I miss building multiple factories

I do too, but expensive factories are the neatest implementation of Zero-K's tech structure. The aim is not to create RPS (we actually want to avoid factory-RPS), rather it is to establish factories as soft-factions. Your role and strengths in the early game are determined by the factory you pick, but you are able to add more factories to increase your tech choices. Factories are built for the technology, not for the increased production.

Subfactories is the best solution that I've heard so far. Here are the main choices to make:

• Cost - I like 200 metal because it feels relatively cheap, but not spammable.
• Buildpower - The question is whether to give the factory 10 BP, making it the most efficient source of BP, or 5 BP.
• Inheritance - Does it lose its build options if you lose all your 'real' factories with that type of tech?

I think it would be fun to try out. To do this we would need 12 distinct models (or at least textures) to indicate the type of a subfactory. I think the cheapest way would look something like the Tank Factory, except that the trap door on the top of the tank factory would be replaced with a flat region that can display the radar icon associated with the factory that it is replacing. If someone makes such a model (with animation) and texture replacement system (the custom comm CUS system should work) then I'd do the other lua.

i like factory tech tree and the cost separating the tech roles.
playing spider fac it should feel like im a spider class. choices shou1ld matter.

thats a handy idea but unless all facs are cheap players will unit gift to provide tech to eachother like BA t2 cons

Even if you can't share the factory tech, you can always make units according to another player's request and send the completed units to that player, which is not particularly different.

I like the idea of a builder having discount to the factory that it belongs to itself. Like mentioned, unit sharing is already possible so it should not really affect team balance. In my opinion it would be much better if not every player needed to build their own striderhub and what not when they want to get access to more units despite teammates already having access to those units.

I think it would be nice if there was somekind of togglable option on factorys to share them for the rest of the team without sharing everything else. Only the player who "owns" the factory is allowed to decide whether it is shared or not and units queued by other teammates could have their own team color surround the ordered units icon in the factory queue.
Of course here is some problems:
* Who pays the metal cost of the unit? Preferably the person who ordered the unit should pay its metal cost, but I don't see this being easy to implement.
* What to do if someone wills your factory with unit orders of their own? It would be good if the owner of the factory had ability to remove build queue requests from other players while others are not able to remove the factory owners queue requests.
* What to do if factory is set on repeat when someone else queues unit? Preferably, all queue requests by players not owning the factory should not be repeated.

Still, that is probably too much work and the discount factory idea will help to fix the same issues.

Factories are only 800 metal. You can have 5 factories for the cost of a Strider hub and a Dante.

Why not?

Why would caretakers speed up the construction of a building halfway across the map?

Why can't you build caretakers at the firebase?

Unit traverse time is very important in Zero-K, that is why at the beginning of games people usually build raiders, and scouts.

i worry that if facs are cheap we will see 90% of units unused late game and players will favor of the cream from each factory. and then with many players doing the same thing some units wil become rare with players prefering to grab a new fac and get the better unit.