Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...

I have no idea how to do this kind of programming so I'll just make the suggestion and if someone sees value in the idea, feel free to implement it however you wish.

Here's the basic concept:

It's pretty widely agreed that the proper use of mass acquired via reclaim is to spend it on something that will increase economic production, as opposed to just spending it on tanks, for example. The game keeps track of mass that has been acquired via reclaim, but not how it's spent. Even though once mass has been reclaimed it becomes indistinguishable from mass acquired from mass extractors or any other source, I think a few simple rules for a few counters can give a player some indication of whether or not they are spending their reclaimed mass correctly.

The rules for "reclaim counters" might go something like this... there would be, say, 3 counters - "reclaim collected", "reclaim wasted", and "reclaim used" (ie. used properly):

• if 1 mass is reclaimed when the mass bar is not full, the "reclaim collected" counter goes up by 1
• if 1 mass is reclaimed when the mass bar is full, the "reclaim collected" counter does not go up, but the "reclaim wasted" counter goes up by 1
• if 1 mass is spent developing economy (building or upgrading extractors, storage, or generators, etc.) when the "reclaim collected" counter is greater than zero, the "reclaim collected" counter goes down by 1, and the "reclaim used" counter goes up by 1
• if 1 mass is spent on developing economy, and "reclaim collected" counter is zero, no change to any counter (there's nothing wrong with spending mass acquired from extraction on developing economy, assuming you have enough units to defend yourself, especially when that's all you have)
• if 1 mass is spent on anything other than developing economy (tanks?), and the mass bar is greater than the "reclaim collected" counter, no change to any counter (there's nothing wrong with spending mass acquired via extraction, etc., on tanks, and any mass above the "reclaim collected" counter could only have been acquired via extraction, etc.)
• if 1 mass is spent on anything other than developing economy, and the mass bar is equal to the "reclaim collected" counter (it should never be less, if the counters work properly), the "reclaim collected" counter goes down by 1 and the "reclaim wasted" counter goes up by 1

That's the basic idea. Maybe there should be options to include other things like factories, intel structures, etc. I think there's an argument to be made that building a factory or a radar using reclaim is better than spending it on tanks.

I welcome any thoughts, comments, suggestions, and especially someone taking on the coding. I have no ability to help beyond the basic concept. Thank you.

@zappazapper maybe "reclaim collected" is the wrong label, since this would be more likely to be understood as total reclaim collected over the whole game, whether it's spent or not. Maybe "reclaim held" is a better label.

@zappazapper said in Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...:

It's pretty widely agreed that the proper use of mass acquired via reclaim is to spend it on something that will increase economic production, as opposed to just spending it on tanks, for example.

By whom?

If 30 more tanks would win me the game I'm gonna spend my reclaim on 30 more tanks instead of some random T2 mex.

@zappazapper said in Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...:

It's pretty widely agreed that the proper use of mass acquired via reclaim is to spend it on something that will increase economic production, as opposed to just spending it on tanks

Widely? I'm not sure where this comes from at all? It's news to me.
[edit: Deribus beat me to it!]

Maybe "widely agreed" is the wrong phrase. It's a widely understood concept, one that makes sense to a lot of players and that forms part of the foundation on which many players build their economy. You may not agree with the concept but you certainly didn't just hear it from me, because I didn't come up with it. I read it on this forum and in various guides. This mod would theoretically be of value to those who agree with the concept and would like a way to track how their reclaim is being spent.

Is that better?

It's a mod based on a flawed concept that reclaim is somehow different and should be spent differently than general mass income. I can understand a mod that simply shows how much of your current mass income is being spent on mex upgrades. That seems more generally useful than one that focuses on reclaim for an unclear reason.

Would be much simpler for users to understand too.

if you have a lot of mass you often can't spend it without scaling build power first. That's when you simply up some mexes to make use of their own buildpower and using your mass for something useful. But it doesn't matter wether that mass is reclaim or just 50 t1 mexes behind your starting location.
What you do with the mass you get all depends on wether you need units to secure more mass on the battlefield or you need eco because there is no easy to secure mass available anymore.

@nex said in Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...:

you often can't spend it without scaling build power first. That's when you simply up some mexes to make use of their own buildpower

This is exactly my approach!
Admittedly, I've learned to immediately focus on building more power and sometimes more factories, so that I'm more ready to spend the mass when the upgrades finish!

@zappazapper said in Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...:

you certainly didn't just hear it from me

I honestly did. Promise. x
I get what you're saying. I challenge the idea, but I can understand the direction it's coming from; but I've honestly never heard it mentioned before.

I have actually heard people say that, but more as a way to "break down" the game to something simpler, because reclaim is often placed on maps to enable faster early scaling, so it's just natural that during the game when you pick up that reclaim the best way to use it is to improve your eco.
And when you win fights and thus get the reclaim from them, your opponent will need time to recover and build up enough units to push you back.
So unless you can win with the reclaimed mass it's often better to put it into eco since you now have a bit more breathing room till your opponent recovers and you will win in the long run instead of risking to throw your advantage away.

@nex said in Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...:

I have actually heard people say that, but more as a way to "break down" the game to something simpler, because reclaim is often placed on maps to enable faster early scaling, so it's just natural that during the game when you pick up that reclaim the best way to use it is to improve your eco.
And when you win fights and thus get the reclaim from them, your opponent will need time to recover and build up enough units to push you back.
So unless you can win with the reclaimed mass it's often better to put it into eco since you now have a bit more breathing room till your opponent recovers and you will win in the long run instead of risking to throw your advantage away.

It's interesting that I just posted in the thread about player retention being difficult because it seems that there is no room for marginal improvement of low-rated players, and this rather obvious concept of using reclaim to build eco being dismissed as being outright nonsense. If this concept doesn't hold water in the 2k+ world, I'm not in a position to argue with that. But it's a basic concept that might help sub-500 rated players start to approach 500+. I'm horrible and eco is a big problem for me and spending reclaim to build my eco makes a lot of sense to me, and I think some indication of how I'm doing on that front would be helpful. That's all I'm saying.

@zappazapper It does have meaning to a low-mid rated player, but not to a level that you should care about a counter for it. that will just make you worry about making errors, that aren't errors.

So what I meant to say here is, that it is valuable as a general concept, but nothing that you should numerically pursue. you shouldn't count the reclaim you get and make an equal amount of t2 mexes. You should rather be "I won a fight, time to make a t2 mex from it" and "there is a reclaim pile next to my base and it's not a 5x5 map, make a t2 mex from it" (the smaller the map the more you need to invest into units rather than eco, because units have a much faster impact due to travel times)

You are overoptimizing, which is exactly what most 2k+ rated trainers tell other people to do.
I can't say if it will make sense for you to actually see those numbers, but I think in general it won't be helpful for new players.

Overoptimizing? Trainers tell you:

1. Don’t overflow mass
2. Don’t stall power
3. Try to stall only slightly in mass
4. Try to overflow only slightly in e

Now combine that with getting your map half as fast as possible with turning it into either mex upgrades or tanks.

Doesn’t really matter what you decide to do while managing your economy like this because you can win a game under 1000 rating doing practically anything provided you are handling your flux economy properly while doing it.

Reclaim enables faster scaling. Scaling is not just mex upgrades. If scaling is securing map control, reclaim enables you to have more factories minute 4 than if it didn’t exist. If those tanks win you map control which in turn is more t1 mexes, it’s faster scaling than t2 mexes. Particularly since taking and holding a t1 mex on enemy map half equates to a t2 mex.

Good example is desert arena. You convert reclaim into tanks, not mexes, because there is reclaim across the whole map. Winning map control equates to winning more reclaim equates to winning more economy. 20 Tanks beat a t2 mex in utility, so you scale faster with the former.

@zappazapper said in Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...:

it's a basic concept that might help sub-500 rated players start to approach 500+

From what I've seen of 1v1 gaming, one of the most common mistakes most players at a lower level (my level!) seem to make is trying to upgrade economy, while the opponent just rolls over their army and takes the entire map with military units.

The 'big' exception, as touched on above, is when you just can't spend the money quickly enough, at which point there are hundreds of points of build-power all over the map, just waiting to be used - in extractors!

That's the only real reason to spend reclaim on economy in my mind. If you have the build power without upgrading, I don't see any reason to try to upgrade instead of just playing as you usually would.

Put another way - I think the cause and effect are being mixed up in that advice - it's less that you should upgrade eco with reclaim... More that large reclaim sometimes forces you to fall back on your extractor buildpower to avoid overflowing (unless we planned well in advance for it, which is above my paygrade!)

I think the advice would be better phrased as:
If you can't spend the mass that you're gaining - upgrading MEXes is a way to immediately avoid wasting it.

@ftxcommando said in Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...:

Overoptimizing? Trainers tell you:

Don’t overflow mass
Don’t stall power
Try to stall only slightly in mass
Try to overflow only slightly in e

That's what you tell people maybe, but often enough there is stuff like "just manually reclaim these rocks cuz it's better bro" and similar things which are 0 help to a sub 1k player.

Honestly can’t name a trainer that says that to sub 1ks. I’ve seen random dudes say that sort of stuff and get bullied for the shit advice by trainers, though.

There is the yearly “automated reclaim” thread on the forums where <1200s say how they hardstuck cuz they don’t manual reclaim and each year trainers say the same stuff in the threads. Just one of the last efficiency things to be worried about as a player, especially passed the very first 3 minutes when more than 5 units exist on the map.

@ftxcommando looking through the history it seems that I was misremembering them being trainer, but to a new guy the difference between the real advice from a trainer and the nonsene some other people spout is not very obvious and I wouldn't expect new players to distrust others advice just because they don't have the trainer role.
So my apologies to all personal trainers offended by my statement, but my (or rather zappazapper's) point regarding such advice being given and thus creating the image of people trying to force new people to become 2k pro players ASAP still stands.

@Nex it was my experience that if I expressed any kind of genuine interest in improving (I wrote a review of one of my games) that I was immediately referred to a couple of high-rated players (trainers?), with the expectation that I would play 6+ hours a day with them to get my rating up to 1900+. It only seems ridiculous to me because my rating is was and is currently below zero, not because I don't understand the motivation of high-rated players to seek out and train literally anyone with the potential to play at that level. They want more players at their level so they can play more games. I get it. I'm not offended by it. It did scare me away a little bit.

I use music analogies a lot because it's a world I'm familiar with. Music can happen anywhere. FAF only happens on FAF. Unlike music, if you FAF at all, you end up interacting with FAF "rock stars", because there's only one place to FAF, and they're here and you're here. 99.9% of musicians that I've met and/or played with are not rock stars, but I've met a couple. They're not interested in raising the general level of musicianship. They're interested in meeting the 0.1% of musicians who have the potential to be rock stars. As a consequence, they are only useful sources of advice for those 0.1% of musicians. Worse than that, the advice they do give to the other 99.9% is actually harmful in most cases.

The training ideology here at FAF seems to be that the only people qualified to train are those rated 2k+. I think that's a consequence of FAF existing in a compressed space, where everybody is forced to exist regardless of skill. What might be valuable advice to a sub-500 player from a 500+ player is often quickly shot down by 2k+ players. The 2k+ players are not wrong, but the 500+ player isn't wrong that his advice will help the sub-500 player, and get him to the point where he can even understand the advice from the 2k+ players. Nothing that the 2k+ players ever say to me is particularly useful, and it is often the case that the advice they give actually makes me play worse. That's not because they're wrong; it's because I'm not yet at the level that I can see and understand their advice. What I need is more advice from 500+ rated players, just like there's no point in me taking guitar lessons from Paul Gilbert until I've taken a bunch of lessons from guys who are only slightly better than me. I don't think there's anything wrong with the advice that 2k+ players have to offer, I just think that they need to accept that their advice isn't productive to players of every skill level, and they need to make room for the idea that lower-rated players can benefit from advice from sub-2k players that might not fit the current state of the META. Training shouldn't come from only 2k+ rated players. In no other endeavor is training and education handled solely by the "rock stars" of that endeavor.

I'm not in any kind of position to argue with the validity of this piece of advice or that piece of advice, but I've been a musician a long time, and I've given and taken lessons, and I can say with some authority that the training culture of FAF is not sustainable. Even if the goal is to spam 2k+ players, in the long run, this is not how to do it. The idea that learning something "wrong" is harmful, or at best a waste of time, is patently incorrect. There's value in learning what doesn't work. Everybody in a position to tell the rest of us what works only found that out by trying a zillion things that didn't work. Let the rest of us have that same experience.

I cannot fathom what 2k+ trainer is "training" you by using you as deadweight to farm rating by pushing themselves and you up 1900 points by crushing 1100 rated players. Sounds like you were getting asked to do some rating pump and dump scheme, let me know the trainer that told you that so I can get a talk going about it in the trainer channel. They are actively ruining the game for you by giving you a fake rating that will then proceed to get you totally throttled.

The advice 2k+ trainers won't relate to "the current state of the meta" because effectively everyone (that I have ever talked to, maybe Russian trainers are different) tells sub 1k players to focus on the fundamentals I mentioned above. Meta matters when you care about what is efficient mass-for-mass but the reality of the game is that you can brute force anything as a win condition when you have triple the mass in it. And the reality of sub 1k gameplay is that you can have triple the mass generation if you are playing at a 2k+ level.

Obviously nobody EXPECTS you to macro like a 2k rated player, but it's the ultimate way to improve. There is no point focusing on marginal points like meta or specific unit mixes or what units are good and when they're good if you can't fathom why you NEED units first. Likewise, it matters 0 to you if UEF destro sucks compared to Aeon destro because if you have 1.5x the mass in it, you win anyway. You understand why stuff is important by understanding the flow chart of scaling. You need to understand what a t2 mex is, how much it costs, how it compares to losing some map control, and how powerful some tanks are. There are the fundamental blocks that make you derive the first tradeoff of eco vs units. Before that, you have simply grabbing your map half as fast as possible, which also involves units because going pure engies (pure greed) is punished by a balanced playstyle of many tanks and a few engies (pure aggressive) which is punished by a few tanks and more engies (more passive) which is punished by pure engies (pure greed). How do you know what to do? Gotta learn how to read the map (terrain, mexes, reclaim) and how to scout and read opponent. These are skills built by doing what you described, playing the game. The more you play the more improvement you will see. If you just play 2 games a week, don't expect much progress. Same as any hobby.

I KINDA feel like you weren't actually referred or talking to trainers, and for that I can't really give you a solution. Trainers are given a special color for their nickname because you should prioritize their advice for this stuff. If you listen to random dudes, even if they are 2k, well some are just useless or dickheads or both. Can't really stop the free market of ideas from them and start banning everyone with bad advice because then you also end up banning the dudes trying to learn by giving each other public advice and then getting feedback on said advice.

And no, this macro stuff isn't up to meta. It's sheer mathematical reality what is the optimal scaling path. If you can't recognize the properties, it's just flat out not possible for you to make coherent decisions regarding when to make units nor will it matter what unit is better. When you get into those aspects, that becomes the subjective meta, but that isn't the focus until you are at least 1000.

@zappazapper said in Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...:

The training ideology here at FAF seems to be that the only people qualified to train are those rated 2k+. I think that's a consequence of FAF existing in a compressed space, where everybody is forced to exist regardless of skill. What might be valuable advice to a sub-500 player from a 500+ player is often quickly shot down by 2k+ players. The 2k+ players are not wrong, but the 500+ player isn't wrong that his advice will help the sub-500 player, and get him to the point where he can even understand the advice from the 2k+ players. Nothing that the 2k+ players ever say to me is particularly useful, and it is often the case that the advice they give actually makes me play worse. That's not because they're wrong; it's because I'm not yet at the level that I can see and understand their advice.

This reminded me SO much of an argument on discord after a low-rating player asked the age-old question "roughly when should I typically upgrade my extractors?"

@ftxcommando said in Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...:

The advice 2k+ trainers won't relate to "the current state of the meta" because effectively everyone (that I have ever talked to, maybe Russian trainers are different) tells sub 1k players to focus on the fundamentals I mentioned above. Meta matters when you care about what is efficient mass-for-mass but the reality of the game is that you can brute force anything as a win condition when you have triple the mass in it.

And this reminds me so much of starcraft! It's generally true of almost all strategy games. Composition, micro tricks, and racial balance are always so much more fun to talk about, but in reality most of us just need to get richer!
I find supreme commander very interesting and a bit unusual in that players focusing purely on accumulating resources hit a pretty early wall, getting beaten by players that focus on attacking. At least concerning upgrading extractors early! It's very true that almost everybody will improve fastest by improving eco than composition knowledge, map knowledge, or micromanagement; but the difference between learning to eco properly, and prioritising eco top is super-important!

@ftxcommando said in Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...:

I cannot fathom what 2k+ trainer is "training" you by using you as deadweight to farm rating by pushing themselves and you up 1900 points by crushing 1100 rated players.

Grimplex