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

T1 ACU can build T1 radar.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Success! Thanks Jip.

@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.

I don't believe it's the client being slow: "Starting Forged Alliance with command" happens soon enough.

Extracting the launch proton command and attempting to run that directly is still slow, so it appears the culprit is Steam. DRM perhaps? I don't notice much CPU or net activity.

GOG is also selling SupCom very cheaply at the moment and supposedly uses no DRM, so I'll try that.

@xayo said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

After getting mercy sniped twice today while being surrounded by (cybran) maa and having inties close by, I have to ask:

Can we finally balance mercies, instead of the current reliance on the honor-bound approach of looking down on the low lifers that use this disgusting tool?

The most OP part might be the way it turns into unkillable missiles before hitting the target. So delay this transition or even remove it altogether?

Looks nice, but much too small for me (4k).

I suppose this could be caused by packet loss. Pings sometimes show 1% or so. I know, I really need a better connection.

Success! Thanks Jip.

@espiranto said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

What the fuck Sparky, a commander with a T2 and a cannon is not enough for you

Interesting idea. If Sparky was a Cybran unit it could complement the ACU's lack of T2+gun a little.

@espiranto said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

Do something with cybran acu, its having choose gun or t2

I have advocated that stealth give a small speed boost, but apparently that fucks up too much balance.

I still don't think the Cybran ACU is weak though. It has high regen. Also, Mantis can assist a gun upgrade.

Thanks for the advice. I switched to a case-insensitive file system:

1. Create a sparse file: dd if=/dev/zero of=faforever.ext4 bs=1 count=0 seek=16G
2. Format as ext4 with case-folding: mkfs -t ext4 -O casefold faforever.ext4
3. Mount: mount faforever.ext4 faforever
4. Move all game data there and create sym-links

... but the Azalea Gardens map still doesn't work right:

warning: Unable to load texture: z:\home\%USER%\.local\faforever\maps\azalea_gardens.v0004\env\decals\wm_azalea_gardens_sm.dds

If I replace back-slashes with forward-slashes that path works. I guess I should give up.

No, but I do know that the time between each of those messages being generated is seconds. It could of course be something else happening in between, but the way loops usually operate is to focus on one job at a time.

Sorry, I should clarify: sometimes launching the game is very slow, with messages like this taking several seconds each to appear. Other times launches are fast enough.

I suspect not. More likely the client.

For some reason launching the game is very slow. In the FAF client output (v 2022.11.0), the delays occur on lines like this:

2022-11-25 21:06:04.698 DEBUG 42552 --- [lication Thread] c.faforever.client.remote.AssetService   : Using cached image: %USER_PROFILE%/.faforever/cache/divisions/diamondIV_medium.png
2022-11-25 21:06:19.534 DEBUG 42552 --- [lication Thread] c.faforever.client.remote.AssetService   : Using cached image: %USER_PROFILE%/.faforever/cache/maps/large/astro_crater_battles_4x4_v2-2_teamplay_ai.v0001.png
2022-11-25 21:06:37.517 DEBUG 42552 --- [lication Thread] c.faforever.client.remote.AssetService   : Using cached image: %USER_PROFILE%/.faforever/cache/maps/small/faf_coop_operation_blockade.v0001.png
2022-11-25 21:06:42.545 DEBUG 42552 --- [lication Thread] c.faforever.client.remote.AssetService   : Using cached image: %USER_PROFILE%/.faforever/cache/maps/large/astro_crater_battles_5vs5.v0001.png

Why would there be a ~10s delay on each line? My internet is kinda slow but I don't see net activity here. My system should otherwise be plenty fast enough.