SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions

arma473

It's normal to play 4v4 on a 20x20 map, which means if the match lasts an hour, people make a lot of units. There can be 800 ASF on each side. Which can cause the game to slow down. Some people play on 40x40 maps, especially if they are playing against AI. If you only play 1v1s, that kind of slowdown basically doesn't happen.

Also, this game was not designed to take advantage of multi-core. So it's basically dependent on your single core performance (as well as RAM). But half of the advancement over the last 15 years is in having more cores.

And some people play on laptops.

Nex

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Performances issues with a 15 years old game on nowadays PCs.... ROFL

Uhm yes.

Small screenshot from a recent game. 16 minutes in with speed set to +0, but it slows down to -1 due to too many units.

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

I'm too confident in some people affirmations about engies :

@zlo said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades seem to be bugged:

Assisting with engies is for the factions that don't have Kennel like units...

Nah, t1 engineers are more mass and power efficient, if you don't use those you will be at disadvantage.

He was comparing them to kennels/hives, where T1 engies (or any kind of engie) wins.

@veteranashe said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Either you take engie mod that makes all BP efficient (t1, t2, t3)
Or
Only t1 engines and one factory is efficient.

This was a comparison between FAF (which uses engie mod) and vanilla where you have to use t1 engies to not fall behind

Manimal_

@nex said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Performances issues with a 15 years old game on nowadays PCs.... ROFL

Uhm yes.

Small screenshot from a recent game. 16 minutes in with speed set to +0, but it slows down to -1 due to too many units.

Is there still an issue with pathfinding computation ?
Unless you're playing on a laptop PC, being short in DDR RAM and/or with a medium end CPU / GPU ?

Laptops are way too compact to embed enough components and to be cooled down efficiently in the mean time...

Not mentioning the quality of internet connexion of all players in a game. (I've played with people who had a terrible wifi connexion, frequently disconnected , or their sync was delayed... what a pain)

Some persons like FAF as it is. Some don't for their own reasons.
I'm in between them.
I think FAF could be much more cool, but the genuine FA engine has its weaknesses due to the dev's tech choices... They complained about Xact Audio engine for instance, if I remember well.
There was a "similar" issue with Total Annihilation 's Peewees and Flash Tanks that was solved by turning off their weapon's sound.

ThomasHiatt

How are HQ snipes limiting strategic gameplay? The fact that you can snipe an HQ is literally an additional strategy being added into the game.

Manimal_

@arma473 said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Also, this game was not designed to take advantage of multi-core. So it's basically dependent on your single core performance (as well as RAM). But half of the advancement over the last 15 years is in having more cores.

I've read somewhere that CoreMaximizer was good for Win 7 users only...
It was given on GPG as THE solution to the use of multi-core CPUs...

However I don't know how does the game manage the multi-core GPUs

@thomashiatt said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

How are HQ snipes limiting strategic gameplay? The fact that you can snipe an HQ is literally an additional strategy being added into the game.

Like weakening the shields ?

ThomasHiatt

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Like weakening the shields ?

I have no idea what this is referring to, or how it relates to my post in any way, but any weakening of shields would also be an increase in strategicness. Shields are just a catchall anti-strategy that blocks whatever your opponent is trying to do in a boring way. Shields are still more than strong enough in FAF and can efficiently counter arty or whatever else is thrown at them.

Nex

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

I've read somewhere that CoreMaximizer was good for Win 7 users only...
It was given on GPG as THE solution to the use of multi-core...

No matter what you do, the simulation will always be single core.
You can use 3rd party programs to spread the simulation, ui and other windows threads/processes to different cores, but the main issue is the simulation.

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Is there still an issue with pathfinding computation ?

It's not only the pathfinding. Every unit has to search for good targets for each of its weapons, they have to compute how to shoot to hit their target etc., etc.
So the performance goes down as the unitcount increases (for weapon targeting it's even quadratic, as each new unit introduces new weapons and is itself a new target). there were a lot of updates in FAF to increase performance, but a lot of things are in the closed source supcom engine, so they are not easily changeable (like weapon targeting for example).

Even the best pcs will start to struggle at some point in a 16 player game.

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Not mentioning the quality of internet connexion of all players in a game.

Bad connections will cause stuttering and lag, but will not slow down the simulation.

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

However I don't know how does the game manage the multi-core GPUs

your gpu has (almost) no impact on the games performance.
here the age of the game plays a big role, as gpu performance went up and has always been scalable across cores. Also the game never was really gpu intensive, as it renders very little once you zoom out.

@thomashiatt said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Shields are just a catchall anti-strategy that blocks whatever your opponent is trying to do in a boring way.

No they don't block nukes

Manimal_

@thomashiatt said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

I have no idea what this is referring to,

It refers to shield spill something (maybe spill-over)
This was done because some players found the shields too tough.

TheVVheelboy

"some"

ZLO

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

@thomashiatt said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

I have no idea what this is referring to,

It refers to shield spill something (maybe spill-over)
This was done because some players found the shields too tough.

on your skill level those small changes do not really matter
you can just make resource up to 1k mass income and make all your factires into HQs or use kennel drones or just build more shields and assst them

Shield overspill damage is only like 15% and something like 30 for mobile sihelds
it greatly affects stacked shields that used to be a balance problem

FAF has many many changes, t2 shields were also incresed in cost because they were and still are very strong

waffelzNoob

when's this dude getting banned for trolling

ded_yaga

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Nothing more constructive to say or do ?

Every time I hear something about constructivism it's always something from norse legends... and very very fat.

veteranashe

Why are we feeding this troll who will never get it?

Start locking these threads

Manimal_

You're so righteous that you convinced me to disable forever the mods that sit here FAForever Data\cache\featured_mod\gamedata, by hoping to be able to enjoy the game with the few interesting updates/new features only.
Among other things I wll get rid of : the still-work-in-progress-SACU-thing, the HQs buildings system and the "rebalanced"-engies

I must to underline that FAF devs have left no choice to toggle on/off those features (through mod manager ?), they are simply imposed... and they don't fit all players.

I've appreciated the patience of some helping persons and thank them a bunch for their efforts.

The other ones were just a background noise...

Nex

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

You're so righteous that you convinced me to disable forever the mods that sit here FAForever Data\cache\featured_mod\gamedata, by hoping to be able to enjoy the game with the few interesting updates/new features only.

This will not remove those features, as the featured mods are not the integrated "mods", but the mods you can choose from when creating a lobby.
Integrated mods can't be disabled and adding such a functionality would be extremely difficult, as they are implemented directly in the original lua code (or even binary patches in the game engine).
There is also no point in just disabling these, as the game would become extremely unbalanced.
If you want the FAF performance improvements but keep the vanilla gameplay you could try the vanilla balance mod
I'm not sure tho if it still works and to what extend it restores vanilla balance.

veteranashe

You come at us all pissed about the faf changes and get mad when we defend them.

Your the righteous one here, nobody is saying you have to play faf.

Manimal_

nobody asked devs to alterr the genuine game without keeping a way to play it as it was...

ThomasHiatt

You can play the GPG version on Steam just fine.

Manimal_

now stop this dumb "game" kidz.
come out and play with your district's kidz.
so intolerant with the ones who think not like you...
peace off

veteranashe

Dude I played this game back in 2007 and it was unplayable as I said it would go -7 sim speed. Often playing setons people would ctr k to be done with it.

You are more than welcome to play the steam version, you will not get anywhere here unless you change your attitude.

And as I type this you continue with it, if I was a mod I'd ban you from the forums.