I vote we fix by deleting it from the game

@morax said in "What will you do if you lose the election" and 5 Questions for FTX:

5. Have you ever donated your own money to a FAF event? Why or why not?

No comment on the rest but why do we care if a college student is donating money to FAF? Hell why would we care if anyone, college student or not, is donating money to FAF when they clearly put time into it? For all we know he’s broke as hell, and if you know he’s not it’s still kind of a strange question if he’s putting a lot of time in anyway imo.

Hi yeah it’s fucking stupid to hide global rating. I’ve stayed mostly quiet on this thread because it’s pure idiotic cancer, but if Mizer is here calling out bullshit I guess I will too. Getting rid of global rating is completely and utterly asinine, full stop. I don’t know what breed of ignorant elitism leads to people thinking it’s a good idea, but for the sake of FAF I’d like none of that in our community leadership.

What do you even think getting rid of that will accomplish? Congratulations you made any sort of manual balance in global games impossible unless you know every single player in the lobby! Wow! Amazing! Congrats, you took away a nice psychological trick to get people to play more games because seeing rating go up is fun. That’ll really help player retention! I’m sorry that you’re compensating for the fact some (in your mind) gaptard is higher rated than you globally, cry me a river.

Okay thanks I’ll get off my soapbox now. Have a nice day.

Firstly, there was a disappointing lack of math in this. I think that's because what math there might be here doesn't support your premise.

Secondly, have you tried... not killing the lowest rated enemy ACU and instead go kill eco or something actually useful to kill? Or maybe tried pressuring the apm of the person who gets the base because managing two bases well is hard? You know, the strategy part of the strategy game?

@thewheelie said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

@exselsior said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

It’s even worse than what @CorvathraNoob said because a single sat breaks t2 shields covering mexes.

No it doesnt. And even if it does it will be so time inefficient its not worth doing it at all

Just for fun I quickly tested this to make sure, it takes ~5 firing cycles and a little over a min of game time for a sat to break a uef t2 shield and kill a t3 mex. Now, the thing here is that the only maps where sats are cancer are high eco maps with spread out mexes. Meaning often the mexes will be surrounded by mass fabs. Killing the mass fab rings kills the t3 mex even faster if I am not mistaken, was too short on time to thoroughly test that part though.

Is this time inefficient? Probably. I can test this later but I'd bet on the novax killing distant mexes faster than a t3 arty would though, assuming mexes are spread out.

@arma473 said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

I can think back to a match where I made something like 6 novax and they wouldn't break the enemy's shields. They made a significant number of shields but they spent a lot less on the shields than I spent on the novaxes.

You're doing it wrong. You don't build 6 sats unless you're doing that purely for laughs. You build one or two and then a Mavor. Good luck defending vs a mavor and 2 sats without having a ton of hives + sera t3 shields. And at that point unless you have a para all you can do with your eco is assist shields.

Edit: Also you should have synchronized the sats firing if you had that many. It would take a very large amount of assistance to defend against 6 sats on the exact same firing cycle.

@rezy-noob said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

so far,i haven't seen a single game where novax spam beats arty grid spam and the single usage of a novax efficiently can probably be the t2 mex hunt if they are split across the map,aka setons but that's it?
i was also thinking about killing t1 assist,but making novax in order to do that isn't the best idea

Same thing I said to Arma, if you're just spamming sats with no arty then you're not using them effectively imo. It's sats + arty, not just spam sats. That combo brings down shields better than just sats do, and then the sats kill the shield generators the instant they go down to arty. Just arty and there's a decent chance it misses or lands after other shields come back up. With a well managed sat if there's any blip in the shields you start picking off shield gens.

That being said, on smaller and more compact maps sats make less sense than purely spamming arty, unless you don't have Aeon on your team then they're very nice for vision and situationally worth it.

Honestly the only situations where sats are arguably op are almost exclusively high eco 20x20 team games with spread out mexes, but they are obnoxious as hell when they are useful in a way that nukes, bombers, and arty aren't. Their perfect intel + perfect accuracy with decent damage is a pretty strong combo. That's just my opinion though.

I've played SupCom on and off since its release back in 2007. A big appeal for me is that it has had something for a wide variety a play styles or level of investment. What I mean by this is that back in the GPGNet days I was playing some other games more competitively with some friends and didn't really take this game that seriously, I just liked having massive survival battles or going through the campaign with different and usually troll strategies or self imposed limits like air only or defensive structures only. On the opposite side of that, much more recently I've been on a kick to start getting better at this game instead of playing chill games with zero effort or improvement and it's amazing the amount of depth there is. There's something for every level or type of player in this game.

Some more specific stuff:

• The scale
• Strategic zoom. This is one of the biggest reasons I never got into Starcraft despite giving it a few tries. Feels so limiting to not be able to zoom all the way out.
• The amount of outplay and comeback potential in the game at all stages
• Huge skill cap - even the best players have room for improvement
• The community - for keeping the game alive and all the new content that is added to it
• The community - for the nice good players willing to help not as good people get better
• Still plenty of new strategies or builds to try if you're feeling creative

I'm for adding it for a a few reasons. Obviously people here know my bias towards it, but here's why:

• It's a good and dynamic map that has at least a bit of everything. Very few maps have everything in the way that Seton's does imo.

• More navy maps in pool is nice

• It's a very high skill cap map - I don't really like the Setoner's have BOs argument. My reasoning for that is similar to what FTX said in the thread Cheese linked: You can go with aggressive non-meta play and absolutely trash most Setoners under 1800. There aren't a lot of traditional Setons only players that wouldn't work pretty consistently against. You can just go first bomber from any slot and crush your opp if they mostly just play setons and you have at least some level of competency in eco scaling in general. Should we remove EOTS (I think that's the right map I'm thinking of...) from ladder pool because it's free win if you know the meta of winning through air dominance and you opp doesn't? Should we remove Seraphim glaciers because having optimal transport timing making use of the spread out reclaim at start optimally can easily win the game for you? What about The Ditch and other maps where if you have a basic BO it gives massive advantage over someone who doesn't? I don't really hear much about those outside of lower ranked people complaining about people having BOs for ladder maps. This sounds the same.

• At least with Seton's even if people have sweaty BOs the meta is obvious what you do in general, the whole supposedly not knowing the meta on that map makes no sense. Sure I'm biased, but the meta on setons is more obvious than most other maps in tmm pool imo. Clear cut air and navy slots, clear mid mass that should be obvious to walk your com to pretty quickly, etc. It's not like other maps where no one knows they should be t3 air or whatever.

• The toxicity argument sounds like complete bs as Spikey pointed out, outside of my next point.

• People who ctrl k are being dicks and that's a them problem. Maybe they should actually be getting warnings from mods when ctrl k'ing in tmm matches and wasting people's time. I don't ctrl k on shitty 4v4 10x10 guncom rush maps even though I hate that shit, it's boring, and has a super low skill cap.

• Some have complained about the lag in late game seton's, a couple things there: Jip's wonderful work has largely made that a thing of the past outside of people playing on potatoes and there are other 20x20 maps with high mex and reclaim counts in the pool as well and no one is arguing those should also go away.

Edit, one more point: I think I saw somewhere where someone said a setoner could beat someone 300 rating higher by virtue of knowing the map. I really don't think most 1500 rated setoners are beating a (solid) 1800 rated tmm player unless the 1800 is beach and that's mostly fine anyway. Only exception might be on air, and definitely if you get a certain 1500 who is way stronger on air than other slots. Can count on one hand the number of people who fall into that category though and none of them play tmm afaik

@blackyps said in Client v1.6.0:

This whole think makes him look not like a potential developer or an interested player, but like a script kiddie that needs to drop his "cool advice" that he read on the internet. The other option is that it is intentional trolling.

Of course in reality it could be different, but that is my impression from his behaviour.

This was my impression too when I read his post. It's just bad form in general to come into here and immediately accuse all the devs hard work as being "for nothing."

If he's legitimately an experienced dev he certainly doesn't have the how to communicate aspect of being an engineer down, and him commenting on JVM thread allocations really does seem like a script kiddie trying to be smart.

I like that this thread is here and that we can post on it, and I am pretty sure that if I came in here and said something like "hey, I know making the app fully non-blocking can add a lot of complexity in some scenarios, did you guys see a lot of improvements from making this change?" I probably wouldn't have been met with the same reception this guy did.

Though I also took a look at the pr and didn't get the feeling that it really made things more complex anyway. Not that me skimming through a 12k line pr in a language I don't use professionally for 5 minutes means much.

@archsimkat Makes sense and I didn't think about it in terms of radar being slow to actually show new signatures. Thanks for the clarification on that.

Honestly this is a perfect example of why the "why" is so important - players can learn from it. Tbh I thought that radar was just buggy sometimes and slow to actually show up, but it makes a lot more sense that it's just waiting on a certain game tick for it to refresh. While this isn't particularly useful information in the vast majority of in-game scenarios it is nice to know and there are a lot small details non pros who are interested in learning can pick up from balance changes.

@thomashiatt As I said, TMM is already nearly dead, and is effectively dead at most of the times I can play which is really unfortunate because I do like TMM. Adding more matchmaker queues is not a viable option. People are going to want their custom games.

This is my issue with removing global rating, the people wanting to do it are clearly out of touch and/or only get to play at peak times and are coming up with compromises that only work for a % of the player base.

The issue is that there are competitive as well as casual global games. There’s a competitive Seton’s scene, and please don’t give me some bullshit about Seton’s bad because you don’t like it or whatever. There’s a more general competitive high level team game scene on various maps, and trying to replace that with a 4v4 TMM just sounds rough for tons of reasons. People aren’t as willing to sit in a queue for as long as they’ll sit in a lobby where they can talk to a specific subset of players for their game they’re waiting on for instance. They’ll want specific maps and we’ll have more map list drama like we have with Ladder. Manual balance to help incorporate larger rating differences in off hours isn’t possible.

We already have an unranked global scene. Any modded game. Any survival game. Maps like Thermo. We have plenty of players that only do that. We need something for those that don’t fall into those categories, the unranked global and the ladder warriors.

If people had actual ideas on how to replace it that fill the role of global rating without being global rating then I’d be less against it, but all the ideas I hear are, well, shit.

Let’s get the achievement page working and working consistently. Let’s get more stats about players available, like w/l and number of time played per map and similar stats for factions. Let’s get more avatars available for lower rated people to show off things they’ve done. Actually do some of these and then come talk about removing global rating. Stop with the “well make a queue for everything and it’ll be okay” bs, because it’s bs for many people.

Huh I could have sworn it was changed back or something, felt like I've had a few times where inties stayed just out of range trailing the transport without shooting. But you're right, looks like the transports top speed is 14.3 vs 15 for inties.

^ tl;dr nerf Janus.

Jokes aside, the whole T2 air is only for snipes sounds a lot like the people who don't like full share. People tunnel vision on the acu like nothing else exists. T2 air is very strong and underused. I almost completely stopped using T2 air for snipes once I got better than the 1200-1500 range or something like that unless someone is clearly asking to have their acu die to t2 air easily. I regularly use t2 air to snipe eco though.

I think delaying t3 air doesn't really solve much. It makes t2 even stronger and just delays the issue - people will rush t3 air regardless if the map calls for that. T2 drops are already kinda op given T2 transports are slightly faster than inties and having asf a few minutes later makes them that much more oppressive, right now I feel that they're balanced out a bit by only having a relatively narrow timeframe where there are no asf to counter them.

I've won air and seen it won more often with mass inties or inties + swifties/janus vs t3 air more often than I've won with t1 land vs t3 land. Yes air has an impact faster than land, but that's only to an extent. A relatively quick t3 land drop can be brutal for example.

@comradestryker said in detect game lag in lobby:

The current lobby system only shows when a player's ping is over 500 - Which in my opinion, is a little high and not a reasonable ping level.

This is an old myth regarding this game. Each game engine tick happens every 500ms, if your ping is 499ms constantly it's not really different than having a 50ms ping because both delays are less than a single game tick.

FAF is probably one of the least toxic multiplayer games I’ve played. If you’re constantly running into toxicity then idk what to tell you.

@ftxcommando said in Why seraphim dont have RAS?:

He didn't prove anything lol, do I need to get Yudi himself in these threads to tell you it's terrible or what?

I want that to happen to just see dudes argue with Yudi of all people about this

@serpentor said in Why seraphim dont have RAS?:

@exselsior said in Why seraphim dont have RAS?:

many things said

The issue is not:
-that sera needs ras bois to be competitive
-that there are many ways to win a game

No one is saying that:
-games can't be won other ways
-that ras bois must be built

And there's no need for the various strawman arguments which are not relevant to the topic here. Once more, for those who seem to be lacking in basic comprehension -

respectfully; what is the balance teams current logic (and i have no doubt they do acutally have one) on why the Sera team do not have RAS SACUS as an option. That's it.

You're quite literally saying what the balance team's logic is. If you don't need it and they aren't necessary for winning the game then all factions don't need their own flavor of it. All factions have a t1 tank because that's kinda necessary and would be crazy if say UEF didn't have the Striker and had to go t2 for a tank. There's no core requirement for factions to be balanced with all having a ras boi, so they don't. Sera has by far the best tele bois, sucks other factions don't have that.

I have probably ~1k games played on Seton's at the ~1800+ level by this point. Sera doesn't need ras bois to be competitive. The times you see guys like Yudi win games with epic ras boi spam are also games Yudi could have won 50 other ways. Hardly ever is ras boi spam the truly best way to win the game, and for the less than 1% of the time that they actually are the best way to win who cares? There are games that I would have won if I was Sera and could have made a washer. Should we give the other factions a washer? There are games I lost because the only game ender I could make was a scathis and I really needed a mavor or para + salv spam. Should we give every faction a mavor like weapon? No and no.

Edit: Those games I lost that I might have won as a different factions are still skill issues on my part. If you replaced myself with Yudi/Tagada/Farms or whoever they probably would have won.

Lol. News flash: RAS bois are a meme and nowhere near as good or efficient as you seem to think they are.

@cyborg16 said in Nuke Sub Rework:

@exselsior said in Nuke Sub Rework:

make strategic subs T4, give them powerful long range torpedos, and leave their tac missiles and strategic missiles as is.

Expecting them to perform in three roles is a bit much. Most T4 (and most units in general) have a single role, and sometimes are half-way capable in a second.

I don't think this is 3 roles anymore than the czar has three roles as good aa, good anti ground, and a factory + air staging. It's at best two roles as a strong torpedo ship + mobile SML, and even then as I said I'd want the torpedos to be the point. The TML has always been mostly pointless and only gets real value when the enemy makes what's arguably a big mistake. It's stupidly easy to counter nuke sub tml.

Another option to nerf the nuke capability might be to require a SML (like T2/T3 factories require an HQ). Then nuke-subs may be a viable path to exhaust SMD missiles.

This drastically weakens the nuke aspect of it when that's already quite niche as FTX pointed out in the main post.

Here's an out-there idea: make strategic subs T4, give them powerful long range torpedos, and leave their tac missiles and strategic missiles as is. Cybran has stealth and maybe slightly faster move speed, Aeon has a shield, UEF has jamming + more hp. Sera probably needs something here but not sure what tbh. Buff their t3 subs damage and health and increase its cost? Give them their own strategic sub? Not sure.

To go even further, add one more minute to the nuke build time and make it the same damage as a land based nuke, but now it takes two extra minutes to build and not the current one extra. The nuke sub nuke arbitrarily doing less damage doesn't make much sense and isn't something a new person might realize.

Something key here: most of the balance and cost for this would be around them being powerful long range torpedo support. The nuke and tml are, to an extent, fun extras. I'd want this unit to be able to be built with no intention of using the nuke. The nuke is to mostly make it viable after navy is won, like battleships are with their shore bombardment, and the tml is just too fun to snipe SMDs with when they're not paying attention to get rid of.

My issue with billy nuke subs is basically that I think as soon as the first one is fire you now have a very tedious back and forth of building and sniping tmd or having enough cruisers in the right spots which sounds not super fun to play. I also think billy subs would be very apm intensive to max their value and high level navy play is already highly apm intensive imo.

Quick edit: To be clear I would not be for normalizing damage between nuke subs and static launchers without increasing the build time by at least a full minute, and that's at a minimum. Way too strong otherwise imo. Also, I suppose this wouldn't necessarily have to be a t4 unit.