I had a very productive week with modding and decided to share my thoughts and feedback received about the Future Outlook for the Superior FAF Experience since uptake has been suboptimal.
Some people have said there is no extensive changelog and yes that is true. As I have said there is no point elaborating on changes to HP, DPS and so on when the base comparison want to use is not a static set. All units have a blueprint and script. Anything can be checked directly in the files if there are any questions, and nobody wants to read up on the 10-20 most important stats of each of the 500 units/buildings there are in the game.
Other people have expressed concern that games wont fill because people have modded games hidden or frankly they dont think others want to play anything other than dual gap with their memorized build order they have been doing for the past 3 years hoping to get a higher rating.
I have highlighted the most important features in my previous post and due to many patches breaking the mod I have had to update it several times in the past few months leading to version 21 where it should have only been version 3 or 4.
Additional features in v21:
Production Damage Adjustments:
Buildings such as Pgens, Mex, Mass Fabs, Gateways and factories are impacted directly by the damage they take leading to reduced resource generation / buildrate. T1 Mex and Pgens, are excluded. Hydros may be included later. This is a novel groundbreaking feature that should not be underestimated in terms of the impact it will have on gameplay.
To make this feature functional I have had to adjust the cost to repair a building/unit to only 50% and make buildings leave 65% of the mass they cost as reclaim. This discourages the ctrl-k rebuild gimmick by eliminating the advantage of doing so.
More importantly, this innovative change makes active gameplay on offense more rewarding because passive gameplay is punished. As an example, when people get hit by a strat run and they may take 2 bombs to their T3 Pgen but who cares, it still produces the same amount of energy while being up in flames and you get the reclaim from the strategic bomber your opponent donated. Another example is 2 Nothas come flying in, you manage to shoot one down, the other hits a T2 mex but hey, who cares, you are going to ctrl-k it anyway to build a T3 mex with a discount from your opponents donation. Both these examples exhibit why it is always a win-win for sim city players to sit back and do nothing but eco up. I dont need to get into the math in detail to explain why this makes the game more proactive and dynamic while being better balanced, anyone can understand the concept and how it improves what they know from their current experience of the balance team's mod.
The base concept in action works the following way:
-When HP is 80% or more, there is no impact.
-When HP is 80% to 20%, there is a dynamic straight line proportional adjustment. For T2 and T3 Pgens, this is a true straight line, for all other it is in steps.
-When HP is 20% or less, there is an accelerated decline for T2&T3 Pgen, but all other have a floor.
Other improvements:
Somebody fixed the walled t1 PD issue. I had another idea of how to do it in mind but since the change broke the mod making everything miss I had to roll with it and am thankful somebody finally fixed it after years of people saying it could not be fixed.
Other additional features in development:
Afterburners for ASF, once the coding side is fully figured out.