Posts made by Exselsior

Dude is commenting on a forum for an rts game from 2007 and calling other people nerds. Nice

If you want a simpler economy, play Supcom 2. There’s a reason we’re here and not playing that game. Getting rid of mass storages is game breaking. If you want games like this on FAF then that’s a sim mod and not a change to the core game.

Actually quite like the idea of summits having a Gatling gun for close quarters support. Not sure balance would work for that to be added into core FAF but it’s a fun idea and feels right for them to have it.

I agree with @BlackYps here. I think there's a fine line to walk, and the wording, while probably too vague, is fair for a reasonable outcome I'd want:

Discussing moderation decisions in public is discouraged

I don't think mods walk that fine line and instead go the far direction and act like it's completely disallowed vs discouraged. I fully agree that people who get banned for saying hateful/stupid crap in cut and dry cases should not be allowed to run their mouths about how it's unfair publicly. We already disallow that and I see that kind of rhetoric get shutdown as is. I'm good with that, and I think everyone else here is also good with that.

The problem is when presumably well-meaning people get shut down when talking about valid hypotheticals, especially when it's actually a hypothetical that's not associated with a report. I don't see why we can't have this while also having the former, they're not mutually exclusive and I don't think allowing valid hypotheticals is going to noticeably increase the occurrence of the former scenario. The benefit of allowing these hypotheticals is clear: we can more clearly define and outline community rules and guidelines.

I get why people in the community are frustrated about this when the rule clearly uses the word "discouraged" and then mods come around and say:

While we welcome suggestions to the FAF rules or feedback on the moderation system in general, we will not allow the discussion of specific reports or moderation cases.

Which has no basis in the rules with how they're currently worded. Discourage in no way, shape, or form means that you categorically cannot do something. I would be discouraged from rushing a t2 mex in a 1v1 on a 5x5 map. I am not allowed to nuke my teammate's base because they took a mex that I thought should be mine. Those fundamentally do not mean the same thing. The wording needs to be updated if mods wish to actually claim this is a rule, but I would only be for an update that allows for hypotheticals and perhaps good faith discussions of actual reports, though that last part could be difficult to implement.

Yeah you’re fine, their acu is practically off map what else did they want from your gunships

When do sign ups close? I’m not sure yet if I’ll be in town that weekend

@zbc Nuggets is tying to help spread your mod. If it’s ranked a lot more people will get to use it. That’s up to faf mods/admins from the sounds of it. Mod looks good!

Make it whenever more than a single mex is selected and I’d probably use it just to keep my once every thousand games mistake of ctrl-k all t2 mexes when I meant to only do one from happening.

That is absolutely the case of skill issue despite rating.

Source: me, a 1.9k-2k player who has permanent skill issues every time I try to play

3 acus dying corsairs in the same game is not a balance issue. Corsairs aren’t making more than a pass or two if you have flak and they’re easy to dodge. If you let yourself get to low hp on the front lines with no air coverage or flak + fail to dodge that’s not a balance issue that’s a skill issue. Hell I think there’s a stronger argument for slightly buffing corsairs so they consistently kill t2 mexes with two hits than there is for nerfing them. Don’t quote me on that last part I could be talking out my ass there.

@nuggets wait does that mean you can do the same thing again when you upgrade the t2 Mex by giving it while it’s upgrading to get a third Mex on the same spot and so on?

Would it make sense to make it impossible to reclaim a tml to get mass back from it? This way it stays as a skill check but is more risky to make because you actually lose the mass you invest no matter what? Just a random idea, and not sure it’s a good one. It definitely has some flaws.

Another idea that might be impossible, but is optical jamming something they could do? So not only is there radar jamming, but they could have holographic images of the sacu projected randomly around them. This would only be counter by Omni or by paying close attention. That might be too op/unfun to play against but it’s an idea I suppose.

Edit: Could be something like it both projects images of the SACU but also other units like titans, parashields, flak, etc. These projections also have a radar signature if there’s no Omni. So basically just massively buffed radar jamming.

Agreed. Jamming on works on things you make a lot of and you make later in the game. Jamming on units that commonly end up fighting in vision range doesn't do much, and jamming on things you don’t make a lot of is also pointless. This leaves frigs as one of the few units where jamming is kind of nice on in practice, forces scouting like stealth does for cybran navy. Still weaker than stealth, but it does something. Even then it’s only relevant later in the game when you’ve got destros and battleships fighting outside of vision range.

That said, this could be a bad idea but I’m throwing it out there anyway. What if UEF SACUs get jamming and shield dome at the same time same slot. So shield dome gives them jamming as well. Additionally, they get buffed jamming that throws more radar signatures than normal jamming and also has a longer range.

That way they have counter intel in beyond visual range fights and it’s not an utterly useless add on when there’s vision on them, which is most fights.

There needs to be some level of justification for it to make finding out if it's possible worthwhile, and we've already gotten confirmation that it'll be a pain to implement.

I'm struggling to find any benefit whatsoever to being able to do this. The only change I've ever made to an SACU after it's built is adding teleport/sacrifice/tml and those are entirely one off cases where I wouldn't want a prebuilt of those cluttering up the build menu anyway. Misclicking a tele boi would royally suck if you don't realize it asap.

If it was just a feature I could ignore, then I'd be fine with it. This is not the case; it has balance implications that both myself and Nomander have pointed out. Not only regarding costs, but one of the weakness of tele bois is that they're telegraphed far in advanced. If you see a Sera or Aeon SACU getting upgraded while scouting, you know they're making tele bois and can plan accordingly. I have won and lost games with that knowledge from scouting, and with how strong it can potentially be it should be telegraphed like it is currently.

It would also change the balance on things like tele gc if you can have pre built tele bois due to how the math behind sacrifice works. Tele gc is a niche that happens maybe once every 500 games, but imo it’s a fun niche in chill games. Pretty sure prebuilt tele bois would be a massive buff to tele gc which I don’t think we want.

@sainserow Gotcha, makes more sense. The stat nerf seems like a little much without also lowering the build cost and time.

Touches on the point that no one builds unupgraded SACUs as it is, so what's the point/role for them? Are they now supposed to truly never be built? I suppose I actually don't have much of an issue with that other than it makes them a potential noob trap. Even then I don't think noobs are building unupgraded SACUs anyway, so maybe not much of one.

Related, I'd also like to know the overall goal of the SACU rework and what role(s) the balance team is envisioning for them so we can have a better understanding of the reasoning behind the changes.

@sainserow said in SACU Rebalance:

Why lower basic SACU stats? Now a basic SACU cannot even kill 3-4 harbs

A basic SACU is also 2100 mass vs the ~850 or whatever a harb is. So mass for mass, a base SACU probably shouldn't be able to kill even 3 harbs. Especially considering the SACU is also a t3 engineer that gives mass and energy.

Story time! And yes, I do tie this back to the thread.

To the surprise of no one, I'm a huge nerd and also the kind of nerd who has been into building computers since I was a kid. Around the lovely age of 13 I built my first rig that was capable of playing games, but to back up a little, my family wasn't well off. I knew I wanted to do this for a long time, so for almost 2 years leading up to that I did whatever odd jobs I could do as a kid to save money. Mowing lawns, dog sitting, whatever, until I could afford the parts myself. My dad then took me to GameStop, and the first thing I saw was the Forged Alliance gold pack that had very recently come out. It had a giant robot on the cover and was a strategy game. Sounded perfect. It was the only game I could afford, and the only game I played for a while on PC. This was late 2007.

I have quite literally been playing FA for longer than some people here have been alive.

I'm not the only person here who has played this game a long, long time. Of course people like me are somewhat resistant to change. Change needs to be damn well justified, because I love the game exactly how it is, perceived warts and all. Some things are no brainers. Performance updates have been amazing, they have no downsides and really do help keep the game alive. Seriously, thank you @jip for all the work there. Overall balance changes have been solid, the balance we have now might just be the best balance the game has ever had.

Other things like advanced target priorities, spread move, spread build, etc are great additions because they do nothing but add to the base game in a positive way. They add strategic depth, which is perfect for a game like FAF.

I'm not going into more depth here since this has been covered to death, but area reclaim doesn't add to strategic depth, it takes away. It makes all forms of reclaim other than factory attack move redundant and pointless most of the time. Good players no longer have to think "hey is it worth spending my apm on manual reclaim right now or is attack move good enough". With area reclaim, the answer is almost always area reclaim or factory attack move. It also does nothing for lower rated players, because for them the answer to that question already virtually always is it's not worth it and they should attack move.

Much like the rename debacle, I do not think communication here has been well handled. On both sides. Valid criticisms of area reclaim have gone essentially ignored.

All that said, out of the things I mentioned in my original post area reclaim was at the bottom of what I cared about. If anything the associated nerf to rock reclaim speed is worse than area reclaim in my mind, but I could be wrong there as I have so far done little more than watch the replay from Tagada. I have, at least, done that though.

Back to my first paragraph. I want FAF to stay successful. I also want FA Forever to embody the Forever part. This means changes that actually impact how the game is played need to clear a very high bar before they're implement. In some cases that bar is trivial to clear. In other cases not so much.

The idea that people should move on from FAF because it's a 20 year old dead game and there's no merit there is a depressing clown take that spits in the face of tons of great open source projects, not just FAF. Even if I don't agree with everything devs/mods/whoever does, I'm glad they try to help the game and put their free time in. Call me naive or whatever the hell you want, but I do think most here have the best intentions for the game regardless of if I agree with their vision.

Communication is hard, and I think we've had some of the worst communication breakdowns I've seen in the past few months on FAF. Hopefully I've added a bit of explanation for the views of people who might be more conservative with applying changes.

Oh, one last thing. Exactly zero people who are current high level players will have any issues still being top players unless the entire game is fundamentally reworked, and even then many of them would become top players quickly if they put the time in. Top players aren't top players due to some magic tricks or meta abuse, they're top players because they have great fundamentals. The idea that top players are against this because they'd have to relearn something and might lose their rating is comically wrong and misplaced.

I am certainly not quitting over area reclaim? But in this scenario where it's somehow worse than manual reclaim my point for opposing it is simply that it makes things more complicated for no reason. Why have it if it's attack move with extra steps? It's just confusing. I'm also not sure how you could somehow make it worse than manual reclaim like @TheWheelieNoob is saying.