[Poita_]

I posted this over at gamereplays but I thought I'd share it with you guys too

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I am convinced that tier 1 mass fabricators are far too good in the current state of the game. The benefits of using them greatly outweigh the costs. First, let's look at these:

Efficiency
Apart from the tier 1 mass extractor, tier 1 mass fabricators are easily the most efficient economy structure at generating mass:

8 power generators + 4 fabricators costs 600 mass, 10000 energy and gives +4 mass
The upgrade to tier 2 mass fabricator costs 900 mass, 5400 energy and gives +4 mass
The upgrade to tier 3 mass extractor is exactly double to a tier 2 and gives twice as much.

That's 50% more mass cost for the extractors. You could argue that the gen/fab combo cost more power but let's look at it in a practical scenario. You build the power generators before the fabricators. The power generated by those p-gens is enough to cover the production cost of the fabricators. In any case, it is rare that a good player is out of power and if you have built mass fabricators before hand then you can just turn them off to get the power required to build the next ones.

The efficiency of mass fabricators becomes even greater when you use tier 2 and 3 power generators.

Flexibility
Using mass fabricators gives you an extra ability that extractors do not - the ability to turn off. If you find that you are running out of energy then you can just turn an adequate amount of fabricators off. If you are excessing energy then you can just build more fabricators at essentially zero cost.

Volatility
Okay, so mass fabricators explode violently. So what? Just place them far apart and away from things. Even on maps like Winters Duel there's plenty of room for many fabricators. Even if your opponent does manage to kill a few batches of them, you'll be able to put them back up for free since you'll be floating lots of energy from their death. If you lose a tier 2 or 3 mass extractor then you have to pay a lot to get it back, which will be especially difficult if your mass economy was relying on it.

Unit Cap Consumption
Yes, fabricator farms do use up a lot of unit population. However, you won't be hitting your unit cap before tier 3 and at that stage you can just replace them with the slightly less efficient tier 3 fabricators.

Conclusion
I don't know about you but I don't think that fabricators should form the backbone of your economy. In my opinion they should be there for when you are floating excess energy or when you simply cannot find mass anywhere else. They should not be more efficient than things you have to have map control for. I honestly don't feel that their volatility is a major concern. Any reasonable amount of AA - which you are going to need at some time or another - is enough to stop their destruction or at least make the raid very cost-ineffective for your opponent.

I have 2 suggestions for fixing them:

1. Make them consume 60 energy instead of 40. This way they will be equally as efficient as mass extractors but will still be flexible yet volatile.

2. Make them cost 75 mass AND 1000 energy. This has the same effect as with suggestion 1 but makes them a little harder to replace after being destroyed. Maybe make them less destructive or give them more hit points as well to compensate.

Your thoughts?

[kosai]

imo engies build them longer than upgrade mex. u need more pgens, but u need pgens in pregame.
i think 10 mass fabs are good, but more... only when uve got much energy.

[Leaf]

imo engies build them longer than upgrade mex. u need more pgens, but u need pgens in pregame.

However, whilst your extractors are upgrading they are switched off, not only do you essentially lose the extractor for a while but it costs more to upgrade.

The turn on/off flexibility is extremely useful as we all know what happens if you tank your energy and can't get out of it in time, your economy stalls completely and you get slowly crushed, guaranteed. If you can simply adjust your energy consumption to fit...that danger is gone.

To be honest I've always been more concerned with upgrading mexes then making fabs, mainly because of the unit cap consideration, however, I'm now more keenly aware of how the proverbial land lies, I will be trying this out.

[ShloobeR]

I agree, it takes away what little emphasis there is on map control.

I'm not even sure if 40->60 would be enough. I'd like to see something more like 80, so you need around 4 pgens to support one massfab, that would force players to rethink relying on them, especially in the early game.

[RoA-Radio]

I agree that t1 mass fabs are currently too good.
Letting them cost 75 mass would be possibility however I think 75 is a bit too much considering they are very vulnerable, 50 would do it I think.
A simply energy consumption increase could work but is boring. But If the bigger energy consumption is associated with a bigger adjectany bonus to T1 Powergenerators it would be very interesting I think because this allows the player to decide building less efficient mass fabs than Mex Upgrades or more efficient but very vulnerable mass-farms.

T3 Mass fabs could need a slight nerf too. (RAS needs a nerf then too)

[kosai]

maybe use them in late game, connected with t3 pgens? u can connect 16 mfabs for t3pgen, one mfab will use ~35 energy, so thats 560 energy for all of them. then u can build a t3 mass fab and u will gain extra 500 energy. (2500 - 560 - 1500 ~ 500)

[_PINK]

Fabs are indeed too powerful- I've been experimenting with 100% fab economies, and it appears impossible for the other poor sot to keep up with conventional means.

Rush to T2 engs -->Power Plants is particularly effective.