Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-31T01:42:29+02:00

BlackFish wrote:
I like what I'm reading here. If I'm correct then I won't have to surround t3 air facs with a billion engies to get air out. This would also help with performance since the unit cap isn't spent on engies.

Well, if the OP change is made, you will only need half as many engies. If the buff to T2/T3 engies is made, you will need as few as 1/9th as many engie. If both, you will only need 1/18th as many engies.

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 31 Jan 2012, 01:42

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-31T01:41:23+02:00

I like what I'm reading here. If I'm correct then I won't have to surround t3 air facs with a billion engies to get air out. This would also help with performance since the unit cap isn't spent on engies.

Statistics: Posted by BlackFish — 31 Jan 2012, 01:41

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-31T00:56:19+02:00

noobymcnoobcake wrote:
T2 factories 2x build power
T3 factories 3X build power
T2 engineers 2x build power
T3 engineers 3x build power

This means build power to mass ratios don't change much over the tiers and you will need less engineers assisting or none at all at early T3.

T2 engineers with 2x build power will have 20 and that will make them more efficient builders than T1 engies. Changing T2 and T3 factories by 2x and 3x won't make as much of a difference.

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 31 Jan 2012, 00:56

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-30T23:20:57+02:00

I'm not yet sure there is a problem with massive clouds of t1 engineers, but assuming there is, I think increasing the build-rate of t2 and t3 engineers is the solution. Making them more mass/build-rate efficient would make them valuable later in the game for assisting. As it is, they are mainly used for starting a project and having a swarm of t1 engineers actually do the building work. The reason why you have 50 t1 engineers on a t3 factory (with all the problems that brings) is because they are the most mass efficient way to increase the build rate of a factory (approximately 3x cheaper than t3 engineers).

If my goal were to increase my build rate, making higher tech engineers more efficient would help solve the problem of unwieldy flocks of t1 engineers. As it is now, I only build the number of t3 engineers as locations where I need t3 projects built. There are many late games where I find myself spamming experimentals and haven't even built a t3 engineer because my commander is t3.

I think there is a natural value to having a unit with more higher tech schematics in its portfolio, but when only three t1 engineers has the same build-rate for 1/3 the cost, the ONLY value of the t3 engineer then becomes its schematics suite. The question for the community becomes whether or not we want t1 engineers to be the only efficient unit of build-rate assistance? Broadly speaking, my answer is no.

For this reason, I don't think changing the factories build rate is the solution because I personally like the strategic element engineer assisting factories add. If t2 and t3 engineers were building at the same mass/build-rate ratio as t1, then we could eliminate many of the current annoyances of 100+ t1 engineer factories because it would make sense to put fewer, higher build-rate engineers on the job.

Statistics: Posted by Antoninus — 30 Jan 2012, 23:20

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-30T19:55:46+02:00

T2 factories 2x build power
T3 factories 3X build power
T2 engineers 2x build power
T3 engineers 3x build power

This means build power to mass ratios don't change much over the tiers and you will need less engineers assisting or none at all at early T3.

Statistics: Posted by noobymcnoobcake — 30 Jan 2012, 19:55

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-30T06:24:49+02:00

Well, if it matters then you can adjust all buildtimes to be less by the exact amount of the cooldown.
But that's probably out of the scope of FAF.

Statistics: Posted by AdmiralZeech — 30 Jan 2012, 06:24

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-29T17:55:43+02:00

AdmiralZeech wrote:
Maybe a cooldown after each unit built for factories?

Then you're just nerfing unit production.

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 29 Jan 2012, 17:55

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-29T13:42:37+02:00

I've always wanted all factory rolloff times to be consistent and somewhat long, to promote more factories rather than engy assist.

Maybe a cooldown after each unit built for factories?

Statistics: Posted by AdmiralZeech — 29 Jan 2012, 13:42

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-29T11:39:53+02:00

Funk's balance mod does a pretty good job of reducing the number of engys required by making t3 engies have 45 buildpower . Now 2 t3 engies are equal to 18 t3 engies, making hordes of t1 engies less valuable late game.

Statistics: Posted by Icy — 29 Jan 2012, 11:39

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-29T05:21:35+02:00

After twirling the numbers around for a while, I think what you want is impossible. You want a solution that reduces the number of engies needed, but nothing else should change gameplay-wise. The problem here is this:

Factory has X build power, engi has Y, no. of engies is N. The equation for BP is X + (Y*N). Nothing you do with those numbers really solves the problem that more engies is always better than less, you'll have to change the equation. You'll have to make the marginal utility of one engi more decreasing like in the example I gave, first works at 100% and rest at 95% of the one before it (or whatever % you prefer).

You'll have to attempt some combination of increased factory BP and sharply declining marginal utility for engies working on the same factory. It might be viable to combine this into a model where additional factories have a decreasing marginal utility. First factory works at 100% efficiency, second at 90% of that and so on. At the very least you'll get the engineers to spread out and not become a massive pathing problem.

Unfortunately I think you'll have to decide on what is an "acceptable" number of factories for optimum production and tweak the numbers to reflect that. One is too few, a dozen perhaps too many. Pick a number between and go for that.

There's also the need to check experimentals build costs afterwards, especially if they are affected by the decreasing marginal utility.

Statistics: Posted by perkl — 29 Jan 2012, 05:21

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-28T08:04:32+02:00

This is a good idea for a few other reasons as well, mostly relating to problems caused by having 50+ t1 engineers around a land fac. Massive engy spam around a single fac causes all kinds of pathfinding issues. First, units coming out of the fac can get stuck on the engy horde and require a lot of click spam to get them free. Second, they bumpercar like crazy if you tell them to do something other than assist the fac. Third, t1 engineers take up a lot of unit cap for the levels of buildpower you need lategame. They can also lose you the game when an exp gets multiple vet levels with 1 shot.

When you see me build 10+ t3 land facs, this is usually why.

Statistics: Posted by Icy — 28 Jan 2012, 08:04

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-28T02:03:48+02:00

perkl wrote:
Ah, yes. Is it possible to make assisting engineers inefficient based on their number? First engi assists at 100% build power, next at 95%, next at 90,25%, next at 85,74% and so on.

Well, maybe, but that would make the problem worse, not better, because you would need even more engineers to achieve the same production rates you get with engineers now. Further, with a little math it would be easy to calculate the optimum number of engineers and people would just use that many.... but because there is a peak number of assisters that you can use, you will need more factories and the total cost of build power will increase.

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 28 Jan 2012, 02:03

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-28T01:44:59+02:00

FunkOff wrote:
This would be imbalanced for the reasons I described above.

Ah, yes. Is it possible to make assisting engineers inefficient based on their number? First engi assists at 100% build power, next at 95%, next at 90,25%, next at 85,74% and so on.

I probably agree on the latter two points. We'd need to fiddle with it a little.

Statistics: Posted by perkl — 28 Jan 2012, 01:44

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-28T01:34:11+02:00

perkl wrote:
The net effect of this should be that it's always more efficient from a pure build time perspective to build more factories.

This would be imbalanced for the reasons I described above.

Engies have other uses, factories are used exclusively for unit production so they should be better at it.

Not necessarily. Factories are hardier than engineers and can use adjacency bonuses, so it's not like build power is their only selling point... it just that their other attributes, at present, don't really make up for their build power weakness.

Engies without better things to do can still be used for assisting, but there's no need to mass produce engies solely for assisting.

I think the ideal is to have small numbers of engies assisting factories rather than the massive blobs we see now, and rather than none.

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 28 Jan 2012, 01:34

Re: Build times for mobile units

2012-01-27T23:33:54+02:00

Using T1 factories as a baseline, calculate mass cost / build power for every factory and engi. This is how much mass each point of build power costs. Don't change the existing mass costs, just make sure each factory is in line with that number. You can make T2 and T3 factories relatively slower builders since they build stronger units, if you want to keep T1 competitive towards the end, or make T2/T3 relatively quicker builders if you want to promote upgrading factories. Change engies so that their assist build power never exceeds that of the factories: T1 engies should be the worst at it, T3 engies the best. Experimentals may need their build times checked if you mess with engies. Fine tune a little for flavor and personal preference.

The net effect of this should be that it's always more efficient from a pure build time perspective to build more factories. Engies have other uses, factories are used exclusively for unit production so they should be better at it. Engies without better things to do can still be used for assisting, but there's no need to mass produce engies solely for assisting.

Statistics: Posted by perkl — 27 Jan 2012, 23:33