Making the game more fluid - The adjacency bonuses problem.

[Kryo]

dont change the mmass storages! k thx bye!

[Sapristi]

Yeah i like Rging's idea, as they are the only option, they should be easy to build. That's still so boring having to aim the mex with the template... Or maybe change adjency bonuses with factories, but it could mess the whole adjency system.

[Gowerly]

I don't understand the problem here. You have the choice of storage, pgens or factories around your mexes. Early game, I believe, it's better to put factories around your mass extractors, but then you lose out late game.
Having said that, I don't know the benefits of a t2/t3 mex on a t2/t3 factory (it will need to reduce the mass cost by 3+ mass a second to be useful.

[Kekouse]

That is exactly the point.
It's totally useless to put something else next to a mex.
You think it's ok to put a fac next to a mex...it's not.

For example:
One Loyalist with a basic Fac

12 mass/sec

With T2 Massfabs

10.8 mass/sec

With T3 Massfabs

8.4 mass/sec (-30%)

Next to a T1 mex:11.7 mass/sec (-2.5%)
Next to a T2 mex:11.55 mass/sec (-3,75%)
Next to a T3 mex11.4 mass/sec (-5%)

And those examples are done with an expensive unit.
Think it again with mantises...2.5% ??? After 5 minutes it's something like 1 free mantis...what a tremendous advantage.
Not to forget that adjency is not given to assisting engys (if you upgrade the fac to T2 or T3)
Is it viable? No
Is it good to give the possibility to do it? I think it's not.
I've done the math 3 years ago (http://supkek.blogspot.com/2009/02/bonus.html) and 90% of the adjency bonus are crap.
it's useless and should be redone one way or another.

For example I think the T2 mex should be able to build the storage by itself.
Like the 1button upgrade for T2 and T3, we can put another upgrade "build storage" or put an additional 2.5 upgrade step.
It easier for noobs and pros can do it the old (and better) way with engies.

[Kryo]

deleting adjacency of storages would be a huge step. It would totally change the whole gameplay, as the mass income on all maps would be decreased if you dont buikld fabs.

Maybe make it more worthwhile to build a factory near to a mex.

but to be honest: Dont change it at all. to me it seems, some want to change everything that is a little bit of micromanagement.

[Kekouse]

I do not play very much FA now, but 2 years ago when I played this game almost every day I loved the micro part.
I love killing tanks with labs, dodge shots, switching the cybran AA to kill building etc...

But this micro is not fun.
It adds a layer that is mandatory (you have no other way...after the T2 upgrade you MUST surround it with storage), it takes "brain-time" and distract you from the battle.

i would be the first to applause if we add mor micro to some units... but really the adjency part of FA is poorly done.
It's done "a la GPG". The idea is there (adjency to gain some bonus), the balancing part is complicated so it's nerfed beyond usefulness.
But it's my vision of the game. I'm not saying it must be done like I want it

[Gowerly]

I'll take a look and see if I can change it to be better.
Maybe if it were 10 / 20 / 30%. The numbers are ok being quite big, as if you want to assist them you lose that bonus.
I'll see if I can make that happen.

[Treble]

Taking Gowerly's 10/20/30 numbers, here are my thoughts.

If spamming T1 is your goal then teching mexes isnt usually done, so building a factory adjacent to every possible mex is what will happen. We will see more units in these types of games, as they will cost less. I guess this is a small nerf to pds/AA, naval and ACUs

At tech 2, the usual time to surround a mex with storage, a T2 mex produces 6 mass/sec.

Lets assume you either build or upgrade a land factory adjacent to a mex or surround the mex with storage. We neglect the cost of the factory/upgrade because you would build it either way. After surrounding the mex with storage it produces 9 mass/sec. (Bonus of 3 mass/sec) So that investment (200 mass per storage) takes 267 seconds to pay off.

If you are building Pillars (198 mass) the adjacency bonus of 20% mass reduction yields a mass cost of 158.4 and builds a Pillar in 22 seconds. After 267 seconds the factory will have built 12 pillars at a cost of 1901 mass, saving 475 mass. So you're far ahead.

In fact, building Pillars (which is a bonus of 1.8 mass/second), the storage adjacency only start to pay off after 445 seconds ( 7.35 minutes ).

Cost after adjacency bonus:

Pillar: 158.4 mass/22 s = 7.2 mass/s, down from 9 mass/s
Mongoose: 160 mass/25 s = 6.4 mass/s, down from 8 mass/s
Ilshavoh: 288 mass/40 s = 7.4 mass/s, down from 9 mass/s
Blaze: 176 mass/22 s = 8.0 mass/s, down from 10 mass/s
Riptide: 290 mass/33 s = 8.8 mass/s, down from 11 mass/s
T2 Mobile Flak: 128 mass/20s = 6.4 mass/s, own from 8 mass/s

Specter Gunship: 192 mass/50 seconds = 3.8 mass/second, down from 4.8 mass/second.
Corsair Fighter/Bomber: 336 mass/60 seconds = 5.6 mass/second, down from 7.0 mass/second.

In average, it is only after 6-9 minutes that building storage around a mex would be better than factory adjacency building tech 2 units with a 20% mass bonus.

With a T3 mex the bonus is +9 and pays itself back after 89 seconds, although the storage is usually built by this point anyway.

Percival: 896 mass/80s = 11.2 mass/s, down from 16 mass/s
Harbinger: 588 mass/60s = 9.8 mass/s, down from 14 mass/s
Loyalist: 336 mass/40s = 8.4 mass/s, down from 12 mass/s

These numbers make it seem like there is a nice strategic choice to make.

However, at T2 and T3, players rarely build more than one factory of any type, so they will just build a factory next to a mex and build storage around all others in the same manner as before. So, this would really just be a buff to all land and air non-experimental units. So, the question is, does this really add any choices to the game or does it just make another mandatory step?

[FunkOff]

Treble's analysis is correct. To make not-assisting with factories a viable choice, you have to get the investment back. T3 factories, per cost, have less build power than engineers by a large margin... in fact, the T3's factory's build power from the T2 factory's cost is still less, so the entire T3 upgrade is simpy waste. For mex adjacency to be beneficial, it would have to provide a total reduction in cost greater than the cost of the factory over its expected lifetime. How many percivals do you expect that T3 factory to build? 20? Then to make it advantageous, the T3 factory would have to reduce costs by at least 25-30%.

[pip]

I agree with Pilot and Kekouse. It would be good to improve all adjacency bonuses intuitively so that it brings clear advantages without having to do the math outside of the game.

I think it would be great if all kinds of adjacency would be worth it without having to do the math. If you want to save energy, build pgen near your mex, and it will save you enough energy to be worth it, and not become completely obsolete after T2. It should still be somehow useful to have t1 pgen near your T2 mex to save energy, but less interesting than if it is near a T2 gen and a T3 one. Same idea to help your production with a specific factory near your mex. Maybe it would require to adjust several values at several tiers, and it's probably a hard work, but in the end, it can make the system more interesting because more intuitive.

On the other hand, it's important to keep the current adjacency bonuses for storage around mex, because the eco of the game as a whole is built around it. So I'd say, the current useless bonuses should somehow be brought on par or almost to the mex storage.

I have a question about a concrete example : if a storage near a mex brings +3 more mass, is it simple to implement a tweak that will make a factory linked to a mex save 3 mass (or even 4)? Thus, it's kind of similar If you have 4 factories linked to a mex, and you save at least 12 mass each second, it's roughly equivalent to produce +12 more mass with the storages. Of course, if you stop the factories, and while the units get out of it, you lose some production (that's why maybe it's better if the costs saved are a little bit higher than the storage bonus to make up for the difference).