I am agreed with second option. You noted Mirddes assault on the integrity of SC:TA project, and its thankfully not caused any issues beside taking time out of my day, Biass day and others to respond and refute baseless accusatiosn.
It also damages ANZ Reputation by falsely claiming bull. For some brief history put this into context why this matters. Mirddes as most know is permanently banned from FAF for a variety of reasons. The cause or reasoning of his banning from FAF, has also caused his banning from other games in Chris Taylor’s Family of Games Community Areas (Total Annihilation Discords and from what my contacts at TAU have informed me Planetary Annihilation discords too). Mirddes also had back in early August-June had promoted SC:TA Project and represented himself as a leading “member” of the Project itself.
Having gone to LOUD, TAU and otherwise presenting himself as co-developer or otherwise. I personally took time to go to adminstrator of each of those respective discords and do essentially damage control. Ultimately I banned him SC:TA discord and removed him from the project, when he insisted or tried to claim it wasn’t my project but the “communities” as such I had to accept what he wanted as features for SCTA mod (notably Adjaceny and Shields).
However he also sprouted falsehoods and claims about SCTA, such as claiming I would never be adding TMD when even I had banned him, I actually had a TMD in place as a stand in until Hedgehog and Scarab were ported later in July.
And in terms of advertisement and promotions, I’ve put in extensive effort with folks here at FAF, communicating with Nine, who has provided regular advertisements on FAF news, talking and working with individuals at TAU whom have provided support for SC:TA project both in giving permission to use various TA Balance Mods unique “Models” to replace ones of OTA, folks interested in having TA factions in Supreme Commander directing them my way. As well talking with folks at other TA related discords, such as Balanced Annihilation, asking for there help and opanion. All while I do research to create/understand what is seen as the “True” OTA experience and making sure the balancing, and bugfixing SCTA doesn’t confuse a bug for a feature.
And a post that Mirddes made on reddit not just slanders SCTA but for new users or folks whom might have looked up “Total Annihilation in Supreme Commander” or someone looking up SCTA. Might now see this reddit thread first instead of my forum posts, the news post on TAU, or on FAF. Furthermore it brings up a discussion I generally been trying to avoid publicly about SCTA project direction. Both to not burn a bridge with a very prominent and avoid a specific converstation about direction/people see as True TA.
Escalation the most popular TA Mod/Game Style on GameRanger, which is what introduces things like Shielding. Took a very different direction from OTA compared to Mayham, or even Balanced Annihilation. To the point after doing research, I am not going be looking at using mechanics or looking at Escalation for what is true “OTA” Experience. But didn’t want to discuss that publicly yet to not burn a bridge with Wotan. As even if I don’t intend to use Escalation for research for my curating/balancing/etc of SCTA he still has extensive knowledge and be an invalulable resource to ask questions about TA. So yes, all this potential damage done to SCTA Project because of Mirddes finding this loophole.
My 0.2 cents