My Hardliner Suggestion

The fabricators - get rid of them. There are great many fun things to do in this game, but building fabricators, and ordering them around is definitely not one of them - it just adds tediousness... which is the opposite of ANNIHILATE THEM flavor I feel game aims for.
In addition they add allot of confusion for the new player as far as how much resources she is producing... it's consumption jumps around wildly when fabricators start/stop building. Whats more having to micro the fabricators takes away the joy of building giant bases by making you focus on dozen units instead of the big picture.

Instead of fabricators I suggest we have a building that can build buildings in an area around it, and it releases automated fabricators to go and build them - they can be killable and the construction bay automatically rebuilds them for a price... Or perhaps it just releases fast moving drones that cant be interacted at all. Or hell just have a particle effect over buildings and tell player its nano-mites
If player wants to expand beyond his construction bays range let there be an units that flies to the location and converts itself into construction bays.

Honestly there's many ways to implement something similar.

Now to build multiple structures I can press a button that puts me into construction mode > place the buildings > and be done with building.... now I get to focus on reacting what the enemy is doing and other fun parts of the game.


I played many RTS's its my favorite games, and I can't think of any case where taking away arbitrary micromanagement in base building did not improve them.

In addition. The fact that there are different kinds of fabricators and they build different structures pretty much made me want to pull my hair out How about once I build advanced something all constructors just unlock that ability on that planet... There HAS to be a better way to tier up.

I like this idea! It'll make setting up artillery positions outside an enemy base a lot eas... oh, wait.

But I can definitely cover a planet in mass extractors much more easily with... hang on.

Surely, this will mean reclaiming will be enhan... hmm.

Nope.

The game you described sounds fun, but it isn't this game. If someone made a mod like this I would give it a try.

Also, your poll is tricking people into picking the wrong response.

Maybe we can make it less micro-depended, I'd like to see a system that allow player to just place the buildings without selecting any fab units then the nearby capable and idle fab(s) will start constructing the buildings.

Great idea.

As others have said. Doesn't quite fit with Vanilla PA's play style.

However, it would be a great mod and I would love to play it.

I still think there are less extreme things that could be done to appease the OP. For example start/stop building animation and rolloff times could be shorter to reduce the economy bumps.

I definitely think that idle fabbers should automatically find something to do when you have the economy to do it, whether that means automatically assisting nearby construction or factories, it would cut down on a lot of micro.

I get the idea of it working similar to how villagers work in rise of nations., that way, if you need more build power in a base, you can queue up some more fabbers at a nearby factory, and don't have to keep coming mack to manage it multiple times.

I don't like this idea and I wouldn't go near any game like it.

I don't really understand how this is making the game really any different? I mean right now I press "F" to select idle fabbers, cause of that the build menu comes up and I place buildings, which my selected fabbers go and build.

I mean the idea of fabbers automatically helping out with building tasks and things would be a little bit of a change, but I wouldn't want them to in PA because even if I have surplus resources maybe there's a reason for that (like I've just switched up to Advanced stuff and I briefly need that surplus so my eco doesn't tank when I start building) and if the AI "helps" me by telling my fabbers to assist when I think they should just be hanging out for a sec it means I can't plan around my economy properly. I mean regardless of what you do RTSs involve managing economy as well as armies, and I really don't want some AI to attempt to control my economy and fail because it thinks I want to do something I don't actually want to do.

Of course if I want my fabbers to auto-assist building things can't I just set them to patrol an area (straight out of a factory if need be.)? I mean I used to do that in earlier builds, it's just not the way I want to use fabbers currently.

And what if I want certain things built faster? At the moment I can juggle fabbers around and turn buildings on/off. With this I guess there'd have to be a priority setting in the build mode to juggle around fabbers?

As far as I can see it'd do very little to streamline the building and build assisting process.

Also seems like it'd reduce the versatility of fabbers because of having some set build area. I much prefer selecting fabbers and being able to build anywhere I'm able to not be blown up for a short while, especially if you can sneakily get pelters in range of the enemy base to bolster your invasion force!

I'd really love to see this as alternative way to build base. Not replacing current way, but just another way to achieve same result.

Or at least select all fabbers / select all fabbers on screen bindings in addition to select idle.

A great game concept, but it´s not the one that should be included in PA. And its even nothing that should be in a mod for PA.
It deserves a whole different game.
Remember, TheBattleForMiddleEarth got a very strange BuildingSystem, a bit feeling like the one you are describing here: Was a great game, but I wouldn´t recommend this to be used in any other RTS game. And that´s it!

This isn´t for PA, this isn´t something to patch into any other game. It´s the base for a new game.
Get a team and do your Kickstarter!

There is a binding for that. Don't remember what it is though.

i dont understand the the poll to be honest

Vanilla? Since when? Last time I checked my controls a few builds ago for fabbers, they had only select idle, for air-land-naval they had select all/on screen.

Gotta check when I am home.

93.62% sure. Ask brian.

But thats one of the best things about this game, its hard, takes alot of super powerful brainpower and alot of super incredible reaction, basically super super masterminds. Lol, well that was fun kidding.( right)

You just have to get used to it frankly, and knowing whats what and what it does and what its better at, but i can totally see your point tho, its abit klumsy, but i think that is kinda late now somewhat 2 years into makeing, but maybe they will add a thing that kinda builds all of the buildings kinda like a tech 5 thing if you might.

Sometimes its really confusing like if some noob makes a totally noobish system with an absolute non understanding orbits and stuff like that, i mean sometime wtf, why are yyou even playing on pardon my french, ****, no good, trash system, ahh i despise that.

I never backed planetary annihilation to have micro intensive gameplay. It's all about the macro.

Edit: I'm sorry didn't read the op. Only read the title of the poll. Stepping back from computer now.

Edit2: @vaidoras lease do not make a misleading poll.

Misleading poll is misleading.

Got baited to vote cause i want less micro for building things, like templates, but i like fabricators and don't want them removed.

I don't see the poll as being a baiting question. It is just a bad poll for this thread because it is not particularly relevant to the idea in the OP. Feel free to vote No and then disagree with the OP.

No such option in vanilla for fabbers, I checked it