Improve mass storage utility in game

Right now the mass storage only works as mex upgrade. Mostly as a t2 mex upgrade before transitioning it to t3.

Pretty much there is no way competent player would put a mass storage alone somewhere not around mex or a mass fab. On other hand you would see energy storage placed somewhere far from energy.

So why don't players build storage for STORING mass?

Reasons for it:

1. Other units provide you mass storage
2. Mass storage itself doesn't provide enough storage for its cost.

Here's quick browse on top players' games. I've been watching only the eco development. Here's some chart how much extra storage do players get from their units:

There were games where players never built a single storage because they never needed them: factories and engineers gave enough storage for them to store reclaim so they never needed to build a separate building.

In fact if storage didn't give adjacency boost we would barely see this unit as engineers and factories provide enough storage.

This reminds the early FAF balance change when energy storage was removed from engineers and factories exactly so players built separate structure and to provide enemy a counterplay to snipe a dedicated building.

My suggestion to remove the storage from engineers and factories. Also remove energy storage from Sparky as it wasn't done with other engineers. Here's PR https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/5824

Further suggestions:

1. Reduce Mass storage cost to 750e and 100m, but also reduce adjacency bonus from 0.5 to 0.25.
2. Take EQ code that calculates amount of mass stored in each structure and removes it from player when structure dies.

The reason players dont place mass storages separately is because mass storage has near 0 utility, you want your mass to be as low as possible because mass in storage is essentially dead weight. If there is reclaim around you also dont want to build storages - you want to spend asap, and in situations where reclaim is contested you still dont want to build storage (on, for example, setons and such). In very late game having storage is nice sometimes, but you already have mass storages around mexes which is more than enough, you still dont want to have too much mass floating. So your reasons for why mass storages are not built for storing mass are wrong.
Also i hardly see how your changes promote building storages for storing mass anyway. Mass storage from facs and engies is meaningless anyway, scaling mass storages down affects economy (why should it) and i really dont see why it should be done, and the last, removing mass when storage gets destroyed is just silly.

@tomma
Neither energy storage placed separatly gives you any eco. You don't build it so you could get extra energy out of t2 pgen, are you?

Mass storage surely doesnt give you any eco, but why should it do so in general? I mean i'm not against that mechanic, but right now Mass storage is generally used as "MEX UPGRADE" and not as "STORAGE".

Right now engies and factories provide you just enough storage to never bother about it if you keep balance of your eco. But if you suddenly had to reclaim field of two dead armies, you would want to have it. Without storage in engineers and factories you'd be limited by ACU storage of 600 mass, which is very little. Meanwhile enemy who lost his army gets a counterplay on you - he can destroy your storage(s) (assuming most of the time you would put your first 4 storages around mex). That would either deny you from filling up your storage or destroy stored mass.

If you take a close look at storages, you'd see that they show how much is your storage filled so it is logical to lose the mass inside of that storage. That makes the storage an alternative target compared to mex.

This is an EQ concept and it was tested and played.

I wish I didn't need to surround mexes with storages, it's a chore.

@siwaonadaphnewen said in Improve mass storage utility in game:

So why don't players build storage for STORING mass?

Because stored mass is mass that isn't spent, thus it isn't doing anything useful. The goal is to always have as little mass stored as possible. Spending eco on the ability to store more mass is counterproductive.

@siwaonadaphnewen
First of all, e storages provide decent adjacency bonus for t2 and t3 pgens, so if you want to build e storage, might as well connect it. Anyway, the reason you want e storage is because you can OC with it, mass storages give you no such utility.
Scenario you provided is easily dealt with by anticipating you will have reclaim influx before it happens and preparing pgens and buildpower to spend it. Mass storage in this situation isnt that relevant, though it might make life slightly more annoying because you wont always manage to nail eco balance, so you would have to pause reclaim engies for a bit, but overall you will be limited by your e/bp anyway.
Also you will never want to attack storages separately - just because you dont know if your opponent is floating (you wont have time to look at some obscure texture on storage to see how much mass there is in real game), and also because its usually not a choice you make anyway. Storages are built around t2 mexes, and like everything that kills mexes also kills storages essentially automatically (bombers, arty drops, big army pushes), so the only case you can theoretically target storages is like some loya/titan raid, and still mexes are safer choice

All units and structures are mass storage, just control K and reclaim them B)

Losing mass in storage is false depth, nobody is making attacks on the notion of how far “up” your mass storages are to gauge whether it makes putting extra resources into the attack worth it or not. If it has zero impact on player attacking decisions, it serves nothing besides some “wouldnt it be cool” factor.

You need entirely new ui elements that make it clear what mass is in storage to make that reasonable.