All My Stuff Blows Up on Exit?

Earlier today I finally decided to update my Nvidia driver. I also installed Laticlave's Nvidia Fix mod. Unfortunately, the mod didn't work for me.

I was in a custom Noob Gap game when my PC began chugging. My issues were affecting everyone else too. At the urging of the other players, I left the game early.

But before I left, I transferred all of my stuff to a teammate, walked my commander to a safe area, then exited to windows. As I left the game, I saw all of my stuff blow up, even the things I transferred to a teammate.

Is that intended? If so, why?

'Cuz you were playing with share until death option? Not full share?

There are different options that can be set. If it's set to Full Share your stuff will automatically go to your team when you die. If it's set to Share Until Death then when you die everything of yours will be destroyed regardless of if you gave it to somebody.

The option was introduced to stop the action of quickly giving your units deciding team games.

So it's to prevent some kind of exploit.

Basically, yeah. It meant that if you sniped the enemy ACU he wouldn't have time to give his stuff, but if he had warning he was going to die then he'd give all. That would usually mean that the remaining player would win because he had double eco.

There's pros and cons of both types of share option, but now it's a game rule and doesn't influence strategy in a way that was often detrimental to the game.

@cablefast Yes. Specifically: when you play with the "share until death" option, all your stuff is SUPPOSED to die when you die. It is part of the game. Snipe an enemy ACU: you also kill all their stuff. It means your ACU is important and you need to protect it, and your enemy ACUs are important, you can try to kill them to get a big advantage in the game.

This is the "normal" setting for team games.

The other common option (there are actually more than 2 options but the rest are only rarely used) is "full share." In full share games, an ACU's death takes a player out of the game, but their stuff goes to a teammate. Which means killing enemy ACUs is less important.

In a game with "share until death," if you sacrifice most of your army to kill 1 enemy ACU, that might be worth it because their army and their base die. In a game with "full share," sacrificing your entire army to kill 1 enemy ACU might cause your team to lose the game because the enemy team will have a bigger army, even if they have fewer players to control it. 1 player with a really big economy and a big army can often beat 2, 3, 4, or more enemy players. I could easily win a 1v4 if I had a big enough economy + army.

The "exploit" is that, a long time ago, in "share until death" games, if you thought your ACU was going to die, you could just give all your stuff (units and buildings) to a teammate before you died. Then your ACU would die, but all your stuff would survive. Which was considered to be an exploit because it sidesteps an important game mechanic to give a big advantage to your team.

In "share until death" games, ACUs are supposed to be very important because losing an ACU means a base/army dies.

There are ways to get somewhat around this. One way is you can give your base and army to a teammate a few minutes before you leave. Then they will have time to use your army (they can use it to attack something, or just send it somewhere where it is easy to scoop the mass from dead units) and they can make engineers inside your base before you leave (which will help your team to rebuild your base faster). Any engineers that THEY make out of factories YOU gave them will not die when your ACU dies . . . unless your ACU is standing next to them, because death explosion.

@arma473 thank you for such an in depth reply. That makes a lot of sense to me. I can envision a player giving away their stuff right before a snipe attempt and this seems like a good solution to that.

However, I feel like my experience was not a cheat or attempt at an exploit. I was trying to do right by teammates that I had inadvertently screwed over.

I know FAF development resources are finite. This doesn't seem like it would ever rise to the level of warranting any serious work, but I think forces given away to a teammate should have a countdown timer associated with them. Something like 60 or 90 seconds, maybe even longer, after which time the units fully belong to the receiving player and don't die on the original owner's death.

It’s not about preventing some exploit, it’s the fact that people would just stack games so that a low rated guy can walk into the enemy base and ctrl+k and then his stuff goes to the better player.

This then results in share until death becoming default which in turn encourages people to play comfy teamgame maps where dying is either unlikely (gap) or easily recoverable (canis) rather than more open ones.

Sheikah has recently created a sim mod for a share condition that blows up your units but not your structures.