Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods

@deribus said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

If you're able to block UI mods from loading that'd be awesome. The impression I got from a conversation with Brutus quite a while ago is that UI mods are just a fact of FAF life and it'd be difficult to control their usage.

And he's right - if the user really wants to then we can't prevent the user. But we can make it more difficult .

edit: but one way or another, this will likely take up time of moderators. Whether that is of the moderation team banning people from using their own version of the mod, or of the creative team by banning people from the vault who re-uploaded the mod.

To make banning possible, you could add code to FAF sim to detect if too many things are switched too often, and have it autoreport the user somehow, for example by adding a message to chat, or doing something similar to achievements.

This way ui modders couldn't byass the block, and moderators wouldn't have an unreasonable workload.

I was thinking of that too - we could add some bookkeeping.

Did not know there was a mod for this, either make it part of the base game or ban it.

Microing massfabs adds 0 value to the game, they should have been automatic from day 1. They just need some warning when they're not running on 100%, so you don't build more of them just to find out they are all disabled.

I vote to remove the mod.

mod needs to be removed

@speed2 said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

Microing massfabs adds 0 value to the game, they should have been automatic from day 1. They just need some warning when they're not running on 100%, so you don't build more of them just to find out they are all disabled.

"They just need some warning when they're not running at 100%"

One exists, its called an energy stall which is very flashy and visible.

Removing the mod just creates a 'black market' to those mods and are shared anyway.

Hunting down everyone who plays with that mod is a never ending race condition and moderators will need to invest their resources to verify every case, and they are busy with a ton of other stuff already in their free time.

Even so, you can never be 100% sure if someone is using the mod or has just a good understanding of keybindings and great APM.

Solutions:

1. Remove the LUA code to be able to do such stuff and life with the side conditions on other mods.
2. Integrate it into FAF to have more control over the behavior.

If OP starts with this mod, then what is with all those other mods that do stuff for you?

Auto share energy and mass, auto select the next eng, auto build mex and pg with mouse over, auto split and auto attack different targets, etc. → This needs to be removed as well to truly show the skill of the player.

Even if the mod gets banned and moderates are hunting them down every day, then someone will simply make a slight change to the mod that make it look more humane. (Adding random pauses, changing threshold on random). You have to invest so many resources and gain so little out of it, to get rid of that mod.

Agreed

@keene said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

@speed2 said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

Microing massfabs adds 0 value to the game, they should have been automatic from day 1. They just need some warning when they're not running on 100%, so you don't build more of them just to find out they are all disabled.

"They just need some warning when they're not running at 100%"

One exists, its called an energy stall which is very flashy and visible.

I think you missunderstood me.
If the mass fabs are managed automatically and turn off when you don't have enough energy. You can end up in a situation when you're not stalling, but only half of your mass fabs are running. So you think you have enough energy, build more fabs, but that will only cause more of them to turn off so your power doesn't crash.

Mod needs to be removed. And if Jip could implement his idea, making it difficult to use this mod, that would be awesome!

Dont forget to remove other UI mods that extends player abilities, that can`t be used by all players.

Also, you guys voting to remove innocent mod, but cant remove astro/gap from FAF kappa

You can't ban it. 26 posts and nobody even thinks about adding a sim solution to it: put a cooldown on the toggle. Do the same for shields.
Reduces the advantage massively.
And/or add a warm up time to mexxes, so it takes e.g. 30 seconds until they reach regular efficiency.

@eternal i just woke up and see this kappa

Some people say it is legal, some people say it is not, but lets take a look in FAF rules:
We will list what sort of UI mods are not allowed here. This includes:

• All reclaim macros
• All autoclickers

So? Where are the limits of it? I vote for mod being banned and such functionality considered as autoclicker

@brutus5000 sounds like the perfect solution

@nullptr I agree, it would just be very difficult to control the ban on the use of this mod. above wrote that it would add even more work for moderators. so discuss other options (cooldown )

@brutus5000 said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

You can't ban it. 26 posts and nobody even thinks about adding a sim solution to it: put a cooldown on the toggle. Do the same for shields.
Reduces the advantage massively.
And/or add a warm up time to mexxes, so it takes e.g. 30 seconds until they reach regular efficiency.

Sheikah and I discussed that in private - I'm not sure how that works in practice without having a reasonable impact on performance in return. I'd need to look into this .

To add to the discussion: from a gameplay perspective I don't think it matters when a casual player uses a eco management mod like this. As Speed2 mentions: this game is not about fabrication-micro.

To me, there are a few options with a few consequences:

• (1) We try and prohibit people from using the mod. This is A, not entirely possible, B it will anger a lot of people that were used to it and C it has a relative high load on moderation.
• (2) We allow the mod in casual games, but not in tournaments. From a replay / observer perspective it is easy to see if someone is using the mod. This has all the benefits of (1) when it matters (during tournaments), without angering people.
• (3) We integrate the mod into FAF, by providing an alternative like Brutus mentioned. One that discourages enabling / disabling them in quick succession.
• (4) We integrate the mod into FAF, instead of through a UI mod. That way everyone has it.

When thinking about it, being able to use fabricators to get rid of excess power seems like a reasonable purpose for the units in question. To 'soften up' the times when there is no reclaim.

All mods that affect the economy and do not require any actions from the player should be marked as sim mods.