You can view this as a google document HERE

This is a start of a series about creating basic modifications in Supreme Commander. This guide was made by both biass and Dragun101, with the hopes that the community could use this knowledge to create balance mods to test their theories. Special thanks to Balthazar for his assistance.

Requisites

• Any notepad tool or text editor. I personally recommend: (They’re all free)
  • Sublime Text 3
  • Notepad++
  • Atom
• A unit database, preferably https://faforever.github.io/spooky-db/#/

Wait, what is a “merge blueprint”?

Every unit in Supreme Commander has it’s stats and features controlled by a text file called a blueprint file. The file syntax for blueprints are “.bp” files.

What we’re doing here is creating a second blueprint file for the game to compare to the first one.
The game will then add your code into the original blueprint file for the unit(s) you’ve selected to change.

For example: If you make a merge blueprint that says that the Pillar tank has 9999hp; that will overwrite the original HP of the unit and thus, the Pillar tank will have 9999hp in the game.

This is the basic foundation for all of our changes in FAF. This includes the core game balance, The Equilibrium mod, and BHEDIT. There are a number of different nuances to that, but we will only go into the surface level today.

Starting off (Mod folder, mod_info.lua)

All mods (and maps!) sit inside a folder so to start a new mod, a new folder needs to be made. I’ll call my mod folder “oneNiceMod” for the purposes of the guide. But you should of course give your folder a relevant name.
If you don’t know what you’re going to do yet, you can come back to this at any time.

Inside this folder, you need to place a file called mod_info.lua
You might need to make a “new text document” and then save it as this name for it to become what you want.

This file is critical because it contains a lot of important information about your mod. Lua files can be opened with your text editor of choice - including basics like notepad - so don’t worry if it asks you for a program.

Inside this file, you need to have a couple lines of very basic code.
Balthazar has kindly provided a template for us to use here, lets go over all of these in order.

name = "My first balance mod"
uid = "4378-3q43-bia55-m0d9"
version = 1
description = "Finally gives UEF the respect they deserve."
author = "biass"
icon = "/mods/oneNiceMod/mod_icon.png"
selectable = true
enabled = true
exclusive = false
ui_only = false
conflicts = { }

Name:

The name of your mod appears in the lobby and the mod vault. You should dictate the exact name of your mod here, and not with the folder you just made earlier.

UID:

UID stands for “Unique Identifier” and will be used by the game to know what mod is what. It’s almost like a barcode for a supermarket. This can in theory be anything, but no two UID’s should be the same. Make sure you add in some stuff so it couldn’t be mistaken for another mod.

You can use https://www.uuidgenerator.net/ if you want a random one.

Version:

When you want to upload a new version to the mod vault, you should increase this number by 1. This will allow the mod vault to properly hide your old version and keep everything clean.

Description:

This text will display in the mod vault when you click on the mod, as well as show in the lobby. It’s best to properly tell other people what your mod does. As well as credit other people for their work if you need to do so.

Author:

This can be anything. You should really just add your username here.

Icon:

This is a link to the image that shows in the mod vault, if you have one to place there. I recommend you make your icon file a .png file, and place it neatly into the folder you made earlier. You don’t need to name your image file “mod_icon.png” but make sure the text path here matches the name of your folder, and the name of the image file.

Selectable and Enabled:

In order for your mod to appear in the lobby for you to use, both of these need to be set as “true”

Optional Mod_info items

If this is your first mod, you won’t need these.

Exclusive:

If you set this to true, you can only use this mod by itself. No other mods can be used if you select this one. It’s best if you just leave this as “false” unless for some reason, you 100% need this to be true. The default is “false” so you don’t need this for your first mod.

ui_only:

Setting this to “true” forces the game to ignore code that impacts the simulation of the game, making it only load code that touches upon the UI. Balance mods impact the sim, so setting this to “true” would make your mod useless. The default value is false, so you don’t actually need this.

Conflicts:

If a mod cannot be used with another mod for any reason, that is referred to as a conflict. Put the UID (See above) of the mods that you cannot use here (For example: “234-345-2345-badmod”) and separate them with a comma. When you select the mod in the lobby, it will ask you if you want to turn off the mods you put here if you have them selected. Remove the examples and leave it empty if you don’t have any conflicts. You won’t have any for your first mod, so you can remove it completely if you wish.

You can go over a more advanced explanation of the mod_info commands here:
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/blob/deploy/fafdevelop/lua/MODS.LUA
You should probably do this some other time, lets move on.

The Meat of the Mod

Blueprint files can be loaded from anywhere inside the mod, but I highly recommend you create some subfolders for organization.

Create a new folder inside your first, and call it “merge”.
You can name this whatever in reality, but “merge” is clean and descriptive of it’s content.
You can make more folders inside here that go as deep as you please, but we will make our first blueprint in this folder.

You can also name the blueprint file whatever you want, and you can edit multiple units from one file.

I’m going to make edits to one unit in this guide. That unit is the Pillar tank, and thus I will make my file “pillar.bp”
Again, you might need to make a new text document, open it, and then save it as “pillar.bp” for it to be correct.

I will now write my first few lines of code.

UnitBlueprint {
	Merge = true,
	BlueprintId = 'uel0202',

}

Make sure to remember the comma marks.

What is a Blueprint ID?

All units in supcom are identified by a code. You need this code in order to select the unit you want to edit.
There are a number of ways for you to get the code, remember how I said you needed the unitdb?
You can see the code underneath the name of the unit in the unitdb. Alternatively, you can see the code in the spawn menu ingame. It’s default binding is Alt + F2.

Reading the code is simple. Lets use the pillar code as an example.
U is for Vanilla (DLC content like the mongoose is D. FA content, including seraphim, is X)
E is for UEF (R is for Cybran, who were originally named the “Recyclers” in early development. A for Aeon, and S for Seraphim)
L for land. (A for Air, B for Building, and S for Navy)
“0” is the category. 0 means factories and factory built units, etc.
“2” is for the tech level, and
The second “02” is for the Pillar specifically.

Changing a Statistic

Now that we have everything set up, we now must figure out what we’re going to change. Each statistic can be changed by writing it’s correct syntax. Furthermore; a number of those are in certain categories, which are called “tables”.
It’s best to look up the correct names instead of trying to guess.

For example, I'm going to change the HP of our pillar to 9999.

Each individual command for changing something is referred to as a “key”.
Here are the two best ways to get that key.

• There is an incomplete list of documentation here: https://supcom.fandom.com/wiki/Blueprint
• Open a game, select a unit and hit the "Shows a dialog that allows you to create entities" hotkey. The default binding is Shift F6.

You need to be in windowed mode for the latter to appear.
The Shift F6 menu can also show you the unit code, and you can even just change the stats on the fly mid game too. If you change a stat, any new unit will have the changes applied. These changes of course do not save.

The key for health of a unit is in the “Defense” table. https://supcom.fandom.com/wiki/Blueprint#Defense
We need to start off by referencing that table in the code we typed earlier.

UnitBlueprint {
	Merge = true,
	BlueprintId = 'uel0202',
	Defense = {

	},
}

Make sure you’re using the correct, squiggly line brackets. You also don’t need to move everything “across”, but I personally find It’s much easier to understand if you do.

The key for the health of the unit is MaxHealth. We also want to use Health, so the pillar does not spawn with less HP than the new maximum. (That we're setting with MaxHealth)

We will add these two keys inside the Defense table we just wrote, along with the required value.

UnitBlueprint {
	Merge = true,
	BlueprintId = 'uel0202',
	Defense = {
		Health = 9999,
		MaxHealth = 9999,
	},
}

That's one change down. I’m going to make another. Let's change the rate of fire of the pillar’s gun to fire at 600 shots a minute.
Weapons can fire once per “tick” and the game runs at 10 ticks a second. That’s 10 shots a second.

Weapons in FAF are complex, and thus use more complicated code.
We can see that the “RateOfFire” key we need to write is in the “Weapon” table. Let's add them both in now.

UnitBlueprint {
	Merge = true,
	BlueprintId = 'uel0202',
	Defense = {
		Health = 9999,
		MaxHealth = 9999,
	},
	Weapon = {
		[1] = {
		RateOfFire = 10,
		},
	},
}

We want to change the statistics for the pillar’s first weapon. It’s also the only weapon, but we still need to mention that. That's why the weapon section requires more brackets and etc, than the health. If the vehicle has 2 weapons you would just make another item. Like the following:

Weapon = {
	[1] = {
	   RateOfFire = 5,
	},
	[2] = {
	   RateOfFire = 2,
	},
},

Make sure that the closing bracket for your tables is followed by a comma.

Doing something like this is referred to as an Array, which typically starts at 0 in most other programming languages. We need to list our weapons inside an array, and have done so for our examples. Let's move on for now.

With our simple block of code, the pillar now has 9999 health, and fires it’s gun at 600 shots per minute. Finally, let's add a new description to the unit. This key does not need a table.

UnitBlueprint {
	Merge = true,
	BlueprintId = 'uel0202',
	Description = 'Finally faf is balanced',
	Defense = {
		Health = 9999,
		MaxHealth = 9999,
	},
	Weapon = {
		[1] = {
		RateOfFire = 10,
		},
	},
}

I've put this in before the tables because it looks neat. Typically, and outside of the first couple of lines; tables and keys are organised in alphabetical order. It helps a lot when your blueprint files are 100 lines long.

The description should probably be something along the lines of “Modified Heavy Tank” so it makes more sense in game. This is just an example of what a key looks like without needing to be inside of a table.

Testing a mod

You don’t need to upload a mod to the faf vault in order to test to see if your mod works, and to be honest. Most people would rather the vault not be spammed with single stat changes.

Please see: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/671/how-to-test-a-mod-offline-locally

With any luck, your mod should now be able to work ingame. If not, you might need to go back and check to see if everything is written properly. Check your upper/lower case, and your commas/apostrophes. Feel free to look at other mods for comparison if you need, but don’t steal their work!

Eat your heart out, balance team.

As mentioned in the roadmap here:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/305/creative-councilor-intro-roadmap-discussion/4

As it stands right now, the limiting factor in user created maps is without a doubt props, this means reclaim like trees or rocks.

While map authors are very much able to easily implement new custom textures and decals into their work, you'll notice that authors are more or less forced to resort to the same 2 or three props, or completely cripple their creativity because we just don't have the assets to match the idea.

Some examples:

• All crystaline maps "need" to be the same blue purple hue. Lava/Crystal hybrids don't exist.
• Fall/Autumn maps don't exist. Brown or otherwise dying trees force this to be impossible.
• Most unique maps need to rely on the same black trees you're probably aware of or they cannot be done due to limitations.
• etc.

After the older attempts to get custom props going in Gateway and Rose, we eventually pushed through a patch for the code that allows you to load props from your map folder. Or so I have been told.

(The map folder is of course - the same place we're putting stuff like custom textures now.)

This also comes with it's own set of problems and thus isn't an optimal solution:

• Every map having to upload it's own props will flood out the servers (I assume)
• People just don't know how to edit props, of course.
• Similar looking props might end up having their own different mass values if authors decicde to change them in the script.
• etc.

The FAF Creative Palette project is a simple project aimed on small edits to map assets in order to bring a larger variety of enviroments to the game. It's not a radical new concept, but can easily provide a lot of reward for little to no risk or effort.

Here is a simple example I did, I opened a crystal prop and then made one edit.

All of a sudden, these recoloured red crystals open up a number of possible use cases.

• First, all geothermal/crystal maps don't need to be blue.
• Lava maps can now have crystal props that fit the colour scheme.
• More hellish maps now have a chance.
• etc.

I want to do a number of these and then add them to FAF so that map authors can use them in their own creations. And of course, you're allowed to help on this.

That currently includes editing the following items, and i'll add onto this later:

• Said Crystals, in a number of colours (Red, Orange, Yellow, Silver, etc)
• Trees (Fall trees, more lava/ashen trees or in varying states of "death", pink trees for you weebs, etc)
• Some more rocks ("Brown" rocks similar to some evergreen textures, other colours)
• Maybe some tiny little civilian houses that resemble rocks, metal scraps)

What happens now? Well first, we'll probably announce a prop making tournament after the mapping tournament i'll announce later tonight, Due to the interesting theme for this one, making props for the tournament is also encouraged.

You can discuss it, add your suggestions or offer to assist this below. Suggestions for other things to add such as decals or textures are also fine. I'll make some more concepts to push this project forward shortly. Talk soon.

This is my stance, it's prewritten at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SDsnfOu1prAMZx0XbUlyZZprsqLdkV_BMu5ZAs9P0FM/edit?usp=sharing If this post has issues. Huge shoutout to everybody that put in their time to make this post - the longest on the forum as of now - possible.

The purpose of this proposal regarding the FAF Map & Mod Vaults (hereby referred to as “vaults”) is to create a system that serves to better suit the regular FAF user, to reward the effort they put into their contribution, and to avoid removing features and options from the user experience.

Furthermore, this proposal seeks to extend the range of valid contributions to the community, and strike out internal inefficiencies that are causing a large negative impact to you, and the client as a whole.

If you want to see more content in FAF, and that of a higher quality - without losing anything in the process; I would hope that you would support this following proposal.

This proposal eventually expanded out to 7 pages worth of text. I do deeply thank everyone I've bothered over the course of writing it for your input and suggestions. If you’re short on time, I decided to create a TL;DR for you. I would highly encourage you to read over it all before you cast your vote, however.
So, to summarise:

1. Do NOT remove the “Most Recent” vault tabs like what is currently planned.

• The whitelist only prevents the need to do busywork.
• Rule offending maps are still on the vault, and the burden of report work is now on the FAF user.
• Seeing your maps on the vault after they’re uploaded is motivation to continue.
• Removing UX options for users for easier administration goes against what keeps FAF alive.

2. Remove rules and inefficiencies that make admin work overly difficult, and take away from your gameplay experience.

• The vaults are fair game due to lacking a system for repeat offenses.
• The vaults are unjust due to your near-inability to appeal instant permanent banning.
• Content authors are just re-uploading content to avoid admin actions.
• The vault rules are unreasonably inaccessible, and poorly presented.
• The 3 Stratum Rule is ineffective and cripples content variety.
• The Meme Maps rule also cripples content variety in order to promote “standard” FAF gameplay.

3. Organize and catalog all of our creative resources.

• This makes it easier to help FAF, and stops material from being created multiple times over.
• Use the wiki and other established tools for this.

3b. Organize and promote what tasks FAF needs people to do.

• Make sure users can easily see what needs to be done.
• Explain the tasks to help onboard contributors to finish them.
• Provide rewards for tasks to incentivise content creation of a good quality.
• Outline constraints to better generate what is needed.
• Provide a worthwhile system to showcase your effort on external employment applications.

4. Remove the map bias from the Councilor role.

Let us begin:

1. THE WHITELIST VAULT

This is the main point: Keep the “most recent” tab of the vaults, while allowing the planned “FAF Author” exclusive tabs to be integrated.
The difference is this: Morax plans to remove the “most recent” tab, and I do not wish for that to happen.

The FAF Author vault will be discussed in Item 3.

Removing the “most recent” tab of the vaults removes the need to moderate them. FAF doesn’t need to go and spend their time doing admin work if they just cut that feature out of the client entirely. It’s a cop-out strategy. More below:

The first problem with stopping you from seeing rule-breaking content, is that the rule-breaking content still exists on the vault. Examples of this being a problem are cheat maps.

Consider the following:
I make a clone of “Fields of Isis” and add some player slots, making it a 6v6 map. I also clone the mass near my spawn a thousand times over to give me a significant reclaim advantage, and because I’m hosting my games; I put myself in the same spot every time.

Even if you’re lucky enough that the cheat is not well hidden and you manage to spot it: The burden is now on the player to go and gather the evidence and make a report. There is no reason for there to be a vault moderation team if we don’t moderate the vaults, so it’s a gamble on if your report is handled. Whoever does handle it must now sift through all of the other new isis variants to find and hide the map. Even if this is handled in a reasonable time frame, the damage to the regular user is done. If you think it isn’t possible for a map to get away with having extra resources on one side, we only found out Loki (a map with over 50k plays!) was imbalanced a couple of weeks ago. It can happen to you.

In our current system, cloning maps and uploading them again are both A: against the rules of the vault and B: are the easiest to spot and remove. This example could not happen and If it did, the problem does not lie with the vault tab.

My further points about this topic follow:

Uploading and seeing your map on the vault is gratification. I can state this even after uploading 30+ maps to the vault; seeing your maps in the list and watching them climb in play count is one of the only rewards that map-makers - and by extension modders - get on the client.

Removing motivations and rewards for contributors to make life easier for the administration goes against what keeps FAF alive. The statistics for map play count are being used to justify the removal of the tab, but I personally don’t think we have a real right to decide how many plays are good enough for an author. If an author sees their content get even 1 extra play, and decides that’s enough to create another work? FAF only serves to profit from that.

We also - as an aside - remove options for the player when distributing maps to other players. Relying on auto-download would have been devastating to FAF during the period when said auto-download was broken, and many users have expressed their discontent over the interface for the vault search systems. Allowing maps to be located with no extra UX “steps” covers an inconceivably vast array of use cases for how players use the vaults to distribute their content to one-another. It’s not something worth throwing away to escape administration responsibility.

Speaking of:

2. VAULT ADMINISTRATION, AND THE 3 STRATUM RULE/MEME MAPS RULE

The current system is damaging the community to fix issues that the vault admin team have created for themselves.

I will first outline the current administration process so you can understand how desperately it needs reformation.
And then I will discuss the removal of rules that are inherently elitist in nature and remove your gameplay variety.

First: When you upload a map to the vault that is rule breaking. It’s eventually hidden.
So you just upload it again, and it’s back. You can repeat this process ad eternum.

The only way you get banned is to intentionally step into vision of the M&M staff and annoy them enough so they ban you from uploading. This ban will be permanent. If you avoid this step, the vault is free game for you.

Appealing your permanent ban is tough, because the staff or the admins do not know why you’re banned.
Outside of one particular case, your ban reason is not properly recorded or maintained in any location that staff can find.

Map Authors already know this strategy. When the vault team found someone dedicated enough to start hiding maps on masse (hello Farmsletje), FAF started to see an increase of maps uploaded to the vault in return. Authors are just re-uploading their hidden maps to evade FAF’s administration process.

Here’s a graph to back this statement up, it shows maps uploaded per day, big thanks to Exotic_Retard for sharing this with me.

In the FAF admin log, Farms went and removed a lot of old maps first, before moving onto the current uploads. This is shown by the authors of such content being an “unknown” because they’re so old. Names of authors start appearing around the 18th of the 3rd. I marked that date with a black arrow for you.

You can verify that in the admin log here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15Q3FJ9QN8nc51ytTDJK61brrUtqd3L3efq58GFJaclU/edit#gid=0

Why are people circumventing the rules? For starters, it’s easier to do and nets you no consequence, but another important point is that our rule documentation has some major accessibility issues. If said rules were on the forum proper or another website, users from other languages can automatically translate them from a web browser. It’s far harder if the rules are on a google document, and impossible to do if you’re using images with text in them. The current rules are using both of those. And so I ask you: Вы вообще можете прочитать наши правила? If you don’t know what the rules are and thus don’t know why your map was hidden, it’s easy to perceive the hiding as a bug, or as an unjust removal.

As an aside: If we had happened to go down the route of using more text in imagery and other methods that are less accessible, FAF could run the risk of legal actions as covered under some national disabilities acts. This is something I feel FAF needs to be conscious of moving forward.

On to the second part;
Here is what we’re removing that nets such an increase in people circumventing the rules:

Here is a graph I made in the admin log some time ago. It shows all the reasons for removal in a bar graph.

It does illustrate my key point, that being we’ve hid over 1100 maps for the “3 Stratum Rule.” This is the vault team’s way of gatekeeping content that FAF deems low effort.

What’s “low effort?” We don’t know. Just adding the required textures is very easy, so they added a clause to make sure you paint those textures onto the map “in detail.” except that it's highly dependent on what staff member sees your content first, and a lot of the staff are people that the userbase would not deem qualified to judge. It’s far too ambiguous for FAF to regulate, and should not be a rule.

I’m of the opinion that content that you inherently don’t care about will not pass the gate no matter how many textures you have, and this is showing in the map vault now. Maps are still low effort, and are just at varying levels of how close they tried to skip around the rules to allow it on the vault. Either it isn’t enough and it’s hidden (just re-upload it again!) or it is good enough and you stay on. Except it isn’t any better than having no textures on your map at all.

Painting textures onto the map is done in such a rough and artistic method, and so it is almost impossible to create artificial texture styles in the editor unless you “really” know what you’re doing.
If you want to create for example a city map, or a machine world map that requires a lot of harsh angles and square geometry? You’re forced to create a high level masterpiece to avoid the gatekeeping rule, or you’re just no longer able to make them with the current administration.

If you want to create something to play with your friends on a saturday afternoon, and don’t want to to spend a month making a map pretty because that doesnt net you any return, you cannot pass the gatekeeping rule.

And lastly, moving onto the second rule:
If you don’t want to create a map that is not made for the standard FAF ladder/teamgame gameplay, you’re not able to do so because we also do not allow “meme maps'' in the vault. The addition of this rule means that “fun” custom game content that defined other multiplayer games such as Halo and Counter Strike, is not allowed on FAF.

Obviously, removing maps that are not made for ranked gameplay only damages the variety that the FAF experience offers, and authors will not change to make maps for game modes they don’t care about. They just leave, and that is the worst scenario to have if you’re in charge of creative content, as the councilor role is.

Now I've explained the process and the flaws in our system. If you vote for this proposal, what changes is this:

• “Meme” maps, or maps that offer differing gameplay experiences, will be allowed in the vault once again.

• Maps that don’t have textures, or are impossible to have textures on, will be allowed on the vault again.
  If you were banned for either of those rules, your ban will be lifted.

• Add a proper consequence to users that intentionally circumvent the rules.
  Create alert systems that properly alert you to infractions without requiring insane admin overhead.
  Properly document the rules to help allow for your appeal,
  and add a fair, time based system in line with FAF that prevents all bans from being permanent.

• Move the rules to a more accessible location.
  remove inherent accessibility issues that prevent users from seeing them.
  present them in a more professional manner.
  and organise for them to be translated into FAF’s main languages.

• Properly extend these improvements to the mod vault, which is just being moderated ad-hoc at the moment.

3. ENCOURAGE AND REWARD CREATIVE CONTRIBUTION

With my proposal, you have removed the admin inefficiency and are now properly managing content that breaks FAF rules. You did this without crippling features that benefit the FAF user, and have allowed them to play games on modes that are not just our standard ranked systems. So how do you use this role to get MORE quality content than was previously appearing?

This area of the proposal outlines implementing systems that allow the councilor role to demonstrate the potential that is being wasted in an almost criminal fashion.

First of all, and most importantly; this role is supposed to be more than just a “Vault Councilor,” and furthermore, the role is not only supposed to be a “Map Vault Councilor.” because doing so leaves the vast majority of FAF creative contributions out in the cold with no proper project management.

FAF needs someone to do two things:
Create a central, easily accessible bank of contribution related information, and:
Organize what yet needs to be created, and promote it to potentially willing contributors.

The M&M Role as it has stood since creation, has been the one role most up to the task of completing these critical objectives. Perhaps due to the name, or pool of willing applicants; the role has been instead relegated to some kind of vault janitor. While I don’t understand why it had become this way, (due to vault admin tools not existing when the role was made) NOT doing the two tasks above has crippled FAF in a truly indescribable fashion.

To better explain this section of the proposal, it will be split into two relative sections:
Why this bank of information is required, and
How I will be able to manage the contributor base to more efficiently produce what is required for FAF.

1. Our knowledge bank:

Hundreds of FAF contributors spend their time creating tutorials, guides on how to contribute, and other such educational resources for every aspect of FAF. However: this information isn’t placed in any feasible location so that other users may access it. This means that when another willing contributor decides it’s time to write a guide, they do not know what has already been covered. I try not to imagine how many times FAF has made the same guide over and over again.

With the wiki, blogging tools, the forums, and the various FAF discord servers as an interconnected suite, the councilor role should prevent this issue from occurring time and time again by properly cataloging and presenting what has already been created.

This benefits everyone in the community.

• Veteran contributors are not hounded with questions on how to do things if they’ve already been properly explained.
• New contributors are given the tools they need to meet their goals without wasting their time on trial and error.
• People looking to help the community do not waste their time repeating pre-established knowledge.

I would like for the wiki to be the start. Discord servers have always been terrible for accessibility, and a wiki is easy to edit, can help display what is still to-do, and doesn't require “inside knowledge” to locate.

But what is still “to-do?
2. Contributor project management.
Here are some random items that FAF requires help to complete, to help illustrate the point:

• The forum is going to need a banner image and possibly a graphic on the footer - art assets.
• The Newshub constantly requires someone that can help create thumbnails,
• The Ladder team needs maps for TMM, and
• Nomads, SCTA, and the Ai Development teams will beg you to test their works and provide feedback.

Depending on how far “into the community” you are, you might barely know about two of those items. Just like how you don’t already know what has been done, the community needs someone capable of organizing what actually needs doing.
Feeding more information outward to potential contributors will give them the information they need to jump right into the project, without joining a server at random and flailing about until someone decides to direct them. It gives said contributors an end goal to work towards, and FAF is more easily able to locate contributors to fill niche roles that never get done.

Adding to point 2 is a system about presenting what needs to be created to contributors and providing incentives towards their completion. Names for this system could be: FAF Contracting, FAF Bounty Hunters, FAF Bounty Boarding, etc.

Viewing what needs to be created on FAF is essentially looking at a bounty board. This system helps to elaborate on the requirements for each request by laying the information out in something not unlike a design brief.

Have you seen the mapping tournaments I (And FtXCommando) have created? They ask for something, offer a reward, and explain to you the nuances and technical requirements involved. They've been nothing but an absolute success for FAF, and this system aims to bring this method out from purely map creation, to the entirety of FAF proper.

When you see something that piques your interest as a contributor on this client; You’re immediately shown what is needed and if applicable: the reward for doing so. The higher the priority, the bigger the reward, the faster it gets done.

You’re told who to go for more information, who to hand off your work to so it gets integrated, and what to send them. If you’re one of the people who are using your work here to bolster your employment applications, completing these pseudo “design briefs” is a far better case for your professional ability than trying to compile an explanation in the dark.

Will this work for maps and mods as well? Of course. The ladder team is beyond able to articulate what niche maps are needed to fill out the pool, and if you’re starved for motivation, completing one of these basic tasks is an easy way to keep refining your skills.

I mentioned the FAF author vaults would be discussed in this section and it’s because completing tasks like these could net you access to the FAF author vault as a reward. Other rewards for completing this could be avatars, forum decorations if they’re added to the new forum, and other forms of compensation as well. This gives you actual reasons to make maps/mods/other content and to make it of an acceptable standard. We can’t possibly expect you to work for nothing here, and while other councilors might protest that “noone is motivated to do anything,” it is this councilors job to motivate you. I personally don’t believe that your creative contributions to this client should be left out in the cold and have advocated for this stance across multiple other councilor cycles. Maybe it’s time you actually got compensated for the work you put in?

Finally, I want to extend these suggestions to grunt work.
Grunt work can be defined as for example: testing new FAF systems, maps, new mod content, doing janitorial roles like being a vault moderator, etc. No matter how many times we advertise in chat, no one appears to help because they don’t benefit. When we gave users even a small avatar incentive to help test ICE in one instance, participation spiked. I want to continue this trend by including them in this system.

So to sum up these three main points, You’re not going to lose the vault tab if you vote for this proposal, you’re instead getting systems that enhance your experience on the platform as a contributor, and you’ll be rewarded for helping FAF grow. You’re also getting a more professional admin system to properly handle the vaults we would be keeping in.

However as a bonus: I wanted to add an extra section at the end to “catch” things I had missed out of the flow of text here.

4. MAP/MOD VAULT PARITY: RE-ALIGNING FOCUS

The past couple of M&M Councilors have been almost entirely map focused. While I'm not the champion of modding some of you might dream for, I believe that mods are just as important to the game as maps, and wanted to use this role to rightfully extend FAF’s improvements to the mostly underdeveloped mod vault.

Such as the following:

• Provide tournaments for specific modding crafts, giving modders a chance to show off their skills.
• Properly articulate the rules for the mod vault because none exist, and implement the admin improvements stated in point 2 to here as well.
• Give a bit of attention to the mod vault UI. I’m not a fan of how it "uses" the space given.
  • You see the space invader esque toast next to your name in the client? That’s generated from your name. It shouldn’t be hard to use that to generate a thumbnail for your mods if you didn't make one. This solves the terrible “half loaded” appearance of the mod vault.
  • Asking for dev work is always a no-go in councilor applications but i’m partly responsible for the recent UI changes to the client as well as the incoming TMM system, (hello BlackYps) so I believe that making vault UI changes are possible.

Of course, mod related materials are also part of those due to improve in the systems i’ve outlined in point 3.

That’s all I have for you today.

Personally I think it’s time that FAF got someone to give their contributors the actual project management they need to really drive the project forward, and I think that the “Maps and Mods Councilor” was a role far too limited in scope.
Perhaps as the close of my proposal here, rename this role to the “Creative Councilor” instead?

Please leave any questions for me to answer if you have them, pms are always acceptable.
biass.

I've been granted the authority of the M&M Councilor position as of now.
This post serves as:

The initial announcment,
What I plan to do as Councilor,
A checklist of if i've done it or not.
A list of things I hope to complete as an aside,
A place for you to pass your feedback to me,
And a place to provide status updates and the like.

First, some things are effective immediately, or as soon as I am able to do so.

1. Renaming to the Creative Councilor.
If you object to this, let me know.

2. Strip the 3 Stratum, and Meme map rules out of the map vault rules document.
I'm just going to move the existing document for now, and put that in a new post on this forum, because I don't think one exists on the new forum yet.

If your map was hidden for these reasons and you want it unhidden, the onus is on you to contact me. Maps will not be unhidden if they also break other rules. (Don't ask for your 8 astro clones to be unhidden, please!)

3. People who are banned from the vault will be unbanned.
This is pending until I touch base with the people responsible.

Futhermore, I need to speak with a number of people. We may or may not have spoken already but if you have not yet got anything from me, please message me at your most convenient time.

• Anyone else responsible for vault bans (all mods?)
• The previous contact for the FAF Whitelist Vault project (Brutus?)
• The Russian members who were given the Dual Gap author rights
• Anyone who is willing and able to translate bodies of text to Russian, German, French, etc.
• Anybody responsible for modding and the like, who would want to be consulted about modding related changes.

And anyone else i've forgotten.

The following things will be worked on in no particular order:

1. I want to fix up the discord server a little bit, thanks again to Morax for this smooth transition.
This includes a rebrand, trimming channels, fixing the roles and adding extra features such as bots. Feel free to leave suggestions.

This includes a space for the "Preflighting" concept, which was left out of the vault proposal due to space.

I also want to open a basic space for projects, this list currently includes:

• Nomads
• SC:TA
• AI Development

All it is, is a basic introduction as well as an invite link to the server and stuff. If you're one of the three leads responsible, expect me in your DM's eventually.
If you have a FAF project you would like to put in this space, let me know.

2. Implement the new vault admin systems spoken about in the vault proposal.
I need a new document for keeping track of hides and the like. I want to set it up in a way that allows for good data collection.
Need to further fix the new map rules to remove the accessiblity issues and translate them onto the forum. Need a new rulelist for mods.

If you're interested in helping hide maps, let me know as always.

3. Work on the knowledge bank concept outlined in the proposal.
Currently working on consolidating my information and contacting people who might want to have a stake in this. this includes Laticlave's old unit - github concept, and the old tutorial curriculum I still have to work on.

3b. Implement the bountyboarding systems in tandem with the above, again as outlined.
Need to create a terms of use, and create some documents that need to go with it.

Here are some things that i'll probably be doing as an aside.

• I have one map almost completed and one more idea I want to try out
• I'm writing out a story concept for the SC:TA's single player campaign.
• I'm going to put some time into fixing the ever degrading state of the client UI, this includes the mod vault UI that i talked about in the proposal.
• More creation related tournament hosting.

It's almost certain that i've forgotten something, so this post will serve as my bookkeeping and is prone to change at any time.

Finally, each councilor has a pledge that they follow along. It's really only for sentimental value more than anything, but I've made one anyway.

• I will set myself upon my tasks with the intent to complete them properly.
• I will remain transparent and not hide away from public opinion.
• I will guide the community towards a quality experience.
• I will lead the role with honestly and desicion.

Very poetic.

If you've been mentioned in the post, expect a message soon.

I want my time as a councilor to be one that people do not look back upon with resentment.
Thanks to everyone who has been involved thus far, hope to continue working with you.

@Psions said in M&M Map Vault Plans for Fall 2020 and On:

@FtXCommando If the majority of people prefer a map over another, it doesn't make it an objectively bad map, it just makes you a bad judge of what a good map is when it comes to the general playerbase.

Let’s get something out of the way here; the only people trying to correlate that “the map is bad” because “the people play it” are people trying to defend Astro crater.

The map is not bad because people play it.
Astro crater is objectively, a bad map.
It has nothing to do with playcount.

As is with all art, there is still objective qualities that can be judged.

• the quality and consistency of your terrain
• the application of your textures and how believable they are in creating a setting
• the quality and application of your decals to improve the appearance of the map
• the application of your props (reclaim) and how they’re tied into your world
• the lighting of your scene and how it conveys your setting
• the placement of your mex points, which despite being a game mechanic are still natural ore deposits.

And so on, and so forth.
Astro doesn’t meet a minimum standard of quality for, or in some cases even has, any of these criteria. Everybody in this conversation knows this part and if you don’t, you’re either deluding yourself to keep a defensive, or you’re so inept at judging maps that you’re not worth having a discussion with.

People can make an “objectively better Astro” at any time.
It doesn’t have anything to do with playcount.
Maps can be popular and be “objectively good,”
The original gap map is still good, even though it is one of the most played maps on the client.

Moving on, I’m not sure what changing the metrics to judge playcount actually solves. Why move the metric away from the quality of your work, to who can inflate their epeen the most? I wasn’t aware that people still cared about playcount on their maps until bad mappers started writing 2000 word forum posts to justify why they spent 2 minutes on their map.

Is there a reason why playcount should be a metric, or even considered to one? Is there a problem with the current (ladder) system of rating maps? Why should Astro be in a 2v2 matchmaker? Why should any map be in a matchmaker because it’s “popular?” Why should objectively good maps not be in the matchmaker if they’re not “popular?”

It’s okay to think people can play what they want, but don’t delude yourself in the process.

I wanted to raise this point for a number of reasons, but keep in mind that i'm not really a reddit user and thus am not completely aware of the functionality.

We have two subreddits, the /FAF one and also the /supremecommander subreddit. Both are completely underdeveloped, and moderated with a detached skeleton crew of staff including Gorton, who vanished from the community a number of months ago.

We have a bit of a issue here. The issue is that permabanned users from FAF can easily walk into the subreddit, and damage the influx of new users from that platform. Case in point is mirddes, who is actively causing major disruption by slanding the SC:TA project, and arguing about supposed "authoritarian practices" on the supremecommander subreddit.

Techincally, we're in charge of these places. I feel that besides the obvious moderation issues we're having, we're losing a major source of new users and retention of those by letting a community discussion panel stay in this state. There is still a sizable level of traffic on the subreddits, and for a lot of new users who might not know about the forums and the discord, reddit is such a popular place that people will likely head there for tech support and general discussion.

I want to suggest the following, and am happy to help work on these too:

• Close the /FAF subreddit.
  • Communities like DOOM manage content over mutiple games by using tags/flairs to indicate what they're for. We can allow having FAF content, vanilla content, AND Supcom 2 AND loud content in the same space. This would allow communities to interchange ideas and help users who came from those games to be shown FAF content naturally.
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/supremecommander/comments/i2rrnp/meta_the_last_post_on_rfaf_was_8_days_ago_i_think/
    People have talked about doing this already, including the one active moderator of the supremecommander reddit. The idea probably fell on deaf ears because the other two mods are inactive.
• Close the moderation loophole.
  • Giving the relevant councilors/users proper powers and titles on the subreddit will drive up the engagement on their promotion. I'm talking linking casts, news posts, etc. Anihilnine posting news looks strange if he is just a random user linking posts. Anihilnine properly presented as the community manager for promotion looks far superior.
  • Stop people damaging the user pipeline if they're banned from FAF, or other relevant community spaces. (I'm assuming supcom 2 has a discord, or something.)
• Make the place look better, its ugly.
  • Reddit has a banner location that is empty, as well as some various iconography spaces that is missing content.

I don't think people will have issue with FAF taking hold of the reddit and enforcing proper rules there. As long as we are fair and open towards other supreme commander communities, and communicate the expectations properly.

I'm happy to open the dialog with the current reddit admin if people are busy. I don't want to see "my" contributors be slandared and lose motivation because of FAF's apathy.
Tell me your thoughts. I know a couple of users from FAF frequent the place such as Tatsu so their input is important for this project.

It's cool to think that a training system is an idea to keep people around - just like it's cool to think that way every other month when this topic appears... But if you haven't been paying attention to FAF proper; you'll find that we're already having to resort to giving 500 rated players trainer status because the supply of volunteers can not and can never meet the demand. If you put out a call for more high rated players to help train people, you'll maybe get one or two, but everyone who cares about this sort of thing is already doing it.

Here are two ideas that would help with retention:

• Maintain some form of clan relevancy.

It's pretty clear from reading this thread that "a dedicated FAF community" is something that many people take for granted now that they're in a circle of like minded people. Frankly, this is not the way it's going to go for a lot of new people. Imagine knowing nobody and having to put up with Ninrai teamgames/Bisq01 in ladder/etc/etc.

While I don't think that toxicity is a huge factor in player retention (see: overwatch, league, any mutiplayer ranked queue), Easily finding a group of people you enjoy hanging out with keeps you around in spite of all of FAF's issues.

It's just the basic human desire to belong to something and clans are/have always been an easy way to acomplish that.

Right now clans only serve as a way for letting veteran users know who to avoid. It's only a matter of continuing to promote and provide incentives for them before they become relevant again. You'll find that when better players have a good reason to, they'll train lower rated guys on their own. People in their own clan "can't be that bad" and helping them win games for the clan benefits them. Strange to see that clans are forgotten when they're oft a critical factor in most legacy game communities.

• Unranked queue

I already know that if you're a vet, this is the most asinine suggestion this side of the decade. But frankly, you can see it in this thread and you've known this since forever. Many new players cannot overcome ladder anxiety. It's the difference between "us" who just "played the game because it was fun" and eventually became good, and people who seem to think they need to spend 4000 hours doing everything but.

Unless TMM and then new divisions systems we planned out work to remove the game by game "fear" of losing rating - the only incentive to play and only major community wide status symbol - we're likely going to need to create an enviroment that further removes the anxiety. It's a place where losing is not really any consequence and your learning experience (if you want one..) is not stained by scripted scenarios or AI games that teach you the wrong impression.

Just some 2 cents, don't bother trying to imagine tutorials because we don't have people who are able to make them to an acceptable standard. and besides, you likely came here from a cast showing off some nice gameplay? If people come here for nice gameplay, don't be suprised if they leave after spending 2 weeks doing something else.

I wonder why..

Rowey has kindly offered $35 to sponsor this tournament.

You have until the 20th of April.
Create a 10km map,
Make it 2v2, and in a summer/spring/early fall theme.
And post the name here. The best authors will recieve prizes.

Prizes:

1. $35 and the Grand Sculptor Avatar
2. Face of Faction Avatar
3. Logo of Faction Avatar

This is pretty standard for mapping tournaments. However rules dictate that you should create a map that is in a summer/spring/early fall theme. This implies a vibrant, sunny evergreen map. Creating maps that revolve around the summer/spring culture of a certain nationality are also fine, but:

A: If i can't tell it's a sunny theme from first glance, it still bombs out on the score.
B: make sure to let me know.

I'm adding a simple 4th score to ensure the theme is met. If you submit a map that isnt of this summer vibe, you score a zero and will probably not win this tournament.

This is on top of the basic Asthetics / Gameplay / Variance score we've used in the past.

Please note that adding custom props will help to boost your asthetic score as well as your "theme" score *if relevant), this is to help assist the new prop initiative mentioned here. and to reword you for your effort if you do decide to contribute.

Also, the map must be 2v2 and 10km. Nothing else will be accepted.

Usual stuff below:

Rules:
You may only submit one map per author.
Maps already in the vault at the time of posting may not be submitted.
Maps that are currently in progress may be submitted.

Content is judged by an opinion panel, and like last time I expect that panel to consist of high level players, FAF councilors, and Ladder Team members. To avoid conflicts of interest, opinions of users who have also entered into the competition will not be considered.

There are still mutiple objective requirements. Make sure your content abides by them. Any map found to not meet these requirements will be instantly disqualified and I will not be showing any leniency.

• No Mass Deposit or Hydrocarbon Deposit limit
• No Decal, Prop, or Strata Layer (texture) limit.
• Textures missing normal maps, or with an albedo map instead of a normal map unless in very specific cases will be considered a "broken" map, and be disqualified.
• Any map name is permitted. Remember to abide by the client rules.
• The map must function correctly in the vault/lobby and be completely free of bugs.
• Furthermore, the Mass/Hydrocarbon Deposits must be placed on their decal correctly, and must not be misaligned.
• The map must be balanced for competitive play.
• Minor misalignments will be overlooked. Intentional unbalances will result in a DQ.

I want to have more than just myself judge tournaments. PM if you're interested and NOT competing.
See you in roughly two months.

They probably don't want to reply because FAF is filled with people who feel the need to be vigilantes over what other people play. I can't imagine wanting to hang around when some 500 rated dude needs to ENSURE I play wonder instead of gap, or something similar every time I make a comment.

Astro told me that he changed his name in discord because people sent him hatemail for making the map, which is reprehensible.

People can just send me a message where-ever if they feel like doing that instead.

deribus said in Astro FAF Version (Player Input Required):

Is any retexturing planned?

No, I could give you a million different reasons why, but ultimately I don't want the playerbase to ignore the map because it's not longer the thing they're actually playing. Hundreds of perhaps marginally better "pretty astro" maps exist but get ignored.

I don't think it's personally worth doing because trying to place something natural looking onto the precise geometrical shape of something like astro triggers the uncanny valley effect.

deribus said in Astro FAF Version (Player Input Required):

I think such a popular map being so aesthetically blank sets a bad precedent

Don't see how, otherwise mapgen wouldn't be popular 4head

If you need a guide on how to use the ui, doesn’t the ui just suck?

Doesn’t this just flip the cards the other way around? If you’re losing to a lower rated player you can just force a draw and keep your rating.

I don’t think draws should give you as much rating as it does for a win but at least getting a couple useless virtual social score points makes sense. Trueskill didn’t expect you to draw let alone win so it needs to adjust its evaluation to compensate

@arma473

I’m not aware of any, I wouldn’t be able to do anything without some crash logs (and someone smart enough to interpret them)

Making a new version would likely solve any issues regardless.

We have identified a number of issues with the original Astro Crater Battles that players are attempting to fix by uploading new versions. These versions go against vault rules, so having a final solution to all Astro related problems would massively reduce vault overhead and allow our team to work on other projects.

With BRS_Astro’s permission obtained last night, I’m requisitioning an Adaptive Astro Crater Battles - FAF Version. I want to know what needs to be added/kept the same, because I’m not an Astro player myself.

The map will be rated.

My list of changes are the following:

• Add support for up to max player capacity
• Add options for (6/10/12?) mex starts (to encompass “Astro XL” versions)
• Resolve symmetry issues that prevent adjacency in certain spawns
• Add an opt in setting for reclaim
• Add an option for the basic linear distribution for midmexs or adding a pseudo expansion
• Smooth the top of the mountains a little to prevent possible airplane issues (I need to know what is supposed to be “blocked” and what isn’t.

Mention what needs fixing in this thread now so I can add them to the list. I’m hoping this map will be a form of end-all solution so I rather not miss anything important.

If someone could translate this thread to RU that would be fantastic.

Cheers boys

The TMM ui was designed around Source Sans Pro, that you can get from fonts.google.con

The value of map knowledge is not relevant to the discussion.

Even if you’re missing both your hands and can’t actually play the game, the system will attempt to find you someone who is equally incapable.

If you’re new and don’t know maps, you’ll eventually get put with people who also don’t know maps, or are so bad in something else that it evens out.

It’s not a matter of not being able to compete, it’s a matter of not having the willpower to continue playing after losing a few games or not having a desire to improve.

Same goes with any matchmaking system, including ones that have random maps.

auricocorico said in Complaint about TMM and Ladder Pool Rating Brackets:

Easy enough, i'm such a genuis

genius*****

9 days remain, make sure you post the name into this thread before said date, even if youre finished already.