Mod suggestion... Reclaim counters...

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

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

Grimplex

All training of mine is done through 1v1 or me watching some horrible 1k team games.