In both my ladder and team games I've gotten the feeling that Chrono Dampener can be quite oppressive to play against, while also providing little feedback. I've written a mod (called "Chrono Expand" in the vault) to try to address these shortcomings.

Default Chrono Dampener:

There is a small effect around the ACU which causes units in a huge area to get immediately stunned for 2.5 seconds. The last titan is actually at the edge of the range, but there's no way to tell that.

Chrono Expand:

The effect now covers the entire area in a wave which stuns units. All units lose the stun effect at the same time, which means that the closer the unit is to the ACU, the longer it gets stunned for. At present, units right next to the ACU get stunned for 3.5 seconds, while units at the edge get stunned for only 1 second.

The values above aren't set in stone, and are actually mostly the result of my lackluster modding ability. I'd love to get a stun shorter than a second at the edge but for some reason that starts to shrink the radius of the effect instead.

What are your thoughts?

Make radar selection not make the exact same sound as a ping

There's little to no point making any judgment on Sanctuary until people not involved with the project can play it.

I did some testing and managed to determine that the formula used is
Speed Multiplier = 2^(Simspeed/3)

In other words, every +3 difference in simspeed is a doubling of the simulation tick rate. Here's a handy dandy table for those curious:

Can't say this is the most useful information, but I found it interesting.

Instead of focusing on what I would do if elected, I'll focus on how I've already been doing many of these duties.

• Being a communication relay between players and contributors
  • Compiled a loooooooot of data on the small suggestions topic: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/3206/small-suggestions-topic/291?_=1649658115116
• Collecting data related to the player experience
  • Ran an experimental survey on people's opinions on the state of naval balance https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1597/naval-balance-survey?_=1649658115124 (as well as the above)
• Being present for the players and answering questions
  • Hard to provide a simple link to that, but I'm pretty active on both Discord and forums, as well as the many PMs I get being a moderator.
• Organization of regular games
  • A little old, but I organized this thread on a forum: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/supreme-commander-gaming-thread.323817/, which ran for 2,879 posts over several years before finally running out of steam. I've also organized many games among my Discord friends but again, can't just link that
• Other Community Management-esque items
  • Trying to lead the Balance Discussions subforum by example: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/759/balance-thread-guidelines
  • Supcom "fun fact" kind of posts: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/3413/what-each-simspeed-value-means?_=1649658115138
  • Occasional meme-making:
    • https://discord.com/channels/197033481883222026/849681991111934002/952114017487446066,
    • https://discord.com/channels/197033481883222026/849681991111934002/930825385443196948
  • Wrote an April Fool's mod that sadly couldn't be implemented this year but perhaps could be next year
  • Activity on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/supremecommander/search/?q=author%3Au%2FDeribus&restrict_sr=1&sr_nsfw=&type=link (as well as dozens of comments answering questions)
  • Many private training sessions with players
  • Responsible for the single most important Discord channel, #cute-animals

Hopefully the above demonstrate both my experience with and willingness to do many of the tasks that might be asked of the community manager. Oh, and also I'm a Russian speaker so I can engage with astro players.

What are my actual plans if I were elected?

A lot more of the same, additional data compilation, updates on the state of development, I like the regular games idea. Might look into running a successor to "this week in slack" but Zulip is so active in so many channels I frankly don't know if I have the time to catch up on that many messages. I have a few other ideas but I'm not committing to anything at this point until I consult with the board post-election.

Will I remain a moderator?

I too had this question, as I was hesitant to retain the moderator role while also being the community manager. I felt this would make me less approachable as a community member. However after posing this question to the board they recommended I keep my role as a moderator, so that I will do.

Trying to make a more convenient list of suggestions, as this thread has grown enormous:

Being worked on/looked into:

• Easy to interpret lag information (Coming soon)
• Change radar selection sound (Being worked on)
• Give friendly/enemy nuke launches different sounds (Being worked on)
• Display total score of each team in lobby (Being worked on)
• Repeat hotkey improvements (Being worked on)
• See friendly radar bubbles (May not be possible, being investigated)
• Full share unit gift prompt/notification (Being worked on)
• Button to notify players to ready up (Being worked on)
• Enable many "proplayer features" by default (Being looked into)
• Global unit toggle (May not be possible, being investigated)
• Force rainbow cup colors (Not possible in custom games, but being worked on for matchmaking)
• Better CPU test (Being worked on)
• Audible low power warning (Being worked on)
• Display whether maps are rated (Being investigated)
• Matchmaking menu improvements (Being worked on)

Probably not possible

• Add unit to beginning of build queue (May not be possible)
• Fix stereo sound issues (May not be possible)

Feature already exists or was purposefully removed

• Ship FAF with PD + Walls template by default (Rejected/similar feature already exists)
• Prevent pause button spam (Feature already exists)
• Target prioritization improvements (Rejected/old feature that was reworked)
• Allow reduced disconnection timer (Feature already exists)
• View share condition in-game (Feature already exists)
• Ability to name templates (Feature already exists)
• Shift-g reclaim orders (Rejected, purposefully removed)

Suggestion outside the scope of the thread

• Clear client search field (Client issue)
• A variety of UI improvements (Client issue)
• Toggle option for UI mods when watching a replay (Client issue)
• Highlight alternative game modes (Client issue)
• Merge all ladder queue chats (Client issue)
• Option to hide games by specific mod (Client issue)
• Portal/teleportation building (Rejected, better as a mod)
• Chat history (Client issue)
• Wyvern mod fix (Rejected, mod issue)
• Encourage optimal balance games; discourage leaving the game early (First is a large feature but may be looked into later; second rejected)
• AI improvements (Rejected, large issue)

Rejected for other reasons

• Lobby voting system (Rejected)
• Gain rating for each player kill (Rejected)
• GC claw inconsistency (Rejected/no issue)

Miscellaneous

• Hotkey of build closest mex for engies
• Announce when players lose connection to one another
• Infinite build experimentals
• Chat beep lite integration
• Spread build
• A variety of changes from KonjikiNoYami
• Filter maps by size
• A variety of changes from WillowsDuality:
• Make air units bounce off map edges like wrecks do against shields
• Custom template images
• Allow premade teams in optimal balance
• Separate nuke load bar for nuke subs and battleships

One of the things requested in the Call for Community managers is setting up regular community game. I've spent some time figuring out how best to do this, but eventually decided the best way to find out is to attempt one and see what happens.

First weekly game will be on Diversity on Sunday, June 12th, at 4PM UTC -4

Here is a link to let you know when it will be in your local time zone

Why this date/time?
Sunday because I work Saturdays, and that time because that is when daily FAF peak player count is. It won't necessarily be at this time every week.

Why this map?
I thought it was a relatively straightforward 10x10 map that most players should be comfortable on.

This first game will be largely experimental, so don't take it as a definite sign of how these will play out in the future.

Also depending on how many people join I may need volunteers to host parallel lobbies so we may split up by rating.

Did you know?

Transports assisting a land factory will automatically carry units to the factory's rally point

Whenever you fire at something, you have a choice of two firing angles. A high arc (red) and a low arc (green)

The high arc is above 45° while the low arc is below 45°.

Unlike every other artillery piece in the game which uses high firing arcs, T2 artillery uses low firing arcs for some reason.

These two are firing at the same target, but look where the T2 arty is pointing and where the T3 mobile arty is pointing.

So I'm proposing we do a bit of a...

Benefits

• Longer time to impact
  • In my testing a high firing arc at max range gives an 8 second time to impact while a low firing arc gives one around 4.5 seconds.
  • This nerfs it against mobile units as it has to predict their movement further ahead and also gives them more time to dodge.
  • It can even be extended further by increasing the projectile speed, so that it fires even more vertically.
• Fixes inability to fire at certain elevations
  • Currently T2 arty can have issues aiming at higher ground. See this thread for an example
• Consistency with other artillery pieces

Ship FAF with PD + walls template by default

One of the most common pieces of advice I see for new players is to make a template of PD surrounded by walls. It's by far the most used template and even some more experienced players can be annoyed if they lose access to it for one reason or another.

Why not have FAF add the 4 (one for each faction) templates automatically? It'd be a QoL feature like mex assist for storage and should be fairly low impact to everyone who doesn't want it.

The game does have a disconnect recovery method, it's just currently broken. Devs were working on it until they had to urgently move to DDoS mitigation.

No, there has been no communication to FAF from the DDOSing party

Yes, this is due to DDoS

I don't think there's much else worth discussing here, and the thread has dissolved into insulting each other back and forth.

Developers are aware of connection issues and were already working on it before DDOS protection urgently required their time.

@nflanders said in Who owns the rights to the SC:FA source code?:

There is a chance that everything is now in the hands of Embracer

It's not, I asked them at the time of that purchase and they confirmed Supcom was not one of the IPs in that transaction.

@blackyps it depends why. If it doesn't have the projectile speed yes it wouldn't reach either way. It will help in other scenarios though.

(R8 my art skills)

@maudlin27

To my knowledge, yes, this has always been the behavior of all fighter-bombers

Servers are down, we haven't heard yet why

Link to Discord discussion