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.

Because if it weren't then any and all moderation would be completely pointless. Get slapped with a 2 hour ban? Have your account deleted and spin up a new one, tada it's like nothing ever happened.

Take note Steam/GOG Link info stays even on deleted accounts. So even if you were allowed to make a new account after deletion, you won't be able to use your old Steam/GOG.

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

If you think thats the case, you haven't played faf for more than 3 games.

Hi, 2694 games here.

Specific slots having specific mass extractors is not a rule, and even attempting to make such a thing very quickly breaks down because in essence you're asking for different or differently enforced rules depending on the map.

• How would new players know? If I joined FAF and got into a Seton's game, start making mexes, and then my teammate starts reclaiming some of my structures, that's a terrible new player experience.

• It would require every moderator to know every assigned mex on who knows how many slots, and also keep up with the meta on those maps. Yeah every moderator probably knows what slot gets what mexes on Seton's, but how popular does a map have to be for these rules to kick in? Does Open Wonder have assigned mexes? I don't know.

• It would force un-optimal gameplay in weird situations. Let's take Seton's as an example. Beach gets nuked and air swoops in to rebuild quickly. Except beach is reclaiming their stuff because technically those are beach slot mexes.

• The current implementation immediately solves all mex ownership arguments. If your teammate built the mex, it's theirs. You can ask to have it, but they are also free to say no.

• It's about a crystal clear rule as we have right now. "Do not reclaim allied units or purposefully fire on allies." Your proposed solution would require a flowchart to even answer if you're allowed to reclaim a mex.

5 minutes would be considered fast

@LordVladimer said in Blocking players, dodge list in MM:

I dont want to carry usless massblockers (even massfeeders, I can say), that dont engage ACU at eargly game, dont spam, plaing some kind of SimCity instead of playing and provide literally 0 impact.

Play 1v1 then

You can contact the creative team here: https://discord.com/channels/197033481883222026/877542950773616690

Might have something to do with one of these changes?
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/5528
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/5518

More specifically that these changes may not have been extended to Nomads.

Do you have any high rated replays of T2 torpedo defence being built? Might be good to have some context in what situations you might want to build them

@IndexLibrorum said in T2 torpedo turrets are awful:

T2 torps being outranged only by (missle) cruisers would make more sense.

This is already the case for UEF and Sera. Their destroyers have equal range to T2 torpedo defence because they have missile cruisers for long range damage. Aeon and Cybran don't have missile cruisers so they have longer range destroyers.

That is an unreasonable expectation for new players