No, it's extremely inefficient to let multiple people compete to do multiple variations of the same thing when they could instead work together on one.
What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?
FWIW, the trailer contest seemed like it worked out pretty well. Different people have different tutorial styles, where a given tutorial might be more helpful for some players, while a different tutorial might be more helpful for some others. Alternatively, if we want to avoid multiple tutorials on the same topic, we could avoid repeats with a first-come first-served style, where the contestants sign up/reserve their tutorial topics before they make them.
pfp credit to gieb
A tutorial campaign (or mission) is not a video tutorial. There is vastly more work involved in the former and such a prize would end up being split between 4+ people because of the effort necessary.
Fix the lobby issues (login failures, loading failures when trying to start new games after having just finished one, extremely frequent connection failures when loading new tabs such as leaderboards or browsing the mod vault)
Maybe it’s just me having these problems (idk) but it seems like making a more stable lobby is something that should be prioritized if at all possible
@Rowey you werent shut down, I simply did not have time for anything except paying bills (which is why I did not candidate again)
"Nerds have a really complicated relationship with change: Change is awesome when WE'RE the ones doing it. As soon as change is coming from outside of us it becomes untrustworthy and it threatens what we think of is the familiar."
– Benno Rice
In my opinion a series of challenges would be better than an actual tutorial, as they would be easier to make and dont baby sit players through timely scenarios, simply choose a map, create said task and record the time it takes for a leaderboard it would also create a seperate area for competative play.
the challanges could start with easy but essential basic skill tasks such as fastest time to create 100 tanks
then fastest time to claim all mexes on a certain map like miricle
to eco challanges like fastest time to break 1k mass income
or fastest time to create a strat bomber then kill something with it
then to more complex things like breaking through a very well defended base
and then these could be placed into another tab where you have matchmaking, custom and co-op
this would allow people to learn things at there own pace and practice particular skills and see how good they are against other times and also allow the top players some bragging rights to the fastest times and the first to use certain stratagies to accomplish those times.
very similar to campaign missions and recorded times but far more specific in nature and smaller in scale
i think casting wise we are more than blessed with gyle. this guy talks like he is and an broadcaster at the bbc for live. 
imho the main problems why new players leave (wihout having any data to prove it) who maybe dont have any special connection to rts or remember the game from their youth is the pathfinding combined with the nealry non existant multicore support (and this in an engine that highly relies on cpu). seeing a 6v6 going down in speed after 40 min while everybody got i5's, i7's and ryzens in a game from 2007 is not very pleasant while used-to players still consider a it a fluent gaming experience.
i wouldnt state toxicity as a characteristic of faf, its even lower than in most other games i think, bcs due to the relativly small playerbase you have to play at some point with the same people. i always have a very family feeling playing it:) also i lost it myself here and then i never had any trouble with players over a longer period of time. also i want to emphasize the fact that those bad lobby names indeed stopped (e.g.)
besides buying the royalties and the game code to make a complete 2023 makeover of the engine i think the tutorial campaign would be very very nice. maybe push modded fun modes more with an own ranking (i know we already got so many different rankings). Its incredibly what the sup com engine is capable of, but me, as most i think, never play fun modes. I think there could be even some battle royal with the coms be possible. warcraft III footmen style if anyone remembers:P the coms get tons of upgrades and can vet like 50 times (level up), maybe you can even implement more ultimates trough the over charge function. also im a big friend of the challenge idea. crazy made up scenarios and some objectives. easy to make bronze but hard for 2k's to get platinum, like trackmania.
all just ideas which would be a shitton of work i cant myself do bcs i didnt learned something useful:P
@thewheelie said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:
We're already paying our good friend gyle 1800 bucks a month for casting
No FAF funds are going to any caster at the moment. I suspect you are just referencing his patreon which is from non FAF individuals
@thewheelie said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:
We're already paying our good friend gyle 1800 bucks a month for casting
H-hey, c-could I get s-some of t-that for fa-faflive?
Some people read jokes like that and take them literally. I'd suggest not making those sorts of jokes on the forums...
pfp credit to gieb
@thewheelie said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:
Its called a joke my man. I think its pretty obvious faf isnt spending 1800 a month on 1 caster
Yes as Penguin said not everyone reading this would know it is meant as a joke so I had to clarify to make it obvious.
I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if faf was spending 1800 a month on gyle since he has such professional casts.
the only thing worth using money for would be to get the IP back and hire developers to rewrite the engine without touching anything else (impossible task in itself), but that would need FAF budget to be in dozens of millions
I don't think there is anything else worth using money for other than keeping the servers and services (like this forum) running
about promoting FAF, everyone on steam forums seems to get triggered whenever FAF is mentioned unless they specifically asked about it, as do some people on supcom reddits, so idk if it would not backfire to go on an advertisement campaign instead of attracting new players
things that matter, improving performance, increasing modding capabilities, reducing friction for joining (recently someone complained they don't use FAF because it is a hassle to set up), derp's new player tutorial system meme, etc all don't seem to cost money to do, but only voluntary effort, adding money to "official" people to do stuff would be toxic to people who already do it for free, and afaik doing things for free is where 99% of FAF development comes from in first place
@edtjuh this has been ongoing for years as it a technical issue that just required people who know what the are doing both the GW back and front end are on the fa repo
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" - Spock