The role of the Mass Fabricator

Re: The role of the Mass Fabricator

Postby Pathogenic » 23 Mar 2013, 04:59

A_vehicle wrote:
Pathogenic wrote:The role of the mass fabricator should be a way to get a nominal amount of mass income after all available mass extractors have been upgraded to T3, and surrounded by mass storage. It should take quite a bit longer to pay for itself than mass extractors, but if an enemy can turtle long enough or be ignored long enough, they can make a significant difference over time.


They already fill this role. One thing that blows me away is that every time someone says "lets fix mass fabs" someone screams that they don't want to play sim city or vanilla supcom or that they have never played seton's clutch (btw how can someone avoid playing seton's clutch?). The key word here is fix. Mass fabs don't have to be what they used to be. They just have to be useful. You know what I mean? Oh course you do. That's why you're reading this, right?


I guess what I am saying is, I don't consider them broken, so they don't need fixing. I fully realize they already fill the role I mentioned. That is the role I think they should be filling, after all.
Pathogenic
Avatar-of-War
 
Posts: 144
Joined: 06 Sep 2011, 05:23
Has liked: 0 time
Been liked: 0 time

Re: The role of the Mass Fabricator

Postby pip » 23 Mar 2013, 09:41

I will say it again : eco values for mass fabs are probably fine as they are, not too good, but still useful as a subsidiary income source. What makes them really awkward to build is their crazy explosion. I'm all for them to explode and be a risk to your base. But :

1) having one t2 mass fab with just 360 hp be responsible for the death of all its brothers in a wide radius is ridiculous. It should explode and damage its fellow massfab, like pgen do, but not kill all of them. If the opponent kills 2, then it would kill more fabs as a chain reaction. Or if the t2 pgen is killed = all mass fabs linked to it killed. I think pgens work well like that, it should be an example.

2) the damage radius of the explosion is insane : 5 for t2 massfabs (pgens have 2.5 blast radius), 14 for t3 mass fabs (for 5000 damages). A t3 pgen has 10 damage radius, and it's already huge.

IMO, reducing explosion damage of t2 mass fabs to 250, radius to 3, and 4000 damages with radius 8 for t3 mass fabs would make them still quite risky to build but in a more reasonable way. Energy structures would be better to target first so that mass fabs die afterwards, instead of killing the mass fabs first, which are more vulnerable (less hp), and manage to kill everything super easily with a huge chain reaction.
pip
Supreme Commander
 
Posts: 1826
Joined: 04 Oct 2011, 15:33
Has liked: 191 times
Been liked: 86 times
FAF User Name: pip

Re: The role of the Mass Fabricator

Postby Rienzilla » 24 Mar 2013, 14:00

To chime in off topic: There is a little mod that enables and disables fabs automatically depending on the capacity of your energy storage. That makes a few t2 mass fabs pretty awesome even in their currect status, since they convert energy into mass that would otherwise have been excessed.

Oh and I'm in team 'explosions-are-cool': the extreme volatility of the mass fab is interesting, but maybe should be compensated by making the fab a little better.
--
Rien
User avatar
Rienzilla
Contributor
 
Posts: 145
Joined: 09 Aug 2012, 22:08
Has liked: 0 time
Been liked: 9 times
FAF User Name: Rienzilla

Re: The role of the Mass Fabricator

Postby A_vehicle » 24 Mar 2013, 23:03

I used to use that mod. It gives fabs economic IQs of +200. The fact that it was sim side made them very responsive.

However I have solid stat suggestions for the fabs that I have done alot of "mathing" on.

T2 Fab:
Code: Select all
Make it T1, and not buildable by unupgraded com, just like hydrocarbon powerplant
Energy drain: -100
Mass income: +1
Build Cost: 18 mass, 10000 energy, and 100 build time


This way the T2 fab pays for its mass cost every ten seconds (+10 mass) and costs its energy cost every one hundred seconds (-10000 energy). It will pay for it's mass cost in the sametime as a T1 extractor. You may be thinking "Wait! Making the T2 fab a T1 fab, then making it as mass efficient as a T1 mex, will lead to it's being spammed!". Fear not, for the energy cost (10,000 energy) divided by the build time (100) means that a T1 engie, with build power = 5, will spend 500 energy every second that it build the unit, and will finish it in 20 seconds, longer than it takes to build a T1 mex. This means that it will cost 1875 mass in T1 pgens to fund its construction and 375 mass in T1 pgens to run a single T2 fab. This will render the unit inefficient until cheaper power sources become available at T3 and still make it somewhat feasible to build in ones or twos at lower tech levels.

I'm still trying to figure out stats that would make the T3 fab hard to spam but still efficient. It should be about as efficient as a T3 mex in terms of mass cost, but be much more expensive in terms of energy cost. To be as efficient as a T3 mex it must pay for itself in about 255 seconds or 4 minutes and 15 seconds, but this would make a mass income of 12 require a mass cost of about 3000 mass. This would mean that, for it to refund its mass more than it costs its energy in operating costs, it would have to drain -1000 energy and cost 1,000,000 energy, or drain 390 energy (which would be ridiculously low) and cost 100,000 energy (which seems reasonable when compared with the energy cost of the RAS on most coms).

I'm going to keep analyzing this and making changes as I figure this stuff out.
Typical Voodoo Edition Map Dialog:
Master_lee wrote:Varaxis ist loser vote all my maps 1 !!! he cant make maps noob go home !!!!!!

Padfoot141 wrote:Terrible map. Spawn with 6 commanders and there are civillians with fatboys.

Master_lee wrote:Padfoot141 go home loser ! go play thermo !
A_vehicle
Avatar-of-War
 
Posts: 55
Joined: 31 Jul 2012, 03:20
Has liked: 1 time
Been liked: 2 times
FAF User Name: A_vehicle

Previous

Return to Patch 3622

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest