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You can't compare FPS with RTS. If you want a cheat free environment in a client-server model you need a central server to run the simulation. The simulation is what happens on every pc right now. And you probably know it's very cpu intensive. So basically you would need a whole server (1 machine) to simulate 1 FA game. In the morning you need like 50 of them, in the evening like 200 of them. 1 of them costs like 30-40€ a month. Peer to peer is not over 15 years outdated. Peer to peer is the choice to work around one particular problem (in exchange for other problems).
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Just because we know of the problem doesn't mean we are capable of fixing it.
a) We don't have the SC:FA source code
b) None of our developers have any professional experience in game development overall
c) Almost none of the developers are experienced in C++
d) Almost none of our developers are experience in networking stuff
You can throw money at us, it won't change anything. When I say "experience" I'm talking about years of professional experience, where you already built stuff like that and shipped it to real customers. It's more than just reading a book. -
With regard to giving money to devs. Take Downlord as an example (even though he reduced his FAF engagement to like 1% of what he did earlier). He lives in Switzerland where life is fucking expensive and educated guess tells me he earns the equivalent of roundabout 150.000$ per year (pre taxes etc.). Thats 12.500$ a month. So if you want to have Downlord working a full work day per week you'd need to collect 2500$ per month.
One dev, one day per week (that's just 8 hours) - 2500$. Of course there are cases where it's cheaper. But even if you find someone who can do it for 500$ per month, that is still 8 hours per week. But fun fact: Many of us already work much more than 8 hours a week for free. If you start paying for us, we probably reduce the "free" invested time. So overall you pay a lot of money, but you don't get much in return.
So giving money to us is a very nice sign of appreciation, thanks for that. But in doesn't really change the "total dev time available".
If playing FAF from the US is so horrible (I really can't tell) the only solution once again (we have the same topic with the Australian people) is to run your own FAF instance in the US. The software is free and available on Github, the people are willing to share the knowledge. But at least I'm not willing to maintain a second instance of FAF.