More interesting adjacencies

[Crayfish]

The adjacency bonus system is a really unique and cool feature in Supcom, but after the early T1 massfab farming episode in Vanilla Supcom, I feel that its potential was really cut back and never given much thought from that point on.
While Supcom isn't susposed to be Sim City, base building and economic efficiency are a part of the game that really sets Supcom appart from the RTS field and is enjoyed by large proportion of the playerbase. The game is (as it should be) balanced toward dynamic offence and territorial (mass point) control, but I feel that there could still be a more fully realised and rewarding adjacency system implemented without upsetting that focus. The designers built in the excellent chain-volatility feature for risk reward and all adjacencys are just numbers that can be infinitely tweaked.

As things stand, you only really see two adjacencies used in most games, Mass storage around Mexes and Power Gens plugged into Factories. Mass storage around Mexes is good, because it puts even more importance on what is (and should be) the main confict reource in the game, the mass points, but it is so rewarding that no other type of mass adjacency is ever worth using. It would be interesting, for instance, if say, plugging your Mexes into factories was truly worthwhile for 'certain' early build orders in the same way that plugging power into air factories is for going air-tech builds. Like on a 5x5 landspam map where early mass consumption efficiency was emphasised over maxing out late game income.

There are many more examples that Im sure people can come up with. There was a huge amount of cranial energy devoted to this topic early in Vanilla on the GPG boards by many players who enjoyed the economy as much as any area of the game, and Star Craft 2's popularity shows how much players enjoy a deep build options game. Since, as I already noted, that adjacencies are just number that can be tweaked and there is the inbuilt chain-volatility feature, it would be a low risk and high reward investment of time to look into realising F.A's fantastic adjacency system's unrealised potential.

[FunkOff]

I think you oversimplify things quite a bit.

Huge power savings can be made in many circumstances, including pgen adjacency to shields, nuke launchers, and SMD launchers. Pgens also improve effectiveness of T2 arty.

You are correct, however, that there is little benefit in adjacency to mass extractors or to massfabs. This is because only structures can gain adjacency, but units can't. Unfortunately, aside from one specific cybran structure, structures are much worse/less efficient at building units than units (engineers, drones) are. Therefore, to make mass adjacency useful, we will need to make structures efficient at building units.

[Crayfish]

Huge power savings can be made in many circumstances, including pgen adjacency to shields, nuke launchers, and SMD launchers. Pgens also improve effectiveness of T2 arty.

That is true, but my point is how often do you see them used in high level play? I think its fair to say that 'most' top players air on the side of keeping structures seperate to avoid chain reactions over utilizing adjacency bonuses except in the few cases that I mentioned.

Take a look over most bases in most high level games and outside of power around air facs and storage around mexes it will generaly be a scattered mess with little thought about layout or adjacency outside of keeping things seperate.

[Jace]

I already statet in another thread that the problem is indeed that the adjacency bonus only affects the buildpower of the factory. That means that the bonus doesn't have any great effect on Units build in heavy assistet Facs.

Thats because i asked if it would be possible to directly reduce the cost of the unit thats build inside that factory. So you could give buffed assist stations to everyone to get the workerspam out of the way.

on another thought: Why not giving adjacency bonus to Assist stations????rofl, then T1 workers would be really wasting recources. so no benefit in using them to assist Factorys.

[FunkOff]

Huge power savings can be made in many circumstances, including pgen adjacency to shields, nuke launchers, and SMD launchers. Pgens also improve effectiveness of T2 arty.

That is true, but my point is how often do you see them used in high level play?

Pretty much every game. T1 adjacency is very weak, so its not used as much, but T2 and T3 is very strong, and is used very often.

[Crayfish]

I already statet in another thread that the problem is indeed that the adjacency bonus only affects the buildpower of the factory. That means that the bonus doesn't have any great effect on Units build in heavy assistet Facs.

Thats because i asked if it would be possible to directly reduce the cost of the unit thats build inside that factory. So you could give buffed assist stations to everyone to get the workerspam out of the way.

on another thought: Why not giving adjacency bonus to Assist stations????rofl, then T1 workers would be really wasting recources. so no benefit in using them to assist Factorys.

Sorry I don't spend my time followng everything you post Jace. Secondly the example I gave was for early T1 factory build when the factory will not be 'heavily assisted'.
Furthermore my post wans't simple about making mexes plug into facs, it was one example of a general point. I had hoped that people would think about the possibilites and post thier own suggestions.

Thanks Funkoff, we can agree that a.) mass adjacencies are currently not worthwhile (even if the adjacency figures are not the main issue) and b.) T1 adjacencies are weak.

[Jace]

Another thing about adjacency bonus:

Why the hell has the death explosion damage of massfabs and energyfabs be so high that they easily chain react, if properly used?
I mean: we all agree that building a massfab in FA cuts away quite a bit of your recources that you will need for your army? And it will repay only after several minutes? So doing so, is a big risk by itself. Even the T1Massfabs already cost so much now that it hurts quite a bit to use them.

So even if you take that risk using the adjacency bonus: Why has the death of a single or two massfabs, kill of and chain react all surrounding structures? All it takes an enemy to take out all your structures is a well placed hit on a single or two buildings.

That counters the benefit completely, so nobody wants to take that risk.
In Vanilla fabchains were quite common, and in most games you wouldnt have been able to end the game if you couldn't blow them.
But in FA their cost was heavily increased, taking away a lot of their benefit. Wouldn't it be wise to decrease their death damage again, so you at least don't have to fear loosing several structures because your enemy made a lucky hit because you used adjacency?

[Stin]

I could be wrong but I think if you build a nuke launcher and surround it with T3 Mass fabs (You can turn them off and still get the adjacency bonus) the nuke missile will build quicker, even if you are low on mass.

IMO this is a worth while use of adjacency.

[Jace]

I could be wrong but I think if you build a nuke launcher and surround it with T3 Mass fabs (You can turn them off and still get the adjacency bonus) the nuke missile will build quicker, even if you are low on mass.

IMO this is a worth while use of adjacency.

If someone blows just one of your fabs, they chain react and your nuke is gone too.

[Doompants]

Lol. T3 mass fabs have more HP than the launcher in the first place, so I wouldn't worry about that!