My FA world is divided. It's easy to see why.

Cybran and UEF have engineering stations, Aeon and Sera do not.

A couple of Hives in the middle of my spawn point, will have me power upgrading my mexes to T3 in no time (thanks mass storage).

UEF kennels will have me power building everything, anywhere (you have air superiority), and is that factions greatest advantage in my mind.

And besides all this, when T3 hits, there is a vast need for buildpower.

I have mastered both Cybran and UEF from this buildpower, and I can build quite rapidly after said power-upgrading.

How do you Aeon and Sera players cope with this lack of build power? Do you just have that many more engineers in your base? You must... Do you just have 2-4x as many factories? You must...

Any comments on this very distinct divide?

Hives are overpowered IMO. They aren't cheap, but incredibly good, too good. I couldn't play another faction without them.

assisting engineers still work

if im aeon or seraph i try to get an engie from an ally if i have one. But apart from that you just build more factories and engies instead

In a game, I can easily build 20 hives, and fully upgrade them. Do you want to build 240 engineers? Each hive is worth 12 t1 engineers when fully upgraded. If you go for T3 engineers, you pay twice the cost. Especially given that Hives have more health, take up less space, and instantaneous reaction times.

yes i know aeon and seraph are at a disadvantage but theres nothing else you can really do except build more factories and engies

This is exactly my point.

If I'm Cybran or UEF, and all things being equal, I feel I can hit T3 faster, and hit it running.

I don't think I can do that with the other two... I'd like to hear how people do it without the stations...

Frankly, I'm scared to play them... But I will after you guys tell me how.

Build more factories and engineers it's pretty simple dude. Build power has always been cheap; it's just even cheaper for UEF and Cybran now.

Agrred x10 with DeadMG

These are insanely imbalanced, way worse than the days of TA where you could have 100 adv air construction planes assisting.

I don't understand how the whole engy-assist issue was fixed for the early game but made worse several orders of magnitude in the later game.

The basically make team games a joke on larger maps.... Paragon+field of kennels = 1 Mavor built per minute. Or nuke, or insta-spam experimentals... take your pick(s). They make it a race to the "I-win" combo. Sooooo exciting.

Even without the paragon, they create self-exponentiating build power....

I agree : they should be removed. The game is good enough without them.
Or every race should have this kind of options, with slight differences.
But for now, yeah, it's just unfair.

I think UEF ones are worst because you can expand exponentially once you get your first t3 mex and Air superiority. Then you just go to every mex and gain + 27 more mass every one minute or less.

Assisting with Engineers is better than assisting with Hives.

They are not OP.

Not true:

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic. ... ht=#294608

A fully upgraded Hive has 60 build power, it takes 4 T3 engineers to match that... at twice the mass cost.

Thats alot of buildpower, at less cost.

And that's just ONE hive... I usually have 10+ in operation.

... on paper.

You can define "OP" any way you want. But I know stupid fields o' hives/kennels gameplay when I see it. In team combo with a paragon, FA devolves into a "build the win button". If you like this sort of game, no point arguing.

Is the build range on the Hives larger than the circle displays? If so, how much bigger is it? I've seen Hives assisting things out of their build ranges.

I have a sneaking suspision, that you can build hives spaced out in a line, and have them all assist the next hive...

Ultimatly what you have is leapfrogging hive drones, all helping to build the project on the end.

I haven't tested this, so don't quote me on it (or you could, I like being quoted)

It is funny to see hives build more, but you can't use this kind of tactic to extend their build range.

Well, after getting shot down my DeadMG, all I can offer is this:

each time you upgrade a hive, the build radius expands. Fully upgraded, they have a rather large assist range.

T3 Hive's build range is 25, or two and a half times that of your ACU. The purple circle, I don't know what the hell it is, but its certainly not build range.

That doesn't work. I've tried it.

Hives aren't OP, I haven't played seraphim yet, so I don't know what they'd be like with them, but if aeon had one, combined with a paragon, they'd pretty much stomp everything. If you like how the hives assist everything automatically, just patrol engineers.

They kind of cause the fark problem from TA. Maybe not to the same degree yet, but it's a possibility that it will become the same.



Don't necessarily need hives/kennels but at least something with decent build rate per unit like the old farks, but with low health so they could only be used in bases would be ok. Problem with engineers is they cost too much unit cap for t1, and cost too much t3 factory time and mass per build rate at t3. It's not the actual build speed that makes kennels/hives so great, it's the fact that you save a ton of unit cap - which is an artificial limit but really comes into play at such a high differential.

The Paragon itself is functionally a win button. I don't think the problem with hives comes from here. -Any sort of team combo involving a paragon devolves into a 'build the win button,' even if hives and kennels aren't present. (Say, a 4v4 Aeon/Seraphim grudge match.)

Besides, they still have to build a second paragon to make use of all that build power, or have a huge field of hives/kennels in their base in order to assist the construction of whatever superweapon they're making.

Of course, I don't think there's a problem with hives/kennels at all, but then I'm a UEF player, so I'm a bit biased.

I’m a hive addict as well but I have never managed to build as many as mentioned by others. Most games that I play are over well before I can sustain more then 7 (non-upgraded and by finished I mean that most of the time I defeated my opponent). The Cybrans and UEF do benefit from a smoother transition to tier 3 but their units reflect this as well.

I can understand the fear that comes with completing a paragon and mixing it with hives but honestly the game was over the second that the paragon was completed, hives or no hives (unless the other players had a counter ready just for that occasion).

Not true. Fully-upgraded Hives are more mass-efficient to build than T2 engineers.

And that was? is?

This I disagree... Aeon (if alone) has still has to build stuff to actually end it. And standard engineer build rate limitations still apply... this gives an opponent time to at least attack it. Same with a mavor or scathis alone.

But together with a mass Kennel assist, the second Paragon takes about 2 minutes to build. Each Mavor (or Scathis) , a minute or so. The kennel/hives + paragon basically makes an econ/offensive capability explode into infinity. You cannot counter when paragons and T4 arty are popping up every minute.

Without this combo, going for a game ender is more of a risk. It may be scouted and one raid can knock it out. It may not end the game then and there alone. But with the combo, it truly becomes a "we win" button.