Hello everyone

Check out my new mod "Calibers Balance Mod" although it has very little to do with balance at all, its more about exploring unit design and changing small things like projectiles, sounds and abilities of the units.

Here are some examples of these changes.

Turning the tac missile defense of the summit into a short range gatling gun to deal with pesky frigates who get into your personal space.

Changing the Corsair projectile from rockets to a unique emp bomb that can stun those stubborn T2 UEF turtle bases.

Turning the Absolver into a rather expensive but OP EMP tank that fires a cloud burst projectile that stuns enemy units for 4 seconds, giving Aeon a much needed buff in the t3 phase.

Creating a cybran SACU shield disrupter preset, taking that perk from the Aeon as in my opinion it suits the cybrans alternative aproach to gaining an advantage on the battlefield.

Speaking of SACU's the seraphim now have a regen aura preset, stolen from the commander, aswell as an ARAS preset.

Giving the Aeon T3 arty the ability to hover, as it suits the unit and has no visible tracks as the original movement type seems to suggest.

One of the largest changes I have made is to T1 and T2 navy, as all submarines are now T2, there was no real dynamic to T1 subs. These new T2 subs have very low Hp but very high DPS, designed to kill frigates, cruisers and battleships with ease but get wrecked by destroyers.

Here is an example of a projectile change. the cybran t3 gunship only fires a single shot dispite having a double muzzle and that projectile isnt very interesting. So I utilized the double muzzle funtion as it now fires two shots at once with a more interesting projectile.

A small change made was to the UEF and Sera T1 PD, all T1 PD are essentialy the same, theres nothing interesting that seperates them, until now, I noticed that the UEF PD sound effect cant quite keep up with the high fire rate so slowing the fire rate and increasing the DPS helped with that issue, unless you pay very close attention most wont notice the sera T1 pd has a double muzzle but fires in a way that doesnt show, so I doubled up the shot by adding a delay that makes it more interesting and seperates it from the other PDs adding a little bit to the faction diversity.

These are just a few of many changes I have made alongside some visual and sound changes. aswell as swaping projectiles that I think suit some of the units better.

If you have any suggestions for new abilities or things you think might fit other units let me know and we can have a look.

Can we have more map gen please?

On the topic of this thread i have thrown together a mod that gives navy a strategic missile defense ability, it's simple but effective.

but if your interested its called " Naval Anti Nuke"

I have basically created a clone of the Missile subs and sera battleship but removed the nuke attack and given nuke defense, all other aspects of the units remain the same.

The nuke defense subs have shorter range from static defense from 90 down to 70 and the seraphim battleship is 60

and they are surface fire only!

the submarine storage is 3 and the seraphim battleship is 1

the battleship is different as people make a whole load more battleships than missile subs.

I made the mod quite quickly so i am aware of somethings that need improvement but if you use the mod please feel free to leave me any feedback.

Loving the new higher rate of getting map gen maps by the way

So i have a suggestion that i hope could save quite a lot of fustration with frequent updates.

Currently there are links to information on changes to other sources in various places that i think from speaking to other players are poorly understood how to even check for updates and understand why when where those changes are being made.

Most people who are not invested into contributing to faf do not go the extra few clicks to find extra info

Speaking to other players after the most recent updates, most people did not realise that the mobile factories have now changed and are fustrated that they could not build from them any more as they didnt realise the changes that have been made, also the most recent change to ringing structures has confused a large amount of the players i speak to who have resorted going back to using the old templates to ring mexes as they dont understand the changes that have been made or understand why.

my solution to prevent the confusion is to place this info onto the newsfeed of the opening page of faf (not just a link) so that this can be very easily seen and understand what is changing, why its changing and when its changing.

Or Even place all this information about changes that is on the forum but in another tab in the client.

Allow a dead team mate acu to respawn from quantum gateway.

inspired by comradestryker i made this little mod to the Ravager that now fires the projectile from the TMD without stoping for reloading giving it non stop fire power!, imo it does look more realistic though the only issue now is finding a sound that fits, however in testing there seems to be very little down time from the sound effect re playing so it seems to be up to the task for now.

3039 vs 978 is not a match in any humans mind, I would rather not have a game at all than have games like this.

Does the matchmaker not pair up equal opponents? at least on rating.

This idea worked out better than I thought it would.

I wanted to create a unit that filled the function of a direct fire exp for the uef as the fatty is less than useful in this role.

So I came up with this.

The UEF ACU is a highly detailed unit and looks great at a larger scale and reminds me of gypsy danger from pacific rim.

The unit has 45k health with 40k shield twin blasters that shoot larger percy projectiles, its also armed with a sub nuke that launches from its backpack.

It costs the same as a GC and has very similar dps but overall loses in a 1v1 with a GC as it has a recharging shield and can launch nukes.

Unbalanced maps in matchmaker

Teams not correctly aligned on this map in the tmm

aslo this map has two unbuildable mexes

After many Novax balance threads and discussions over how the novax is too easily abusable I decided to make a mod to experiment with some of these options.

one of the largest changes I made was to add an energy drain for the laser that costs -8000 energy per second to fire the laser weapon, I did this to try and discourage spamming them in high numbers, and this would heavily risk e stall, and cripling you own shields ect if you make more than one.

reducing turret speeds from 360 to 8, currently the Novax turret speed is 360 which is insane (T2 PD is 130 for referance) which allows the user to destroy many shields and engineers in one firing cycle, so I slowed down the turret so you cannot target such a large amount of vulnerable units in one shot.

and some smaller changes like vision reduction cost increase ect

I might add a salellite that is just a spy sat in the future.

Feel free to try it out and share your ideas.

an idea i just had would be to turn the novax into a factory that has to build the satalites, kinda does this anyway when they get shot down.

base of novax could be cheaper with sats having increased build time and costs ect
with options of which satalite you want to make such as

*intel only sat
*defense sat that does more dps but has a range limit
*current sat, renamed to something like offensive sat without intel just vision

just an creative idea

In my opinion a series of challenges would be better than an actual tutorial, as they would be easier to make and dont baby sit players through timely scenarios, simply choose a map, create said task and record the time it takes for a leaderboard it would also create a seperate area for competative play.

the challanges could start with easy but essential basic skill tasks such as fastest time to create 100 tanks
then fastest time to claim all mexes on a certain map like miricle

to eco challanges like fastest time to break 1k mass income
or fastest time to create a strat bomber then kill something with it

then to more complex things like breaking through a very well defended base

and then these could be placed into another tab where you have matchmaking, custom and co-op
this would allow people to learn things at there own pace and practice particular skills and see how good they are against other times and also allow the top players some bragging rights to the fastest times and the first to use certain stratagies to accomplish those times.

very similar to campaign missions and recorded times but far more specific in nature and smaller in scale

In my balance mod I gave the novax beam an energy drain of 8k per second, very high so the player has to at least support/monitor their energy or if a player chooses to spam multiple sats they will run a very high chance of e stall leaving them vulnerable to other threats.

I am not involved with the inner politics of the FAF Dev team, so I can say from a outsider point of view, things have greatly improved over the years.

Matchmaking, Performance, Mapgen, Bugs, Mods, Client, game play features have all noticably been improved, bumps along the way are unavoidable even with large multi million dollar companies, so dont spend too much time thinking about these issues.

A good thing to do is look back a year and think what is new or has been fixed in that time and you will quickly see all you have achieved.

the only thing in my opinion holding FAF back is the size of the player base, as most "high" level players state it is hard to find games, even for most players there are parts of the day that just arnt very active, when you log on ther are just some astros being hosted.

FAF is very much a PVP environment, so when youve exausted yourself in PVP and played against or with the same people several times that week or even in a day is gets a bit same same.

I used to spend hours trying to get a quick time in the campaign and seeing where I placed in the leaderboards for particular missions trying out different strats, there have been several additions to this but i feel they dont quite hit the spot, some are extremely antagonizing to play if you expand you get bombed, then you build aa then you get rushed by land they kill the aa, then you get bombed again and its very frustrating to play.

Once more you are summoned to talk about the novax

More and more commonly in voice chat and in game chat we encounter remarkes about the dreaded novax, "you made novax ima cntrl-k" and so on, it seems players really dont like this thing.

The first part if this thread isnt to discuss about what should be done but should anything actually be done, if we establish the basics then we can work on from there.

Point 1.

Create a link on the FAF front page "news" that asks one simple question in order to establish the thoughts of community.

Do you think the novax needs a change?

Not how or why just yes or no.

based on the answers recieved if 50% or higher no then we can end the conversation there, if 50% or higher yes, then we can openly discuss as a community how that change should come about.

Point 2. Possible changes.

I have spent the last few weeks making novax balance mods based on suggestions given in multiple other threads and by friends so that players can actually test and visualise these ideas in game.

1. Novax rework. A general Nerf that changes things like build cost movement speeds and adds energy drain the the beam weapon.

2. Novax Range limit. Puts a hard limit on how far the satellite can travel from the Novax Base.

3. Novax manual Fire. forces the player to order every attack Like a TML no quing orders (my personal favourite) as its less of a nerf on the unit and more of an APM tax on the player

4. Damage over distance, reduces damage done the further the satellite travels from the Novax Base.

5. Factory, allows you to make multiple sats from one factory, (putting all your eggs in one basket) but requires less space and easier to protect.

6. Weapon distance, puts a weapon range limit on the satellite so that past a certain distance from the novax base the weapon deactivates and becomes a spy satellite only (weapon reactivates when back in range)

7. Reduce damage to shields by 60 %

Granted im not the best moder out there, these mods are just to showcase how these ideas would play out in a game, If any of these ideas were chosen to be implemented you should not judge the idea based soley on one of my mods as I expect actual implementation would be carried out by much more skilled individuals than myself.

If you have any other ideas/feedback about how these mods could be improved please let me know, the only mod I have yet to make that is a popular suggestion is the SMD>Novax mod.

Thanks for reading and happy gaming!

whats the option to see the green structure peremiters from more zoomed out?, i cant find it
if its a thing.

I would like to play further zoomed out but if i want to correctly position things i have been quite close in, i feel like this would help.

@Jip The new terrain looks awsome great job.