T2 vs. T3 Mass Fabs

[codepants]

Late game, once all your mexes are t3, do you build t2 mass fabs or t3 mass fabs?

If you do the math, t2 mass fabs are ridiculously more efficient. 1 mass for 150 e as opposed to 12 mass for 3500 e (=1 for 291 e, almost twice as much). Build 12 t2 mass fabs and you save 1700 e, almost half the intake of a t3 fab.

Is the only purpose of t3 mass fabs to be faster to build because it takes forever for engineers to get out of the way in a crowded base?

If my thinking here is sound, are there any plans to rebalance them? Or is there a reason for this? Generally efficiency increases with the tech level.

[speed2]

go for T3 only if you are limited by unit limit, T2 are just so much better

[Rogueleader89]

If you look over the faf patch notes, you'll notice that one of the changes is that t2 mass fabricators give a 2% discount to factories and quantum gateways while t3 mass fabricators give a 20% discount to factories and 15% to quantum gateways. adjacency-wise, t3 mass fabs are definitely better. That said, is that enough? I don't know, it is clear most people either don't know about this or don't use them anyway.

To put this in perspective, a percival is -19 mass income while its building, with 4 adjacent t3 mass fabs this goes down to -3 mass (bit more if you have a mex or some t2 fabs in here as well), with 16 t2 fabs this goes down to -15 mass

[speed2]

and how long does it take to pay off? also this is adjacency if you build it just from the factory, engies that assist it pay the full price, also you need pgens to have power for it, and its easy to kill and blow up your production.

[Rogueleader89]

and how long does it take to pay off? also this is adjacency if you build it just from the factory, engies that assist it pay the full price, also you need pgens to have power for it, and its easy to kill and blow up your production.

All true and I agree t3 mass fabs probably need a buff (mentioned it in the useless unit thread), I'm mostly just pointing out that somewhere along the way this problem was attempted to be addressed, but for reference of whoever ends up making that decision, it takes a t3 mass fab (not counting adjacency) 250 seconds to pay off its own mass cost, and another 270 seconds to pay off the mass cost of one t3 pgen (which will fall 1000 energy production short of covering the mass fab's energy cost), 100 seconds for a t2 mass fab to pay for itself, 16 of them will pay off a t3 pgen (which will more than cover energy cost on all 16) in 202.5 seconds (after the 100 seconds in which they pay for themselves of course), keeping in mind that 16 t2 mass fabs cost considerably less and that I'm not taking into account the adjacency bonus you could have from placing them around the t3 pgen, which they won't even kill if you manage to blow them all up because they only do 370 damage on death each (leaving the t3 pgen with 3800hp).

T3 mass fabs do 5000 damage on death so the most efficient use you are going to get out of a t3 mass fab without risking your entire production line exploding is a single one next to a quantum gateway, or if you are feeling fairly risky 2 next to a t3 factory (which leaves it with 1k health if they die) or 4 around your factory HQ (leaving it with 2000 hp if they die), and of course if it dies you'll probably also lose a bunch of engineers assisting.

With all of this in mind, at best in a real game I could see putting a single t3 mass fab adjacent to something I wasn't supporting with engineers, the 15-20% mass cost decrease is not nothing... but t2 fabs are definitely superior in general.

If you really wanted to make them useful without necessarily making them an outright step up from t2 mass fabs (since clearly the way this was addressed before was not meant to do that, probably because t2 mass fabs aren't used much before t3 anyway), lower their energy consumption so that a single t3 pgen can power one, and reduce the death weapon damage significantly, say somewhere between 500 and 1000 damage, they can have a late game use supporting factories with their adjacency then while t2 fabs continue to be a superior choice for mass in general.

[codepants]

t3 mass fabricators give a 20% discount to factories and 15% to quantum gateways. adjacency-wise, t3 mass fabs are definitely better.

To put this in perspective, a percival is -19 mass income while its building, with 4 adjacent t3 mass fabs this goes down to -3 mass (bit more if you have a mex or some t2 fabs in here as well), with 16 t2 fabs this goes down to -15 mass

What Rogue said. I'm just not sure -16 mass is work risking losing all four of those fabs and the factory because of a lucky bomb or tac missile. At a cost of about 5000 mass, you'd have to make ~312 percies to have profited from that. IMO the only thing worth losing with mass fab adjacency is the pgen you put next to it.

The unit cap note is interesting though. I hadn't thought of that. I also thing the build speed thing is worth noting -- much faster for your engies to build one mass fab than 12 (not straight build time, but the time for the engies to move within range and out of the building template).

Thanks both for your thoughts.

[Flamingo]

I've been using T3 mass fabricators for the adjacency bonus next to SMDs. The fabricator has more health than the SMD, so if they can kill the massfab they can kill the SMD easier, and if you build an SMD you're anticipating the game will continue on long enough for a nuke to potentially hit you. Between the adjacency bonus and the mass production, it cancels out the cost of building the missiles.

I've also tried T2 massfabs on tactical missile launchers on the rare occasion, but it takes three T2 fabs to reduce the cost of the missiles by one, and usually I want the things quickly and as a surprise anyway, so it doesn't seem appropriate very often.

[codepants]

I've been using T3 mass fabricators for the adjacency bonus next to SMDs. The fabricator has more health than the SMD...

I like this thinking. Very wise. Thank you for sharing.

[kristi]

Could mass storage possibly offset it a little? The bonus of mass storage on T3 fabs is bigger than on T2 fabs right?

[keyser]

http://wiki.faforever.com/index.php?tit ... ency_Bonus

there is for you !