Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods

My main gripe with ecomanager is not that it's op, but that it gives you a type of advantage that new players are not even aware of being possible.

While I can't speak for the 2.5k gods among us, at my semi competitive level of ~2k setons there are only two actually useful, hard to replace, automation features of ecomanager:

1. Making sure shields and omni never turn off in the lategame by throttling fabs, (air-)factories and construction.
2. Allowing your mass fabs to run on your allies' power overflow without fear.

Integrating the second feature into the main repo would be a nice QOL change imo, but for the first one I don't really have a good idea.

In a perfect world all parts of ecomanager would be unnecessary, e.g. adding the fab throttling into the base game, banned by an easy to enforce rule, like reclaim auto-clickers, or just explicitly allowed.

Sadly, all three solutions have problems.

For one, I'm pretty certain there is no way to integrate throttling of non-fabs to always keep your shields up in a sensible way.
Having your construction pause automatically will loose you lots of games unless you know exactly how the automated logic works, and/or you being able to edit said logic directly. But automatic throttling like this is a must if you want to ensure your base doesn't die to your shields flickering from a random influx of mass while you micro your army on the other side of the map.

Banning it is also a bad idea imo. Not only would enforcement be costly and avoidance trivial (just make sure the pausing looks human enough and you have plausible deniability), I can already imagine the endless arguments about some 1k dude on dual gap having used, or not having used, ecomanager to pause their hives..

As a result, even if you want ecomanager gone (and I kinda do), I think it's not big enough of a problem for the ban route to be worth pursuing. None of the actually good players use ecomanager in tournaments after all.

As such, I think just explicitly allowing the type of automation ecomanager uses (selection, pausing and unpausing), while keeping mods that give unit movement/reclaim/attack orders banned is the least bad solution.

It's the "least bad" solution because for maps where ecomanager is useful, keeping it allowed also keeps the weird meta-skill of having to learn ecomanager, if you want to get the most out of your t3/t4 arty wars which is useful nowhere else in faf.

But having selection, pausing and unpausing explicitly allowed avoids the problems that ban or integration have, while, as a side effect, also clears up the grey zone that mods like selection prioritizer, split/disperse move and the auto-repeat feature of UI party are in.

If we combine this with having mass fab throttling as an option in the main game, now every new player also knows that something like ecomanager is possible which should significantly reduce the information gap between them and long term players.

Note that ecomanager has of course a lot more features than the two I mentioned (automatic mex upgrades, auto share of resources, etc.), but all of them are easily, and usually much better, done yourself.
E.g. sending mass to allies or upgrading a mex is just a single click and both should always be a conscious decision if you want to win.

Can those features still give you an advantage if you are inexperienced (or lazy) enough? Of course, but for me they rank similarly to overly intricate templates: It's far from optimal, so why not let people have fun with them if they want.

@Jip
Did you mean manually enabling the fabs you want ? Because manually disabling would defeat the purpose of having this automated by the base game.

Simply prioritizing t2 fabs first to be turned off before t3 would not be difficult and would also provide a finer granularity of power consumption adjustment once you fall below the storage limit allowance.

I highly recommend you to try out the behavior yourself by playing a sandboxed game on FAF Develop:

It is difficult to describe it without repeating myself. I'll try again tonight.

@archsimkat said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

I propose we ban mods that automatically throttle energy and mass spenders (mass fabs, engineers, factories, etc.) to prevent stalls such as, but not limited to, EcoManager and UI Mass Fab Manager - Auto Fab Manager.

The way EcoManager in particular works is that it will throttle energy users when your mass/energy in storage falls below a certain threshold. It provides a huge gameplay advantage, preventing shields from going down, without any input from the user since it just plays the game for you.

Here is a recent example of it being used. You can see the streamer lilSidlil add 14 hives to a t3 pgen, which crashes his power to -30k. The mod immediately reacts to pause all mass fabs and other engineers to save as much power as possible.

https://youtu.be/vbKlS3k-LRE?t=8032

EcoManager has some features that are acceptable, such as the Mex overlay and the Nuke overlay (displaying mex tech level/number of missiles loaded) that don't need to be banned, but those non-cheat should be bundled into a new mod or the cheat features removed from the current one.

In my opinion this mod far surpasses the threshold for a cheat mod, and honestly am a little confused at how it is still allowed to be used. It should be straightforward to just remove it from the vault and ban people that still use it, since it's pretty obvious when it is being used. What are your thoughts on the issue?

Why don't we just implement some of the features of these mods into the core game so everyone is on the same level? A mod that helps lighten the load on your APM, in my honest opinion, should be welcomed - not shunned. Not everyone is capable of high APM, and mods like these can help make the game more accessible without excluding people who have faster APM. To put it bluntly, I think mods like these are good (albeit flawed).

Heck, now that I talk about it, I think I'll try and see what I can do to help be the change I want to see - to make the game more accessible to lower-APM players without excluding people that have near perfect muscle memory, etc.

@MediaMix1 see a previous post for an implementation to make it more widely available, ready on FAF Develop.

@jip Ty for letting me know.

@mediamix1 said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

@archsimkat said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

I propose we ban mods that automatically throttle energy and mass spenders (mass fabs, engineers, factories, etc.) to prevent stalls such as, but not limited to, EcoManager and UI Mass Fab Manager - Auto Fab Manager.

The way EcoManager in particular works is that it will throttle energy users when your mass/energy in storage falls below a certain threshold. It provides a huge gameplay advantage, preventing shields from going down, without any input from the user since it just plays the game for you.

Here is a recent example of it being used. You can see the streamer lilSidlil add 14 hives to a t3 pgen, which crashes his power to -30k. The mod immediately reacts to pause all mass fabs and other engineers to save as much power as possible.

https://youtu.be/vbKlS3k-LRE?t=8032

EcoManager has some features that are acceptable, such as the Mex overlay and the Nuke overlay (displaying mex tech level/number of missiles loaded) that don't need to be banned, but those non-cheat should be bundled into a new mod or the cheat features removed from the current one.

In my opinion this mod far surpasses the threshold for a cheat mod, and honestly am a little confused at how it is still allowed to be used. It should be straightforward to just remove it from the vault and ban people that still use it, since it's pretty obvious when it is being used. What are your thoughts on the issue?

Why don't we just implement some of the features of these mods into the core game so everyone is on the same level? A mod that helps lighten the load on your APM, in my honest opinion, should be welcomed - not shunned. Not everyone is capable of high APM, and mods like these can help make the game more accessible without excluding people who have faster APM. To put it bluntly, I think mods like these are good (albeit flawed).

Heck, now that I talk about it, I think I'll try and see what I can do to help be the change I want to see - to make the game more accessible to lower-APM players without excluding people that have near perfect muscle memory, etc.

Why don't we just let AI play for us?

Unless you're 1500+ (and that's lowballing it), the game already has a very low APM requirement compared to other popular RTSs. I have a hard time seeing APM as a reason for the game not being accessible.

Further, a large part of getting good at this game is eco management. If we just automate that, you're taking away a large portion of what the game is even about. The mod should be banned, not integrated. Make it as hard to get/install as reasonably possible. Obviously most cheats/mods cannot be 100% eliminated, but luckily in this case the mod tends to hamper you as a player more than it helps so that isn't really a problem if the odd player here or there ends up using it.

@snagglefox said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

Further, a large part of getting good at this game is eco management.

A significant part, yes: especially with regards to grabbing reclaim, building power and choosing when to upgrade mexes. Flipping a few mass-fabs on/off is nothing compared to that.

Anyway, a still larger part of the game is unit control: raiding and defending.

I support Jip's decision to try merging limited mass-fab automation into FAF.

I can see adding a button that disables/enables all fabs, but I can't support any sort of automated control. Balancing your eco to avoid power stalls is a big part of eco management, and contributes to fights considering you risk losing shields or radar.

Having some automated control avoiding power stalls for you is IMO akin to cheating. That should remain manual, otherwise you're just letting the game deal with your gameplay mistakes. It is not hard to select some fabs and disable them yourself. If we automate things just because they're minor APM-wise, then we may as well just start automating a ton of other things and let the game play itself besides us just giving movement or attack orders.

@snagglefox said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

Why don't we just let AI play for us?

This argument is used quite often when anything related to automation comes into play. With it, we should remove:

• the extractor capping feature (we are letting the game place storage / fabriactors / power gens for us)
• the attack priority feature (we are letting the game determine what units my units should attack for us)
• the spread attack feature (we are letting the game manages our commands for us)
• the ability to see your allies resources (we are letting the game estimate our allies economy for us, even their storage!)
• (1) the ability to repeat-apply the queue of your factories (we are letting the game requeue units for us)
• (1) the ability to auto pickup and drop off units with transports (we are letting the game automate unit transportation for us)

And we should also ban:

• Additional camera stuff (we are letting the game gauge the engineer reclaim radius for us)
• Disperse move (not sure what this does, but the game manages our commands for us)
• Better reclaim view (we are letting the game highlight relevant wrecks for us)
• Advanced target priorities (we are letting the game determine what units my units should attack for us, at great precision)
• Any strategic icon mod, especially that of Eternal as it also highlights the tech level of the engineer.

This list is not exhaustive. All of these automate parts of the game. I'm quite confident that everyone that opposes these changes use some of these features and some of these mods. After all, the mods are recommended by Blackheart in his UI mods topic.

Back to mass fabricator automation. At the moment fabricators are extremely unfriendly to a casual player - they are very volatile to your economy. I'd even argue that new players see no purpose for the unit the moment they understand that you can also upgrade extractors. With that, in the average game they have no real meaning. And that is what eco manager brings to the table - a reason for you to have fabricators without you having to worry about crashing your economy because of them. But it takes it to the extreme, where even the performance of the game can take a hit.

In my opinion a good game feature is friendly to a casual player, but it allows you to have a competitive edge when you take manual control. Fabricators are, without eco manager, not friendly to the casual player. With the change I am suggestion they become friendly to the casual player. They react slow: only one mass fabricator can be turned off or on each tick. It would take 10 seconds to turn off 100 fabricators. Meaning, if you have a low reclaim burst and some storage then you will likely not stall. But if you have no storage and a high reclaim burst or a sudden burst of energy usage in general then it won't respond fast enough and a casual player will stall. A competitive player can use their hotkeys to turn them all off before they stall - that is where the competitive advantage is.

That makes it a 'easy to use, difficult to master' feature. Exactly the type of features that are interesting to a game as it allows casual players to play the game and it allows competitive players to have distinct advantage over casual players.

Another example is the rotation of the weaponry of units. Take for example a Mantis. If you move the unit to the left while the target is moving to its right then the Mantis won't fire: the rotational momentum of the turret is roughly equal to that if the unit rotating as a whole. This is a tiny detail that, on the average fight, is irrelevant. But competitive players can make use of this to have an advantage over their opponents. Another 'easy to use, difficult to master' feature that I am quite fond of.

(1) This was a feature that were well received by critics and reviews during the launch of Supreme Commander:

Paragraph of a review from IGN: https://www.ign.com/articles/2007/02/16/supreme-commander-review-2

Effectively controlling the battlefield is achieved chiefly through the all-powerful Shift key. By pressing and holding, players can queue up unit movements, build orders, patrol waypoints, and combine move and attack orders. Should you decide to change movement patterns or build locations while the action is already underway, hitting shift again brings up an interface where you can drag around the waypoints as you see fit. Every unit construction factory can be given build order while it's still being built. Even after telling it to upgrade to the next technology level, you'll be presented with the next set of build options so you don't have to keep checking back in. Different types and amounts of units can be queued in the same construction facility, and a repeat build order function lets you move on to something else once you're happy with a factory's production pattern. Since you'll find a significant amount of water and hilly terrain across the game's many maps, there's an unusual emphasis on air transports. Thankfully these units can be set along ferry routes, where they'll automatically scoop up waiting units and drop them off wherever you so designate. If you set a factory waypoint to the starting point of the ferry route, units will automatically be ferried as soon as they roll or crawl off the production line.

The entire paragraph (and the article) is a good read, as all these features were magical in the 2006 / 2007 era. The game was praised because it took away a lot of manual bullshit that you don't really want to think about. We want to think about the grand scheme, the bigger picture. And automating the mass fabricators in such a manner that the average player can forget about them seems to fit right into that if you ask me.

And for those that do not read the article, it ends with:

The strategic zoom and base automation are so intuitive and helpful, it makes many other RTS games seem confining and simplistic.

APM should naturally arise from the breadth and pace of decisionmaking opportunities. Any action that does not amount to making a choice between at least two relevant alternatives tends to feel unnecessary and superfluous, and imo is a cheap way to make the game "harder".

As an easy example in early sc2 betas (iirc, don't quote me) many players complained that the game was too easy. The developers ended up adding some additional mechanics to artificially raise the skillcap. One of these mechanics was larva inject. Zerg players need to periodically use the "inject larva" ability with their queens in order to spawn larva that can be used to construct units. Without larva you can't make units. There are some edge cases where players skip injecting larva to save queen energy, but in the vast majority of cases injecting does not include a choice from the player and is just a mechanical task that players have to perform periodically. Furthermore the few edge cases where you'd skip injecting are only relevant for high level players and as such have no effect on how an averge player perceives the game.

In my view, pausing massfabs is an entirely mechanical task as there's no situation where you wouldn't want to pause your massfabs when running low on energy. That's why automating massfab pause is fine (as long as everyone has access to it). For the same reason automating pausing buildpower is not fine -- there's compelling decisionmaking in which engis to pause etc.

had a look at the implementation on faf-dev and it is nice and responsive, seems at least equal to the mod versions I have tried in the past. I wonder if with a little adjustment it could turn off multiple fabs in one go rather than over the course of several ticks, which would have a similar overall affect on sim speed and help prevent an actual e-stall.

currently any mass fabs that are switched off won't be paused though which seems somewhat unintuitive - you can see which ones are running if you enable the eco consumption overlay but i doubt most players have this turned on for their games

as i suspected also there is no priority for tiers of fabs, when energy bar gets filled a bunch of t2 fabs got turned on when i would prefer the t3 fab that is next to my t3 land facs...

Has anyone ever built mass fabs in a competitive match?

@jip Thanks for the long winded reply, you actually convinced me. I can get behind the implementation as you've described it.

@black_wriggler said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

as i suspected also there is no priority for tiers of fabs, when energy bar gets filled a bunch of t2 fabs got turned on when i would prefer the t3 fab that is next to my t3 land facs...

This is intended. The system needs to be as light weight as possible, keeping track of the more 'relevant' fabricators requires some form of sorting to remain backwards compatible with mods.

At the moment the fabricator that is enabled or disabled to produce is chosen at random. It depends on the order in memory. If you want certain fabricators enabled then you either:

• make sure you have sufficient power to run all your fabricators
• you manually disable some fabricators to ensure the fabricators you prefer can be enabled again. You can set up hotkeys to easily select the t2 fabricators and disable those accordingly, for example

The latter feels more involved. Again, that is intended: the automated solution should not be optimal. It should be reasonable, where reasonable means that it helps you to prevent a stall. It doesn't help you activate the most relevant fabricators. That allows a competitive edge when you take manual control.

@black_wriggler said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

currently any mass fabs that are switched off won't be paused though which seems somewhat unintuitive - you can see which ones are running if you enable the eco consumption overlay but i doubt most players have this turned on for their games

I agree, I have not figured out a solution to this yet . I'd argue that giving them the pause symbol is equally confusing.

@black_wriggler said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

I wonder if with a little adjustment it could turn off multiple fabs in one go rather than over the course of several ticks, which would have a similar overall affect on sim speed and help prevent an actual e-stall.

We can tweak the parameters (perhaps they start disabling at 60% of your storage instead of at 40% of your storage), but you can also create more energy storages .

@snagglefox said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

Thanks for the long winded reply, you actually convinced me. I can get behind the implementation as you've described it.

Glad to hear the appreciation - it took me 40 minutes to write.

@snagglefox said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

@jip Thanks for the long winded reply, you actually convinced me. I can get behind the implementation as you've described it.

Same for me.
But the main point now is, if it's allowed then it MUST be active by default in all games and for everyone.
Again, I am new to FAF, and there is lot of stuff to deal with to reach the best experience in the game.
It's like an AirSim, you need 1hour reading the manual just to launch the engine.

@jip said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

This is intended. The system needs to be as light weight as possible, keeping track of the more 'relevant' fabricators requires some form of sorting to remain backwards compatible with mods.
At the moment the fabricator that is enabled or disabled to produce is chosen at random. It depends on the order in memory. If you want certain fabricators enabled then you either...

I see how more book keeping is undesirable, but perhaps instead a toggle in options to just choose at random amongst t2 fabs only (also t3 only if this has a use case?), rather than all fabs, would prevent any tracking, and would require the player to ensure they have enough built of the correct type to not stall. You could even have a disable option for those hardcore players who want to do it all themselves

We can tweak the parameters (perhaps they start disabling at 60% of your storage instead of at 40% of your storage), but you can also create more energy storages

I was thinking more along the lines of once you hit the lower limit, then enuff fabs are turned off to change you from energy deficit to energy positive, is turning off a dozen fabs in 1 tic much different to twelve over consecutive ticks ? Having more storages is kinda mandatory at this point in the game yeah, and the prior fab managers would not prevent hard stalls without them.

Please don’t make it an option. Either include it or don’t.

Slippery slope argument

Obviously both extremes of no automation or full automation are undesireable. The best game is a game with the right amount of automation and people draw the line differently here. So I don't see how people using some automation is a compelling argument that we should have more of it or the other way around.

@Jip said

At the moment fabricators are extremely unfriendly to a casual player - they are very volatile to your economy.

They are not more volatile than any other eco structure, they have constant input and output. What is volatile is your energy consumption/production and you need to adapt to that which is one of the core gameplay loops.

I'd even argue that new players see no purpose for the unit the moment they understand that you can also upgrade extractors.

People realizing that it's better to upgrade mexes than to build mass fabs is already dictated by the efficiency. Even fully managed they will only have a presence in the late game.

The important decision here is if we see the mass fab as a unit that burns your excess energy and automatically detects how much excess there is, thus requiring no micro like the rest of the eco structures, or as unit that works like all other energy consumers and needs the player to make a decision if there isn't enough energy. Obviously you would rather pause your mass fabs over any other energy consuming structure, so there isn't an interesting choice to make here. But this applies to a lot of micro in the game. There is no meaningful choice between having hoplites shooting at max range or having them close so they die*. It's one of the inbuilt drawbacks of the unit that it needs some attention to work properly and we have to decide if the mass fab should be one of these units.

Until now it was, and people resorted to mods because managing your mass fabs is very cumbersome. I think there are two viable alternatives:

1. Have the game turn the mass fabs on and off automatically
2. Leave the management to the player, but give him the tools to actually do it conveniently

Option 2 could mean to have four hotkeys: activate one mass fab, activate 10 mass fabs and the same for deactivation, without losing your current unit selection. This would make it easy to adjust how much energy your fabs should burn.

• The choice becomes more meaningful when you frame it as "where do I spend my attention". If this is a desireable choice to make as a player is up to debate of course.