Did you know?

Wanted to start a thread about unexpected or little known interactions involving units in supcom faf.

Did you know: Torp defence doesn't work against torp bombers?

Torp bombers use depth charges not torpedoes.

Minus points for not saying "Did you know?"

Ah, I thought you were talking about why it happened.

Well, I recently read about ZLO discovering that the last tick that a unit is building in a factory is actually free, so things like a fatboy with a lot of BP can build labs at a 15% discount from sticker price. Though it doesnt apply to assist afaik.

Thats cool! I shall overlook the lack of "Did you know?" for that one.

@ftxcommando Isn't this only for aeon torp bombers?
The other ones use normal torps (unless this was changed since 2013)

Somewhat related

Did you know aeon destroyers and czar uses depth charges instead of torpedos, which for those that don't know cannot be blocked by anti torpedo defense.

Looking at the db it seems you are right, though I thought all torp bombers did avoid torp defense.

@ftxcommando Well yes you're right, before the change to normalize torp bombers seraphim and I think uef torps got screwed by torp defense and aeon and cybran (uses current behavior) weren't effected by it. I may be mixing up the factions.

Did you know?

Transports assisting a land factory will automatically carry units to the factory's rally point

DYK: An engineer with an attack move order will move to reclaim nearby enemy structures even if they were never scouted.

•When you build something, game remembers that and does not let you build in that place anymore.
(for example you could use cheats to teleport building away, but as long as building is not dead, game will not let you build in that place)
•When you upgraide any building, old building gets removed and replaced with new upgraided building. And while this happens, game forgets that that old 1rst building was build. New building that was spawned on top does not get the same treatment as newly build one and there is no extra mechanism to prevent building
•Usually players can't order to build buildings on existing buildings, but AIs can, sometimes they block their upgraided factories by placing stuff inside factories.
Players can use "repair" hotkey on a building's wreck to give order, even if wreck is on top of other building. however it should not interfere with model of that building... not sure how that works, but you can't just build things inside other thing, but there is lots of empty space around factories where you can build
•you can do some cool weird stuff with that
IT WAS ALL DONE WITHOUT CHEATS, i didn't teleport things inside other things, i actually build it this way, and it can be reapeated with cheats off.



•That is only the beginning tho!
I found out that it is often not consistent.
Sometimes i can fit storage in the corner of the factory, and sometimes i don't


However if all factores are placed next to each other in a grid - then they all are acting similar, in a way that you can build storage in the same corner (i just didn't build all of them on this creenshot, but only 2 storages on the left are buildable for those factories)

•So i have been testing that for long time but im gonna skip all the failed test attempts... here is test that reavealed the mistery
•Making a big grid of dead t1 AAs

•1rst test susbject coordinates 0x0 (mesured in pds with 0 at the top left pd xD), 2 layer of pds are buildable on the left, 1 layer at the bottom

•second subj, coords 0x1, 2 layers at the left, 1 layer at the bottom but only partually... weird actually

•3rd, 0x2, now it gets different, and i am able to build on top

•4th, 0x3. weird that those two pds were not buildable now

•5th. 1x0. so changin horisontal position changed my ability to rebuild PDs on factory sides now

After that it was clear that factory's position on invisible grid affects your ability to rebuild things inside of it, witch was kinda werid...
also it repeats itself at least once in avery factory lenght i think... didn't check that for sure, and didn't check if it repeats itself more often... maybe like every 2 1 pgens or so maybe possible.

not many uses for that i guess, can probably try to fit storages and factories next to mexes, but need to know beforehand if you can do that with certain mexes or not. The fact that id depends on position kinda makes things simpler. also makes things insanely more fun for people that would try to recreate what you are doing but not placing things exactly in the same place LOL.

maybe you could fit more shields in the same area and fit tele-defence in the same area at the same time but it requires you to build things and then ctrl+k them and then build on top of them without reclaiming and then upgraide what you have build and then rebuild from wrecks.. not easy, and not cheap

Edit: Testing was hard not only for me https://youtu.be/NhIr38iKFac that poor SACU lost its mind

ZLO, it's time your write a damn book about all the knowledge you have accumulated on this game

If you assist unfinished building or unit of your opponent with a builder, builder will try to capture it. even if progress bar fills, capturing will not actually happen, and it will keep trying to capture it over and over again.

You can assist engineer with mantis or harbringer and they will assist in capturing if there is nothing to aggro against nearby

mantis / harb will not assist ally engineer capturing, but engineers can assists ally engineers capturing

If you and your opponent queue same building in the same place at the same time you can help to build enemy building.
it can often happen with engineers trying to build mass extractor at the same time... but surely happened once to two acus standing in the open place and randomly deciding that it is a good time to start a PD right in the same place and at the same time https://youtu.be/VsJ3Syb8wW4?t=134

Holy smokes that's a lot of cool weirdness right there! Do facs get the adjacency bonus from pgens built like this?

Dyk : aeon torpedo bomber depth charges gives water vision. You can use that to spot stealth ACU under water by groundfiring.

Dyk: Capture speed is proportional to build time of a unit and it takes twice less time to capture unit, compared to building it.
capturing will drain twice is much power per second compared to you building the thing that you capture.
So overall it takes half the time and same amount of power to capture unit compared to building it.

Reclaim speed of LIVING UNITS (not wrecks) is only proportional to power cost of a unit and nothing else.
Just divide power cost by builder's build power and divide by 10 and you will get time that it takes to reclaim something.
E.G. t1 engineer costs 260 power.
if you want to reclaim it with other t1 engineer, it wil take 260 / (5*10) = 5,2 second.
reclaiming t1 interceptor with t1 engineer will take 45 seconds.
reclaiming t2 mex with t1 engineer will take 108 seconds
and 13 minutes and 20 seconds to reclaim an ASF with t1 engineer

it takes 3.2 sec to reclaim aeon lab
2.8 for cybran
2.4 for UEF
1.6 for selen
however 1rst 0.2 second engineer spends to unpack his "arm" and aim(tested on uef enginner)
then after all HP has expired it actually needs extra 0.1 second to actually kill the unit. If that does not happen, unit will be alive with 0 HP

one fullly upgraided t3 hive will deal 219 DPS to a GC by reclaiming it
20 Fully upgraided hives can capture a monkeylord for about 9.2 seconds

Dyk : Groundfiring SR will kill and vet from inte swarm attacking it. On the countrary, If you give only move orders to the inte, they will win against the SR.

Did you know ?
The fervor (Aeon T1 arty) is a reliable anti-air unit, and an underated counter to mercy.

@auricocorico I knew I saw that correctly when I was casting that game!

Did you know that you can get full t2 beach mex by min 7:10 and then need pricisely 31 T1 pgens to spend every single point of mass for t2 destroyer production.