BlackOpsFAF Balance and Patch Mod 2026

[Doompants]

@Zopto Wow. We hadn't noticed the Inquisitor bug. That sounds gross. lol.

I dove deep on these fixes because I had two weeks off and my wife did not. I can't promise I'll be an ongoing champion for this, now that I'm back to work because life is pretty busy, but I thank you for posting. I will take a look.

Gamebreaking stuff like the Inquisitor I'm certainly a lot more willing to spend my time trying to get working. Unit descriptions, not as much, but with your level of detail, if it can be a quick fix, it may get done.

Tell me though -- did your friends just play house rules with Blackops Teleporting? I'm not crazy right? It's fun, but it's pretty dang OP. I wonder sometimes why it doesn't overtake the mod on 20x20+ maps.

[Zopto]

@Doompants Oh yeah we absolutely have a set of house rules regarding the teleporting. We banned offensive teleporting but still allowed defensive teleportation for the purposes of running away or base defense. That's what ended up satisfying the most people and worked as a decent compromise.

[Doompants]

Cool, well if you try the TP balance, let me know what you think. I think it's still very powerful offensively due to the strength of upgraded ACUS in BlackOps, but it's a little bit harder to rush, and a little easier to see coming if people actually scout, and the longer channel time is not as long as vanilla, but we've definitely had people overstay and die trying to get out, (or super-clutch escapes) which just doesn't happen in unbalanced BlackOps. Also the range on T2 and T3 Anti-TP towers are a lot bigger.

[Szasz]

This post is deleted!

[Szasz]

[Szasz]

Hey Doompants,

Did you touch artilleries in any way?
The mod '1.5x T2 Artillery Range, 75% cost' conflicts with yours resulting the game getting stuck during loading.
Yet that mod is a simple script changing only a few values dynamically:

LOG('[Blueprints.lua Line number 1 inside mod is line '..debug.getinfo(1).currentline..'] after hooking blueprints.lua!') -- printig the real line number after hooking

local OldModBlueprints = ModBlueprints

function ModBlueprints(all_blueprints)
	OldModBlueprints(all_blueprints)

	for id,bp in all_blueprints.Unit do

		-- build Category Array for faster access like "Categories.LAND" or "Categories.EXPERIMENTAL"
		local Categories = {}
		for _, cat in bp.Categories do
			Categories[cat] = true
		end
		
		if Categories.TECH2 and Categories.STRUCTURE and Categories.ARTILLERY then

			if bp.Economy.BuildCostMass then
				bp.Economy.BuildCostMass = bp.Economy.BuildCostMass * 0.75
			end
			
			if bp.Weapon then
                -- Loop over all Weapons
                for _,weapon in bp.Weapon do

					if weapon.MaxRadius then
						weapon.MaxRadius = weapon.MaxRadius * 1.75
					end
					if weapon.MuzzleVelocity then
						weapon.MuzzleVelocity  = weapon.MuzzleVelocity  * 1.25
					end
					if weapon.ProjectileLifetimeUsesMultiplier then
						weapon.ProjectileLifetimeUsesMultiplier = weapon.ProjectileLifetimeUsesMultiplier * 2
					end
				end
			end
		end
	end 
end 

[Doompants]

Everything I fixed or balanced is in the readme. There was nothing to do with T2 arty at all. I'll try to give it a quick look into it tomorrow after work tho. Who knows what weird shit I may have done. Hahah.

I have a version 3 I'm going to try to get done for tomorrow too. I not only fixed that Seawolf bug, but I reinstated their concussion torpedos so they work properly now with an AoE that matches the blast projectile. Can hit hover units too. Super stoked.

[Doompants]

New stuff in V3:

• Fixed the Seawolf as mentioned, and in doing so reinstated the concussion torpedo - medium AoE torpedo that can hit hover units.
• Nomads stuff! Extended the Blackops SMD-kills-satellites to include Nomad Deadline Satellite (and enable Nomad SMD to Shoot down Artemis and Novax satellites).
• Also Nomads: Bullfrog Experimental Tank back on the construct list.

We're playing with Zopto's "Nomads Commander BlackOps" mod, and that paired with this actually make Nomads a faction that can contend in BlackOps games. (Could still use a bit of love, but it's a start!)

[Punzler]

Ha! I found a kindred soul! I just uploaded some of my own small Blackops changes to the vault, to play with my friends and thought why not go and see what's new on the formus. heh
Uhm, do you mind if I incoporate your changes into my own stuff? Especially the bugfixes. but also the balance changes, they look reasonable enough. but I am not intrested in the nomads parts. I'll obviously make sure to credit you and the others.

[Doompants]

I'm hardly in this for the fame, so do whatever, but I'm constantly making new fixes as we find new bugs. You're better running the mod separately so you get my updates properly instead of packaging it and getting a stale version.

[Szasz]

Hey fellas,

The Inquisitor is nigh unkillable.
I wish I could get a snapshot that features all different angles for the incoming fire. In any case the only unit doing damage was the engineer seen in the pic.
I previously rammed the Experimental with a Mazer ACU, and the only angle from which it was able to deal damage was directly below.
Even torpedoes miss that bastard.

There are still quite a few issues with BlackOps that I'm willing to organize into a list if that would be useful.

Off the top of my head, the Aeon ACU's second intel upgrade -the one with Eye of Rihanne-style quantum optics- costs 270 mass, which I'm pretty sure is meant to be 2700, matching the cost of a similar intel upgrade for another ACU.

(270 is unbalanced for multiple reasons: 1. it grants too much health for such a low cost, 2. the peeping module is extremely powerful on its own, and 3. Aeon can exlusively get their commander into T3 power level in early stages)

Less important but still there:

• Vanisher: T3 T3 Air Transport.
• ED5 UI and economy values (the entry itself is unnecessary IMO due to it being a clutter but right now it's worse: a suboptimal choice that costs more than building ED4 then upgrading it)

These issuesare hard to remember, but very easy to write down in a note when they pop-up in play, so lemme know if you need such a list.

There are also some inconsistencies immersion-wise: Cybran structures lose their regenerative capabilities from vanilla on higher tier (eg. Hydrocarbon Power Plants and T3 Storage), Manticore T3 PD sits on UEF pavement.

Unrelated to BlackOps: the track mark bug in vanilla, produced by every unit rolling on treads like the Viper, Fatboy, etc. is extremely disturbing. Do you know who to reach out to? I don't care if mass spot or hydrocarbon marks are low resolution, the track mark glitches are way worse.