Hello everyone,

I would like to share some thoughs about how difficult the economic system is to balance. That's more an analysis on why some units aren't used anymore, and some results of test I've done to try to better the situation.

The economic system used by SC (and TA before) is really different from other RTS. This two-ressources flow-based system is really complex to understand and balance. Moreover with the adjacency bonuses, it offers even more possibilities.

Since FA has been released, I'm concerned by the fact that some adjacencies and some economic buildings are not very useful and so they are almost never seen in games. That's sad because it reduces the numbers of possibilities, the choices available to each player.
I've also read other threads, some with really good level of discussions, with lots of data and scientific methods. I'd like to analyse the solutions that have been said in order to see which consequences they ll have.

What will I check in this post ?
- Mass adjacencies bonuses because only mass storage are used currently.
- Mass fab balance (T2 vs T3) because T2 fab are better than than T3
- Mass production choices (Mex vs Fabs) because fabs seem useless

If someone has a suggestion to solve an issue, I'll be glad to test it as I ve tested the other ones.

I would like this thread to be a cordial discussion since I only want to share my point of view. And I apologize for my english because I'm not a native english speaker If I have made some mistakes, do not hesitate to point them and I'll correct them.


-----------
I Notations
-----------


I apologize for the personnal code I use in this thread, but it saves me time not to traduce it

Here is the list of parameters that will be used :

Parameters for building the unit
MC : mass cost (mass)
EC : energy cost (energy)
BT : build time (time x build power)

Parameters when the unit is active
MF : mass flow upkeep or production (mass/time)
EF : energy flow upkeep or production (energy/time)

MA : mass adjacency bonus with full adjacency (%)
EA : energy adjacency bonus with full adjacency (%)
SA : size for adjacency

List of units and their codename :
PG1 : T1 Power Generator
PG2 : T2 Power Generator
PG3 : T3 Power Generator
HP : Hydrocarbon Power Plant
MEX1 : T1 Mass Extractor
MEX2 : T2 Mass Extractor
MEX3 : T3 Mass Extractor
ES : Energy Storage
MS : Mass Storage

-> X a given building, its mass cost will be written ]X_MC[/color.

-> An adjacency between X and Y will be written [color=green]X@Y
If we are using z adjacencies between those two buildings : X@zY

-> A unit X upgraded from the unit Y is written X<Y

-> A unit X building the unit Y is written X>Y


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II Energy production units
--------------------------



II.1 unit list
---------------


There are 4 common energy production buildings : PG1, PG2, PG3 and HP
Here are their raw attributes :


Table 1 : raw attributes of energy production buildings

Moreover, you can indirectly increase your energy production using the adjacencies with ES.


Table 2 : attributes of energy storage

Here is the formula to know how much energy you gain from an adjacency with the building X :

ES_EF = X_EF * ES_EA * (ES_SA/4) / X_SA

Explications / Exemple :

The first part of the formula says that if a PG2 is entirely surrounded by ES, you have a 50% bonus in energy production (PG2_EF * ES_EA = 500 * 0.5 = 250) But the second part says that because there are 12 ES around this PG2, a single ES only adds 1/12 of this amount (ES_SA /4 /PG2_SA = 4/4/12 = 1/12)
So the energy gain for a single ES is 20.83 (500 / 12 = 20.83)

Energy gains for using ES adjacencies :


Table 3 : Energy gain for adjacency between Energy Storage and energy procuction buildings

If the ES is surrounded by several buildings, you may multiply those numbers accordingly by the numbers of adjacencies.


II.2 Important numbers
----------------------


Now that we know how to produce energy, let's see how we can compare the different buildings :

-> EE : energy efficiency
This number represents the cost of a +1 energy income. The lower the better.
Formula :
X_EE = X_EF / X_MC

-> EPE : energy population cost efficiency
This number represents the cost in unit count of a +1000 energy income. The lower the better.
Formula :
[color=greenX_EPE = 1000 / X_EF][/color]

-> EBT : energy build time efficiency
This number represents the cost in build time of a +1 energy income. The lower the better.
Formula :
X_EBT = X_BT / X_EF


Finally, this table show the numbers for each buildings (order by energy production efficiency):


Table 4 : Efficiency comparison for energy production building and energy storage


-> In matter of energy production, higher tech level power generator is always better.
-> HP are really interesting until TECH 3
-> Even if energy production is not the main role of ES, it may be interesting in some situation where you need power quickly, at the expense of population. For exemple, four ES between 2 PG3 give a nice boost to your energy. Remember that the primary role of ES is the storage increase.



II.3 Adjacencies gain with other buildings
------------------------------------------


First I'll give some common values of buildings using energy.

L1>LT : T1 Land Factory building light tank (-20)
L2>MML : T2 Land Factory building Mobile Missile Launcher (-60)
L3>HAB : T3 Land Factory building Harbingers (-160)
A1>INT : T1 Air Factory building Interceptor (-90)
A2>FB : T2 Air Factory building Fighter/Bomber (-140)
A3>ASF : T3 Air Factory building Air Superiority Fighter (-400)
OMNI : Omni sensor (-2000)
QG : Quantum Gateway (-410)
SML : Strategic Missile Launcher
SMD : Strategic Missile Defense


Table 5 : Energy use and size for adjacency for several buildings.

In order to measure the benefits, we must know (X being the unit using energy and Y the power generator used for adjacency) :
X@Y_EF : how many energy is spared with adjacency.
MCS : the mass spared for not building some power generators.

MCS = X@Y_EF / Y_EF


Table 6 : Energy (and mass equivalent) spare for using adjacencies between several buildings and energy production buildings.


As we can see, using energy adjacency bonus with a factory will not turn the tide of the game : the benefits in term of mass spared are really marginals. Moreover, adjacency bonus are not given to units assisting the factory.
However, using adjacencies with building that uses large amount of energy is really worthy : T2 radars, omni sensors, Eye of Rhianne, Soothsayer, T3 mass fabricators, ... But those building have low hit points, and power generators are highly volatile.


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III Mass production buildings
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III.1 unit list
----------------


There are 5 common mass production buildings : MEX1, MEX2, MEX3, FAB2 and FAB3
Here are their raw attributes :


Table 7 : Raw attributes of mass production buildings

Moreover, you can indirectly increase your mass production using the adjacencies with MS.


Table 8 : attributes of mass storages

Here is the formula to know how much mass you gain from an adjacency with the building X :

MS_MF = X_MF * MS_MA * (MS_SA/4) / X_SA


Mass gains for using MS adjacencies :


Table 9 : mass income gain for using adjacency between mass storage and mass producing buildings

If the MS is surrounded by several buildings, you may multiply those numbers accordingly by the numbers of adjacencies.


III.2 Important numbers
-----------------------


Now that we know how to produce energy, let's see how we can compare the different buildings. Since most mass productors have an energy upkeep to run, it's important to take their consomation into account (which depends on the tech level we are). That's why all the following formula take into account a second buildong, Y, which is the power generator used.

-> ME : The mass payoff efficiency
It's the time that the building takes to repays itself when it has been built. It is important because it's the time from which there is a benefit for having built this unit.
The lower the better.
Formula :
X_ME = (X_MC + X_EF * Y_EE) / X_MF

-> MPE : The mass population efficiency
It's the number of unit count used to produce a +1 mass income. The lower the better.
X_MPE = (1 + X_EF / Y_EF) / X_MF

-> MBT : The mass build time efficiency
It's the build power required to gain a +1 mass income. The lower the better.
X_MBT = (X_BT + Y_EBT * X_EF) / X_MF
= (X_BT + Y_BT * X_EF / Y_EF) / X_MF


Finally, this table show the numbers for each buildings (order by energy production efficiency):


Table 10 : Efficiency comparison for mass production building and mass storage


-> Mexes surrounded by MS are the best way to go.
-> FAB2 with PG3 take longer to build, more unit count, and are more vulnerable, but they are quite interesting in term of payoff.
-> FAB3 are really unworthy. Their sole interest is to take only 1/5 of the unit cout of a FAB2 when TECH 3.



II.3 Adjacencies gain with other buildings
------------------------------------------



Table 11 : Mass use and size for adjacency for several buildings

In order to be efficient, an adjacency bonus must give a mass income bonus equivalent or greater than the adjacency with a MS.

The critical values are :

X_CMF = MS@X_MF / (X_MA * X_SA / 4 / Y_SA)


Table 12 : Minimum mass use for adjacency with a building being more interesting than with a mass storage.

That means that a building with a size 16 adjacent to a MEX2 will give a better mass gain than a MS adjacent to this MEX2 if it uses more than 30 mass / time.


If we cross the two tables, we can guess when we could place a building next to a mass production building instead of a mass storage :
-> SMD may be interesting with MEX1, FAB2 and FAB3
-> SML may be interesting with anything
-> QG may be interesting with MEX1, FAB2 or FAB3
-> Land and air factories may be interesting with FAB3 for T2 and T3 units
-> Land factories may be interesting with FAB2 for very high cost units like AAB.


We can search the new Mass Payoff with those adjacencies :


Table 13 : Mass payoff efficiency for the adjacencies between mass production buildings and several buildings


If we look at those results, we can conclude that mass adjacency bonus is only useful with building using lots of mass per time. But it is only marginal and thus mass adjacency isn't very well balanced.



------------------------------------------
III Is it possible to improve the system ?
------------------------------------------


Forged alliance economy is more complex than any other strategy game. The introduction of adjacency bonuses is really interesting because you have to make choice between efficiency, unit count, build time, vulnerability, ... And there are a lot of layout possible.

With the current balance, there are some units or combinaisons that are hardly useful but they are really difficult to better.


III.a FAB2 analysis


First issue : FAB2 are (almost) never used in T2 because their payoff efficiency is very bad when supplied with PG2. But when you achieve T3, they become quite efficient with PG3. (Same as MEX 3)

Second issue, with their unit count efficiency, it's not really worth building them in T3 : 56 unit count to equal the 10 units of 2 MEX3 surrounded by MS ... that's a bit heavy. But they are fine in term of payoff efficiency !

Any change in order to make them useful in their tech level may make them too good at T3. Here are some exemples :

-> decreasing their energy upkeep
What would happen with a reduction of energu upkeep


Table 14 : Efficiency comparison between MEX3 and a FAB2 with a 20% reduction in energy upkeep

No need to go further, we can see that the payoff efficiency (ME) at tech 3 would quickly be better than MEX3 (259) and than MEX3 + 4MS (202) in which case they wouldn't be used anymore except for their population efficiency.
At tech 2, building FAB2 would be equivalent at upgrading a MEX2 to MEX3 without MS adjacency (397), and less effective than with adjacency (298).
At tech 3, I think 125 energy upkeep would really be the limit because FAB2 without adjacency would be equivalent as MEX3 build from scratch, and with double adjacency, they would be equivalent to MEX3+MS, so that would be fine.
Don't forget that FAB2 will require more build power (x4) and population slot (x5) than mexes !

[b}-> Reducing their mass cost[/b]
What would happen with a reduction in mass cost ?


Table 15 : Efficiency comparison between MEX3 and a FAB2 with a 20% reduction in mass cost

With a reduction in mass cost, the efficiency gain is better for T3 than for T2. The situation will be worse because FAB2 could become too powerful at T3 and never used in T2.

-> Increasing adjacency bonus
What would happen with an increase of adjacency bonus ?

Here is a table showing the critical values to make mass adjacency more interesting than MS adjacency depending of the adjacency bonus of FAB2 :


Table 16 : Critical value from which mass adjacency is better than mass storage adjacency

Between 15% and 20%, the bonus with a factory would become interesting at T3 (because only at this level we found units with a cost higher than 10.4 and 13.9 mass/time), so we will further increase the interest for using FAB2 at T3.
At 25% some units of the T2 land factory will allow a small benefits. So let's see the efficiency of FAB2 with 25% adjacency bonus :


Table 17 : Efficiency of FAB2 used in adjacency with some buildings.

According to those results, an increase of adjacency bonus will make FAB2 even more interesting at T3, but not really more at T2. The explanation is that adjacency bonus is better used with high energy consomators, which are at TECH3.

-> An overall increase of all stats
That may sound weird, but what would happen if we increase all stats. Let's say we double them :


Table 18 : Efficiency of FAB2 with double stats

With this new setup, the only change is that the unit count efficiency is better. This will only lead to an easier use at T3 ...

Conclusion (This section is only my personnal opinion and It can be freely debate):

It's really difficult to better the balance of FAB2. Maybe the best way is to forget the current stats and to define when and how FAB2 should be used !

-> long payoff is bad because it slows the pace of the game. A 8 minutes payoff is really too long ! A payoff efficient around 5 minutes 30 (330) when used around PG2 at T2, and around 4 minutes 20 (260) when used around PG3 at T3 would be fine.
Why ?
At T2, building a MEX2 directly has a payoff of 2 minutes and 30 seconds, putting MS around it 4 minutes 40, and upgrading to MEX3 5 minutes. All mexes solutions will remain better in term of payoff efficiency, have a better unit count efficiency, a better build time efficiency and will be a less vulnerable solution (don't forget that T1 bombers, T2 fighter/bombers, air drops and other TML can kill the low HP FAB2 quickly).
At T3, building a MEX3 and 4 MS will be more efficient with its 3 minutes and 20 seconds payoff.

-> Energy upkeep should remain between 100 and 150 because it's a T2 unit and if we use it to absorb energy excess, that's not a too small or too big range compared with the +500 of a PG2.

-> Unit count efficiency should be slighly better. Around 0.6, three time the unit count of mexes surrounded by MS, and ten times the unit count of Mexes alone.


All those points could be achieved with the following stats :


Suggested values for a better T2 mass fab

Mass cost : 370
Mass income : +2
Energy upkeep : -140
Build time : 1000



Table 19 : Efficiency comparison between suggested and old FAB2


AS we can see, those values give a better efficiency at T2 and a slightly worse than before in T3. But with a better unit count efficiency, FAB2 will be useful in both tech levels but may not be overpowered.



III.b FAB3 Analysis


Currently, FAB 3 take age to repay their cost. More than 10 minutes without adjacency and 9 minutes otherwise is really too long when most ranked games last 10-20 minutes and longer games are around 1 hour ! Moreover, their mass adjacency bonus in regard of the danger of their 5000 damage explosion.

If we try to define how FAB3 should be :

-> The repay time should be less than 8 minutes without adjacency and around 6-7 minutes with adjacency

-> The unit cost efficiency must be worse than the MEX3 but better than the FAB2 (that's the first advantage of FAB3 beside FAB2)

In his gathered list of changes, ppipp suggested a change to up to 16 mass income. Here is the result of this change :


Table 20 : Efficiency comparison between suggested and old FAB3


The change ppipp suggested is well suited and should give FAB3 some better days in T3 games.



III.c mass adjacencies


Currently, mass adjacency bonus are almost useless.
For FABs, if the above changes are applied, mass adjacency will be even more useless due to the mass income increase.

The issue is that if we buff adjacency bonus too much, mass storage will never be seen anymore.

There is another solution that is to make factories consume more mass. The higher the mass use is, the higher the benefits from adjacencies are. There is another thread on the build speed of T3 land fact so I will not enter the debate. We could also have the possibility to buff build power of factory. Either with a special building or with assisting (which would increases build power of the factory)


After lots of testing, I believe it is possible to give advantages to both adjacency in different time of the game. In the early stage, with lots of T1 factories, storage could be better. They could be equal When T2 factories are in play. And it could be really interesting to put T3 Land factories.


But I need further testing before releasing the results

Thanks for reading me ; I hope I wasn't too boring nor wrong.

how misleading lol "Small economy analysis"...!?!

tl;dr



Sorry, I'd read but I don't have time.

+1 post count.

Yeah, same as the others. tl;dr.

I readit all!
All he says can be summarised as follows:

Suggested values for a better T2 mass fab

Mass cost : 370
Mass income : +2
Energy upkeep : -140
Build time : 1000

And keep Fab3's the same, but increase mass output ot 16.

And backs it up with masses of maths.
Which is very good, as Fabs need a tweak

If you had read it you would have seen EPIC WIN. BnZ, it's awesome that you took so much time to put this together, and getting all the math to support it. IMO, you're right.

+1post count fails. BnZ has epically triumphed over tl;dr.

Makes them better as eco without being OP, but T2 fabs are still crap.

The reason I don't use them is because they cost mass at all. T2 fabs need to cost more energy and have 0 mass cost, to be useful for something other than as main eco. This makes them inefficient, but it makes them useful.

They suck because they are worse than something else at the exact same job. They will always suck until they serve a different purpose. T3 fabs serve a whole different purpose: eco after all T3 mexes are capped. They do need the +16 buff though.

They need to be used to fall back on. For example, if the enemy is surrounding your base, they could give you one last shot to either break out, cripple the other player's eco(go where their units are not), or go for a snipe. But their still not good enough to be useful at T3.

The numbers I got EDIT:were wrong. His t2fab+t3power value of 300 is accurate.

Using fabs to fall back on should never be an option, because if they are good enough to fall back on when you lose land, they are good enough to cement your lead when you win a lot of it. Back to fabspam. Fabspam = fail.

By the way, your MEX3 numbers are off. You have to exclude the income from the old mex, so that it only counts the increase in income, rather than the whole income, because Fabs are 100% new income, while mexes are an upgrade of an old building that already provided income. MEX3 + Storage is only +18 new mass if storaged at t2, not +27, giving it a value of 300. If storaged at T3, it's only +21 new mass, giving it a value of 257.

The only time you can use the 200 number is when building a brand new t3 mex.

But you could make unitcount go against the winning player. These only give +2 mass, and the winning player will have a lot more units. It might take too much of a waste of units to build these.

But this buff makes them take less unitcap than before. That buffs them for both sides! Takes 3 to equal a t2 mex's worth of income, 9 to equal a t3 mex. It takes 5 to surpass a storaged t2 mex by 1 point, which takes the exact same amount of unitcap and can be built anywhere.

Plus, if you can fall back on them when you lose land, then losing land does not matter anymore. That's my point, and it's a huge step backwards.

Here's the catch-22 though: even if fabs reached the numbers he proposed, they would be useless because it's always better to tech a mex for eco. Most of the time, people who are losing haven't teched all their safe mexes, and don't even have the eco to tech a mex.

T2 fabs will always be useless until either they are better than mexes, or if they are useful as something other than main eco. They are not useful for burning off excess power as long as they cost mass, so this only makes them another degree of useless.

i wish all the new members on these forums' first posts were as detailed and full of accurate information as BnZ's!! good work champ.

I agree, isn't this excellent? Here, read it again:

SHI*LOADOSPACE
lol... I'll delete it in a bit.

Agreed. He might not fix T2 fabs with this but he is dead on about T3s, and he's got a lot of math to back up his claims. That's more than any new poster has ever done, and he should be applauded for it. I apologize for going tl;dr so quickly. I just have a lot of bad experiences reading new posters' ideas on fabs.

BnZ should get an award for "most intelligent new poster". New posters with brains are so rare that I think a reward is warranted.

Dark....you just killed me with that quote. I'm actually kind of tempted to quote you, but I won't destroy the thread like that. As for the guide, haven't read all of it, but it looks like at least he has facts for his assertations. And more facts...and a few tables...and some more facts...

lol. And he does have plenty of facts... and they're all very supportive of his argument. And he makes a good one. The fabs are hard to balance.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I'll get rid of the quote now. It's kinda annoying.

Thanks for all the feedback (Yes it took time to write, but my baby was crying every hour last three nights so I spent lot of time awake )




My though about the 0 mass FABs is that : every time you will have an excess of energy, you will have to build FABs to absorb it. So FABs will become a must have unit and not a choice to further boost your eco at he expense of efficiency.
The numbers : you can farm a +1 / -150 with an efficiency of 360 at T2 (not very usefull) and of 194 sec at T3 (which is better than MEX3+4MS). More energy upkeep and you will never see FAB2 at T2 because it'll widen the gap between T2 and T3 interest.


When trying to balance FAB2, my point of view was : if a player has a huge energy excess, he didn't manage his eco very well (or have loss a lot of land) Having the oportunity to absorb this excess for no cost (because he only builds with energy) does not really reward a player who his on the edge with his energy in order to spend more mass on units. But it's a personnal though and as a T2 unit, we should be able to use it at T2.

You are correct, but how do we make T2 fabs better without making them OP? We'd have to change the efficiency of power plants, because the numbers that I got that were the closest results to now (-250 power) is 600 at t2.

T2 fabs are extremely hard to balance. Your numbers seem to be the closest we'll ever get, though.

I always try to make the minimum changes. any modification to PG could have lots of consequences. Their efficiency is scale so that the higher tech the better, whereas mass efficiency is the lower tech the better.

That's the philosophy of the game, the ways the game designers wanted it. I tried to suggest something that was in that philosophy too.

And the fact that more energy upkeep always leads to more interest in T3 is also a matter of adjacency (75% at T3 vs 50% at T2) which increases furthermore the differences of energy cost.

On the other hand, if we reduce the energy upkeep too much, we will also lost the philosophy of the unit (we could think of a FAB2 costing 300 mass and with almost 0 upkeep for a +1 mass income that could be balanced)

I'm still supporting my suggestion

Ok, I've read it all (or almost), and I wholeheartedly agree with Bnz.

T2 massfab :His solution to improve the T2 mass fab is very smart, because it takes into account the efficiency at t3, carefully compares the new efficiency with mexes, and takes into account payoff time.

T3 massfab : His solution to improve t3 massfab is great, because I had the same (and he had the courtesy to quote me). It's a reasonable value I've figured out roughly taken into account massstorage adjacency, energy consumption, etc... and I'm glad he could back it up with precise and detailed numbers to show it doesn't make T3 mass fabs overpowered either.

Interest : Now, I'd like to emphasize another thing that is important. The game is well balanced as it is now, economywise. So what would improved massfabs do in terms of gameplay?
1. a slightly smoother eco management, and of course, with more variety.
2. slightly easier to turtle, but still much less interesting than conquering the map.
3. but not least : mass fabs being highly volatile, if people begin to build them because they are interesting, you get new targets to harass in the enemy base = added strategy (to protect them and to attack them). Now, since no one ever builds them, you cannot destroy them...
Think about it : even a couple Firebeetles backed up with a deceiver until close to the enemy base could blow up mass fabs farms under shields, etc...

Last point : I think the end of Bnz's post is very interesting : increasing the buildpower of t3 factories in order to make mass adjacency a bit better is another good reason to think about some adjustments to make at the T3 phase. I hope his next post will be as accurate concerning this idea.

Let's hope some GPG guy notice the intelligence in this and suggest that these changes should make it into the Experimentals expansion, the same way they tweaked the economy in FA.

Read it all, awesome maths, once i managed to read X_MF*X_MC and so on it became much easier to understand what you actually were doing.
I ran a lot of similar tests myself and i must say that the changes you proposed would be very nice.
100 unit cap for 200 mass sounds very good to me. I'm not sure if i like the 16 mass income T3 massfabs idea though. I'd rather like to see a massive boost for adjacency for them, as they are not very well suited for mass storage anyway. Right now, even building 4 T3 massfabs around a SML is not really worth it, energy adjacency is just better.

/me stumbles in...
/me wonders wtf he's doing here
/me wanders off

/you fail...

The thing is what is the sense of T2 mass fabs at T2?
I would never turtle with fabricators, I would just upgrade my extractors to T3 and never build T2 fabs at the T2 level.
Decreasing there mass cost to 20 and increasing there energy cost to 250 is the only good solution here IMO. That way they are always useful if your wasting energy without them.

T3 mass fabs should generate far more mass (16-18) and cost up to 4000 mass to build and drain as much energy as they do now.
Higher cost + more mass output will increase adjacency bonuses and lower unit limit costs.
Payback time for a 4000 mass cost fabricator with 18 mass/second output and enough T3 energy to run it would be 473 seconds. In a good template it would be ~349.
~100 seconds lower then it was before.

That's a simple thing and T2/T3 fabricators would be useful for sure, but never OP.

Too long of an analysis thread creator, next time break up the discussion into one of mass and one of energy.

Nobody has mentioned that, in order to construct, spend, create anything in the game, you have to have both mass and energy to do it. The only legitimate way to secure mass, is to expand or create a defense that gives you a mass pile to harvest, you cannot for the price of energy create the economy necessary to advance as well as the player who chooses to expand or tech up, or both.

In SC, you could use the ability to balance mass and energy, if you harvested the wreck pile, upgraded your MEX's and maximized your MEX and economy efficiency using adjacency to the greatest effect. You could also hope and pray to defend a base in SC.

In FA, not only can you not build the impregnable defense like in SC, but you cannot get to the point where you are secure enough to turtle. The player who doesn't stay in T1 long enough to harvest a wreck pile or at least give another player the tactical reason to upgrade will face the wall of T1 unit spam and be defeated.

The bottom line is the strategy of turtling is gone in FA. I'm not saying I was ever in favor of turtling rather than expanding. But in FA it's not even an option.

What I am even more not in favor of is useless units/structures. First off there should be a t1 mass fab, and why not, they are no more useful in T1 than in T2. There is no way, a player can spend the initial cost to build both the cost of the T1 mass fab itself, plus the 6 extra power gens just for a +1 in mass. In T2, you can't risk having the T2 mass fabs next to a T2 power gen, and it only makes sense to spend those resources on a T2 Mex upgrade which gives you more mass for less cost, without the risk of explostion. In T3, when you can spend the extra energy, you won't want to, not for a few extra units of mass. When you are using double or triple digits.

GPG, really lost their way with the economic balance of FA. SC is so much more balanced, and yes you can get runaway economies with SC, but the obvious solution to that is, dropping a few bombs on a linked mass fab farm, or in FA, if anyone tries to turtle, you race in Exprimentals and they lose.

Even if you had a better performing T1 mass fab and T2 mass fab in FA, there would be no way to get the runaway economy, because energy would then become the limiting factor. T3 energy is smaller, less efficient, mass is harder to get so its harder to build up to T3 energy, T4 SCU upgrades have been toned down. It's also easier to take out energy structures with air power now than in SC. Again you'd face exprimentals rushing in if you needed to take out an energy economy.

The other nagging issue, is you can't store enough energy in the T1 energy storage to really use them effectively. You need to store energy at times, because of the spikes, and you simply cannot build sufficient energy structures at times because of the opportunity costs. That is where storage versus capacity would be better to have.

Bottom line is until mass fabs are brought into line FA's balance isn't going to be as good as SC's.