Discussion about ACUs and their volatile nature (i.e. possible Disconnect Share rules)

Nomander

This is a repost of a post made by @Jip on Discord:

It goes without saying that when an ACU is destroyed that it should explode. This discussion is not about the 'typical' way that an ACU ends up exploding. Instead, this discussion about what should happen when a player disconnects. There's some interest of adjusting this behavior, see for example:

https://feedback.userreport.com/354e2fbd-fdb7-4282-ae57-df75bf625431/#idea/448833

And with thanks to @Nomander we now have a technical solution:

https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/5971

We just have to enable it. At the moment it is disabled. We can make the behavior work like any of the other share conditions. And we can also introduce a new behavior: the ACU recalls individually.

The question that remains is how this feature should work in practice. A few relevant facts:

A) It is difficult, if not impossible to determine whether a player left the game on purpose or because of technical reasons. We'll refer to this as the player 'leaving' regardless of what the cause is.

B) It is possible to make it configurable, in the same way that the victory conditions and the share conditions are configurable.

And the primary questions for this topic?

Should we adjust the behavior of the ACU when a player leaves the game?

Should we make the behavior customizable (through the lobby options)?

The new (individual) recall behavior, how should that work exactly? Are there conditions, and if so - what are they?

I'd like to add some more details based on what's possible with the current implementation too:

Aside from recalling the ACU individually, we can share the ACU for a limited time or permanently.
The share condition for units can be changed based on if a player disconnects, and whatever anti-abuse measures are used (ex: use fullshare for disconnects unless we detect abuse, then use no-share just like for normal deaths).
- Some ideas for anti-abuse measures are checking current ACU HP, if the ACU was damaged recently, or letting the ACU live (and possibly sharing it) and calling it abuse if it dies too quickly.