Luckily a huge amount of mapgen samples will be provided today. We gonna see first hand what the mapgen is capable of and what kind of games it provides - If it can reliably create reasonable maps.
That said, I dont think the quality assasment of current hand made ladder maps can be directly transfered to mapgen maps. The will likely never reach the aesthetic level of hand made maps - especially if you look at the astounding progress in the last maps made by Jip, Svenni, biass and other map creators.
The huge advantage of mapgen maps is, well, they are generated and no one has seen the map before. In short, its their novelty. And novelty is a quality of its own. Mapgen trains a player to adapt, to asses what a map has to offer, to think what might be good and what not so much. Hand made maps with established meta simply cannot provide that feature.
My point is, even if mapgen maps lack in comparision to hand made maps in some regards (which they do), they bring some new quality into the game which current ladder maps simply cannot provide.
Therefore I would love to see mapgen maps in ladder to some extend.

It is included, you need to enable it ingame though.
Menu -> Options -> Interface -> Draggable Build Queue

Maybe ask in "technical help" on FAF discord
https://discord.gg/T6BY22RJ

@khabume
Imo most of your observations you pointed out fall back to the maps hosted and played. Unfortunatly those are mostly Astro/Gap/Thermo in the lower to mid ranked area. Those maps are known to promote turtly playstyle and often feel like an eco-simulator without much interaction and use of all the units in all tech stages you got. The map layout simply just calls for it to be this way. On top of it, having such a distinct focus on eco and an overall clear meta seems to provoke quite some toxicity at time if someone didnt yet understand how those maps play out or just screws up. Overall, its pretty unfun if you like interaction und you may think, this is how FA is meant to be played. Lucky you, its not. There are alternatives but there should be more.

There are some players in the community trying to help to overcome that issue by hosting "all welcome" games on decent maps. E.g phong already deserves a medal for that as he is hosting 4v4 all welcome games on mapgenerator maps on a rather regular basis. Those are very welcoming to new and unexperienced players, usually have spread out spawns and no dedicated air slot. Games are rather dynamic and highlight the importance of map control.
I feel, FAF could benefit alot of such kinda moderated lobbys (mapgen or not is not the point) to present an alternative to the majority of teamgames hosted on the same 3 turtle maps in the lower rating area. (Dont get me wrong. If you like DG, well you like it - nothing terribly wrong with that.)
It seems to me, players in this range are often simply to intimidated to go 1v1 ladder or want to play in a team. Team Matchmaker could/will somehow solve that issue, although players need to overcome their fear to be thrown into the fighting pit and any many new players may be reluctant to do so after getting crushed horribly a couple of times.

It seems to me, it may be very beneficial to have some dedicated and welcoming FAF guys hosting newbie-friendly all welcome games (FAF kindergarden-bootcamp games if you like) on a regular basis on half decent maps. Just to have a low barrier/threshold alternative available opposed to the majority of "crap" lobbies. This could be a good and low effort way for new players to highlight all the different ways how the game can be played.

So, how to achieve that? Is it feasable to introduce "official" FAF lobbies for newbies hosted by well known community members?

deactivate the "dummy drone" on the top right of the unit list in a game lobby. It was introduced to easily unrank a game.

you need to put a game title in

@Sir-Prize There is a file named "Advanced strategic icons" in your installation.
You can open it with a file-archiver program like win rar or 7-zip and delete the icons you dont wanna use. You can also open the icons within using e.g. irfanview with a plugin to see whats what.

@SteelTalon Try playing some mapgen teamgames. Hosts are usually quite open to less experienced players. Futhermore, mapgens games (due to their novelty) usually dont have fixed roles/lanes for players and are often quite dynamic to play. Both should be an advantage for ladder players.

I think its the "Reveal Positions" mod which may be in conflict with the spawn settings of the game

@shultz13 try "Nvidia fix"

keybindings are safed in your game.prefs file. In general, its a good idea to have a backup of that file, especially if you need to delete it. Than you can copy paste your keybindings from the old to the new game.pres file.

pls post the game log. (top left menu in the client ->log folder->logs->game_14668715.log)
where you running mods?

hey. you got loads of XACT errors in your logs. those are a typical hint that you suffer from the (well known) sounds issue.
make sure all your sound devices are set to stereo - SCFA cant handle surround sound.
check this out as well:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/796/i-can-t-hear-some-of-the-audio-or-other-sound-issue-what-should-i-do?_=1622355110175

yea give it a try. be sure to run the latest version of FAF (1.4.6). technical help on discord is a good shot too if it doesnt solve itself. https://discord.gg/jFrAU5N2

it seems your game and FAF are installed on different drives. This can cause issues afaik.
try to install both on C

pls post the full game log. where you running any mods?

good chance its the "ressource rich" SIM mod you are running. Give it a try without the mod

Ecomanagrr mex overlay is causing it

Thats a classic

Hi, you have multiple "XACT" errors in your game log file, so its seems you are a yet another victim of the sound bug.
Make sure every audio devices (headphones....) is set to stereo and disable all audio enhancements.

This might be helpful too.
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/796/i-can-t-hear-some-of-the-audio-or-other-sound-issue-what-should-i-do?_=1619436424665