Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods

I think people overstate the usefulness of the eco management, except for maybe the mass fab parts + prevent stall to keep shields up late game.

Maybe integrate some of the UI features and if/when mass fab management is in the base game the mod can be removed from the vault. I haven't been maintaining it for years anyway.

New UI options available for all players and better performance by providing sim-side data:

• Mex overlay for level / upgrade status
• Build status% of your teammates nukes / anti
• Mex upgrade: One click / right click assist start mex upgrade

Features which already moved into FAF:

• Upgrade shields multiple levels at once
• Queue up acu/scu enhancements with shift
• Auto build mex storage rings

Features that can be removed:

• Autoshare

Only shares resources with other ecomanager players. Had a use in the RAS air builds @ setons but now useless, replaced by one click share in the UI.

Only nice thing is when the ACU dies it instantly dumps all units / mass / energy to the rest of the team instead of 5+ second delay

• Energy throttle

Basically only useful for mass fabs and somewhat prevent shield stall late game. Otherwise mess up more than it helps

• Mass throttle

Not very efficient and cannot compete with someone semi-competent manually upgrading mexes.

Currently working on mods ecosystem and I want mention here some of them, replacing functions of Eco manager:

• TeamInfo share: shares data with teammates about nukes/smds and exps completions
• Idle Engineers light: shows idle engineers/ factories and upgrading mexes (all of it is toggable through UI mods options)
• Eco Ui tools: stolen reworked UI party mex panel

Just put all the non-controversial options of eco manager into a new mod and upload that. Then we can blacklist eco manager in peace

How many successful competitive games have you seen with optional per-player mods? It's not gaming here, it's gaming + coding. UI mods should not be allowed in ranked and tournaments.

@melanol said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

How many successful competitive games have you seen with optional per-player mods?

Gonna go with 100% of them

@melanol said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

UI mods should not be allowed in ranked and tournaments.

Even assuming we wanted to implement it, how would you enforce that?

Gonna go with 100% of them

What universe are you from?

Even assuming we wanted to implement it, how would you enforce that?

How am I supposed to know?

Oh I see you meant "competitive games" as in DOTA and CS:GO, I thought you meant in the context of FAF games, in which case I can't think of a single tournament that banned UI mods.

As soon as you personally finance all our touraments to happen at lan events in your 3rd mansion we can ban all ui mods from events.

@ftxcommando said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

As soon as you personally finance all our touraments to happen at lan events in your 3rd mansion we can ban all ui mods from events.

Nope, i would implement a game option to disable ALL UI mods, and anchor those functions inside the sim-state of the game so you can't bypass it.
Problem solved

i'd be mostly fine without UI mods, but probably would be less enjoyable to play without spread move and disperce move, target priorities, ect ect

People who use something like selection deprioritiser might not adapt so easily, but i may be wrong

Wasn't spread move already removed with the recent patch?

Only split attack works for me and I asked in the lobby and people told me it was basically cheating, so it was removed.

@uveso said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

@ftxcommando said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

As soon as you personally finance all our touraments to happen at lan events in your 3rd mansion we can ban all ui mods from events.

Nope, i would implement a game option to disable ALL UI mods, and anchor those functions inside the sim-state of the game so you can't bypass it.
Problem solved

Every solution creates 8 new problems.

It is not possible to ban UI mods entirely - we can only make it more difficult.

Banning UI mods without implementing some of the better ones into the game explicitly would be a horrible idea.

Well, by banning UI mods I actually meant "after integrating some into FAF and then occasionally integrating new ones".

And how exactly is the community gonna figure out decent ones to integrate when they’re banned from all competitive play?

I just use common mod tools and ui-party so I can play windowed dual screen using a autohotkey script (see https://forum.faforever.com/topic/123/guide-fake-fullscreen-and-optimisation/57). I have issues using the secondary adapter method, it does not display correctly for me as I use 3 monitors.

As far as mods which add new functionality like spread move or target priorities these should either be added to the base game or banned.

@ftxcommando said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

And how exactly is the community gonna figure out decent ones to integrate when they’re banned from all competitive play?

By testing them in non-ladder and non-tournament games.

Why do you always discard any idea proposed in the forum as garbage?

You said all ranked games. Nobody decent plays unranked games habitually so your sample size for testing these ui mods will be 3 games hosted and played by game devs and/or balance teams for 2 hours on the weekends. If what you mean is ban them from the matchmakers and tournaments, now you have created two even more alienated subcommunities with even less overlap as people need to adjust their settings to both environments. Custom lobbies are the larger subset, so this will inevitably hurt the matchmaker and tournament communities more than the general FAF community and make yet another roadblock for any player to overcome to reach "decent" level.

Believe it or not but I just discard the garbage ideas as garbage.

Here are the 3 UI mods that have been argued as necessary for decent play:

Additional Camera Stuff - for build range rings showing up, this is planned on being integrated. Carries a bunch of superfluous camera hotkeys that some people use but tons of people don't.

Advanced Target Priorities - gives you additional control over unit targeting. Was partially integrated as it was deemed too complicated and too much information for new players to be given which would only harm them in figuring out what they need to focus on to actually get better. A simple version with ACU and unit priority was integrated and once they reach intermediate level on FAF they can download the mod to get further control when that gives them greater value.

Supreme Scoreboard - important tool for replay analysis, was not integrated because it harms performance compared to normal scoreboard which can have bad results for many FAF players with poor PCs that weren't intending to "get good" in the first place. Left as a mod to better accommodate this reality.

Banning and integrating these 3 carry their own issues and disregarding that for some weird puritanical values that don't actually impact the high level scene nor solve any actual problems is such a waste of time.

Another fun thing to imagine: you have now destroyed all icon mods people have developed and mandate everyone to play with default icons. How do you think this will impact the guys playing on like 3440x1440 resolution or higher?

If the solution to all of this is "make a settings and option page that would make Dwarf Fortress blush" then you have now entered terrible ui design territory that scares away new players even more than some spook about "cheat mods" does.