Can we get it off ladder please? Nearly everyone I play on it tells me it's a boring map and I strongly agree.

Added feature : preselection of mex when selection engineer and hovering the cursor over a mass spot

I don't like this so much. Is there an option to turn it off? It can require an extra click when doing the "assist mex" thing to build storages.

Several times recently I've been matched against a 0-rated player on ladder. I'm ~1200. I get that a 0-rated player is more unknown than known noob but all the same it doesn't make for interesting games.

Shouldn't there be a hard cap on the maximum rating difference when matching? A 300 difference is already a strong predictor; a 600 difference is an almost-certain predictor, and beyond that you can safely bet that no 2k player would want to be matched against someone my level, so 600-700 difference seems like a sensible hard cap?

IMO map veto isn't really required (with good choice of maps), but...

@ftxcommando said in How do I block horrible maps:

Glaciers sucks at high level

Glaciers simply sucks. Too much mass for 1v1. Like many of the GPG maps its seems to be designed for more than two teams and doesn't really translate to 1v1 — perhaps with smaller fewer expansions it would be better. It's also ugly. The main thing to get out of it for lower level players is learning early air control and drops on large maps.

Signing up (humble 1300)

Another possible option on battleship balance: make them less effective direct fire (unit-vs-unit) weapons, thus only really useful for bombardment. Keep T2 destros (+ UEF T3 destro) as the navy mainstay. This could perhaps be achieved via damage classes (reduced damage, with bonus vs structures)?

That might also help reduce splash vs subs without affecting splash vs harms.

Honestly though, SC navy would need a lot of work (and probably a lot more units) to be properly balanced IMO.

There's nothing wrong with Aurora: they're (almost) a T1 sniper.

But Aeon needs a T1 tank: something with enough HP that it can survive 1-on-1 vs any other T1 tank much of the time in close quarters. Perhaps a new unit with the speed of the Aurora but the range of other tanks, with similar DPS but 20% more cost and 30% more HP.

Given a new tank, one could even try balancing the Aurora more like other snipers: lower DPS but a little more speed. (Currently DPS must approx. match other tanks for balance to work with smaller numbers, but then Aurora get too powerful in large groups due to range, except vs bombers...)

If the unit count really can't be increased, there is another option, though many would consider it heresy: turn the Flare into a T1 sniper/LAB hybrid and the Aurora into standard medium (or less-standard heavy) tank.

No worries, watching the casts is probably more fun than playing! Looking forward to the event.

The proper solution would be to create an intel entity which drops from the aircraft, every few seconds, and if it lands in water, becomes a short term sonar buoy. The code for that too, is already in the game - it's used in the Aeon Eye of Rhianne, which creates a vision entity. This would be an adaptation of that.

That might actually work okay. Can such a temporary entity be targetted by subs/ships?

And what about stealth? Should there be stealth subs which only show up in vision radius or is that too insidious? Would they be visible to scout planes anyway due to vision + radar?

Perhaps a better alternative:

• all water-based sonar are actually short-range omni + long range sonar
• all subs (even all underwater units?) automatically stealth when not moving
• (maybe) no underwater vision; enemy units are only visible as sonar icons: this could make nuke subs a key part of T3 navy

@melanol said in Every ranked 1v1 map is generated?:

Can I have a less stressful life please?

This is stressful? Maybe yeah, because playing is stressful, but no more so than known maps because your opponent is in the exact same position of figuring the new map out.

What often confused me was a stealthed ACU under water. It turns out that the scout/spy planes all have sonar (equal to vision radius, I think), therefore can "see" underwater and spot the ACU.

My impression from reading this is that it has zilch to do with winning/losing games and everything to do with whether the implementation is simple and easy to use or another command few want to learn.

Also, I don't understand the level of energy in this thread — it's not something that will really change the game (basically Ftx's argument IIUC).

The Monkeylord has never (IIRC) been better damage&armour per cost vs bricks/percies (at least, before veterency); it's not designed to be. Instead it has speed and stealth. It's best used as an ambush unit, not a front-line unit (Cybran and UEF don't have front-line T4 armour, but they do have the best T3 armour).

Both 2022.3.0 and 2022.4.0 work for me using this command:

INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jre-18 ./faf-client

Jip, I kind of support your idea for 1v1 ladder. But when playing 2v2 and 4v4 matchmaker with unknown players it is very relevant to planning — that first minute while you're waiting for your factory to build and trying to guess who will/should do what. Giving lower-rated players just a little bit of advice about where to focus their play as the game starts can significantly improve team performance.

Are you two months out? It's April 27th today.

Good call. I'm stuck around 1300, often I think due to struggling to notice everything going on (at least, I'm bad at stopping drops and at finding ways of doing damage).

@snagglefox said in Ban EcoManager & Similar Mods:

Further, a large part of getting good at this game is eco management.

A significant part, yes: especially with regards to grabbing reclaim, building power and choosing when to upgrade mexes. Flipping a few mass-fabs on/off is nothing compared to that.

Anyway, a still larger part of the game is unit control: raiding and defending.

I support Jip's decision to try merging limited mass-fab automation into FAF.

@arran said in Points of Imbalance.:

Swift Wind. Change popup tooltip to mention that the Swift Wind is only cost effective against T2 Air units, Transports and nothing else.

Vs T1 inties, cost effectiveness will depend on micro. Did you take this into account? IMO the biggest advantage of Swift Winds is being able to better control the map compared to the lower speed of inties, which is independent of the prior statement.

Your other points sound good, but I'm no balance pro.

Sure. The problem is just that every month they change the maps and I forget to make sure they're downloaded. But it's not a major issue.

Map gen isn't an issue in my experience (usually even if a new version needs download). Some maps are also fine; others are much larger downloads.