What would it take for Nomads to be FAF's 5th Faction?

@mach yes, eventually, but not before it's ready. After another 15 years of balancing and polishing if that's what it takes.

Using unit restrictions to disable a whole faction is a single click. Unit Restricting entire factions is a WAY smaller hoop to jump though than joining Nomads discord, downloading the campaign, editing files in "C:/Program Data/FAF". and then editiing settings in FAF. Campaign integration ASAP is a no brainer, most everything else im sure will come to pass in good time, even if it takes another decade, or two.

For everything other than the campaign, it's as accessible as it needs to be in it's current form. And even as a mod, maybe it could have it's own ladder, but it's clearly not ready. Personally I would be entertained to see a SCTA ladder, with and/or without the other 5 factions, I'm sure other's would be horrified by that notion, and yet more others would be as entertained as myself.

I think nomads is really cool, I'd hate for anyone to be forced to play as something they don't like... I personally dislike seraphim.... though i've developed a soft spot for their nothas..... I honestly have no idea what any of the buildings are when I look at them in the build menu... I avoid playing them like the plague. Eventually as Nomads' balance and polish becomes truly of the same standard as the official factions, does the faction choice of your opponent really matter?

And again im certain there is some audience who would be happy with a 'vanilla' supcom ladder, just as im sure in time, a nomads inclusive ladder suplementing existing ladders will be appreciated by some portion of the community.

No one would be forcing anyone to play with nomads, no more than anyone is forced to play survival , pvp, or coop. Having to select Nomads from the featured mod list is perfectly acceptable, however there is one major limitation not yet touched on, other featured mods cannot be played with nomads. Phantom with nomads would be cool, though from what I read in another thread, looks like PhantomX is now a sim mod? im sure there are other featured mod combinations that might also be cool. Maybe enabling support for multiple concurrent featured mods is the solution.

It seems everyone agrees Nomads "has potential" and "is cool" but that 'jank'.... oh no the horrors of the jank "run away..." and fair enough. I wouldn't want my match ruined by broken bullshit either. Ideally this thread will result in a very long list of every single flaw nomads has. Clear direction for future Nomads maintainers to move forward with will certainly benefit the project.

The performance issues @jip mentions IMHO are way worse than any balance issue, it's worse than turning on RTX in cyberpunk, way worse. Like wow thats bad. not even with your 10 foot pole bad. Though not quite 2006 single core 2ghz during the beta bad.

"I demand campaign", nothing more. The rest is wishful thinking with great respect for everything that has already been accomplished. Nomads needs as much critical feedback as possible. I'm sure a mock ladder and accessible campaign will certainly generate some. Could a nomads inclusive ladder exist whilst remaining a mod?

I don't know if Nomads is going to developed day in and day out until 2038...

I mean I don't care if nomad campaign gets put into the coop tab. It just isn't good for competitive games. Up to devs to think about the work in implementation and whether that warrants doing it.

I don't mind integration of nomads campaign (idk why it isn't yet), nor making it easy to play nomads with other mods (featured mod system imo makes things harder like you explained), nor anything else about improving it

but

@cunnismeta said in What would it take for Nomads to be FAF's 5th Faction?:

Using unit restrictions to disable a whole faction is a single click.

no one would be forcing anyone to play with nomads, no more than anyone is forced to play survival , pvp, or coop

by having to use unit restrictions, you are forcing everyone to play with them, I already explained why it shouldn't be a base faction, but here is more detailed example

current situation:

• those that want to play nomads: use featured mod to host the modded lobby or join existing one
• those that don't want to play nomads: host normal lobby or join existing one

with your proposal:

• those that want to play nomads: host normal lobby or join existing one (such difference?)
• those that don't want to play nomads: host normal lobby, then go into options, unit restrictions, disable the entire faction, probably unranking the game because you can't have restrictions in ranked, or join normal lobby, check if it has nomads off, ask host to disable them if not, host probably disagrees or doesn't care and you are playing nomads anyway

effectively it creates massive friction to play normal game if nomads are just another vanilla faction, they have to be kept as an optional mod and the current mod system is fine for that (it would be better if it was just a normal sim mod instead of featured so you can play other featured with it), host a lobby, enable the mod, FAF makes it really easy to join modded lobbies without having to do anything more than joining the lobby, and mods can be ranked

so for tiny more convenience for nomads players by making nomads available as a faction by default in all lobbies, those who don't want to play with nomads have to jump through more hoops to play a normal game than nomads players have to to play the modded game even with current system

(off topic? comparison) I see this exact same problem in minecraft, microsoft keeps adding things to vanilla version with every update, things that already existed as mods before (and were done better in mods than by microsoft, but that's even more off topic), things that players had option to get before if they wanted it, or not if they didn't, but now that they are added to the base game, they have no choice, they have to deal with new additions, previously mods, if they don't want these new things they have to go out of their way to remove them by adding mods that remove those features, just to play the game that it originally was, and these are not mere rebalance things such as playing an earlier balance patch in FAF, but entire features and systems that change the gameplay significantly

so even if all jank is fixed and nomads runs as smoothly as vanilla factions with 100% balance, it should still be a mod, a faction that doesn't exist in base game should not be in base game because you are forcing everyone else to have to deal with it for minor convenience of those that do want the mod

all else about nomads, like I said, I don't mind, but having it on equal grounds as base game factions is unacceptable, it is a mod and must remain so, the base game is of paramount priority

sorry for essays

also offtopic comparison, dota and lol add new heroes and items all the time, their additions enrich the greater potential for balance. dota2's introduction of talents again gave more room for balancing. with a 5th side actively considered for the overall balance of the meta, even if no one chooses it, it's affect on balance will still exist. i see this as a good thing, and i can empathise with those who do not. it is truly a double edged sword and i believe in the long term it is worth it.

speaking of microsft... halo infinite as seasonal content update for MCC would have avoided the entire mess they've got on their hands... halo5 crossplay splitscreen... i love when all the things get added, and cry when they dont... but what a mess. FAF does a good job of avoiding messes. FAF actually gets things done.

I've been in plenty of Nomads lobbies where no one picked nomads. I think statistically this is the most likely scenario. In most matches most people wont pick nomads, well no more nor less than any other faction not getting picked in an 8v8. And this is the pvp context for my personal appreciation of nomads, it adds more flavour to the chaos, without getting silly like blackops and mayhem.

We must remember that ultimately FAF is viewed by many as just a mod. Arguably the greatest supcom mod. I view Nomads as one of the crown jewels, it just needs to be cut and polished.

How about nomads as a lobby option, disabled by default?

Love the essays, keep them coming

That would require loading Nomads content every game, for basically no reason

@deribus are unused assets really loaded into memory?

it would certainly make initial installation of FAF take longer.

@cunnismeta said in What would it take for Nomads to be FAF's 5th Faction?:

We must remember that ultimately FAF is viewed by many as just a mod

it may be viewed as a mod, but last I checked, as a mod to continue the support of the original game (supreme commander: forged alliance) and improve it, not change what it is as if it is some kind of unofficial sequel or fan game/spiritual successor, unless it changed, the point of FAF, as I understand it, is to make the base game the best it can be, you can't do that if it is no longer the base game, these additions (mods), however amazing, must remain completely optional

and it is not an excuse to deviate "because we are already technically a mod, so it doesn't matter how far from original we decide to change it" nor should what people see FAF as change what it is, I can't check, but I think many more people come to/stay on FAF not because of how far it deviates from original, but because of how close it manages to stay to it while improving to the point where the game is unplayable without it, I know I do, nomads (or any other modded faction) just can't fit into that no matter how good it is, because it wasn't in the original game (SC:FA) and thus should remain optional

before you mention units that FAF added, those were added (again afaik) because of existing gameplay necessity (t3 maa) or other kind of improvement of some aspect of existing gameplay (engy mod), nomads aren't needed for gameplay, they are a completely optional addition that base game doesn't need to function, they may be great and all but they are great as an optional mod, not as part of base game

FAF does a good job of avoiding messes.

this is why

In my opinion the "crown jewel" of FAF you speak of shouldn't be what it adds into the base game whether you want it or not, but what it allows to be added to modded games if you do want it, but the base game should remain base, a crown can be taken off

Updated my post with more accurate numbers, with thanks to @Sheikah

I look at the numbers and think "How many more people would play with Nomads if they were more complete?". Playing coop is the same content only the objective has changed. Nomads puts additional functional ("Functional") content in that adds more.

Unrelated, I didn't know so many people played coop.

Just a total lack of man power, if Nomads and Balance team had a full staff, maybe it could be possible, I’d be happy with a fifth faction to add more spice to the game.

However, this would need a dev staff for nomads, and for balance team to have much more time in their hands to balance all of these things.

Afaik Nomads development stopped because most devs either stopped working on it or don’t want people changing Nomads. I recall some people I know trying to contribute but being met with a lot of bureaucracy from nomad devs about their vision and what they want implemented…

@Mach whilst i agree entirely with most of the points you make, some people feel this way about seraphim, i know i sure did for the longest of time.

@jip that's much clearer. 35k unique players playing 2.5million valid pvp matches? in one month is impressive. what are the stats for 1v1? and other matchmaming queues.

@TankenAbard i think the same thing, and i think the same of SCTA.

@Femboy yes, gatekeeping by skeleton crews helps no one, least of all nomads.

the massive difference is that seraphim were added by original developers of the game, they are canon and part of the game no matter how anyone feels about it, they were also introduced like less than a year after original game afaik, they were basically part of it from start so idk how anyone could have a problem accepting them, unlike nomads who are completely fan made in every way more than a decade later and unofficial and having nothing to do with original developers

I also found seraphim confusing at first and I still can't tell the difference between many of their units and buildings as easily as for other factions, but they are part of the game that always existed for me, and for anyone else coming to FAF, literally the intro of FA shows seraphim and the entire story is about seraphim, everyone who played the game anywhere knows about seraphim because they are everywhere in it from start (even original supcom mentions them repeatedly, some critical stuff in story is literally seraphim), same can't be said about nomads or other potential fan factions, many probably don't even know nomads mod exists, especially those just coming to FAF

@mach to be fair, nomads is as old as seraphim. considering the emphasis modability was given prerelease, isn't no surprise a group of fans immediately set to work creating a 4th faction. Coming from TA, Aeon will always be the new faction in my eyes.

maybe i need to rewatch all of the cinematics, does vanilla supcom truly reference seraphim repeatedly? would be insanely cool if the cinematic videos could be played directly though the FAF client at any point. seem to be in some weird format... the videos play through VLC... with no audio...

As long as SCTA under my steward, SCTA will never be ranked

@cunnismeta said in What would it take for Nomads to be FAF's 5th Faction?:

does vanilla supcom truly reference seraphim repeatedly? would be insanely cool if the cinematic videos could be played directly though the FAF client at any point. seem to be in some weird format... the videos play through VLC... with no audio...

original supcom intro mentions seraphim as origin for aeon, aeon intro also mentions them, naturally, in the story itself seraphim artifacts are a plot point in cybran's second mission and exist as real objects in game, brackman himself talks about them in some cutscenes, I think QAI does as well, idk how many other times they may be mentioned in story cutscenes

in "secret" outro of each faction shows seraphim arriving on Earth in different ways even if for few seconds, example of UEF, and cybran, (for some reason it is very hard to find an isolated video of those on youtube)

so yes seraphim were very canon from beginning

I would like to clear out some of the missinformation about "gatekeeping" people from contributing to nomads. That was never the case, people are welcome to help out with the mod and they are given pointers if they are unsure how to do stuff.

You can see all closed PRs here https://github.com/FAForever/nomads/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed
and you will have hard time finding PRs that got rejected.

But as with the main fa game repo that Jip is managing, Nomads also have certain quality requirements for the things that get added. That applies for code, models, effects.

So people are getting feedback on their work and pointers on what to improve and how.

I hope this help to clear some things out

So gonna make a fuller response now about SCTA and Ranking/integrating:

1. Most of the SCTA Models simply aren’t the “proper” quality needed. And most don’t have LODs more than 1. Now I set many to phase out, but that different issue.
2. Fundamentally TA Factions at there core are not balanceable vs Supcom. You can make them ‘fair’ but not balanced. There is 1001 reasons for this, between the different scaling of Eco, lacking certain “techs”, and having abilities that are simply not replicable but Supcom Factions.
3. Fixing 2 would fundamentally change the mod at its core premise. Which is about enabling a way to play Supcom vs TA in a somewhat reasonable fashion AND allowing folks to see where Supcom franchise had spawn from. Why is there only 1 “Engineer” type? Because juggling 3-5 different types are infuriating (for example).

Which basically covers it, but I wanted to be clear on that.

No point in balancing Nomads until models are finished and some units cut or replaced or reworked. Before that happens, all you can do is make things look less worse. Original team wanted to implement some really weird things in mod and some of them exist to these days.

One thing is certain: mod needs thoughtful approach of "balance team" and "model team" to make things happen. The amount of work to make models of required quality is absurd. And FAF balance team wouldnt handle this job given how slowly they fix things in original game and how ugly they do their job. Quick example: loyalist missile redirection was fixed in EQ in 2016, now the question is the fix in the main game?

In any case there is one major issue with mod: its intellectual property. It doesn't belong to FAF, it doesn't belong to Exotic's team, nor 2-3 teams before. It belongs to Brute51 and he set some restrictions on how we could change the mod. We certainly crossed the border a little and it cost us a shitstorm a couple times. I personally would scrap 1/4 of what people call "faction identity", but i was not allowed to do so. Orbital bombardment that was mentioned here is one of those things. However one thing is random russian noname doing small things and other is legal entity from Europe changing everything completely.

My conclusion is FAF does not have resources to implement mod.

This project was cool, but right now its barely living corpse or better say cadaver. When i first saw Sanctuary trailer I noticed familiar style, concepts and assets there. Why do you think EDA was the first faction you saw on screen? Fair to say Nomads will be finished. In other game...

@siwaonadaphnewen I did not know that this was the reality of things, that is terrible.