The FAF leadership team
@Saver said in SUGGESTION: AEON T2 Shield Generator Fix:
@Nomander I'm tinkering with this thought poetry right now. However, I don't know whether I can get the construction effect of the Aeon to the unit (Silver Sea). Unfortunately, I have already tried this in vain with another unit without success.
Reach out to us in Discord, it is easier to discuss the details there.
@Dorset said in Another dumb idea from Dorset:
I would hope we could get to the point where we narrow in on some of these changes and are able to hand over the work to the actual development team. Similar to the t2 Aeon Shield thread I would imagine the development team would just speak up when the time was right in whatever forum post was tracking such testing and changes and then it would potentially make its way into FAF Development soon after that.
I don't think your idea is dumb. But, this is sadly not how it works in practice. Not only are mods unrated, which makes a ten fold less popular. There's a more deeper problem in my opinion. And apologies for the long post.
Historically, there was one game team. But at some point the game team was split into a balance team and a game team. Based on my experience as game team lead between 2021-2024 there's some significant friction the moment something touches the balance area. This not to jab at the balance team - it's just a fact. Some (previous) balance team members even stated this publicly in the past. And this split into two teams is a mistake in my opinion. I don't want to write up a post to ask for approval. I want to constructively discuss it, toy around with it and see it (not) work based on observations made possible by a proof of concept.
As an example, there were talks in various places about giving the Cybran a unit similar to the Absolver. Because of a lack of ability to implement it by the balance team, it did not quite get beyond just talking. As a game team lead, I thought this was a great idea. The first prototype was the made in January 2024. I paid @Balthazar to make the initial prototype according to the specs of the Absolver. See also #5869. The Pulsar was born. Now, the Pulsar is by no means perfect. But it was a great start and it allowed us to test, tweak and tune it. However, now more then a year later the unit still did not see the day of light. And at the moment the balance team is talking about how the unit will never see the day of light. It was never given a chance to flourish.
Some may respond: you should (or still can) just turn it into a mod! But that's not the point. The point is that in order to implement some ideas it can take many hours or even days of work. Take the Pulsar, there's a time lapse. And that does not include the work by @Nomander and myself to tweak it after the initial delivery by @Balthazar .
Another example, take the painting feature (#6725 by @Ctrl-K , alternative approach #6726 by me) took many hours to make from several contributors. Whether that is tinkering on binary patches (#111 and #112 by @Ctrl-K and reviewed by @Hdt80bro ), tinkering on the Lua implementation and/or reviewing and discussing the features. The same applies to making a unit (modelling, animations, setup the blueprints and weapons, scripting when necessary, iterations on all of the previous). It applies to almost any relatively significant change.
Why is the painting feature more interesting and engaging to work on for me? Simply because there's less bureaucracy. There's less talking to talk. It's more about the feature, it's more about figuring out how to make it tick. How to make it fun and engaging. How to make it work for other contributing teams. How can we make it so that moderators have an easy time moderating them? And how can we make it expressive enough for casters and trainers to use it with ease? And at the same time, how can we make it so that players can paint conveniently yet at the same time have the ability to mute users that take it a bit too far. So far, the discussions surrounding the painting feature has been super constructive and progressive. The fact that there are two competing implementations is/was also interesting and beneficial to the end product, regardless of which one is chosen in the end.
About the idea of turning things into mods. Yes, turning things into a mod initially is a great idea. But it's also a bit of an escape. As an example, Equilibrium was a (large) mod about various balance ideas. See also its changelog. A lot of these changes were made to improve the experience of the game. The changelog is also written from that perspective. I wasn't around back then, but apparently this entire mod was created out of necessity because the bureaucracy at the time would just prevent it from even being taken serious. Now, years later, a lot of the features that are described there have become part of the standard game mode. Yet, nobody who worked on Equilibrium is even around anymore. With maybe the exception of @speed2 .
Mods are a great tool to toy around with features and create a proof of concept. But then an similar amount of time investment should be expected from those that make the final decision about whether the proof of concept works and should be implemented into the standard FAForever experience. That's not the case at the moment, it's totally out of sync.
Which also brings me to this point:
@BlackYps said in Another dumb idea from Dorset:
I agree with the others. Making a mod achieves what you want. The fact that we don't see many suggestions implemented for testing is not because there is no possibility to test things, but because nobody actually wants to implement it.
In my experience this is not true. There are numerous people willing to implement things. @Saver is a great example. So was @MadMax before that. And there's numerous other people that I can't possibly all list. Also look at the massive mod packs being made by various people, still now after more than a decade. As an example, take @CDRMV. Or just in general the amount of mod and map work being done by reviewing the vault.
I think it's just that the quality of the evaluation is not in sync with the quantity spent on something. It just sucks to get a 'no' without concrete feedback or a direction to improve and/or get accepted. And if you're lucky then the people in question even took the mod/changes for a spin, instead of the disapproval being based on hypotheticals. Meanwhile, you spent 20+ hours on it. That's just extremely discouraging.
While we're throwing in what we do in real life - I've studied and taught game design as a student at the university. Game design is about creating an engaging experience for a specific audience. This contrasts with the average discussions here on FAF that's about spread sheets, statistics and hypothetical scenario's about extensive micro that only about 50 players can actually do in practice. Which brings me back to my first paragraph about the game team and balance team being two separate teams. The current approach and direction of the two teams is, in my point of view, fundamentally different.
As an example of the bureaucracy and the view being fundamentally different: mobile factories that actually work were already thought of and implemented in Equilibrium. It took years for the same feature to reach the standard game mode with #5227. See also all the other related work. Now all mobile factories have this feature... except for one. The Megalith still has the old build mode. You know why? Because the balance team thought it was unique. It already works different then the other mobile factories did before. And yes, it may be unique. But it's about the experience of the end user. Make it work exactly the same way as all other mobile factories for the end user. Wouldn't it be a ten fold better (user) experience if the Megalith would just poop out the eggs like the game team wanted to do? And - of course - it would still have its own smell... flavor and therefore still be unique 
!
Eventually this was done by mods. And they even made the pooping animation, which ironically is already implemented to some degree by @Saver and @Evildrew . You can find it in the vault by searching by author.
tldr: in my point of view the gap between the game team and the balance team make it impossible for these things to happen in a streamlined fashion. I already tried in the past and I still think that the teams should be combined. Just like it was in the original development team of the game. And that all members do not necessarily need to be good at the game, but instead have a good understanding of game design and the capabilities of the engine. To make the game more fun then the original, instead of just more balanced for the top 50 players. To be less about eSports, and more about a engaging experience for the average player.
While writing all of this, it reminds me of The Next Major RTS Will Fail. This Is Why. and Dear Developers, Stop Listening to Pros. And also why I am so excited about games like Tempest Rising. To me, that game is more about the average player and the experience of it then it is about eSports. Just like the original Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance .
And unrelated: I can highly recommend the earlier referenced interview with Chris Taylor by the University College Dublin as a whole. It does tend to jump around a little, but it's (almost) all interesting to hear to me.
And for those who read this and are wondering about the painting feature: we're actively looking for feedback on Discord. If you want a live demo of both implementations, just ask!
edit: writing a text is hard 
I agree with the others. Making a mod achieves what you want. The fact that we don't see many suggestions implemented for testing is not because there is no possibility to test things, but because nobody actually wants to implement it.
@Deribus said in SUGGESTION: AEON T2 Shield Generator Fix:
Personally I don't like the 4 "petal" T2 shield generator model. Would it be possible to have an additional set of petals come out of the first?
Other structures (looking at you, factories) hide 'additional' mesh information for the upgrade underground. You can't do that here for things that are up in the sky.
The current shield generator:
The new shield generator, next to its upgraded counterpart.
I feel like it having two 'petals' at the top is important for the silhouette (looking at hq rework discussions, I learned). But based on how animations work, you can't scale them into existence or something like that. All you have is rotation and translation.
About the top petals. Move the top petals on top of each other. Then hide the bones Arm_03 and Arm_01 recursively. That way it looks like the original model:
Then the first thing you do when you start upgrading is unhide the petals and move them to the right position. This way the time it 'overlaps' is minimal. And the original base model looks the same.
Now, this type of upgrade animation where we 'duplicate' the mesh is unusual. I don't think any other structure does this. It may feel out of place because of it.
This is based on how the animation of the Seraphim shields work. We could create a 'puddle' at the core of the base of the shield to create the new shield. Somehow, seraphim units manage to apply the build shader to only the upgraded parts. I'm not sure how that happens, but if we can reproduce that then we can re-use the build shader for the Aeon unit to scale the new 'top part' from small to large. Just like we do with regular structures.
This direction requires additional investigation.
Move the bottom petals underground. During the animation you can make them move up from the ground. And as they do that, they start pushing the structure 'up' as they get into position. Hiding mesh below the ground is applied by a lot of animations of structures. The benefit is that the base of the model is then essentially unchanged to the original model, until you start upgrading of course.
With all of that said, thank you for your time on this. You took the extra step. Not only did you make the animation, you also took the time and effort to make it compatible with AIs.
Hello everyone, it is with great pride that I get to say that we've finished two of our objectives within modernizing the Learning Supcom page of the wiki. This started with us having several meetings to highlight what some of the issues were with the wiki, such as it's lack of maintenance and proper structure like most other wiki's would have. Which brings me to the first objective.
We have changed the structure of the Learning Supcom page, which included us having a proper flow of information (see meeting notes regarding the topic), and removing what redundant guides and information we could. You can currently see the difference by first looking at the new page and then looking at the archive. I think we did a great job, let us know what you think!
Although, there has been another significant development. The Personal Trainer Team had begun it's first team project, the Beginner 1v1 Guide. We have had several meetings to get to this point, and several Trainers have gone above and beyond for this guide to become what it is today.
I'd like to express my gratitude to @Sladow-Noob, @Razana, @Paradox_of_War and @Seraphim-Noob for their amazing contributions to this guide, and I hope they get the full credit they deserve for each and every read of this guide.
I'd also like to thank those who have given me feedback throughout it's development, it was taken back and we actively considered each and every suggestion
That's enough from me friends, thank you for everything, and being an amazing community we can contentiously give back to!
nope. I joined faf development 2015, gw was long gone by then. probably 2013-2014 last season
@Caliber said in Add the Tombstones from the 2025 April Fool's Update as a Permanent Feature:
Its just a UI feature so people can choose if they want them or not in an in game setting
This is not a UI feature.
I'm just trying to understand what exactly people like or dislike about the feature because we have:
It's not an all or nothing situation where we have to take or leave the whole package
Do we even need a wreck? There is a large black crater already. Isn't the utility of the feature the map marker and the message?
Could the people that want it as an option (I read that as "yes, but not in my games") please state why? This helps for a productive discussion to better understand what the controversial parts of the feature are
