@Sainse said in Another Novax conversation:

The way to overwhelm this is to give this opportunity to every fraction, which would be basically an already suggested idea of SMDs shooting down Novaxes.

@Blade_Walker said in Another Novax conversation:

If you are an old fart like me you might remember this game. So what if your nukes (not SMD) had a toggle to detonate in proximity to a novax ( could even work for any air Experimental?) Double the build cost and maybe time for a replacement Satellite.

Why not just have nukes be able to target Satellites? If a Satellite gets shot down by a nuke, that would look super cool!
Plus, even if your Satellite was shot down and reclaimed, factoring in the nuke cost, you're still out on top.
@Nomander said in Another Novax conversation:

I like this idea in terms of economic costs: 16.5k launcher + 12k missile + at least 6280 mass in pgens (34.78k total) vs 36k novax + at least 10k per rebuilt satellite
This is way better than the SMD idea where sats basically die for free (7.5k smd + 3.6k missile + 2k pgen = 13.1k total)

In terms of gameplay design it is a bit of an awkward solution with the targeting but at least both sides get something useful out of their investment if the nuke isn't used to intercept the sat so there's never useless mass wasted. Also balancewise imo it would be a poor, unsatisfying decision to make a nuke and use it on a sat that will kill its mass in 5 minutes instead of using the nuke to kill some poor player without smd (way faster mass killed/time).

Satellites also build faster than nukes so nuking a Satellite would be a desperation move, unless multiple Satellites get hit all at once.

Nukes shooting down Satellites would be cool, remove the element of "this is not a counterable unit", while still maintaining the same advantages building a Satellite already gives you.

If the mod is still being developed, I have a suggestion.

Can we build SACU presets on the fly?

How this would work:

• Where the presets are, replace them with the upgrades so all (left, back, right) are all visible simultaneously, next to one another.
• Select up to one upgrade option from each category. Like buttons, they get greyed out when selected.
• Once you have selected your desired upgrades, click the icon to build the basic SACU, the one that usually would build an SACU without upgrades.
• It will add to the build queue a SACU with your selected upgrades. Left clicking the in-progress build icon in the build tray will add duplicates of the same configuration SACU. Right clicking to remove, like with normal factory ques.
• Each different configuration added to the build queue will have its own icon, which can also be enumerated up or down as desired.

A mod to play as Nomads in the Co-Op missions. If there is another way to accomplish this outside of a sim mod, let me know!

Sercammus faf mod to not break all cycle type hotkeys (e.g. for factories or templates). In this mod I like the ACU info card, construction prediction times and mostly ECO stall predictions on constructions.

What about allowing the ACU to "walk over" T1 units like EXP's? That way the effect is symmetric (i.e. easier to understand for newer players) and with clever micro, you can still obstruct a retreating ACU with early T2 units.

For a bit of "fun" I decided to go back in time to Nov 10, 2016 on Github to a release by Zockyzock. As far as I can tell, this is the first record still in existence of a balance patch for FAF. If anyone else can find an earlier record, please let me know.
But I decided to scroll through the changes, just taking note of changes to Aeon. From what I can gather based upon the buff/nerf ratio, Aeon must have been silly OP on the steam version of the game. Did anyone here play SupCom:Alliance on steam? I would love to hear about your stories about the gameplay, especially if Aeon were as OP as they seemed from looking through the FAF balance notes.

But it was rather ridiculous how quickly the blaze could move.
I would still like the Oblivion AOE to be increased to match it's graphic.

@FtXCommando Please try and find a more constructive way to say what you want to say. Sarcasm and thinly veiled insults are not conducive to a productive conversation.

I would like to see the T2 PD for Aeon get an AOE buff. It's tragic how the animation and AOE do not match. Its overkill is so terrible, a little buff to AOE might mitigate this "feels bad" aspect of the structure.
Also increasing the projectile AOE on the T2 destroyer for Aeon might be a good idea, but it would need monitoring.

Perhaps SACU's being identical to ACU's is the final answer to the long-standing question of "how to balance SACU's"? XD

V3 is the bees knees! Very cool and love it. Thank you for taking my suggestions on board and for taking the time to fix EVERYTHING*! That can't have been a small task. Seriously impressive stuff.

There is one major problem with your mod. Whenever I look at a YT cast of a game, I feel blinded by the obscurity of it all. Everything morphs into one indistinguishable blob. Totally wrecked my enjoyment of watching FAF casts

*Those idle factories and their grey outlines hovering on top of other icons is a little janky. Also SMD can't count to 7 haha.

Looks and sounds good so far.

A couple of thoughts.
If you are appropriating code from UI-Party, make sure that the cycle bug isn't present. This bug caused hotkeys which cycled through selections (e.g. factories or templates) to reset periodically (on some tick count) to the first in the selection. One example that happened frequently was cycling through intel structures (from radar to select sonar), only for UI-Party to reset me back to T3 radar when I was trying to build sonar.
Instead of left clicking to unpause, can you change it to right click? My logic is that right clicking can toggle paused/unpaused, while left click selects all things in that expenditure category (useful for manually implementing a partial reduction of expenditures).
Also, why did you decide on green/pink bars for eco, not the traditional green/yellow? You could also use the colour wheel to invert colours for paused vs unpaused eco representation. E.g. Green (mass) and yellow (energy) for current expenditure, then red (mass) and blue (energy) for paused expenditure. You could honestly just make colour customisation another setting (so many settings :/) by taking some code from 4z0t's ScoreBoard. Their UI mod probably has all the code you'd need for that.

Your idea of integrating eco managing via thresholds and profiles is inspired! Usually eco UI programs are full automation, or full manual. The hybrid approach should really help with getting a balance between the two while maintaining user control and preference.
In a similar vein, could you add a feature (e.g. clicking mouse scroll wheel) to set a category (or any project really) as maximum priority. The mod will then pause everything else (with some selective logic of what to pause first) so that you don't stall on what you must complete ASAP.

The auto activate function seems amazing! I understand why cybran ASF's have it off by default, but it makes no sense if you are overflowing. Same for seraphim selens.

As for how to represent all this functionality on the UI, you seem to be on a good path. The idea to keep a display of how much a paused category would consume if turned back on is a really nice touch.

For things like profiles and settings you can shove most of them under the hood into the wrench icon (top left of your image). Stuff I'd put here include:

• TML missile storage limit.
• Specific threshold for each category to control which units gets autopaused first.
• Profiles.
• Autopause mass thresholds.
• Ordering of prioritisation order. This can be it's own sub-menu where you click and drag icons into an order you like. Similar to kiddy coding programs with visual code blocks.
• Set autopause/prioritize only, or ignore some, specific units. Can be integrated into the above UI sub-menu as I binary "include/ignore" tickbox.
• Auto activate unit abilities. On/off setting. A more advanced version might have aa on/off setting for each unit.

For many things in the above list, you can use a similar UI layout to the Eco display itself. Or just appropriate code from 4z0t's mods as they have implemented submenus, sliders, drop down menus and tick boxes.

For things which will potentially need to be adjusted in-game on the fly, they need to have a designated keypress and/or UI element. An example of this already implemented would be the left/right click of the eco display to pause/unpause stuff.
These include:

• Expandable subcategories. This can be represented as a dropdown menu which automatically opens up when the mouse is hovered over the main category.

Those are my quick initial thoughts. Shove most out of sight, and only worry about what the player is likely to want to use differently every game.

That auto pause category mod seems very useful! Ever since UI party was depreciated (and later brought back somehow) I've been missing a way to pause categories to free up BP and mass for other projects. Or just generally any mod that could visualise eco spending of categories that wasn't buggy.
Hopefully you can integrate the TML/Nuke storage mod idea into your project (which sounds amazing!) as that would be lovely to see.

=
The Request
As I have the coding ability of a grasshopper, I ask if someone could make a simple UI mod with the following features:

• Pauses TML and turns off auto-build when the TML reaches a certain number of stored projectiles.
• Ability to customise the number of desired missiles to be stored in the UI Mod options menu of the f10 dropdown menu.
• Unpauses and turns on auto-build when the number of stored missiles is less than the desired amount.

This mod should also be able to work for strategic missile launchers.

=

The backstory:

When playing a game against the AI, I built some TML to troll their lack of TMD.

However, a storage bug occurred where the TML would auto-pause and turn off the auto-build functionality of the structure whenever it had 2 missiles loaded. I have not been able to replicate this bug since, but I found it somewhat useful.

The auto-pause when you have X number of missiles was good, but the turning off of auto-build was annoying because you'd have to manually re-enable it by right clicking every time the TML reached it's self imposed missile cap.

@FreadyFish You are a legend!
I'll try it out VS Ai first then see if I can get people on discord to try it out in my games.
EDIT: Thank you for adding helpful comments as it really helps me understand the code.

@FreadyFish a demo mod would certainly be useful for testing out stuff, instead of me pulling numbers out of my butt and hoping they work How difficult would it be to make such a mod, and how challenging would the projectile change for aeon be? Another consideration is time investment. If no one on the balance team integrates the changes, it will become a niche sim mod. If that risk is ok with you, and you think it is still a worthwhile use of your time, go for it!

@maudlin27 The cost increase not being proportional to effectiveness increase was supposed to be nerf to prevent spam. I took the idea from how the balance team addressed sniper spam. Exact value would need lots of testing, as you said. A demo mod would be very useful to that effect.
P.S. Love M28Ai! Recently discovered how you can pass units off to the Ai to help with APM.

No one will admit it, but T1 mobile arty is the strongest unit in the game.

It is viable at all stages of the game because of its amazing range, low cost, high DPS and great alpha strike.
E.g. You lose your T3 land, so you spam T1 arty. They are cheaper than T1 tanks after all.
This works because people's APM is limited, but T1 arty is plentiful and only requires shooting once or twice to be effective.

My belief is that T1 arty should be used to counter T1 PD, be good at neutralising structures, and have VERY limited effectiveness at killing experimentals, or literally anything that CAN move. This is not the case in the present state of the game.

Normally at this point in my post, I'd post a bunch of statistics proving the point. However, historically everyone has ignored the mathematics and just said "skill issue". So, I'll save myself some time and not bother.

If anyone is inclined to believe T1 arty is over performing, despite my deliberate lack of supportive evidence, read on to my proposed change for T1 arty.

In order to make T1 arty better, it first needs to become worst at killing stuff which can move, while keeping its effectiveness at killing T1 PD and structures.
Also, each faction has a point of uniqueness to their T1 arty which I would like to emphasis more.

The first step to making T1 arty worse at killing units is to turn off predictive projectiles. This would mean that any moving unit is virtually unhittable.
Excellent; we solved one problem but made another. Now all T1 arty feels useless.
Not so fast! We can give it various boons/buffs that should only apply to its intended role (detailed later). But now you say it is too good at killing bases (there's no pleasing some people).
Alright, we'll double the cost of the unit, increase DPS by half, and give it a smidgen more range (+2) to make it easier to use. And we are done! We now have an effective T1 PD killing machine, that costs lots, is easy to kill if unprotected and can't shred higher tech units by accident.

Now we have to increase the faction diversity of each T1 arty.

For the UEF. It has a vision ability and massive alpha damage. These are traits we want to keep and accentuate. It also has too much move speed compared to other factions (cybran needs the speed. I'll explain later), so we'll reduce this (I can already feel the rage from 90% of players for this).
Just because people like numbers, here they are.
Cost: 2x
Range: +2
Predictive projectiles: No
RoF: Halved
DPS: Doubled (this is DPS, not damage per shot)
Vision ability area: Doubled.
Conclusion. A vision granting, hard hitting monster that can smash a PD in only a few shots before the enemy can push them away. Classic UEF battle tactics.

For the Cybran. Their T1 arty is fast, has good aoe, is terribly inaccurate and stuns. We'll keep these and accentuate them. It also has pathetic DPS. We'll keep and accentuate this too! The speed will be increased so it can keep up with the mantis on raids, stunning PD so the mantis can wreck house. But we will keep its DPS the same, even though the cost is doubled, so it really becomes a proper supportive tool. To make it actually useful, we'll also increase the stun duration by a lot, but it can only stun PD (only T1 and T2 PD, leaving T3 alone just for you, you pampered UEF players).
Just because people like numbers, here they are.
Cost: 2x
Range: +2
Predictive projectiles: No
Speed: Increased to 3.7 (same as mantis)
AOE: increased by half
Firing randomness: increased by a quarter.
RoF: Increased by half
DPS: Unchanged
Stun duration: 5 seconds (can't stack but can refresh)
Conclusion. A stun machine that allows cybran bugs to crawl into your base, but is virtually useless by itself.

For the Aeon. Their T1 arty is precise, fast firing, has the highest DPS, but no AOE and sucks at literally everything else. We will keep all of these traits except the fast firing aspect. It would be easy just to say they only get stat changes, because this would make balancing easy. But that's no fun.
Keeping in theme for the Aeon, we'll use the old graphic of the mercy projectiles and have the balls of light shot by the T1 arty break up into that above its target. This will guarantee perfect accuracy, but unlike the old mercy, these projectiles won't track their target.
Just because people like numbers, here they are.
Cost: 2x
Range: +2
Predictive projectiles: No
RoF: Increased by half
DPS: Doubled
AOE: zero
Accuracy: perfect
Conclusion. Assassinates PD like a boss, but cries if you missclick onto the walls around it!

For the Seraphim. Their T1 arty fires fast, has good AOE but isn't overly accurate. We will accentuate the fast firing nature as this is their defining quality. The Seraphim are also aliens so physics don't apply to them quite the same. For this reason we'll increase the rate of time applied to the projectile. This means the projectile will fly faster, but also be affected by gravity just as quickly. It will look like the projectile is being shown on a video at times two speed.
Just because people like numbers, here they are.
Cost: 2x
Range: +2
Predictive projectiles: No
RoF: Tripled
DPS: Doubled
Rate of time applied to projectile: Doubled
Conclusion. Because their projectiles fire and fly so obscenely fast compared to the other factions, they have a very slim chance of actually hitting a moving unit if it retraces its steps. Otherwise, it is not special and has only received the universal changes to all T1 arty.

Wow. You made it to the end! Congratulations. Bake yourself a cake, you deserve it.

Yesterday I discovered that the shield issues are somehow related to the bloom setting. With bloom off, the shield icons look normal, but with bloom on, the icons look whitewashed (i.e. white squares), and you cannot see the blue(ish)/purple square part of the icon. Sadly V2 still has this problem for me.

Top is with bloom on, bottom is with bloom off.
Disclaimer: This issue with bloom is being exacerbated by one of my other UI mods (I think). But even with all my other UI mods disabled, the issue persists, just not nearly as noticeably.

I do wonder if this might be a problem on my end or not since the factory overlay isn't working properly either. If you can get other people to give feedback, that would be of help.
Disabling every mod except Color coded strategic icons sadly didn't get the functionality working. Your code was also too complicated for me to understand!

In V2, the engineer overlays are much better, especially in regards to the SACU icons. A small suggestion might be to only have the nuke/antinuke overlays appear after they have finished construction? IDK if this is feasible or not to do.

I'd also suggest adding UI Mod Tools (uid = "ui-mod-tools-4z0t-v12") to the required mods list in the mod_info file. People might otherwise complain that the mod is "broken" when they've forgotten to add the dependencies.

name = "Color Coded Strategic Icons"
version = 2
copyright = "Nope but feel free to let me know what you are planning and if you want to improve something."
description = "Color coded strategic icons with integrated unit overlays. Player color is shown as a surrounding glow, middle is colored based on unit class with same colors as range circles. Icon size indicates unit HP/threat level. Submersible units have pointy bottom, hover units has pointy top. Overlays for idle engineers/SACU, factories, upgrading structures, and TML/SML/SMD missile count.
Check the FAF forum thread for images and let me know what you think.
Requires UI Mod Tool (v12 tested) for overlays. Optimized for 2560x1440."
author = "FreadyFish"
url = "https://forum.faforever.com/topic/6779/color-coded-strategic-icons"
uid = ""Color-Coded-Strategic-Icons-FF-v2"
exclusive = false
ui_only = true
conflicts = {  }
requires = {"ui-mod-tools-4z0t-v12"}
before = {  }
after = {  }
icon = "/mods/ColorCodedStrategicIcons/icon.png"

Unfortunately, so far as designs go, I'm no artist either! The best I can do is spot asymmetry in icons. Like with the T2 PD, T2 AA, T2 TMD, T2 radar, T2 sonar. And in this regard something weird is happening. In the dds files, the images are perfectly fine, but when displayed above a structure, they are slightly shifted.
I also noticed that the mass storage icon (all except _rest) still uses the Redux Strategic Icon while all the other icons (so far as I can tell) all have unique icons now.

For experimentals it's hard. Honestly, they aren't too bad in their current state. My only suggestions would be to reduce the size of the Ahwassa icon size to be more in line with the other air experimentals, and to increase the relative size of the depictions of the GC, Chicken, et cetera inside their red circles to make them more clearly distinguished.
Also the Neptune has a little blue strip at the top of it's icon indicating anti-air capabilities, yet it has no AA.

Hopefully this feedback helps!

P.S. SMD overlay caps at 5, not 7. I also saw some code to have the number be replaced by a "+" when over some number, but that doesn't seem to be working/implemented yet.

Something I've been wondering about is icon size scaling based upon camera zoom. Reduce the icon size slightly the further out you zoom so stuff isn't as cluttered in the late game.

This idea isn't specific to your mod, it could be used anywhere, but it might make for a nice feature/addition if you think it's worthwhile.

Congratulations on the V1 release @FreadyFish! I downloaded the mod on the vault and gave it a go. Normally I really struggle with identifying stuff with the default icons, and your mod helped me a bunch in that regard. Many thanks

My favourite features were the colour scheme matching the capabilities of the units and icon size representing tech level. These were awesome for determining how best to smash an enemy's army composition.

At first I found the navy icon ugly and weird. Now I can't live without them. They are just so FUNCTIONAL. I can tell at a glance if I need subs, gunships or frigates to counter a naval composition. It was especially nice seeing if something had torpedo's or not. I didn't know the Galaxy had them until I installed your mod!!! Wish I'd known sooner...

Some icons weren't to my taste, so I've just deleted the image file for the corresponding unit (it was the spider). Ez fix

It is really commendable that there aren't tons of obviously asymmetric icons. Many other icons on the vault have asymmetric icons which I find really distracting.

I found a few issues that I hope get addressed in the next release. It took about 10 open-then-close the game to get the shield icons to stop glowing except when zoomed out to the extreme. I also haven't been able to hot-fix the idle factories functionality. Without UI Mod Tools, the fac's show as white (and all idle monitoring also doesn't work obviously since UI Mod Tools is a required mod), while with UI Mod Tools they show as grey except when on repeat build.

Please keep soldiering on! Your mod is great and I'd love to see it in its finalised state