beginner questions
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Hello,
I don't understand differences between "mod UI" and "mod sim" ?
Also is there a way to play with my friend with exactly same mods because I have the feeling that some of them could "break the game" and make the game unfair if one have a mod that another one don't have.
last question : it is said in game creation (when you choose a map and wait for friends) that you can close start point and "remove/add some mass point using right click" but I don't succeed to do this, is it working ?
it could be usefull to play a 6 player map with 3 players and remove some mass point..thanks a lot.
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UI stands for "User Interface." "SIM" stands for "Simulation." A UI mod affects only your computer. It affects how you interact with the game. A SIM mod can make changes to the game for other players. A UI mod can change how information is displayed to you (for example, it can change the scoreboard) and it can turn things on and off for you, like it could turn your radars off to save power. A SIM mod can make much more serious changes. A SIM mod can do anything a UI mod can do, and it can do a lot more. For example, a SIM mod could change the amount of HP that a tank has. Or it could make the tank into a flying unit and give it nuclear missiles. A SIM mod could change how the scoreboard looks to every player.
A SIM mod makes the game unrated, so if people choose to play with you, it doesn't really "matter" whether the game is fair. If you think it's unfair, just don't play with that person, and you won't lose any rating if you do.
When you play a custom game, every player gets their own UI mods, but the SIM mods are supposed to be identical so that the game stays synchronized. That is because when you run the game for multiple players, each player's computer is keeping track of the entire state of the game. It would break the game if, on your computer, a tank had 300 hp, and on your teammate's computer, the tank only had 250hp. Errors like that are called "desyncs" because the game stops being synchronized.
It is true that if one player has different UI mods than another player, it could give them some advantage. Every player has the ability to choose the UI mods they want to use.
UI mods don't give a huge advantage. I know because I've played quite a few games with no UI mods, because I turned them all off and forgot to turn them back on, I didn't play that much worse than normal. Don't worry too much if someone has "better" UI mods than you. It's a good idea to try out some popular UI mods and decide if you want to use them but you shouldn't worry that people are getting a big advantage over you. Some people have put together collections of their favorite UI mods. For example:
https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?t=19207
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1186/ui-mod-guide-for-the-improving-playerNot all maps support the ability to remove mass points. Basically, only "adaptive" maps will support that, and you can tell whether a map is "adaptive" by whether the name of the map starts with the word "adaptive." If the map you are playing has "adaptive" in its name, it probably has features like that. When you are in the lobby you can change spawns by right-clicking on them (cycle between "closed" and "closed-spawn mex") and you can change other map-specific options in the lobby's options menu.
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thanks a lot for our detailled answer.
Then there is nothing to force people to have same UI mods ? like, I create the game and then other players automatically get UI mods that I have choosen even if there are not installed. and we all play with same UI mods.
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Practically speaking, no, there is no way to do that.
You could change a UI mod into a SIM mod, so that when you host a game with that SIM mod active, all of the other players download it and they play with it on. But you couldn't also stop them from using additional UI mods. And they wouldn't be able to use your SIM mod in other games unless they were the host of the game. So it wouldn't be a good way to share mods that affect the user interface and it wouldn't be a good way to guarantee that no one else is using different mods that affect the UI.
Every player would need to download the UI mods for themselves. You can make a list of recommended UI mods from the vault and tell people which ones they can download if they want to copy you. But I don't see a way that you could force them to use those mods or to automatically download them.
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ok, no problem, thanks
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I modified armas answer into a potential FAQ entry because i think it was well written:
How do mods work?
UI = User Interface
Sim = SimulationA UI mod affects only your computer, it affects how you interact with the game. It can change how information is displayed to you (for example on the scoreboard) and it can turn things on and off for you, like it could sometimes turn your radar off to save power.
A SIM mod can make much more serious changes to the game for all players. For example, a SIM mod could change the amount of HP that a tank has or add new units. A SIM mod could change how the scoreboard looks to every player. Games with SIM mods are unrated.
Each player can choose their own selection of UI mods, but SIM mods (which can be activated in custom games by the host) need to be identical for every player in a game.
That is because each player's computer is simulating the entire game and they must stay synchronized. It would break ("desync") the game if, on your computer, a tank had 300 hp, and on your teammate's computer, the tank only had 250hp. To ensure this, when you join a lobby with activated SIM mods, your client will automatically attempt to download and activate (only) those mods.
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Added it.
