Production and factories

Features & systems·Units, buildings & economy·Buildings & economy

Changed in 0.1.0

Production runs on two models. A player’s house carries four production slots — one for infantry, one for vehicles, one for aircraft and one for structures — and each slot holds one object under construction with a queue behind it, however many factories the house owns. Six war factories do not let such a house build six vehicles at once; they make the one vehicle it is building arrive sooner. A computer house does not use those slots at all. Each of its factory structures runs production of its own, so six war factories do turn out six vehicles at a time — all of the same type, since the house names one type per category at a time and every idle factory takes it.

Both models put the object through 54 production steps, charging part of its price at every step, and end with it waiting out of play until a factory building lets it out.

What counts as a factory

A BuildingType becomes a factory by naming the kind of object it produces.

rules.ini

[MYWEAP] ; example war factory BuildingType
Factory=UnitType
WeaponsFactory=yes
Owner=GDI,Nod

When a player’s house orders an object, it searches its structures for one that clears all of these, in this order:

• it is on the map;
• it is owned by this house;
• its Factory= names the kind of object being ordered;
• it is switched on;
• it is neither being sold nor queued to be sold;
• the product is not blocked by its own build limit;
• the factory type’s Owner= shares at least one country with the product’s Owner=;
• Any of: the factory’s own type is not the first BuildConst entry, or the country that construction yard is acting as is one of the product’s owners.

That last term is why a captured construction yard keeps building its original owner’s structures.

The first structure found carrying the primary flag is taken immediately; otherwise the last structure that passed is used. For an aircraft, a pad that already has an aircraft in radio contact with it is held back and used only when no free pad passed. A computer house runs no such search for its own production: its structures build whatever their house has decided to build next.

The four object names split the two production models

The value is matched against the engine’s object-kind names without regard to case, and a name it does not recognize leaves the type a non-factory. Four of the names it does recognize — Unit, Infantry, Aircraft and Building — stand for objects on the map rather than for object types. The player’s factory search tests the value against the product’s own kind name, which is always the ...Type form, so a structure carrying one of the short names never produces for a player — while still raising the multiple-factory divisor for its category. A computer house’s building-driven production accepts the short names, so the same structure produces the computer’s current choice normally. Write UnitType, InfantryType, AircraftType or BuildingType to get a factory that works for both.

The primary factory

One structure of each kind may be flagged as the primary factory. Because the search returns it as soon as it is seen, the primary is where a player’s production is charged and where the finished object comes out. Toggling it clears the flag from every structure this house owns on the map whose Factory= names the same kind, then sets it on the chosen one — toggling the current primary itself only clears it, leaving none — and announces the change to a player-controlled house. A structure loses the flag when it is captured, and an IsMobileWar=yes structure runs that toggle on itself as it opens.

The cursor that offers the toggle appears only over a structure clearing all of these, in this order:

• it is not stunned: an EM pulse is the only thing that stuns a structure, and for as long as one lasts it holds the structure switched off and refuses to let it back on;
• its Factory= names a kind of object;
• it belongs to the local player;
• its house owns more than one factory of that kind;
• for an infantry factory, some other structure of this house names InfantryType in its Factory=.

That last term reads the long name only, so a second barracks written Factory=Infantry satisfies the count above it without satisfying this one, and the cursor stays unoffered.

The automatic primary flag does not count factories

A factory is also flagged primary as it is placed, but the count consulted is not of factories of its kind. It is the number of structures the house owns of one fixed BuildingType — the eighth entry of [BuildingTypes], whatever that turns out to be — so which newly built factories come up primary depends on the order of that list rather than on the base. Setting the primary deliberately is the toggle above.

What a house may build

Four gates stand between an object type and a house’s build list, and they are tested in order.

Tech level. TechLevel=-1 blocks the type outright. Otherwise the type’s level must not exceed the house’s own, which comes from the house’s own map section and defaults to the scenario number; every house a non-campaign session sets up is instead given the level chosen for that session, seeded from [MultiplayerDefaults] TechLevel.

Prerequisites. Every entry of the type’s Prerequisite= list must be satisfied. An entry naming a BuildingType requires the house to own at least one live structure of exactly that type; the tally counts a structure from the moment it is placed, so a prerequisite unlocks while the structure is still playing its buildup animation, and it keeps counting a structure that has been switched off. Seven further entries are group names, each satisfied by owning anything on the matching rules list:

Prerequisite= entry	List consulted
POWER	PrerequisitePower
FACTORY	PrerequisiteFactory
BARRACKS	PrerequisiteBarracks
RADAR	PrerequisiteRadar
TECH	PrerequisiteTech
GDIFACTORY	PrerequisiteGDIFactory
NODFACTORY	PrerequisiteNodFactory

An upgrade prerequisite is answered by one structure only

When a prerequisite names a type that plugs into another structure — one carrying PowersUpBuilding= — the test does not scan the base for that plug. It takes a single structure, the last one in the game’s list of structures that this house owns, has on the map, has switched on and is not selling, and asks whether that structure carries the upgrade. The same plug installed anywhere else does not answer the prerequisite.

Ownership. For a BuildingType, its Owner= list must not be empty, and when it names exactly one country the house must own a construction yard that is on the map, switched on, not being sold, and acting as one of the countries in that list. DoubleOwned=yes opens the type to every country, but only outside campaign games. Units, infantry and aircraft are not put through this gate at all; their ownership is enforced by the factory-and-product Owner= overlap above.

Build limits. The last gate, and the only one the factory search puts again on its own; build limits covers it.

Only the first gate applies to a computer house. Once its tech level clears, every remaining test is skipped and the type counts as buildable; what it actually produces is decided by base planning instead.

Build limits

BuildLimit= decides which of two tallies it is compared against, and the sign is what selects them.

BuildLimit=	Counted	Effect
Above zero	Objects of the type the house owns now	A destroyed object frees its slot
Zero	—	The type can never be built
Below zero	Objects of the type the house has ever produced	Destroying one frees nothing

Two adjustments apply to the “owns now” tally. A UnitType that names a DeploysInto= structure also counts every structure of that type the house owns, so an MCV’s limit is consumed by the construction yards it turned into. An InfantryType marked as a vehicle thief also counts every vehicle of this house that one of them is sitting in.

While a factory is already building that exact type, the answer is “buildable” rather than “at the limit”, so the cameo does not vanish partway through a build. A type at a positive limit is drawn darkened on the sidebar rather than removed; one whose zero-or-negative limit is spent loses its cameo outright.

The limit reaches production through the player’s path only, in two places. The factory search rejects a structure outright when the product is at its limit, which is what stops a new order. The queue gate applies its own version, adding the object under construction and everything already queued to the tally — though its vehicle branch skips the deployed-building addition the factory search makes — and that version has no case for structures at all, consistent with structures never being queued.

Build limits do not restrain a computer house

Neither test lies on the path a computer house’s factories take, so the computer keeps producing the type past its limit. The limit does reach a computer house on a few side paths — most visibly team creation, where a campaign team naming a build-limited member cannot be created — but never its factories. A BuildLimit= is therefore chiefly a limit on what the player may build.

How long it takes

Build time is computed in frames, in a fixed order, and truncated to a whole number at every step.

1. The object’s Cost=, multiplied by BuildSpeed and by nine tenths of a frame per credit. A structure uses that figure as written, which already includes the price of any FreeUnit or pad aircraft bundled into it; the reduced figure that strips those out prices a repair step, not this one.
2. Multiplied by the figure the house was handed when it was given its difficulty — the country’s BuildTime=, the difficulty setting’s BuildTime= and GameSpeedBias multiplied together, with the country’s figure dropped in a campaign game.
3. Divided by the house’s power multiplier.
4. Multiplied by the multiple-factory adjustment.
5. For a Wall=yes BuildingType, multiplied by WallBuildSpeedCoefficient.

Production steps

That figure is not the delay itself. It is divided by 54 and clamped between 1 and 255 to give the number of frames between production steps, and the object then takes 54 of those steps.

With every multiplier above at 1, a unit costing 1000 credits reaches that division with 900 frames, comes out at 16 frames per step once the truncation drops the remainder, and finishes in 864 frames — 57.6 seconds rather than the full minute the price implies. The clamp fixes both ends of the range: nothing builds in less than 54 frames, or 3.6 seconds, which on those same multipliers covers everything costing under 120 credits, and nothing takes more than 13,770 frames, about 15.3 minutes, reached at 15,300 credits.

More than one factory

The count of structures whose Factory= names the product’s category — switched on or not, still in buildup or not — adjusts the build time through MultipleFactory, once rather than once per factory. The table gives the multiplier each count produces at the default setting and at half of it, and the two figures worth taking from it are on its second row: the second factory buys nothing at the default, and a MultipleFactory below 1 makes a pair of factories slower than a single one.

Factories	Multiplier at MultipleFactory=1	At MultipleFactory=0.5
1	1	1
2	1	2
3	0.5	1
4	0.333	0.667

A value of zero or below skips the adjustment entirely.

Power

A house short of power divides its build time by a multiplier taken from a fixed ladder and floored at MinProductionSpeed; the production ladder has the bands. The power recalculation — run whenever a structure is placed, lost, damaged or switched, balance change or not — is the only thing that re-rates a house’s factories, and re-rating keeps the step a build had already reached, so low power slows a build in place instead of restarting it.

Difficulty and campaign games

The country and difficulty multipliers are combined once, when the house is assigned its difficulty, and not per order. A campaign game drops the country’s contribution from both the build-time and the price multiplier, so a [GDI] or [Nod] section’s Cost= and BuildTime= shape skirmish and multiplayer games only. The two difficulty settings are separate axes: a difficulty block’s Cost= changes what everything costs without changing how long it takes, and its BuildTime= changes how long it takes without changing what it costs.

GAFSDF, GAWALL and NAWALL have their price fixed at 250 after their own Cost= is read, which fixes their build time along with it.

Paying for it

The full price is charged in installments across the 54 steps. The installment is recomputed at every step as the outstanding balance divided by the number of steps left, so integer division never loses or gains credits; whatever remains at step 54 is charged in one final payment and the balance reaches exactly zero.

An installment larger than the house’s credits and stored tiberium put together stops the build: the step is rolled back, nothing is charged, and the same step is attempted again after another delay. Progress stays exactly where it stood until money arrives. Starting or resuming a build that the house cannot yet afford is allowed, and it simply sits at its first step on the same terms until the money is there.

Putting a build on hold moves no money and keeps the step it had reached. Canceling refunds the price less the outstanding balance — exactly what has been paid so far — deletes the object under construction, and frees the slot. Because the refund is worked out from the price at the moment of canceling, a price multiplier that changed mid-game skews it.

The queue

Queues belong to a player’s slots; a computer house’s factory holds one object and nothing behind it. Ordering something while its slot is busy adds it to that slot’s queue rather than starting it. The queue holds at most MaximumQueuedObjects entries, which puts a ceiling of one plus that number on how many objects of a kind can be outstanding. An order refused because the queue is full, or because the type is at its build limit, is dropped, and plays ScoldSound for a player-controlled house.

A slot that has been put on hold queues new orders too, with one exception: ordering the very type that is sitting on hold resumes it instead of queuing a second copy. When the object in progress leaves, is canceled, or becomes unbuildable, the head of the queue is taken and started as though it had just been ordered.

Structures never queue. A second structure order is refused outright while any structure order is outstanding, whether the first is building, on hold, or finished and waiting to be placed — the sidebar turns the click away before it becomes an order. A held structure order can in principle be abandoned in favor of a new one, but nothing reaches that path: the sidebar is the only thing that raises a structure order in the first place. While a house has any structure on order, every structure cameo on its sidebar is drawn darkened.

Leaving the factory

At step 54 the slot suspends itself and the object waits. How it gets out depends on who ordered it.

A player’s completed vehicle, aircraft or infantry announces itself and asks its factory to let it out at once; a completed structure announces itself and waits to be placed by hand, which switches the display into placement mode. When no structure could let the object out, the request does nothing at all and the object keeps waiting; clicking its cameo at that point cancels the order and announces that there is no factory.

The exit attempt itself reports success, a temporary blockage, or a permanent failure. Success hands the object to the house and clears the slot. On a player’s path anything else cancels a vehicle, aircraft or infantry and refunds it, so a blockage the factory would have cleared costs the order; a structure is never canceled that way and stays in the slot to be placed by hand.

A structure placed by hand is put down on the chosen cell, plays the placement sound and clears the cursor, and when its type is a firestorm wall or lays a wall overlay it also fills the gap between itself and a nearby wall of the same house. A cell that refuses the structure leaves it in the slot.

What letting the object out involves depends on the factory:

• An aircraft appears at its pad unless the pad already has an aircraft in contact with it, in which case it is spawned at the edge of the visible map and flies in. An ion storm places it on a nearby cell instead of either.
• A WeaponsFactory=yes structure runs a door sequence and clears whatever is standing on its exit cell. While it is still unloading it hands the next object to a second idle structure of the same type by lending it the production slot; with no such structure free, the attempt is a temporary blockage.
• Every other factory picks an exit cell beside its footprint and sends the object there; finding no exit cell at all is a permanent failure. A barracks offsets the exit to a door coordinate of its own.
• One object leaves at a time: a factory still in contact with the object that just left refuses the next attempt as a temporary blockage. Hospital=yes, Armory=yes and WeaponsFactory=yes structures are exempt from that rule.
• A refinery or weeder puts a vehicle out one cell south-west and one further south of its center and sends it to harvest, then reports a permanent failure anyway; infantry leaving one of those is scattered and fails the same way.

A jumpjet infantryman whose rally point calls for flight skips the adjacent exit cell, flies straight to the rally point, and releases the factory’s radio contact immediately. A nearby rally point, no rally point, and every other kind of infantry keep the ordinary exit-cell movement and unload coordination.

A vehicle produced for a computer house by a factory with WeaponsFactory=no keeps that adjacent exit cell as its immediate destination. The base position chosen for it is queued behind the exit and becomes the point it guards; when the house supplies no valid position, the vehicle only clears the factory.

A computer house drives its factories from the structures themselves rather than from a sidebar, and treats the three outcomes differently: a temporary blockage arms a wait of PlacementDelay minutes before the next attempt, and only a permanent failure abandons and refunds. A factory of its own that has stopped making progress with no wait armed is abandoned outright rather than left on hold. An idle one with more than 10 credits behind it asks its house what to build next and starts it.

Buildup

A structure that has just been placed runs its construction animation before it opens for business. It tells whatever built it that construction has begun, which is what puts a ConstructionYard=yes structure into its production animation, and tells it again when the animation ends; that animation then stops and the new structure opens.

The step delay for that animation is BuildupTime converted to frames and divided by the step count, which is half the number of frames in the buildup art — or GateStages plus one for a Gate=yes type. That delay is then adjusted by the game-speed setting before it becomes the animation rate, so how long a buildup actually takes tracks the selected game speed as well as the configured value. A type with no buildup art skips the wait and opens at once.

Only when it opens does a structure hand over what came bundled with it: a FreeUnit is put down beside it and sent harvesting, and a HoverPad=yes structure receives the first PadAircraft entry unless SeparateAircraft=yes. A free unit that cannot be placed anywhere refunds its own price instead.

When a factory is lost

Destroying a factory abandons and refunds whatever production was attached to the structure itself, and then, if nothing the house still owns could build what the house’s slot was working on, abandons that too. Capturing one abandons its attached production before the transfer, moves it between the two houses’ factory counts, clears its primary flag, and makes both houses re-examine their slots. Switching a factory off or on does the same re-examination.

That re-examination covers the four slots, so it is the player’s production it reconciles. It has four outcomes, applied in order:

1. Queued types that nothing the house owns could build even in principle are dropped from the queue.
2. An object in progress that nothing could build any more is abandoned and refunded, and the queue advances.
3. An object that could be built in principle but not right now — typically because every factory for it is switched off — is suspended, keeping its step and its balance.
4. An object that has become buildable again is restarted, unless the player had put it on hold, which is left alone.

A slot left with nothing in progress and nothing queued is discarded. A computer house’s own production is not reconciled that way; it ends when the structure holding it is destroyed or captured, or when the structure abandons it for having stopped making progress.

A computer house that cannot make money sells its base for a replacement refinery or harvester, and abandons every factory it has running as part of that. Handing a house over to the computer abandons them as well.

Parsed settings without effect

The difficulty blocks carry two settings that no production decision reads: BuildDelay and BuildSlowdown.

Related settings

Filter keys

34 of 34

Key	Description	Value	When omitted
ArmoryBuildingType	Admits one infantry at a time and promotes it when the servicing delay elapses.	boolean	no
BuildLimitAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	The cap on how many of the type a house may build, with the sign choosing which tally it is compared against.	integer	2147483647
BuildSpeedglobal rules	The multiplier that turns an object's cost into its base build time.	floating point	1
BuildTimeHouseType, difficulty settings	The build-time multiplier a country applies to everything it produces, or the one a difficulty setting applies.	floating point	Varies by type
BuildupTimeglobal rules	The length of a structure's construction animation, in game minutes.	floating point	.05
ConstructionYardBuildingType	A BuildingType with this flag animates while it produces, refuses ordinary undeploy orders, and starts a computer house's base when an MCV deploys into it.	boolean	no
Cost6 applicable types	The credit price of one object of this type, or the multiplier a country or a difficulty applies to every price it pays.	integer	Varies by type
DoubleOwnedAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	Opens the type to every country, outside campaign games only.	boolean	no
FactoryBuildingType	The kind of object the BuildingType produces.	RTTIType	none
FreeUnitBuildingType	The UnitType a structure hands its owner when it opens for business.	class	none
GameSpeedBiasglobal rules	The multiplier folded into every house's build-time and ground-speed figures.	floating point	1
GateBuildingType	Makes the BuildingType a gate that opens for a unit wanting to pass.	boolean	no
GateStagesBuildingType	The number of door frames a gate animates through.	integer	9
HospitalBuildingType	Admits one damaged infantry at a time and heals it to full strength.	boolean	no
MaximumQueuedObjectsglobal rules	The most entries a production queue may hold.	integer	5
MinProductionSpeedglobal rules	The floor the low-power production multiplier is held to.	floating point	.5
MultipleFactoryglobal rules	The speed-up each factory past the first gives to production of its category.	floating point	1
OwnerAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	The countries that may own the type.	list of HouseTypes	(empty)
PadAircraftglobal rules	The AircraftTypes bundled into the price of the pad they dock at.	typelist	(empty)
PlacementDelayglobal rules	Minutes a factory waits before trying again when the object it finished cannot leave yet.	floating point	.05
PrerequisiteAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	The structures a house must own before the type appears on its build list.	list of BuildingTypes	(empty)
PrerequisiteBarracksglobal rules	The BuildingTypes that satisfy a BARRACKS prerequisite.	list of BuildingTypes	(empty)
PrerequisiteFactoryglobal rules	The BuildingTypes that satisfy a FACTORY prerequisite.	list of BuildingTypes	(empty)
PrerequisiteGDIFactoryglobal rules	The BuildingTypes that satisfy a GDIFACTORY prerequisite.	list of BuildingTypes	(empty)
PrerequisiteNodFactoryglobal rules	The BuildingTypes that satisfy a NODFACTORY prerequisite.	list of BuildingTypes	(empty)
PrerequisitePowerglobal rules	The BuildingTypes that satisfy a POWER prerequisite.	list of BuildingTypes	(empty)
PrerequisiteRadarglobal rules	The BuildingTypes that satisfy a RADAR prerequisite.	list of BuildingTypes	(empty)
PrerequisiteTechglobal rules	The BuildingTypes that satisfy a TECH prerequisite.	list of BuildingTypes	(empty)
ScoldSoundglobal rules	The sound played when the interface refuses a request.	sound	none
SeparateAircraftglobal rules	Stops a helipad coming with a free aircraft and pricing itself around one.	boolean	no
TechLevelNo effect in some scopes7 applicable types	The level an object type demands, the level a house is given, or the level a non-campaign session hands every house.	integer	Varies by type
WallBuildingType, OverlayType, WarheadType	Turns a BuildingType into a wall segment, marks an OverlayType as wall, or lets a WarheadType destroy walls.	boolean	no
WallBuildSpeedCoefficientglobal rules	The multiplier applied to a wall's build time.	floating point	.5
WeaponsFactoryBuildingType	Sends a finished object out through a door sequence instead of an ordinary exit cell.	boolean	no

Related resources

• AI base planning and buildingFeature or system
• Power output and drainFeature or system
• Building animationsFeature or system
• Difficulty settings and handicapsFeature or system
• Sidebar and build queueFeature or system
• Walls, gates and wall towersFeature or system
• No Factories leftTrigger event
• Build Building Type...Trigger event
• Build Unit Type...Trigger event
• Build Infantry Type...Trigger event
• Build Aircraft Type...Trigger event
• Building exists...Trigger event

History

1. Changed0.1.0In development

   Queue AI vehicle factory exit destinations

2. Changed0.1.0In development

   Release flying jumpjets from factory exits

Page feedback

Report an error or missing detail. The issue includes this page and revision.

Open issueSource revision 59fae722af8c