Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factorys?

Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory's?

Should factory's be amphibious if they can produce a water traverse able unit?

Should Air factory's be amphibious?

Should all buildings be amphibious/or able to built on the sea floor?

Should some units be lava immune?

What buildings should be build able in gas giants?

Should metal worlds have unique and capture able structures?

Thanks for your time and ideas.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I prefear if you can choose aloot of units from the same factory.

Most the things you ask would be something good thing to try in a alpha or even prealpha (To see whats more fun). Its hard to make decisions regarding such things this early, thats also why i suggest that the developers try it out in some sort of alpha build.

As long as they have some code support for it they could change around and experiment to see what feels good ingame.

As for gas giants, someone mentioned floating ilands. Something like that, or perhaps just floating orbital ships/structures.

Metal planets, with re-activatable technology has apperently allredy been confirmed, if this technology includes structures or if its some kind of units i have no idea.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I don't think there should be enough units for that kind of setup, you'd end up with crazy amounts of overlap and redundancy.

No, its a Land unit that happens to be amphibious, not a naval unit.

Although air units aren't tied to land, I think the Factories should still be land locked.

No, I think there should be a special subset of buildings for naval planets, depending on the specific implementation of them.

No.

Special Gas Giant oriented ones.

There is no context for this question.

Mike

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

First you say that more types of units would be redundant, then say there should be different types of structures for different environments.

That doesn't make much sense.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

It makes perfect sense, if you can't build Naval versions on non-Water worlds there is no redundancy. It depends more on the exact implementation of the different world types more than anything, and we know nothing about Uber's plans in that regard yet.

Mike

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

True, but different types of the same thing would end up being confusing just because one world has more water then another.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

If i remeber correctly there will be worlds completely covered by water, and worlds without water. And gas planets can most likely not use land units. So having more then one unit version of the same role (Anti air land, anti air naval, anti air flyer) seems likely.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Well like I said, depends on the implementation, Naval Worlds could require either special engineers(that would only build the Naval world structures) or the Game could adaptively only show the applicable build options based on what planet type the engineer is on.

Implementation is key.

Mike

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Kbots vehicles hover crafts and spiderbots should have their own factory....

yes indeed my dear boy

quite the tip of the spear isn't he


Edit : Will there be lush worlds?

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory's?
-- Bot, Vehicle, Air, Naval factories is how it should be (well my opinion anyway). Hovercraft can be in Vehicle and/or Naval as they fit both roles.

Should factory's be amphibious if they can produce a water traverse able unit?
-- No

Should Air factory's be amphibious?
-- I like sea planes and sea factories but think the latter should be a separate building if build-able at all, and maybe contain planes and amphibian units maybe...

Should all buildings be amphibious/or able to built on the sea floor?
-- Not all buildings no, maybe give the Bot factory the option with it having very limited construction options like only able to produce engineers or just amphibian units, but I say that because more then once in TA me and my friends had to hide in the ocean from sorians AI....

Should some units be lava immune?
-- I say no there needs to be something they can't go through.

What buildings should be build able in gas giants?
-- A modified Air factory ( mostly looks ) with the basic resource collectors and defenses as well.

Should metal worlds have unique and capture able structures?
-- Should they? as in must have? No, but metal worlds that may have factories/resource buildings already present you could capture or resurrect/repair would be awesome.

Each factory produces an engineer of that type and all engineers can build tech 1 factories and only tech 2 factories of their type. No need for anything special if your in orbital you build air factories that are merely modified for looks to fit the orbital theme. They have the option for naval and vehicle factories but since land nor sea exists you cant.

Same goes for naval planets and all dirt worlds, the type of terrain the factory is limited to being built on is itself a way of determining what can and can't be built on a given terrain. No need for extra units that take time to make, I'm a fan of TA what can I say.

Modders shall fill in any gaps and that's honestly the way it should be, the creativity from them is worth taking advantage of, but in a good way .

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Id say No. Keep factories for units that use different layers of the game world. Naval, Land, Air, Space, Yada yada.

If we had a factory for every type of unit class, you would have over half a dozen factories. PA is all about the Big unit battles! Not microing Base management!

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

That's what Zero-K does, and it works well. Each factory produces a set of units with one specific movement type. The only exceptions are cloak/shield bot and vehicle/tank, each time with the same movement type ; so similarly, factories could be divided by their main feature or their weight. You could have :
vehicles (near-flat terrain) ; bots (small slopes) ; all-terrain bots (in Zero-K, spiders) ; floating amphibious ; submarine amphibious(?) ; sea-crawling amphibious ; hover (not actually touching the water, and as such immune to underwater weapons like torpedoes) ; gunship (VTOL) ; planes (always moving, obviously need atmosphere) ; ships ; submarines ; air-less flyers (specific to non-atmospheric worlds) ...

Obviously, some would overlap as there are too many for each having their own factory/set of units. The most common example is having ships and submarines in the same factory.
On the other hand, it could be interesting to have many factories (though not that many), but with some units overlapping. Like a shipyard (built at the surface of the sea) and a sub-yard (built underwater) having some submarines in common. But we could be more creative, like having some floating amphibious built in the shipyard.
There could also/instead be feature-specialized factories, for example a stealth factory. The factory itself could have some stealth, there. And its units could also be common with other factories.

Each of those factories should have an engineer corresponding to its movement type (and/or feature), though some overlap may also be necessary, for example gunships, planes and air-less having the same VTOL engineer.

This would give more flexibility to strategies, as you could build precisely the factory needed for the job.
On the other hand, this works in Zero-K because there aren't tech levels but a flat tech tree instead (which works better IMHO). With tech levels, the number of factories would probably have to be lower.

tl;dr : yes.

Dear god no! Imagine building a factory slightly away and suddenly half your units can't be built because you're over water?
Instead, a factory should be amphibious if all its units are amphibious. It should be at the surface if it's floating amphibious, underwater if it's submarine amphibious (still not sure about this one) and on the sea floor if it's crawling amphibious.

tl;dr : each factory should have the same placement rules than all their units : land units on land (even if there are a few amphibious), all-amphibious on land or sea, ships on water...

Probably, as planes can fly above water as well. Though the air factory could be different, for example it could be mobile, becoming a carrier. We can even imagine a submarine carrier, like SupCom's Atlantis. Not that those are exclusive, anyway.

Of course not, why would a (non amphibious) tank factory be built on the sea floor? That said, many units should be buildable on the sea, like some point defences, missile launchers and antimissiles, radar and such. Some of those should still be limited to land, though. Maybe the biggest defences, artilleries and such, or some powerplants.
That said, there should be naval-only worlds and we should be able to build complete bases there.
Also, if water is shallow enough so land units can pass, it should probably not bother most (all?) buildings either.

tl;dr : not all, but enough to have complete naval bases are required. And if possible, underwater bases.

An airship factory ; airship being slow, big gas-giant-specific units taking the role of tanks for the gas giants.


That said, this (and the other questions) will have to wait the alpha to be tested.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

It would be interesting to hear from the Zero-K people here. ZK has about eight different land factories for various purposes so it would be good to hear the good things about that from people who've tested it to oblivion.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

Once you've tried 11 facs you'll never go back!

I'd like to see 15 factories in PA as follows:

Vehicles (T1 and T2)
Bots (T1 and T2) - including jump, shield, and cloaking bots within the unit line up
Naval (T1 and T2)
Orbital (T1 and T2)
Hover/amphib (T1 and T2)
All terrain/insectoid (T1 and T2)
Experimental (T3)
Air (T1 and T2)

Each factory having 5-8 units (total mobile unit count 75-120). Experimental could be one special gantry/nanotower/constructor or (I prefer) a module that can be added as an upgrade to T2 factories to allow 1-2 T3 units to be built per factory.

I don't buy the redundancy argument. There are (I count) some 104 mobile units in Zero K across 11 different factories and no major redundancy issues. Some roles may overlap but only for units in different factories where one player would be unlikely to be able to build both units, at least until the late game. Just needs imaginative unit design (I'm sure Uberent can do this!)

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I remeber hovercraft in TA didn't have their factory buildable on water until it was modded in. Personally Id like to see hovercraft/amphibious units buildable on/under water.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I guess there's a balance to be struck between having too many factories just for the sake of having them and making the game too simple by not having enough.

A building's importance and value to the player is weighed by how much it costs and how effective it is at what it does. When we apply this to a factory then we must consider how it weighs in compared to it's piers. So for now let us forget T1 and T2. We'll just focus on the different types...

So far we know there will be (at least). kbots, vehicles, air, naval and orbital. I assume we won't see orbital on the same maps as the others and it might well have it's own sub-categories of units and factories so we'll leave it alone for now.

As far as our list is concerned it is not unimaginable that people might refer to a kbot or a tank as a land unit and thus group them as such into a land factory. The outcome of this is one of two options: There are less kbots and tanks overall as the abilities are shared out between the two to avoid overlap. Or the factory can produce twice as many unit types as it's air and naval piers, making it much more valuable and an obvious choice at the start of the game. This could be offset by making the factory more expensive to build and upgrade but that has the adverse effect of making it a bad start of game choice.

I think we can realistically expect kbots, vehicles, air and navy to all have their own factories. I think the fancy abilities of some of the ZK units are intriguing, but not necessarily warranting their own factories. I think maybe the only unit that warrants it's own factory is the amphibious types. The game would really be different without them and they are a genuinely different type of unit.

Regarding special abilities I think that there should be units that perform a support role, much like in the previous games where there were shield, stealth and cloak field generators. All viable and valuable units. I really get the impression that Uber want to keep the units themselves pretty simple. Especially when you watch the KS video. In that respect I think we should be looking much more at TA than ZK.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I don't think having more initial options available from a land factory is a bad thing. Yes, it does mean that land factories are an intuitive and obvious first-step, but was is actually wrong with that?

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

No. I don't like the possibility of being locked in to a narrow strategy with you first build. and it just get's more confusing and raises the barrier to entry

No. Only if they produce exclusively water traversing units, or perhaps special rules (ideally factory) for water planets.

Yes. Possibly airborne. I think this would make the change to water planets more natural.

No. Having some to tie the normal planets to the water or gas giants seems sensible to me but there has to be a point of difference

Yes. I would like to see hover units that could pass unscathed over lava. Like the CnC TS hover tanks and the tiberium weed.

That's a very big question. Specialised power, air/orbital factory's, unit canon. and other common and some exclusive units I can't think of.

May be not unique to themselves as much as unique to metal worlds. metal worlds with capture able structures to control the world has been more or less confirmed, but I expect the worlds to be mostly the same.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I suppose it depends on how the developers want the player to play the game. In the end, by making something a better option they are encouraging the player to go down that route.

Most people would complain that since the player will likely have access to effective AA type land units, that making the land factory cheaper is discouraging the player from using air in favour of land.

Of course, making air units more powerful might offset this problem early game. But when resources are less of an issue in a late game situation, having more powerful air units might unbalance the game if they can be spammed just as fast as land units.

That said, IRL air is a big asset and can take out tanks and such like quite easily. Though this is not real life, I do feel that sometimes in the past air has been hard to play simply because T1 bombers are not as good at destroying land units as their real life counterparts. Gunships, yes but unless you were Cybren in SC2 then you had to wait until T2.

Re: Should Bots, Tanks and hovercraft have their own factory

I do think there should be various different land factories with different units, choosing which one to start with is an interesting limitation.

But building several factories eventually should be normal way to up your production - you might decide you want just another lab of the same kind, to maximize production of a certain unit, or branch out to have wider selection.

If you can build every unit any time, it's not very interesting - limitations are what makes the stuff you can make, interesting. If you can make anything anytime, it's more stale - if you are not at some level locked by your previous choices there's no need to think too far ahead.