I started playing FAF 2 months ago, so I consider myself still somewhat of a new player. What I found/still find very challenging and frustrating:

• Joining a community and finding players to play with is HARD. There is a clan system in place, but actually finding and joining one of those clans is very difficult, as nearly all clans do not post contact/recruitment data publicly. Even a recruitment section here on the forum would go a long way of fixing this issue.
• 1v1 ladder is punishing and winning offers a lot less rewards than other RTS games. The gamification of the ladder rating system is basically non-existent. Other games (starcraft 2, LoL) do a better job here at motivating you to play by pitching you against similarly ranked players in a division.
• initial setup of hotkeys and mods could be even more 'out of the box' than it currently is. I remember I had to spend a couple hours at the start setting up /refining hotkey assignments. Things like this should just be set to sensible defaults in my oppinion.
• Teamgames, astro crater, survival maps and dual gap are all great fun for a beginner, as it feels like a lot less punishing environment, and more like a place where you can explore and have a good time. But getting into a game is frustrating, as lobby hosts will happily have you sit around for 20 minutes to fill their game up, only to kick you in the last second because gray=gay.

Exactly. Reclaim batching helps you to assess the total value of reclaim in an area better. But then when you try to collect it in an efficient way you realize how dysfunctional the batching actually is.

Maybe an option to decide up to which zoom level the batching is applied would help. I could see that batching is useful at max zoom out, but for anything below that, I would much prefer clickable reclaim indicators.

Will this be affecting all matchmaker queues?

In general, please be more specific for all "Matchmaker"/"Ladder"-like announcements, it is often very hard to see which queues these affect. The information could also be more consolidated. For example, why is the 1v1 pool in this forum under "Home > Announcements > January 2022 Ladder Map Pool", the 2v2 pool under "Home > General Discussion > 2v2 TMM Matchmaker Pool", and the 4v4 pools not posted at all? Can't we have one neatly organized section where the information for all matchmaker queues is consolidated?

@waffelznoob said in 4v4 TMM January 2023 Map Pool Tier List:

Every 20km water S+ but setons is in "would rather draw" solely because 5% of the TMM players is gonna be better at it?

I rate the maps similar to javi, and for me this comes down to:

If I win navy on those S rated maps, I can destroy all/most enemy bases and win the game. This feels rewarding and I like it.

If I win navy on my half of setons, the game will often drag out for another 30+ min, and my team might lose anyway. It's a real struggle to close out a setons game. Now, some setons experts will probably immediately reply that I'm just bad at setons if I can't snowball a win on my lane into a quick and easy game win. But that doesn't change the fact that I don't like the map and would rather draw than play.

Have you considered supporting the experimental with an army?

As far as I'm concerned, it's good that there is some counterplay to most experimentals. This allows for differentiation in player skill, and broadens the strategic depth of the game.

While this proposed change might shake things up a little for the 1800+ lobbies, I don't think incentivizing subs over frigs for the other 90% of players is a good idea.

I am also taking issue with the realism of subs detecting land and air-based units better than frigs. A strong sonar would be ok, but a submerged unit providing intel on land-based units and buildings is just silly. And this argument is not just about "but muh realism, reeee", it also helps accessibility and makes the game more new player friendly when units behave according to expectations.

Don't support on 2 grounds:

• When I'm signing up for TMM queue, I don't want to commit to a potential 60-90min game (maybe not ingame time, but certainly wall-clock). Some of us have wives and families that also need attention, and an uninterrupted+unplanned gaming session of that length is sadly not a luxury I have anymore.
• Very map-specific meta. Same argument goes for asto and dualgap. If you like a single map that much, just play it in customs. No need to have it in tmm.

On the Soul Ripper:

The Problem:
Currently, it feels like an air experimental without purpose. We have the ahwasser for massive AoE, and the czar for great single target damage. The soulripper is an awkward middle-of-the road. If you want to snipe a com or land exp, czar is better. If you want to flatten a base or t3 army, ahwasser is better. The soul ripper doesn't excel at any of these tasks, and especially as cybran you are better off just building t3 bombers or gunships to fill these roles. Additionally, the strategic capabilities of the Soul Ripper don't feel special at all. In most regards, it feels and performs like a group of T3 gunships.

On raw combat power, the soul ripper is not as cost-effective as T3 gunships. Having less efficient T4 is not a problem on land or navy, as you get a higher concentration of combat power compared to building more T3 units. But in the air, packing lots of units close together is not nearly as much of a problem. Thus if a T4 air unit isn't as resource efficient as T3, it has to offer other capabilities to compensate. Both the ahwasser and czar do this sufficiently by offering unique abilities not achievable with T3 air, while the soul ripper does not.

Proposed solution:
One way to give the Soul Ripper a more distinctive role and feel could be to make it a long-range bombardment unit. For example, what would happen if we give it a range of 62? This would enable it to hover on the edge of a battle or hostile base (conveniently just outranging SAMs, being able to avoid them with good micro), poking away at the enemy and drifting in and out of vision with it's stealth. Kind of like a lategame air version of cybran stealth com or hoplites, or tempests in starcraft2. In combination with the stealthed ASF it can be used to deceive the enemy and bait air fights, fitting the general cybran philosophy well. Due to being an air unit it can attack from unique angles unlike any other long-range unit in the game today (just think of the possibilities on mountainous maps like gap!). This would add a new micro-intensive strategic dimension to the game.

If it proves too oppressive, values like range, dps, hp and speed could of course be tuned. But I would love to see a new angle being explored with the bug, instead of its current existence as a strictly bigger gunship.

After getting mercy sniped twice today while being surrounded by (cybran) maa and having inties close by, I have to ask:

Can we finally balance mercies, instead of the current reliance on the honor-bound approach of looking down on the low lifers that use this disgusting tool?

The aurora is the single reason why I feel like my Aeon rating is 300 points lower than all other factions.

It can't raid, can't defend against raids on even slightly open maps, and commits suicide the moment a bomber shows up.
This disadvantage in the t1 stage snowballs into less mapcontrol, less mexes, and eventually weaker at all following tech stages.

I feel like particulary aeon vs cybran on something like a 15x15 land map is an impossible task.

I hate the aurora.

I agree with @gabitii that the t1 sub change (along with torp def change) often leads to very turtely navy gameplay. Yes, rushing a frig to kill bp is still good. Yes, having some frigs to go raiding and for radar is still good. But on smaller maps without a lot of frig raidable mexes, spamming subs is now the way to go. In many of my recent games the player that build more subs at the cost of less frigates than their opponent won early navy control.

I also agree that the aeon destroyer is no longer good. People who think its a good unit haven't played in 2 patches. Especially in destro vs destro battles sera and cybran are for sure better.

+1, I am also a big fan of idle engineers and the various variations of that mod, but I notice the same issues. It's not working on inherited bases, and sometimes the UI overlay glitches out, obscuring large parts of the screen.

I was also glad to see that the missile speed increase coming with the next patch only applies to mobile launchers, and not to TML and cruisers.

As Fatboy and Mega's building functionality are so underused, massively increasing the build power is a good idea. It might actually lead to that feature being used. It would be very interesting to see where that leads.

Hard no on any speed changes for the fatty. If you have the longest range of all units, you have to be ok with the slowest speed as well.

I don't think the HP of the fatty is a big issue either. First of all, if something like a monkey or some T3 land units kill your fatty, its not an issue of tank. Its an issue of bad micro. Against air or arty bases you can support your fatty with shields and aa (either mobile or stationary). This requires some set up, but a slow push of a fatty with some engies supporting by spamming T2 shields and sams along the way can be pretty devastating.

Thanks!

Since the last update (2 days ago), My resource bars (Mass/Energy) get stuck sometimes. Then they are just not updating for minutes on end, resulting in me having now clue about mass and energy balance and storage. This has obviously serious gameplay implications, as good ecoing is like half of the game.

More of a map design issue than a balancing issue.

I found the best way of avoiding TML crush games is to not play certain 10x10km team game maps, or at least be very vigilant that a TML is strong on these maps. The kind of maps where one person rushing a TML slightly outside their base can hit the core Mexes of 6 opponents. I still very vividly remember one open wonder game where someone rushed T2 upgrade and build a TML on full t1 eco, and proceeded to kill like 20k mass worth of mexes and HQs.

On larger maps (say 15x15), or even 10x10s with spawns far enough apart that you need to establish at least some mapcontrol before building TML (like plateau of arracis, or adaptive millennium), I find the TML perfectly balanced.

I got nuked just yesterday after a corsair hit-squad suicided on my smd. That nuke killed 56k mass, without leaving any reclaim. The nuke still has great value. Just instead of trying to overwhelm the opponents ability to defend with SMDs by rushing more nukes quicker, you now have to integrate this strategy with other tools.

Aeon frig felt great the first time I used it. But I am afraid with some micro practice this might get very oppressive.

I don't think we have the player base to support more queues (except for dedicated setons/gap queues, but that is a different discussion).

Currently, when the leader of a TMM party has to go, the party has to dissolve and reform with a new leader.

Can we instead have a "Transfer party leader" button to make this process easier?