SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions

[SpikeyNoob]

Seems like a skill issue, just look at the buildings its not that hard.

[Manimal_]

@spikeynoob said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Seems like a skill issue, just look at the buildings its not that hard.

it is hard to my old eyes... tiny icons with even tinyer Tech marks... d'oh !

And It's getting worse by zoom out

[Nex]

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades seem to be bugged:

Historicaly , the buildings gain 1 "Tower" per Tech level :

1 "Tower" = T1 (the initial look of a factory)
2 "Towers" = T2
3 "Towers" = T3

No they didn't

Screenshot from Vanilla FA (no mods)

They look exactly like the support factories (aside from my chosen color)

[Nex]

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades seem to be bugged:

it is hard to my old eyes... tiny icons with even tinyer Tech marks... d'oh !
And It's getting worse by zoom out

If your having trouble distinguishing icons/tech levels i recommend an icon mod.

These change some icons and make higher tech icons larger

These make icons somewhat larger (50%/100% size increase)

[Manimal_]

I agree Air Factories are the only one that change so little after techin up, while the other ones have a neatly different look.
Maybe my memories are confusing some old mod's Air Factories on which I've worked with the non-mod"ed ones.

If I was able to do it in a short time, then I'd make new models that would work like Land Factories and their "towers"...
Result : buildings instantly spotted.

Sea factories are rather ok but would diserve some more details

About icons:
This makes me think of my attempt to get "WYSIWYG" like icons in SC and FA back in the days.
Icons shape were looking like units's shape...

[Ctrl-K]

Everlasting Circus

[Manimal_]

I'm feeling a bit lost with all of the changes.
Maybe this will change after a few game.
But I'll be busy from next week, this lets little free time for playing.

Now I think my thread should move to general discussion... or not.

@genos said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Is it circus? Or am i in a wrong place?

@genos said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Everlasting Circus

Always criticizing others and never giving a hand ?
Nothing more constructive to say or do ?

[LegionDarrath]

Moved to General Discussion.

[Brannou]

This is next tier shit post.

I can understand the difference between selecting SACU but this is a compromise between custom sacu and preset. If i want RAS SACU i'm gonna select RAS preset. It's very unlikely that i'm gonna build a normal one then upgrade it to RAS or take another upgrade and change it to something else and if i end up doing that it's a very minor inconvenience.

As for the factory stuff it's just very blatant troll.

HQ system serves 2 purpose from what i've understood. Slow down T3 rush (cause HQ are more expensive then support factories) and eneable good scaling of production as the game go on. In vanilla FA there is only HQ making it very expensive to increase production of T3 units.

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions Always criticizing others and never giving a hand ?

Nothing more constructive to say or do ?

SACU selection is a very minor issue because beside RAS SACU, they are not that vastely used compared to others units and no one usually go in a round about way to upgrade them ,that why no one has brough it up until now. Maybe jip can see for the selection menu if it can get fixed

HQ factories have already discussed and everyone (beside you who is apparently playing vanilla FA) is fine with how it work because that improve the game experience.

Look more like a skill issue

[FtXCommando]

Everyone is not fine with it actually. Petric famously still hates it. It's just been so long in the meta that it's impossible to do anything like remove it because you also throw out the last 8 years of finetuning around the system. For example, things like rebalancing t3 are essentially only the result of being able to put all your bp into t3 spam smoothly and efficiently.

I'd say it's one of those things where you sacrifice some of the strategic diversity at the highest levels of play to make the game more enjoyable at low levels, or at least make the game run better since you don't have 400 engineers per player in a 4v4 these days.

[veteranashe]

The hq system is really easy

Either you take engie mod that makes all BP efficient (t1, t2, t3)

Or

Only t1 engines and one factory is efficient.

It's been explained above, and if you don't use engie mod you will have -7 games

[Manimal_]

@veteranashe said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Only t1 engines and one factory is efficient.
(...)
The hq system is really easy

Please, just make a pause : stand back and take a sit, then consider the whole thing.

What would you think of such RTS game which doesn't allow you to spread any buildings freely ?
Who like games that are limiting high tech building cap ?
"Oh too bad, you've lost dis stoopeed HQ. Dat cutz your wingz, so rebuild it at all cost or this game will be over"

Side note :
Buildings are counted as units, which is wrong IMHO.
Why ? Because they are not units, as simple as that.
So my idea is to no longer include buildings within the unit count.
This might lead to create a separated building counter.
This way, when you'd see 1000 units in your counter, this would mean you have 1000 running on the battle field, buildings excluded.

@i_forgorthescene said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Nobody upgrades SACU's anyway.

@brannou said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

, they are not that vastely used

• How / Why did this happen ?
• is there some remedy to this ?

You want to turn your SACUs into Rambos ? T
IMHO, this would mean there should be 2 totally different SACUs, including their visuals :

• a SACU that's purely a fighter with its pre-build stuff. But isn't this the T3 bot's and eventual T4 bot's job to be such Rambo ?
• a SACU that's purely an engie with or without its own pre-build stuff, remaining unaffected by the order of its upgrades.

And what about LOW Tech engineers that became more efficient, turning suddenly HIGH Tech into useless engies (or so) ?
errr wait ! WHY and HOW could they be more efficient ?
Higher Tech is meant to be superior to lower Tech or does the world now turns upside down ???

EDIT: my feeling is the game is becoming some sort of Starcraft and this sux hard. FA is losing its soul and its uniqueness !!!

[waffelzNoob]

my hq literally almost never dies and when it does its probably game over regardless so i dont get why you're crying so much

also t3 engineers have the same efficiency as t1 engineers, except they have more build range, health, and of course access to t2&t3. please stop spreading misinformation, it could be harmful

[Katharsas]

@Manimal_
Oh dear lord.

Maybe if you STOP using BOLD FONT eXcEsSiVeLy, people on the internet would start to CONSIDER taking you SERIOUSLY. Bold font is EQUIAVLENT TO ALL CAPS when used LIKE YOU DO, so your posts read PRETTY MUCH like TROLL posts / ATTENTION WHORING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111!!!!!!

[Nex]

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

What would you think of such RTS game which doesn't allow you to spread any buildings freely ?
Who like games that are limiting high tech building cap ?

How is FAF limiting your buildings?

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

"Oh too bad, you've lost dis stoopeed HQ. Dat cutz your wingz, so rebuild it at all cost or this game will be over"

Without the HQ mod you would only have a single factory anyway so it's the same outcome when that factory is destroyed.
You can still build more than 1 HQ it's just not very efficient, but if your HQ is in danger it might be a good idea to preemptively build another one.

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Buildings are counted as units, which is wrong IMHO.
Why ? Because they are not units, as simple as that.
So my idea is to no longer include buildings within the unit count.
This might lead to create a separated building counter.
This way, when you'd see 1000 units in your counter, this would mean you have 1000 running on the battle field, buildings excluded.

But to what ends?
you have a 1000 unit cap which is almost never reached and you can even increase it.
The unit cap is not there to limit your gameplay (like in many other rts).
It's a limitation to prevent the game from lagging to hard / becoming unplayable for certain pcs.
So it makes 0 difference for gameplay if you count buildings or not, but buildings still need to compute stuff so they count for performance reasons.

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

You want to turn your SACUs into Rambos ? T

SACUs are quite capable fighters with the right upgrades

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

IMHO, this would mean there should be 2 totally different SACUs, including their visuals :

That's the point of the presets and why they are not selected together.
So you basically make rambo presets for your fighters, engie presets for your builders and RAS presets for your eco bois.
Them having different visuals is something that someone would have to design, which no one has done yet, so all upgrades look the same (but you can see if a part has been upgraded).

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

And what about LOW Tech engineers that became more efficient, turning suddenly HIGH Tech into useless engies (or so) ?
errr wait ! WHY and HOW could they be more efficient ?

In vanilla a T1 engie has more buildpower per mass than a T3 engie. This is fixed in FAF (they all have the same bp/mass)

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Higher Tech is meant to be superior to lower Tech or does the world now turns upside down ???

Higher tech units are and were always only partially superior to lower tech units.
lower tech often has more stats/mass than higher tech, but since a higher tech unit has more absolute hp and will fire all its weapons at maximum power until it is fully dead, it wins against a mass equivalent amount of lower tech units, as these slowly die one after the other thus reducing the strength of the group.
But in certain scenarios lower tech units are still superior because they give more dps/mass or hp/mass etc.
That's why you always see t1 arty or frigs even in the t3 stage and often t1 bombers against T4s

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

my feeling is the game is becoming some sort of Starcraft and this sux hard. FA is losing its soul and its uniqueness !!!

How is it becoming more like starcraft compared to vanilla?
What uniqueness is FAF loosing compared to vanilla?

[Manimal_]

Performances issues with a 15 years old game on nowadays PCs.... ROFL

I'm too confident in some people affirmations about engies :
@zlo said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Nah, t1 engineers are more mass and power efficient, if you don't use those you will be at disadvantage.

@veteranashe said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Only t1 engines and one factory is efficient.

And there's no netiquette rule speaking of the use of bold chars.

[arma473]

It's normal to play 4v4 on a 20x20 map, which means if the match lasts an hour, people make a lot of units. There can be 800 ASF on each side. Which can cause the game to slow down. Some people play on 40x40 maps, especially if they are playing against AI. If you only play 1v1s, that kind of slowdown basically doesn't happen.

Also, this game was not designed to take advantage of multi-core. So it's basically dependent on your single core performance (as well as RAM). But half of the advancement over the last 15 years is in having more cores.

And some people play on laptops.

[Nex]

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Performances issues with a 15 years old game on nowadays PCs.... ROFL

Uhm yes.

Small screenshot from a recent game. 16 minutes in with speed set to +0, but it slows down to -1 due to too many units.

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

I'm too confident in some people affirmations about engies :

@zlo said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades seem to be bugged:

Assisting with engies is for the factions that don't have Kennel like units...

Nah, t1 engineers are more mass and power efficient, if you don't use those you will be at disadvantage.

He was comparing them to kennels/hives, where T1 engies (or any kind of engie) wins.

@veteranashe said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Either you take engie mod that makes all BP efficient (t1, t2, t3)
Or
Only t1 engines and one factory is efficient.

This was a comparison between FAF (which uses engie mod) and vanilla where you have to use t1 engies to not fall behind

[Manimal_]

@nex said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

@manimal_ said in SACUs and Factories Upgrades questions:

Performances issues with a 15 years old game on nowadays PCs.... ROFL

Uhm yes.

Small screenshot from a recent game. 16 minutes in with speed set to +0, but it slows down to -1 due to too many units.

Is there still an issue with pathfinding computation ?
Unless you're playing on a laptop PC, being short in DDR RAM and/or with a medium end CPU / GPU ?

Laptops are way too compact to embed enough components and to be cooled down efficiently in the mean time...

Not mentioning the quality of internet connexion of all players in a game. (I've played with people who had a terrible wifi connexion, frequently disconnected , or their sync was delayed... what a pain)

Some persons like FAF as it is. Some don't for their own reasons.
I'm in between them.
I think FAF could be much more cool, but the genuine FA engine has its weaknesses due to the dev's tech choices... They complained about Xact Audio engine for instance, if I remember well.
There was a "similar" issue with Total Annihilation 's Peewees and Flash Tanks that was solved by turning off their weapon's sound.

[ThomasHiatt]

How are HQ snipes limiting strategic gameplay? The fact that you can snipe an HQ is literally an additional strategy being added into the game.