Multiple constructors build the same station faster.

[CreepersNemisis]

posted on July 18th, 2013, 8:02 pm

Last edited by CreepersNemisis on July 19th, 2013, 4:01 pm, edited 4 times in total.

This is one feature that I wanted for Armada 1 back in the day, and when I first logged in to Fleet Ops I was hoping to find this as a reality.

Basically the way it works:
1. Select multiple construction ships.
2. Go into the build menu and tell them all to build one thing.
Now what will happen is that one constructor ship will invariably reach the build site first. This constructor will start building at regular speed. Once a second one gets there, it deploys it's construction shuttles and speeds up the process 2x. Each one that arrives and starts building speeds it up faster. There would be a limit of course. Everyconstructor that joins the construction will up the cost by a percentage. (See edit 1.)

Another method:
1. Tell one constructor to go build something.
2. Select another constructor's build menu and click on the first constructor or it's in-progress construction.

There would be a limit to construction ships/speed, of course. Perhaps beyond a certain point which I imagine to be about at 3, adding more construction ships will slow down construction. Also I would expect that it would not be a straight up 2x speed gain for the first helping constructor, but more like 1.5x speed.

I'm not entirely sure how this would influence gameplay, except that it would give a use to dormant constructors.
It could allow certain starts to be faster, but I expect not, as many starts I know build multiple things in a staggered fashion.

As always, if you have any suggestions, see any problems, or have anything you want to say about this, please leave a comment below. I want to know what you think! =)
(No, I'm not a phychilogy major. Um, no, I'm not psycho either.)

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EDIT 1:
Y Wing Driver had the brilliant idea of making the cost increase for each constructor that joins the construction! I, personally, like the idea of a 25% increase for each constructor. So you can set up that perimeter right in front of your enemy's base in a moderately short amount of time but it will cost like 50% extra.

posted on July 18th, 2013, 8:10 pm

this reminds me of total annihilation, where multiple builders could work on the same job.

i loved that game. but i'm not sure if it would work here.

ta had a different economy compared to a2. in a2 you can only build if you save up all the resources first, which i think is silly. in ta you could start whatever you want whenever you want, resources were taken per tick of building. if you run out in the middle, the build slowed to match how much income you had. i prefer the ta economy. there weren't miners in ta, all resource gathering/creation happened within the unit, so no offloading time.

back to the suggestion, allowing multiple builders would definitely unbalance fleetops as it is now. dominion can instantly transform miners into constructors, so they would be able to swarm build fast. allowing ridiculously fast land grabs. then those cons switch back to miners and start mining. yeah that'd be devastating. to add multiple builders, you'd need to get rid of that mechanic for the dominion.

also borg constructors are huge and expensive, you don't usually have many.

posted on July 18th, 2013, 8:32 pm

I agree. In relation to the dominion, I did mention I believed it would be necessary to have a speed limit, however this wouldn't be an effective solution to the problem. In the current version of the game, changes to the building speeds of the various races would be necessary. Keep in mind that if it were implemented this would be implemented in a future version of the game, where it might fit in. Future versions are notorious for changing major aspects of gameplay.

posted on July 18th, 2013, 8:44 pm

This one i do not like.

balance would be damaged greatly, many if not all builds are now in balance for all races

borg would be too slow, if you impare their buildspeed, then you force other races to use multiple constructors and its no longer a choise...

dominion are nightmare, they suround you with buidings, you cant posibly destroy anything in time, and they build 5 more before you are done.

this can be used on these races romulan, fed, and klingon, because they are similar in buil system.... i think it cant be balaced for other two remaining races.

posted on July 18th, 2013, 8:50 pm

Hmm, emphisis on "there would be a limit to how fast one could build." Though it is not a solution, it prevents instant build times. I do agree that it would be hard to counter, and hard to balance. It is kindof imprctical. Perhaps it could only be semi-implemented, or nerfed greatly for some races, e.g. Dominion, and more useful for other races, e.g. Borg.

This is a very tricky idea. If done wrong, it could be a catastrophic disaster with balancing. If the devs are skilled enough, they could fine tune it to be an excellent strategic game mechanic.

posted on July 19th, 2013, 7:44 am

This could be cool, but I would limit the number of constructors that can work on the same job to 2 - that would help eliminate Dominion building spamming. If you wanted to, you could even add a construction cost for the quicker job - perhaps a 15% increase on the building materials for a 50% increase in speed.

posted on July 19th, 2013, 3:04 pm

Warcraft 2 and the alliance faction in Warcraft 3 handled this quite well. A second peasant could be ordered to help with construction and it would double the speed, but two workers building something together would almost double the cost as well, if they both worked on it from the beginning. You could set up a town hall very fast, but it would set you back quite a bit of gold.

posted on July 19th, 2013, 3:55 pm

This could be cool, but I would limit the number of constructors that can work on the same job to 2 - that would help eliminate Dominion building spamming. If you wanted to, you could even add a construction cost for the quicker job - perhaps a 15% increase on the building materials for a 50% increase in speed.

^^^ This. You sir, I believe, solved our little problem. =)

Warcraft 2 and the alliance faction in Warcraft 3 handled this quite well. A second peasant could be ordered to help with construction and it would double the speed, but two workers building something together would almost double the cost as well, if they both worked on it from the beginning. You could set up a town hall very fast, but it would set you back quite a bit of gold.

I've never played WoW so I wouldn't know, but I like this idea =)

posted on July 20th, 2013, 5:41 am

Wish I could find the thread that I made suggesting this to recall what they thought of the idea then.

But anyways yes this should be doable by all races. YWD is close on the numbers but the build speed boost should be only 25% if only two constructors can be used to make it not so "spamable" I guess you could say. This would be perfectly fine by me.

posted on July 20th, 2013, 6:39 am

I've never played WoW so I wouldn't know, but I like this idea =)

Not World of Warcraft, just Warcraft, the RTS series that the WoW MMORPG was spun off from.

posted on July 21st, 2013, 1:42 am

Wish I could find the thread that I made suggesting this to recall what they thought of the idea then.

But anyways yes this should be doable by all races. YWD is close on the numbers but the build speed boost should be only 25% if only two constructors can be used to make it not so "spamable" I guess you could say. This would be perfectly fine by me.

None of us know how the new update will turn out, so I'm leaving the numbers to the dev team.

posted on July 21st, 2013, 4:03 am

I like it. cabal has a good idea as well:

Warcraft 2 and the alliance faction in Warcraft 3 handled this quite well. A second peasant could be ordered to help with construction and it would double the speed, but two workers building something together would almost double the cost as well, if they both worked on it from the beginning. You could set up a town hall very fast, but it would set you back quite a bit of gold.

So, to preserve balance in Fleet Ops, there would have to be serious drawbacks to complement the increased build speed that two constructors would provide. As cabal pointed out, we can give the player a monetary (resource) penalty for using two constructors to build one station. Given how much resources matter in this game, a hit to the wallet will always make a player think twice.

Another option would be not touching the di / tri at all, but putting the extra cost into supply. This way, supply would serve a new purpose: A smart player could keep a healthy reserve, just in case a surprise attack destroys his mining expansion, so he could get it back up and running ASAP by building the mining docks and platforms at double speed.

Anyway, I think a really important decision here is: in which situations do we want it to be feasible for the player to build with two constructors? In which situations do we not want the player doing this? Once we work that out, we can then decide how much of a cost penalty we want to give the player.

posted on July 21st, 2013, 8:29 am

Another option would be not touching the di / tri at all, but putting the extra cost into supply. This way, supply would serve a new purpose: A smart player could keep a healthy reserve, just in case a surprise attack destroys his mining expansion, so he could get it back up and running ASAP by building the mining docks and platforms at double speed.

This is interesting, because supply more or less is a late game resource. That means that a player could use this to rush, but face dire consequences later if his opponent has built at a normal pace. in order to "rush" building. I like that! Obviously, the cost of supply would have to be quite high - 30 to 70 or so.

posted on July 21st, 2013, 4:58 pm

I don't agree with incrementing cost, that doesn't make any sense not even for balancing purposes. If you use your two constructors to build a yard faster your penalty is obviously that your other stations are stopped, if you produce another constructor(s) to solve that your penalty is that you used more dil/tri to build them and decommissioning them takes too long either way balance is kept.

Age of empires used this model of cooperative construction and the balance were never affected.

posted on July 21st, 2013, 5:30 pm

I
Age of empires used this model of cooperative construction and the balance were never affected.

you can't compare fleetops to age of empires.

the games are very different. what is balanced for aoe doesn't have to be balanced for other games.

1) defensive structures were the primary users of stone, practically nothing else used stone (not even the stone thrower). there is no analogue to stone in fleetops.

2) buildings in aoe could be outranged and flattened by many siege weapons very easily. or a few academy units.

3) buildings could be targeted and hurt during construction.

4) there wasn't as much map control in aoe, even if you did set up defences, they wouldn't survive long at all.

5) in aoe there is no analogue of a fleetops yard. in fleetops, it's usually only feasible to repair at yards, which are stationary. in aoe, healing was done by a priest, who is mobile. he could sit anywhere that is safe.

6) most importantly: aoe had almost completely duplicated empires. every empire had almost identical units in almost identical tech trees, even with civilisation bonuses. in fleetops some races would benefit from combi-building more than others. even with just two, the dominion would love it.