Small suggestions topic

archsimkat

When someone disconnects from a game you are not allowed to give any actions for around ~1 second while the game simulation continues moving forward. Would it be possible to remove this 1 second control lockout entirely? If not, would it be possible to at least automatically pause the game for the lockout period?

It can actually decide the game, especially if multiple people leave consecutively, e.g. in situations where you are fighting air and one player is behind the other, and suddenly neither player can issue orders. Also, I don't recall this being a thing in the past, so if someone could point me to when this feature was added that would be great.

Eternal-

@archsimkat I vote for removing this

FtXCommando

It was added like 2 years ago and it was added because it removed a huge majority of the desyncs in replays. You basically used to have a desync in every teamgame replay if a person decided to leave mid game.

Vastly more coherent to ban something as rare as exploiting the pause than to remove something that gives a huge net benefit, if anything.

archsimkat

Solving desyncs is great, so there's no need to remove the lockout entirely. Maybe just automatically pause the game for the 1 second duration and then automatically resume so you don't have periods in the game where nobody can issue orders?

Jip

@archsimkat said in Small suggestions topic:

Solving desyncs is great, so there's no need to remove the lockout entirely. Maybe just automatically pause the game for the 1 second duration and then automatically resume so you don't have periods in the game where nobody can issue orders?

This is very possible, upvote this post if people want this solution.

QuietJoy

@jip Geez I had no idea you could upvote on this forum lol If we do implement this can a message be put in chat saying whats happening? And can it unpause itself automatically??

Jip

Yes, we can unpause it automatically too.

Edit, these are the functions:

When a player leaves, we issue a pause. And then we can keep it paused for ~ 1 to 2 seconds, before we automatically continue by issuing a resume.

Eternal-

i would like to have an option in lobby to turn it off if this is possible. I would like to enjoy the gameplay, not a hour long boring replay

Jip

I'm afraid that the toggle to disable the UI is part of the executable and the implementation doesn't allow you to toggle it.

QuietJoy

Can you pause the game, make the pause/unpause disabled for the players to prevent interference then unpause the game and reenable the button for the players?

archsimkat

Right now, the option to expand the idle engies or factories menu only appears when you actually have an idle factory/engie, and - at least for me - the button is somewhat difficult to click because it's so small. In my opinion you should always want the expanded version of the menu, so my suggestion is as follows.

This is how it is currently:

This is my suggested version:

Excuse the bad image editing, but could you create a menu option to show expanded idle factories AND engies menu by default?

Jip

A UI mod can do that too, no need to embed that in the repository.

QuietJoy

I was thinking of the flags in the game lobby that shows where we all live. If there was also a small icon showing if each player had indicated (somewhere) that they spoke/understood english that would be potentially helpful. I'm one of the (few?) people who types a lot in game, trying to rally or focus the team and I've often had games where no one responds lol so maybe they literally don't understand me meaning I'm wasting my time and it would be useful to know to stick to pings

Jip

I'm not sure about that last suggestion. I think the country flag is already a good indication whether you can expect someone to understand / speak english. And even then, sometimes people just want to be able to play in slience.

CheeseBerry

The real question is: Do we want to show the flags at all?

thecore

An idea I have which may need play testing and discussion is if you que engineers to build multiple building they can sometimes get in the way of the next building in the que. The build has wait until all units that are in the way to move. My suggest is have units that are in the way of the next build que move out of the way and avoid this location before it starts to be built.

archsimkat

Somebody link that clip of Yudi trying to move engies out of the way of a t3 pgen for a full minute.

Jip

@thecore said in Small suggestions topic:

An idea I have which may need play testing and discussion is if you que engineers to build multiple building they can sometimes get in the way of the next building in the que. The build has wait until all units that are in the way to move. My suggest is have units that are in the way of the next build que move out of the way and avoid this location before it starts to be built.

The simulation is not informed of the building until it starts building. We cannot sync that information to the sim - that would open a window for cheating. This is also why the terrain scanning feature is delayed.

@Deribus can you close this topic? We've got sufficient examples of small improvements for the next patch. Some of them are already part of the patch, see also the changelogs or the commits to FAF Develop.

edit: linky to the overview made by Deribus:

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/3206/small-suggestions-topic/141

archsimkat

Locked upon request

Deribus

Unlocked and relocked because Jip asked me to do it