This is a borderline shitpost, but I have a job where my mind wanders sometimes, and I come up with lots of weird stuff. Last week, I was taken with the absurd idea of making a satirical song about FAF to the tune of 'My Favorite Things' from Sound of music. Don't ask why.

For better or worse, here is the result.

"ASFs spew from a surfaced Atlantis
Three engies lost to a single rushed Mantis
Point defence rapidly blasting their beams
These are a few of my favorite things!

2 minute bombers, and engineers juking
SMD snipes and the subsequent nuking
Seeing your enemies power-stalling
These are a few of my favorite things!

Fatboys out-ranging Galactic Colossus
Monkeylords stealthing and bloody Ahwassas
Allies and all their "assist me plz" pings
These are a few of my favorite things!

When the com snipes and CTRL-Ks
have me feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad!

Rapid-fire arty and tactical missiles
mass fabs exploding, reactors so fissile
Mazers and cloaking and teleporting
These are a few of my favorite things!

Soulrippers belching out plumes of pollution
Salvations finding their firing solutions
Flak tearing bombers apart by the wings
These are a few of my favorite things!

Walking destroyers and cruise missiles soaring
"Commander under attack" AI warnings
Cheap ghetto gunships full of mech marines
These are a few of my favorite things!

When the com snipes and CTRL-Ks
have me feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feeeeeeel... sooooo bad!

ARE YOU an avid fan of SupCom and BlackOps?
ARE YOU interested in a recurring Friday Night game group based in North America?
ARE YOU chill with playing with mediocre old people who complain about stalling their eco and how bullshit restorer death balls are when they could have just built flak?
ARE YOU comfortable using DISCORD and do you know what misophonia is, and how to set up push to talk?

If so, our group may be interested in meeting you!

We have been playing as a group every week for a number of years now, but life happens and we're down a few members and would like to get our weekly average back up to around 8 folks or so (we're at 5 or 6 currently). I asked about you, so here are some things about us:

WE typically play using BlackOps mod, and play a variety of larger two-team or three-team maps (depending on numbers) and the occasional FFA or Phantom X games when we have odd numbers. Team games usually have decapitation on so you are still in until all your team ACUS are dead.
WE start at 6:30Pacific/9:30Eastern and usually get 2 or 3 games in depending on length and brain power.
WE are not pros, we are not Joes. We are somewhere in between mostly? If you don't consider yourself that good, we will happily give you tips. If you can scrub the floor with most people by minute 20 in a Setons game, you'll probably not find us terribly challenging.
WE don't play a lot of meta maps like Dual Gap, Astro or YSNP, though sometimes Setons is cool.
WE aren't here to discuss politics, but fair's fair we lean a little left on average (though we have some awesome conservative folk who ain't bigots) so no sense coming back for voice chat every week if you're not down with people being people, and robots being robots.
WE swear and drink. By god, we do, but lets not get so absolutely shitcanned you can't play.

PM me if you're interested, or reply below to mock or ask questions and we'll figure something out. Don't make me regret this like I regret posting things on Facebook Marketplace, by god.

@spikeynoob excellent news!~ We'll test the crap out of it and let you know if we find anything.

Thank you

FWIW, we actually found these tombstones break the PhantomX mod's win conditions. When an ACU pops the rest of their forces don't disappear.

Didn't report it because we assumed they were reverting after this week.

Otherwise I don't have a horse in this race, but maybe another reason to make it optional.

We were talking about AI in our games last night and something that came up is that none of the AI know how to play PhantomX. Is this something that you think would be possible in the future? I imagine the simple part is teaching an AI that they need to break if they're the Phantom, but more complex is simulating how they would come to decide who the other phantoms are and who are the innocents.

Just a fun thought. Played a few games with M28 though and watching it kite me out is infuriating. Great job. lol

Never underestimate the value of the participation marks.

And yes, it's on Assassination. lol.

But we've played several Phantom games now and every time a player dies, their stuff stays around. They are reported as dead, they count as an innocent or phantom death toward game victory, they cannot issue any orders -- but anything their base was doing continues to happen; factories still produce units, waypoints are followed, etc.

We usually play modded, but I can reproduce in vanilla with all mods off. Started a couple of weeks ago. Easily reproducable even with AI -- just build a few things and then ctrl-k your ACU. Your buildings will all remain. You will be able to select, but not issue any new orders.

If you want a replay, we did https://replay.faforever.com/18038205 last week. Takes 58 minutes for first death tho (dark green).

Let me know if you have any questions.

FWIW, our playgroup digs this change. It's SO good being able to maneuver a couple of Atlantises while they continue to work on building planes. Big thumbs up to whomever we can credit with the idea.

Crashes at the 40-minute mark and people with potato computers. What else?

New 'Mod' version of Phantom-X worked great for a week or two, but now after the latest Dev patch, it's doing the same thing as the previous version and then some:

When ACU dies, player counts as dead, but units and buildings remain.
NEW sometimes players don't count as dead and can continue to play! (Game will never count as over).

https://replay.faforever.com/19423345

FWIW, we actually found these tombstones break the PhantomX mod's win conditions. When an ACU pops the rest of their forces don't disappear.

Didn't report it because we assumed they were reverting after this week.

Otherwise I don't have a horse in this race, but maybe another reason to make it optional.

AI uses TML very well to pick off valuable targets, so you really don't want them to set up. It's going to take proactive scouting to find where they are and some quick bomber or gunship strikes to take them out.

Defensively, the upside is that T2 TMD is relatively cheap and can be spammed, but if you're playing for map control you clearly can't defend everything, so going on the offensive is better.

Alternate option: Play cybran and get T3 loyalist bots ASAP and watch those missiles bounce back to the launchers that sent them. lol

Update: This post helped nab a great player who has been a hoot to have with us, so I figure it's worth a bump a month later to try again.

We also have a couple new players that we've gotten into the game, so there's some fresh meat mixed in as they learn to GIT GUD.

But averaging 5-8 players on Friday nights and we'd love to bump that up to 6-10, so if you're a fun person who loves the game win or lose, and who enjoys pivoting to some novelty modes like PhantomX and King of the Hill when we have odd numbers, give me a reply or a PM.

Friendly reminder from last night to wait until battleships pass overhead before firing your Billy Backpack from underwater. lol

@Jip I like this idea, and FWIW, using SMD to kill a satellite also exists in BlackOps with the 'Artemis' Aeon Experimental (nuke) Satellite.

Which is great, although the fact that SMD can shoot down the Artemis and not the Novax currently is... weird.

I'm in the same boat if it makes you feel better. I had a rating back from the early days playing and then i started playing in closed groups with friends (and mods) and the rating hasn't moved in a decade.

Would still love some help tracking this down if anyone who knows their way around a log file could take a look, or give me some idea what I'm looking for. We play with a few mods, but nothing obscure, and these desyncs are recent and seem to be ruining at least 1 game every week or two. I know I had Docsyn turn on the FAF Debugger. Hopefully that's reflected in the log.

We were talking about AI in our games last night and something that came up is that none of the AI know how to play PhantomX. Is this something that you think would be possible in the future? I imagine the simple part is teaching an AI that they need to break if they're the Phantom, but more complex is simulating how they would come to decide who the other phantoms are and who are the innocents.

Just a fun thought. Played a few games with M28 though and watching it kite me out is infuriating. Great job. lol

game_24325122.log

Here is the log from Docsyn if any of y'all could spare your eyes to look into it for a moment. I've combed through it but don't know what to look for.

Thx in advance.

Our playgroup is trying to solve some of its own desync issues. I am assuming that this snippit from my log suggests that Docsyn is the person whose logs will shed more light? I have asked them to send them to me.

But what intrigues me is that I always assumed it was just mods or perhaps bad installs that caused this, but y'all are saying hardware or drivers can cause game desyncs too? That's wild.

I'll probably post some logs here soon as soon as he gets them to me. It's not happening every game, but ruining one game a week is annoying enough.

@deletethis It's fine. Time zones have got us all by the nuts. Even our group is spread across 4 of them. Not much you can do.