Long-Range Nano-Lathing

Since someone has shared their hatred of half-cooked ideas, I decided to make another. Maybe if I am lucky, I will have prevented them from having a peaceful night's sleep tonight.

Anyway, the idea is that if there is a Unit Cannon, and there will be Teleportation, and there will be Tier 2 units that aren't stronger but serve a niche purpose, and Nano-Lathe is the method of construction in this game...

...Can there be a Nano-Lathe cannon?

It could have a cooldown of use (as might the unit cannon), a extra cost of use (like the unit cannon), and pros and cons over the unit cannon itself...

But theoretically, you could use it to shoot nanolathe possibly across to another planet and establish a base, or assist things a small distant base is currently building to help it grow, and by doing so also assist with resources and power over a distance which is another topic of discussion.

Feedback?

Cross posting into a more relevant (and non backer-only) thread:

Long range nanolathing is interesting, especially if it can be stealthy without being OP. Also I think Mavor said at some point that some sort of teleportation would be in the game. I'm sure that anyone who has played Portal can think of a few interesting things to do with a portal generator and a nanolathe, or a gun.

In fact I could see an entire interplanetary econ system based on the idea. Each builder only has access to the resources available on the planet it is currently sitting on. But if you fire the nanolathe though a portal you can project that builder's build capacity and resources to another location off world. That way each planet is still its own economy but you can still use resources from one planet to assist another.

You could even make nanolathe relay stations to increase the range that you could project the nanolathe stream past the portal exit point. This would need to be limited in some way to keep engineers from never needing to move but it would also create supply lines that an enemy could attack.

Particles don't fly through space, obviously
Your whole premiss is invalid already!

Sir your understanding of physics has left me astounded. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Please tell me more of your great wisdom.

Huh? If you can shoot units through space, you couldn't shoot a stream of liquid metal and construction nanobots like a giant super soaker?

Sounds like fun.

How long range are we talking? Nanotowers capable of covering a base might be sensible, although they would be a highly efficient buildpower source for redistributing production between projects in the base. This might be desirable, however. Zero-K has quite long range nanotowers that work quite well for this purpose.

If you're talking unlimited-range construction, like anywhere on a planet, or even on other planets, then you're nothing short of insane. It's a terrible idea.

What's to stop me from making 100 of these long-range lathes and constructing whatever I want, wherever I want, immediately? I can build combat units directly in your base. I can recap mexes on an entire planet instantly. I don't even have to bother defending them because if you try and move into my territory I will just build turrets right in front of you. And just replace any mexes you destroy instantly. And there's nothing you can do about it. This gets even more ridiculous if they can reclaim, or what about capture. Ridiculous range buildpower is a silly idea.

Replying to sarcasm with sarcasm. Well played good sir, well played.

I agree with Ledarsi. Mass enough of these things and it's tantamount to making this RTS into a "God Game"... except with none of the challenge of those games either...

it's like a literal God game. :?

Well, with relay stations you need to send an engineer to the remote location and build the relay station first. The other players could, you know, attack it, either before or after it has been built. This makes supply lines important. Or they could go attack the engineer on the other side of the portal, wherever that might be.

Also if you limited the amount of metal and/energy that a single station could relay per second you wouldn't be able to just spam massive build capacity without also spamming relay stations first.

Also I imagine that opening a portal to another planet won't be something you can do right at the start of the game.

No one said anything about remote stations... what? Portals to other planets... what?

what?

I play EVE, I can troll with the best of them.

Yes you would need to do something to limit it. Hence my relay station idea.

But with relay stations it's... not a Lathe-Cannon?

To clarify; thetrophysystem was basically proposing a Nanolathe Tower with its ranges set to

No, but its something similar that should be easier to balance and allow for more emergent gameplay and tactics.

So it's like I put down an Engineer? Hey! Then it's mobile!

Mobile Construction/Caputre/Reclaim units that I can send to other planets? Nerf Naow!

Having builders that need time to go places to use their short-range lathes, and having immobile nanotowers with relatively short range compared to the map size sounds boring, but it leads to vastly more interesting gameplay than being able to focus map-wide buildpower in one spot.

What "emergent gameplay and tactics" does being able to transmit your entire economy's build power long-distance and use it all in one place create? It seems to me it creates the ability to focus all your buildpower in one location at a time.

A normal builder can't project resources from one planet to another. Its more about invading other planets than doing what engineers already do on one planet. Also I never said that you would be able to transmit *all* of your build power. Just some of it.

It creates supply lines. Supply lines that can then be attacked and cut. Its just an idea. There is probably a better way to do it tbh.

First, if it were to be an expensive unit, then it's cost would keep you. Second, if it were to have a cooldown and extra cost of use, its cooldown and it eventually crashing your economy would. Third, it's travel time would make it not-direct-combat-worthy probably the same as the unit cannon.

I mean, if it were balanced by those things, it could work. It could even have unique limits like multiple nanolathe cannons not being able to assist each other's building projects (only 1 unit cannon can work on one project at a time, with engineer units being able to assist with whatever limit they have if one exists).

So, to recap, these would be the balance points, not all having to be used but one or more of these can apply to help balance:

-Cost to build, be balanced to what it does, and be "t2" build complexity and build cost compared to the unit-cannon
-Cost to use, be balance to the benifit of using it to build compared to traditional construction by units, making using it to build everything and anything crash one's economy.
-Cooldown, where using it to build one whole advanced factory or 2-3 normal structures would use it up completely, and require it to build back up for 45 seconds or 2 minutes or whatever to be back to full, and probably allow it to be used at partial recharge of course.
-Limited blueprints, where it can only start the construction from scratch on a handful of basic structures, possibly not even turrets at all.
-Assist cap, where only 1 nanolathe cannon can be used on the same construction project, with nanolathe bots being able to assist the 1 cannon's construction or 1 cannon be able to assist nanolathe bots. There may be a cap for bots assisting a construction project anyway.
-Range limit, which limits it to in-orbit use, or defence-tower-distance. Would make it used more for automated assistance in construction projects than for starting new projects, but it would be useful this way as well. This could also be extended by a line of towers, allowing the cannon to gap between the towers in a line to do it's job farther down the path of towers.

So, your solution is to "nerf" the unit to near worthlessness to balance the intrinsic power of being able to build anywhere?

No one with an ounce of ability to macro-manage will build this handicapped unit... and you'll teach people who can't macro-manage bad habits so they never learn.

Not good.

Thetrophysystem, your idea has all the hallmarks of an "experimental" from SupCom 2. Only this one is an "experimental" nanotower that is game-breaking, and balanced only by high cost. Nonsense like cooldowns for a construction unit and having this long-range lathe somehow cost more to build the same units are not good ideas. Neither are these elegant design ideas, they again speak to trying to limit a game-breaking ability. If these are necessary to make your idea work, perhaps you should consider that your idea simply does not work.

These lathes obviate the need to have production anywhere except in a single consolidated location, which you will obviously defend to the last. Everywhere else you don't need engineers, structures, troops, or anything at all except mexes. You can have whatever you want anywhere immediately, be that another mex, radar towers, combat units, anything.

You also ignore the fact that you can use these lathes to grow your economy much faster than you could otherwise. Being able to build mex after mex after mex at unlimited range will give you effectively a perfectly ideal exponential metal income curve. I would purchase one of these unlimited-range lathes as quickly as possible just to bolster my economy with instant mex capture everywhere in the solar system.

You also haven't taken into account the fact that industry scales exponentially. You have to put a flat price tag on something that gets exponentially more useful the more of them you have. 10,000 metal might be a high price for the first one, but what about the 20th one? I imagine the 21st would give you even more utility for the same price as the first, and so on up to unlimited numbers of infinite-range constructors. All in the exact same heavily fortified location, with nothing else happening anywhere else on the map. Anything your opponent tries to build next to your mexes, you build next to his units to destroy and then recap the mex.


But the real nail in the coffin is that there really isn't a price tag you could put on that asset that wouldn't make players want it. It is SO powerful that if it can be built, it will be built.

It's hard to put a price tag on such powerful assets. How much in-game metal is universal vision worth, for example? How about the ability to deploy troops anywhere instantly? Well this infinite-range lathe gets you both of those, and more. The ability to build at unlimited range? If it is possible to acquire the resources to obtain that ability, it becomes a priority because it allows me to win the game with virtually zero risk. Which of course means my opponent will do the same thing. The resulting game would be incredibly weird.

And lastly, if this asset is so expensive to acquire just one of, then it warps the game around a very significant individual unit. Having it can end the game in your favor, having it destroyed can end the game for your opponent. This is also bad.

Oh yeah, about the mex thing.

If the economy is world based, building remote mexes just off somewhere does nothing. You need to build that single mex up to have a transportation system for it's income. It would cost more to make a distant remote mex, than it would produce anytime during it's life.

Either way, if things it built cost more per unit resource, it would also drain an economy to use it maliciously. Really, it would speed up endgame, wouldn't replace any units, and wouldn't give any godpowers.

Godpowers being, by situations presented, being able to build a tower on top of an enemy. Obviously, it would only be able to build limited buildings, and not instabuild. So, if it started building a tower in that situation, wouldn't the structure outline be destroyable pretty easily by enemies?

Anyway, I just thought it would be that extra bit of speed for the late game. Being how stagnant it is to build each individual base and then move to a new planet to build a new base, each possibly having it's own resource economy.