Why does Fullshare exist?

It's just another playstyle. Some maps are more fun with full share, some are more fun without. Imagine gap with fullshare? Yikes. Imagine setons without? Nearly as bad.

Imo, full share's goal is to make the feeling of a game being a waste of time not happen. Imagine you're playing setons, you're doing fantastic on your side, but your teammate is an idiot and suicides somehow. No matter how well you play, your chances of coming back from completely losing one of the lanes is not that high. You either have to start going for snipes on your own, or attempt to win your lane real quick. And if that was possible why didn't you do that already?

Ofc you can reply and be like, well that's part of the game! Yea, no shit. But a lot of people obviously prefer still having a chance to win if someone on their team isn't doing so great. It makes certain maps more enjoyable and allows for different strategies.

For example, I love playing seton's mid. One of my favorite positions to play in FAF. That said, I'd hazard 70% of my games I'm presented with a situation where I can kill the enemy mid ACU. But then what? Do I have enough to keep pushing? Is my eco good enough to counter a now double eco'd player? Should I let the enemy mid live and just eco myself? Would I benefit the team more by switching to navy or rushing an experimental instead of sending a ton of mass to potentially donate down mid?

If you didn't use full share on setons, mid would go from a defensive/supportive position to probably the most important position because if you die, it's gonna be a pain in the ass for your team to stop what's coming. Navies will have to pause, air will have to switch to bombers/gunships. And at that point, now every lane is behind.

I'm not saying setons without fullshare can't be fun. It can be. But at least for me, it's more fun and the games vary a lot more with fullshare on.

Full share is a half way point between Supremacy (where you lose nothing from a snipe) and pure assassination/share until death (where you lose a lot from a snipe).

Killing a commander in Supremacy is almost always a bad idea. There is usually a softer target that you can kill instead. Meanwhile, killing a commander in pure assassination/share until death is always a good idea. Full share makes you think about whether or not killing a specific person is good or bad. It adds another layer of decision making.

Sniping in supremacy is still good early game at least. Later game not so much. The ACU is a very powerful unit, and if they’re using it in combat then you can often kill a lot of their units in the explosion as well.

I'd like to add that losing a commander means partially losing the most valuable resources a team can have: attention span and APM. If you're suddenly alone you need to focus on so many aspects that things just go dead wrong: a bomber you didn't see and took out your radar. A bad fight you accidentally took. A raiding party that you saw, but can not micro manage properly against. Your interceptors / ASF being engaged without you being aware for the first 10 - 15 seconds. So many things.

And whether or not it fits with lore is not too relevant to me in this case. I would always go for full-share option as otherwise the game is just over after a commander dies.

Just a weird idea. But what about percentage share.

When a player dies his team gets a % of the units still on the field. For example 75% stay alive, 25% die.

That way killing an opponent player does hurt the enemy team economically as well in full share.

What exactly will die is something to think about. As well as what to do with the wrecks.

Just a random idea.

What we need is a question on a FAF poll, but as I understand Morax is not in office yet.

@exselsior said in Why does Fullshare exist?:

If you have an issue with assassination then host supremacy lobbies. That sounds tedious to play in my mind, but more power to you. It's a game at the end of the day, do what makes you happy. Removing assassination from the default would make most people unhappy and there aren't really any legitimate arguments for not having it as the default.

That's a common response on this forum, as if one person is telling another person how to play the game. I'm not telling you how to play. We're having a discussion, a debate. I'm making my arguments, you're making yours. Saying "just host Supremacy lobbies" isn't a compelling argument in this case. Of course I'm going to play how I want and you're going to play how you want. But you haven't convinced me that Assassination is a realistic gameplay mechanic in what might be the most realistic RTS ever created. That's all I'm saying. This game allows us to explore strategy and tactics that have been used all throughout human history, not just what might happen in a far-future universe. I don't think you can find a battle in human history where one guy died and the whole rest of the army went, "ok, fuck it" and went home. It's just not a realistic aspect of this game and I'm just suggesting that just playing Supremacy instead of Assassination with full-share makes for a more realistic battle experience. Of course, this game will generally be played in Assassination; the 1v1 games, which is kinda the only thing I play, are Assassination, and to be quite honest even when I play against AI, I play in Assassination, because it is fun, don't get me wrong. But it's not realistic and that's the reason why the OP even asked the question in the first place, and the answer for me is that for maps where full-share is the only way to play Assassination, like Seton's, for example, it might be a better solution to just play Supremacy. The commander is still a valuable unit, and it removes both the situation where a team has lost a quarter of its units and a quarter of its attention/APM, which as @Jip suggests is almost as likely to create an automatic win situation as losing the entire army.

oh well,it goes downside,pretty sure everyone figured out why it "does" exist,but this turns into some more arguments,locking for 1 day to remind what is being discussed there.

Fullshare was once the default and it should be again. Without it, too many games are decided by disconnects.

If you are dumb enough to kill the lowest rated enemies first in a fullshare game... well... you will tend to lose rating xD

If you join a Setons lobby and Full share is not enabled while not as such advertized in title... you can be pretty sure the host has a team full of buddies with some optimized strategy to whack 1-2 of your teammates...

" I don't think you can find a battle in human history where one guy died and the whole rest of the army went, "ok, fuck it" and went home. "

WW2 (hitler) and chess, many other wars and battles

I don't agree with your premise that full share = annihilation.

I would argue that the full share is a compromise between annihilation and assassination. therefore, it should exist as a legit option to play with.

also, the replay you shared doesn't prove anything. I don't have the statistics ready but I imagine that most of the time when an entire army goes poof! . the game collapses quickly after in favor of the team who scored the kill.

@zob said in Why does Fullshare exist?:

" I don't think you can find a battle in human history where one guy died and the whole rest of the army went, "ok, fuck it" and went home. "

WW2 (hitler) and chess, many other wars and battles

Hitler died April 30. Combat operations ceased on May 8, by order of the German High Command. There was still someone at the top issuing orders after he died.

Is that why fullshare exists?

@thewheelie Yes, Hitler died to give FAF fullshare.

Well there's a sentence I never thought I'd type.

EDIT: I think this thread has long since run its course and probably should just be closed.

Fullshare sucks, because it basically punishes snipes in many instances by giving the best player, furthest away, even more eco. And the way eco scales in this game is exponentially, not linearly. I don't tolerate it on anything other than Setons, where I suppose it kind of makes sense.

Eco does scale linearly though. If you have two people with equal eco and one of them dies giving the other player their eco, that player now has 2*x their original eco, not 2^x their original eco.

Math aside, if you take advantage of it snipes are still worth it unless there is a massive rating disparity. Just because someone doesn't understand how to capitalize on snipes in a certain game mode doesn't make that game mode bad. It would make for garbage gameplay to have anything other than full share in TMM for example.

@exselsior said in Why does Fullshare exist?:

Eco does scale linearly though. If you have two people with equal eco and one of them dies giving the other player their eco, that player now has 2*x their original eco, not 2^x their original eco.

Yes, when I say scales I mean the player who got 2x eco now has much more base income to make upgrades, which do exponentially scale. I'm referring to the economy scaling in the future past that point.

@zeldafanboy That's not how it works though. They have to maintain not only at least the same level of unit production that was originally being made, but often slightly more to offset the fact they now have one less ACU in combat. That's if you actually take advantage of the snipe though. If you rest on your laurels then yeah, you're putting your team on a massive disadvantage.

The eco advantage comes from the higher rated player using the eco better than the lower rated player. Only very good players can simultaneously eco two bases and fight on all the fronts better than two players each trying to do their part. If you let a 1k player do this then well it's kinda on you for letting them afk manage their bases.

The ACU that was sniped isn't necessarily integral to the frontline defense though. On a map like Canis River the other remaining teammates can quite easily fill the hole, while the air player now has double mex and power.

It's not very hard to upgrade eco when you're in the back slot... simple math and making enough buildpower.

Stuff like Canis, Dual Gap, and any Astro map are generally exceptions to normal gameplay. Canis less so, but still any team game map that has teams spawning very close together with most the mass there and far away from the enemy team are pretty cancerous to play with full share. This is very different from most of the more competitive team game maps and TMM where it switches to being cancerous to play without full share.