Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods

@nullptr I agree, it would just be very difficult to control the ban on the use of this mod. above wrote that it would add even more work for moderators. so discuss other options (cooldown )

@brutus5000 said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

You can't ban it. 26 posts and nobody even thinks about adding a sim solution to it: put a cooldown on the toggle. Do the same for shields.
Reduces the advantage massively.
And/or add a warm up time to mexxes, so it takes e.g. 30 seconds until they reach regular efficiency.

Sheikah and I discussed that in private - I'm not sure how that works in practice without having a reasonable impact on performance in return. I'd need to look into this .

To add to the discussion: from a gameplay perspective I don't think it matters when a casual player uses a eco management mod like this. As Speed2 mentions: this game is not about fabrication-micro.

To me, there are a few options with a few consequences:

• (1) We try and prohibit people from using the mod. This is A, not entirely possible, B it will anger a lot of people that were used to it and C it has a relative high load on moderation.
• (2) We allow the mod in casual games, but not in tournaments. From a replay / observer perspective it is easy to see if someone is using the mod. This has all the benefits of (1) when it matters (during tournaments), without angering people.
• (3) We integrate the mod into FAF, by providing an alternative like Brutus mentioned. One that discourages enabling / disabling them in quick succession.
• (4) We integrate the mod into FAF, instead of through a UI mod. That way everyone has it.

When thinking about it, being able to use fabricators to get rid of excess power seems like a reasonable purpose for the units in question. To 'soften up' the times when there is no reclaim.

All mods that affect the economy and do not require any actions from the player should be marked as sim mods.

Note that (4) means it becomes part of the FA repository.

I misunderstood 4 option. I edited the post.

@jip This would mean that the FA is adding an autoclicker

Wouldn't be the first time: the ringing feature for extractors is not far off.

I mean like: we're here to wage strategic battles. Not to worry about fabricators. In a lot of my games I typically don't use them because they are so volatile to your economy. But if we'd automate them by default in some sense, in a way that doesn't harm performance, then it is a nice new feature to the game. The capability of being able to do something with all that excess energy, instead of spilling it to your allies .

Even without this mod, the idea of brutus sounds pretty good

(3) We provide an alternative, like Brutus mentioned. One that discourages enabling / disabling them in quick succession

@marcspector thats not option 4. Option 4 I think is saying it is automatically part of FAF (presumably with an option in settings to turn it off) the way building storage around a mex is integrated.
(Edit: posted pre your edit!)

If it’s made a SIM mod (which I presume is what is meant by banning it-ie ban mods featuring this unless they are SIM mods) and Jips ideas for making it hard for most people to use are implemented I dont see an issue with this not being fullproof. Not being able to stop 1% of cases shouldnt mean giving up entirely.

Yep, either (3) or (4) with the ability to toggle it off seems the most sane option to me.

@skrat You already using an embedded auto-clicker called "Spread attack". Including UI Party and other related UI mods

@jip said in [Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods]

• (4) We integrate the mod into FAF, instead of through a UI mod. That way everyone has it.

When thinking about it, being able to use fabricators to get rid of excess power seems like a reasonable purpose for the units in question. To 'soften up' the times when there is no reclaim.

The mod has several different features, some of which are arguably undesirable for integration IMO. I'd rather FAF specifically add/integrate the ability to auto toggle the player's choice of mass fabs/radars/shields. That seems like a useful functionality that should be in the game, it would be fair, it would decrease tediousness, and it wouldn't increase the moderation burden.

The issue is mod not only toggle fabs but also prevents from E stalling by any means. If i am not mistaken you even can choose in what priority to cut off E spending. In my opinion eco managing is the core part of the game and it should not be simplified too much.

It would be good to have more or less strict rules what mod types are considered as illegal. And any exceptional case should be also stated within the corresponding thread. In general EcoManager works as auto clicker but for some reason considered as legal mod and used by many players.

You guys must try this mod before complaining about it. It is not that good, as others describes it.

What about the FAF rules?

We will list what sort of UI mods are not allowed here. This includes:

All reclaim macros
All autoclickers

Ban thy ecomanager

What about eco managers option to queue up mex upgrades by assisting with engineers. That's a nice feature, or is that integrated in FAF now?

@archsimkat said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

am a little confused at how it is still allowed to be used.

I guess it how it end up being historically, EcoManager appeared at GPG times and developers being AFK there was not one to make a desigion to ban something.

feels a little bit late to try to ban it, also i don't see best players using eco manager
afaik it is not even considered to be good for 1v1 (the throttle part of it)

The only "criminal" part of ecomanager is power and mass throttle and automated mass sharing. (automated resource sharing is pretty OP and idk why nobody mentioned it, tho i am not sure how it really works, only seen some videos from TA4Life like 10 years ago)

Everything else i'd keep or even integrate into the game, i am totally fine with automated massfabs, mex upgraide on right click, mex overlay

I use this mod primarily for the right click to upgrade mass extractor as a time saver, and have become accustomed to how that behaves. the mod frequently conflicted with another mod and caused issues that i can't recall, so i simply stripped out all the extra functions, and it literally only can be used to upgrade the mass extractors for me now. The teamshare mod takes care of nuke overlays for me now.

So if the option to right click mass extractors to upgrade existed in base game and works the same way here,, i wouldn't even need the mod as it exists now.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JJUNAbRUvRKI2KkmeVbtqD2OLfU9pXT9/view?usp=sharing

for anyone who just wants the mex click function only

Eco manager not only manages your mass fabs, but can entirely prevent shield stalls when your power gets sniped if it finds enough other things to turn off. This can be a pretty substantial advantage.
In my opinion any UI mod that automatically pauses units for you should be banned. We could still integrate automatic toggling of mass fabs or other elements that we find too tedious to manually do, but I think that it is important that we discuss what kind of automation we accept, integrate that and ban additional automations. Ideally we would prevent UI mods from being able to pause units entirely, but I am not sure if that is possible.
The arguments that you can't ban UI mods are not really convincing to me, as we have banned UI mods that automate reclaim and unit movements in the past. We don't have floods of reuploads or reports about them and even if we can't 100% prevent their use it is important to have these rules to communicate what we deem acceptable and what we consider cheating. In tournaments and select high level games we can actually enforce these rules and the same rules should apply to all players.

And in real life no sane person unironically argues for the abolition of all speed limits because you can't catch every speeder as well.