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

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

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.

Cool story bro

Came across this comment on a Gyle video:

Basically, it's like assassination except players don't lose once their ACU dies. The whole team loses when all of their ACUs die.

This almost certainly wouldn't be ranked, but might be an improvement over Full Share. Would people be interested if development time was put into this?

Better late than never!

@deribus said in Ideas for Mercy changes:

Mass cost: 300 => 250

• This makes it equal in mass cost to a TML missile for consistency and ease of remembering.

Universal scale: 0.15 => 0.2

• Makes the Mercy a little bigger as it was always tiny, especially for a T2 air unit

Health: 10 => 55

• This is still a pitiful amount of health, for reference the Aeon interceptor has 285. However it can now survive a single interceptor hit or 1-2 T1 MAA hits instead of disappearing with the slightest AA presence.

Movement changes were scrapped

Weapons!

This sped up gif shows 2 Mercies:

The first does a mere 500 damage over 10 seconds, but on a massive radius of 15. Could be useful for taking out chunks of T1 armies, softening T2, or maybe some T1 power or engineer killing in the base.

The second does 3000 damage over 10 seconds, but on a radius of 3.5. This does slightly more than the current Mercy's 2,500, but isn't as useful on mobile targets. Can be used on upgrading ACUs or sniping high value structures, kinda like a TML but with a little more control. 3k damage is comfortably enough to snipe UEF T2 mexes and pgens.

All the values above are meant to be a starting point for the balance team. I didn't feel a need to fine tune them myself and I'll leave that to those more qualified.

Anyway, mod is live now.

That'd be All Faction Quantum Gate. You can find and download it in the Mods tab of the client.

My guess is they initially had hover in development, and the unit design reflected that. Then they did some playtesting and realized what absolute cancer that would be.

I'll present some alternative Mercies to the balance team tonight or tomorrow morning, after some fine tuning.

I think people missed that I was joking with kennels reclaiming GCs. Offensive reclaim with kennel drones is a complete non-issue in current balance. It's only hives that you'll occasionally see do it.

I'll help out. If you want me as a Russian speaker to manage the project I'm happy to do that as well.

Dual Gap is a map where a single nuke defense can defend 3 players. It's heavily weighted in the nuke defense direction.

Bricks, Percies, Sprite Strikers and as per usual who cares what the Sera unit is called.

5 GCs assault a base supported by hundreds of ASF

Cloud of kennel drones comes in, reclaims the GCs, leaves

Can't wait for new DG meta where you give 6 players worth of units and eco to each M28 and see who wins