Game patch 3728

When introducing a new feature there's two things we can do:

• (1) We turn the feature off by default.
• (2) We turn the feature on by default.

If we pick (1) then new players will not be aware of the feature and they'll likely never use it even though it can be a great feature. If we choose (2) then the best we can do is inform people they can turn it off, but everyone does get to experience it.

When adjusting a feature we have one additional option:

• (3) We add a 'legacy' option where the behavior is the same as before.

If we'd choose (3) then we'd have the same issue as (1) where a lot of people would never know the full potential of a feature as it is 'hidden' in the options menu. Therefore it is again best to turn on the entire feature and inform people they can change it in their game settings with a similar rationale to (2).

Bottom line: if we'd always disable features by default then we may just as well make no more features at all as nobody gets to use them. As an example of a great feature that is turned off by default: being able to drag / drop the queue of a factory to change the order. That allows you to move an engineer to the front of the queue without wasting the queue.

edit: note that this feature can be tweaked by UI mods in the patch after this patch (3.g., 3729). That way everyone gets to define their own behavior as they see fit.

@jip said in Game patch 3728:

Bottom line: if we'd always disable features by default then we may just as well make no more features at all as nobody gets to use them. As an example of a great feature that is turned off by default: being able to drag / drop the queue of a factory to change the order. That allows you to move an engineer to the front of the queue without wasting the queue.

Well case in point, I didn’t know this was integrated into base Faf… why is this not on by default with a loading screen tip? I see no downside to it…

@zeldafanboy said in Game patch 3728:

@jip said in Game patch 3728:

Bottom line: if we'd always disable features by default then we may just as well make no more features at all as nobody gets to use them. As an example of a great feature that is turned off by default: being able to drag / drop the queue of a factory to change the order. That allows you to move an engineer to the front of the queue without wasting the queue.

Well case in point, I didn’t know this was integrated into base Faf… why is this not on by default with a loading screen tip? I see no downside to it…

Not totally related to this patch but gotta comment, I tried this feature before long time ago but encountered some issues, for instance the queue could reset/stop the factory back then if you tried to swap the order. Not sure if it has changed since then.

More on-topic, I did a few test games with this patch and it did feel significantly smoother later on in the game with many units on the field, so looking forward to the release.

Yeah, the draggable factory queues are extremely buggy and cause people's factories to randomly break in weird ways. Tex was having a lot of issues until he turned that off. It is good that it is disabled by default and an argument could be made that it should be removed from FAF.

I have no issue with that game being "improved" and the patch making speeds better and anything like that. But I am yet to actually see someone simply state what the benefit is to this new mex capping, to the engi assist orders or anything.
Will a dev please put in simple terms what the actual benefit is.

@thomashiatt if that is the case then it should be fixed or removed. I never experienced issues, but maybe I'm not using it often enough.

@noonecares said in Game patch 3728:

I have no issue with that game being "improved" and the patch making speeds better and anything like that. But I am yet to actually see someone simply state what the benefit is to this new mex capping, to the engi assist orders or anything.
Will a dev please put in simple terms what the actual benefit is.

Note that this feature already existed in the game - this patch works with what was already there and tries to improve it. The feature (if I am not mistaken) was already enabled by default. The idea of the feature at the time was to reduce template usage because that can be apm intensive.

First of all what it improved upon:

• When capping the group of engineers assists one engineer and that one has the orders issued. This would cause issues where an engineer would lose the assist order for some odd reason, causing half of them to move on to cap the next extractor. If I am not mistaken this is described by blast_chilled a post that I can't find anymore.

Then what is added to it:

• Being able to cap various structure that you often see capped in-game, such as radars (with pgens), mass storages (with fabricators, when surrounding an extractor), t2 artillery (with pgens), t1 pd (with walls) and tech 3 fabricators (with storages).

Note that this isn't originally my idea - someone mentioned it on the forums, some people agreed (including me) and I started working on it. And here we are now, where you can determine to have the old behavior (except for the assisting behavior) and the new behavior (with all the additions).

Ringing structures and reclaim seem like basically the same thing to me. You gotta click some stuff quickly and accurately to get an economic boost. With reclaim you get attack moves to help you a bit, and with capping you can make templates to help you a bit. Now people have decided that auto-capping things with 1 click is okay, but using area commands or reclaim macros is still deemed a bannable offense. It seems quite logically inconsistent to me. If clicking reclaim quickly and accurately is important, then placing ringed structures quickly and accurately should be considered equally important.

So basically you just made it noob friendly
And those of us who have half a brain and more than 5 apm are still basically fine.

@thomashiatt said in Game patch 3728:

using area commands or reclaim macros is still deemed a bannable offense

The "paint manual reclaim orders into an area" command should be added to the base game. It's consistent with what FAF is supposed to be. Maybe even with a modification so reclaim orders are only painted on wrecks of a certain size (big enough that it catches every tree group but not individual trees, if you want to scoop individual trees or small rocks, you might as well just put a patrol order)

@ThomasHiatt if that’s what you want then you are basically advocating for getting rid of templates entirely. Because templates do exactly the same thing as this “right click to cap” feature except just not as well. You can keep using templates if you want and it won’t make you any worse at the game than someone who uses the “click to cap” feature. The only difference is it’s a quality of life change where the person using “click to cap” doesn’t have to bind and memorize as many hotkeys.

I don't want anything, I don't even play the game. I was just stating that the decisions don't make sense to me. If it were up to me I would allow reclaim macros and auto-reclaim mods and allow for the easy ringing of structures. Templates do the same thing, not as well, in the same way that attack move does the same thing, not as well. Everyone is forced to use attack move because the better solutions are deemed cheating. By the same logic, auto-ringing structures should be deemed cheating.

Nobody thinks using a storage template around a mex is pro… the UI of SupCom could be more powerful and anything that allows you to use less APM on base building is good

But clickin rocks is pro?

autocappng mexes doesnt change the meta on all 38 rocks inbetween trees maps, some automatd reclaiming does.

If you would add automated reclaiming that is even close in efficiency to manually reclaiming most of the maps would change from normal eco scaling to a Daroza/Ditch level scaling which would make the game arguably 10x harder for most people (The difference between bad, decent, good and Pro scaling and BO's on such maps is insanely hard eg. 2x more Total mass by min 8 or so.)

@tagada one ----- made mod that do reclaim orders around engineer on hotkey. Like you moving to trees, and clicking those groups of trees. This mod does it for you. But it was sim mod

Changelog has been updated to match commit ca43c5c. You can read it in the first post of this topic.

With thanks to feedback from @Haachamachama , @Fearghal @MadMax and others:

• Fixed kennels to always spawn their first drone
• Fixed build bot count on Cybran ACU
• Fixed various small issues that are quite rare

I am hoping to play a test game later today at 18:00 UTC + 1 (Amsterdam time). It will either be Seton's Clutch or a map gen and there is rank limit: you must be at least 1000+. Aim is to test the game a few more times before the patch set for tomorrow. The last week the branch has been stable - I am not expecting any game breaking bugs .

You can leave feedback on the patch at the FAF Discord in the #game-testing channel or in this topic.

Walls around t1 pd don't take any fire anymore with patch

With the developers patch, or the balance patch of last month (November the 26th?)