as sniper bots, gunships, orbital fabbers, mines, and flame tanks.
He needs to get all these units in before he can balance them. So he's getting in some balance tweaks along the way, but in some ways there is so much more to come.

Come to think of it you haven't seen flame tanks, but the day is young!