inter factory dynamics

There used to be a lot of rapid factory switching in 1v1, so that you never really knew what to expect or what angles the enemy would attack from. I think right now the costs work pretty well with what you can expect to be able to scout and prepare for.

They're meant to be like 'tech' options, and earlier on, even like faction choice. They're meant to lock you to some small extent into a path and a set of tactics, as little as Zero-K actually does that otherwise.

mojjj: imo ZK should do anything but make the game more complex. (more different mechanics. imo overdrive is already too nontransparent)

saktoth: That rapid factory switching and not knowing what angle to expect an attack from is exactly what i would aim for. You have cheap scouts and radars, i think any competent player should be able to find out what is happening on the edge of their opponents base.
It is not that the current cost is bad, not at all actually. It was an idea to allow for faster counter measures against certain units and factories. (like facing air with a vehicle lab)

I agree with Skasi, factories could have more holes in their lineups, not every has to have the roles covered the same way. Thus, I support the removal of Hammer from the cloakies.

I've been imagining what Zero-K would be like, if factories couldn't be assisted. This would solve the issue presented in the OP completely - instead of assisting you initial factory, you'd have to build new ones. In a way, tech switching would be 'free', since you would have to make an a new factory anyway to get more factory buildpower, and it might just as well be a different one. As a bonus, bases would look more epic, with multiple factories simultaneously churning out units.

Of course, above I just looked at what I consider the benefits of unassistable factories. It'd also change the game a lot. Heavy units wouldn't be rushable (this might actually be a good thing?). For example, Goliath would take almost 4 minutes to make, with 10 BP. Something like the Detriment would have to be assistable to ever get finished, or the strider hub would have to have epic BP.

Unassistable facs is the thing I like about NOTA the most, so that's where this all springs from.

Possible approach for the assist issue: facs start out non-assistable, and can only be assisted after a morph. This would also prevent rushes and put a fixed lower bound on how quickly you can get a new factory with new unit-types online up to a full BP potential, meaning the enemy will always have a chance to scout.

Correspondingly, you could lower the cost of factories since if a player needs just one or two units from a fac, they can build the simple form.

Say, 500 cost for a fac, 250 for the morph into assistable form.

And as for making facs more unique and distinct, imho the first step would be to pull the mobile shield and mobile-cloak morphs.

Yeah, I know it's an ugly hack of a solution, and you'd need some way to mark assistable vs non-assistable facs clearly.

quote: i dont see a problem with assistable factories?

I suppose you refer to this part of what I wrote:

quote: I've been imagining what Zero-K would be like, if factories couldn't be assisted. This would solve the issue presented in the OP completely

What I mean is, that when you have to make a new factory anyway to amp up your unit production, you can also make it a different factory than the previous one(s). I think unassistable facs would result in players having multiple different factories, and mixing units.

@Tandstickor, that approach has been done in other mods. It meant factory spam and tremendous effort tech-switching since changing the emphasis of your production over to another lab means building a whole bunch of factories. The only way it works is if factory BP is hella-cheap, and then you've a new problem that you're constantly stalling at the start of the game.

how about - only nanos can assist factories?

Pxtl's idea sounds very interesting.

To solve the confusion issue, I'd implement it differently. Instead of morphing factories to make them assistable, have a static unit (the "Control Tower" or something like that) which, when built, allows all factories within a certain radius to be assistable.

The Strider Hub and Athena should be inherently assistable, neither requiring nor providing the Control Tower functionality.

The upshot of the Control Tower idea would be that, depending on where you set various costs:

a) Initial rushes would be more expensive.

b) At first, adding a factory would be the most cost-effective means of adding buildpower, which then gives you another decision to make about whether to double your current mix of units or add a new technology to the mix.

c) After the second or third factory, the cost of the Control Tower gets spread among all the factories in range of the tower, so adding a Control Tower and then spamming Caretakers becomes the more effective route. That also means you can still blast out specific units at a fearsome rate when you need to, once you've invested in the infrastructure to do so.

d) Spreading your factories out becomes less cost-effective (once you're up to scale) than clustering them, so you get nice pretty bases. Defense still loses, of course, because this is ZK, but it means the attacker gets to have more fun smashing up the enemy bases.