Mass Fabricator Upgrading

[noobymcnoobcake]

To T3 Mex only. T3 Mex are generally not used as they are so inefficient. These massfarms are highly volatile and a great target to snipe. Map control is still required to win the game. Massfarms require more space, more protection(shields that need constant energy and t3 shields are very expensive anyway), will blow up and leave no wreckage and have little hp, require more build time. T3 Mex will still be better but massfarms won't be not used at all. You will NOT see the sc1 massfarms but may occasionally se them in team games on larger maps. As I said makes the game slightly deeper and gives you new fun targets to kill and something to protect.

[pip]

The argument considering "it gives something else to snipe beside the ACU" is quite obsolete because it's so bad to currently make mass fabs that nobody builds any. There's nothing to snipe.

If you want something to snipe while making t2 mass fabs not useless, it's precisely by making them not so explosive. Then you have the T2 / T3 p gen to snipe and when it explodes, it will kill all the fabs around it. It's a little bit harder than "sniping" a single mass fab leading to a chain reaction but at least people would try to build some of these (and there would still be a chain reaction, but around a bigger, primary target, not the small secondary one like currently).

[noobymcnoobcake]

I do also think that massfarms should be made less explosive. I also think they should have around the same efficiency as t3 Mexes. They will still be less eficcient as they have to be more protected. This will mean they are changed from never ever used rxept in thermo to occasionally used in team games. T2 ones also need a decreased build time.

[microwavelazer]

We could experiment with increasing the health of T2 mass fabs and giving them a slight regen to make them a harder target to snipe (maybe something along the lines of 600 health and 2 hp per second yes, I know breaking the 5% rule) but I still think that the death weapon should be enough to chain. (So a 601 damage death weapon) This is because otherwise it is no longer a target for snipes.

It should also be noted that the more viable we make T2 mass fabs the less viable expanding becomes. For that reason, I think a caped T3 mex should always be the more economically viable option.

On a side note, if were changing the T2 fabs so much how do we make T3 fabs useful without taking away from the T2 ones.

[noobymcnoobcake]

Keep the death weapon damage as it is but increase health to 600 as you said. The aoe of the deathweapon will mean that when two of the fabs surrounding the pgen die then the whole chain goes instead of only needing one to go.

[microwavelazer]

It could work, is a blast radius of 5 large enough to reliably hit not just the fabs next to it but also the next one over even if they are in a diagonal line.

[AdmiralZeech]

What if massfabs were a risk/reward sort of thing? Rather than adjacency only taking into account, uh, adjacent structures, what if the bonus depends on the total number of massfabs&pgens connected in the array?

So a lone massfab wont be nearly as efficient as a mex, but as you add more of them to an array, they become exponentially better.... but a single bomb will destroy the entire array.

[-_V_-]

Are we talking about FA or Simcity

[uberge3k]

I'm stunned at how frequently I find myself saying this of late.

I agree with V.

To T3 Mex only. T3 Mex are generally not used as they are so inefficient. These massfarms are highly volatile and a great target to snipe. Map control is still required to win the game. Massfarms require more space, more protection(shields that need constant energy and t3 shields are very expensive anyway), will blow up and leave no wreckage and have little hp, require more build time. T3 Mex will still be better but massfarms won't be not used at all. You will NOT see the sc1 massfarms but may occasionally se them in team games on larger maps. As I said makes the game slightly deeper and gives you new fun targets to kill and something to protect.

Impossible to balance such a thing. Either it's better than a T3 mex (and will be used exclusively) or is worse than a T3 mex (and will not be used).

At the highest levels of play, it's all about maximizing your return on investment. If it's possible to protect that fab farm at all (cough, shields) it will be used and abused. If it's impossible to protect, or less efficient than a T3 mex, it won't be used.

Simply put, the most efficient ways of managing your economy are already known. The T1-T2-storage-T3 formula was figured out long ago. If fabs are found to be more effective at any area of that (in this case, T3 mex's), they'll be used instead of T3 mex's. If they aren't, then we have the same "problem" that we have now - fabs won't be used as the tried-and-true mex's are a better value. There is no middle ground as high level players will always go for the most efficient way to maximize their return on investment to their economy.

Even more simply put: there can only be one shortest path to a destination. High level players will always find that path and take it. Your economy is the destination, paths are mex's or fabs.

One final nail in the coffin: I have yet to see even the largest teamgames make it to a point where you have upgraded every single mex to T3 and surrounded every single mex with storage and find yourself in need of more mass, to the point where you would need fab farms, even if they were only some small percent lower in efficiency than a surrounded T3 mex.

The only three places that I have ever seen fabs used are in:

1) Thermo. (no expansions aside from a trivial number of mex's in the middle)
2) NR. (again, no way to expand)
3) Survival. (I'm detecting a pattern..?)

Economy doesn't shoot. Units shoot. You win games by shooting things. If a game reaches the point where T4s are flying back and forth, it will only be a matter of time until something gives. There's simply too many ways to end a lategame game for there to ever be a deadlock where eco spamming will be more viable than unit spamming.



TLDR; FA is about expansion and territory control. If you don't like that go back to vanilla.

[noobymcnoobcake]

What even was the purpose of massfabs in sc1? Were they to make the game more epic? To make games last longer? To break stalemates? Or were they just a mistake?