Oh, and I also wrote a lot of script to support predeployed units for GALACTIC WAR. Sadly, galactic war was very short-lived and will probably never come back

Im definitely the oldest user who still checks these forums. Ive written up the history once or twice before. I was also the author of the original FAFpatch. When zep first wrote in gpgnet chat that there needs to be an alternative for when gpgnet eventually fails, which I think he wrote in 2009 or 2010, I immediately understood what he ment and threw my unwaivering support behind ZEP and faf.

Zep did the client side faf development, and I did the FAF side lua modding. I was never a fantastic coder (Im not a programmer in my day job) so most of my work was finding the best FA mods and including them in the FAF patch. The first one was the shipwreck mod. Then I adapted it to work for hover wrecks and aircraft wrecks in water. Then I added the community bugfix patch that I found in the gpgnet vault (and which more talented modders than myself had made).

The only 3 large FAF features which I coded myself were the air/hover wrecks in water, the anti-offmapping script, and the shield interference script to nerf shield stacking.

Faf is still my favorite game ever, I just cant play it much anymore because I have 3 young children, so I can't just spend all day on my PC anymore ;-(

I havent seen a Billy in over 20 games. I'm sure it's fine as it is.

There's no good reason for it. I just quit games that start on these maps.

I no longer play FAF because I have kids. If not for their needs, I'd be on ideally everyday. I'd even participate in a tourney if I knew the real pros were "too busy" to show XD

I haven't changed my username is years on FAF. (PSN made me change it because it was offensive though )

@magge said in Kindergartener wording and design of the main page:

for whatever reason, the conversation veered off track into negativity

Yes, FAFers are quite the argumentative type lol

In my experience making missions, difficulty/challenge is a very hard thing to implement. Because FAF's economy is exponential, it's basically impossible to keep a consistent level of challenge without harshly punishing success. That is to say, it would be easy to simply nuke the player's base if they achieved more than 50 mass/sec income, and this would retain the challenge.... but it's also such a bastard, asshole move to do

@thomashiatt said in This idea will make you angry (don't read it):

Most 1v1 games you ma

The second half of the idea is (soft) requiring a T2 pgen for T2 mex upgrades as well.

Another one down. It's hard to keep at it.

@ftxcommando I'm really just asking what other people thought of the balance as depicted in the highest tier games. How dare I

I've made sure to watch every LOTS game on youtube. I have some thoughts.

1- Balance is generally good
2- In land battles, indirects and snipers are just bad. Aside from Vipers, t2 arty, and t1 arty, indirects were almost completely absent from LOTS games. I think I saw 2 trebuchet built in a game on twin river. No other games included them. I suspect the main issue is low hp of indirects - your tanks and heavy bots can survive not being supervised for 5 seconds because they have tanky hp. Indirects die too quickly.
3- Snipes are a bit too strong. Perhaps, when an ACU hits 0 hp, it falls to the ground and becomes a crippled ACU. Crippled ACU cannot move, shoot, build, regen, or be repaired, but can absorb another 10k or 20k before it goes nuclear. Just an idea.
4- T2 and T3 navy are too good. They scale much better than air and hover. Land simply cannot defend. Better shore-to-sea weapons would be more interesting than a nerf to ships, imo.

Any other thoughts about the top level games?

@madmax said in Deribus' Patent Pending Fatboy Rework:

i see no problems here

Obviously the front turrets should be low arc, the back turrets should be high arc. NO CLIPPING PROBLEM THEN

When I played, I and my opponent both had broken textures. All units and buildings were 100% black. The water was also red with black stripes in places.

Fix plx

Mex (and radars) shouldn't be upgradable until after an HQ of that level is obtained.

To clarify, I don't actually agree that this change is a good idea, but it's fun to think about. It would certainly make eco whoring harder if construction of a T2 mex required a T2 land (or air or navy) HQ and T3 mex required a T3 land (or air or navy) HQ.

If you really think about it, it's kind of silly that only mex (and radars) can be produced at one tech level before the fixed cost of that tech level is paid somewhere. T3 Air was actually balanced this way. Functionally, any T3 air production requires that a T3 pgen be constructed first. Therefore, on top of the T3 Air HQ, one also must invest in an expensive T3 pgen before T3 air can be used.

In addition to the tech balance, the same power balance can be applied. Currently, a T2 mex required about 60 energy income to upgrade, and a T3 mex takes I think like 400 (unassisted) If the tech nerf isn't enough, mex upgrade power consumption/cost can be nerfed to something requiring a higher tech pgen before upgrades are really feasible. A t1 mex upgrading to T2 could take 300 (500 - 300 = 200 left for other things), and a T2 mex upgrading to T3 could take 2000.

But these are just fun ideas. I know the balance team will never approve.

(*And of course the engineering suite upgrade on the ACU or an SCU on field would also count as the 'HQ' that allows T2/T3 mex and radars to be constructed.)

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

@sladow-noob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

There are reasons for every balance change

What was the reason for giving 90% of units and buildings 15% more vision radius across the board?

This was a good change and was needed.

See the title. I actually made this change many years ago in my mod, because it's fairly obvious to me that a TMD weapon is a much more obvious choice for a combat engineer than a crappy gun that can hardly kill T1 tanks. Let's discuss.

First, the main role of the Sparky is to build PD, both T1 and T2, near the front line. What naturally counters the PD? A TML or MMLs. Obviously the Sparkies should have TMD to pre-empt that counter. The PD will kill nearby ground units, so the sparkies don't need their own guns for that.

Second, to piggy-back off Deribus's call for a fatboy buff, it's obvious that a mobile TMD escort could greatly improve the fatboy's survivability against TML. And it would be nice to give UEF something unique. And have I mentioned the current pea shooter is basically useless?

@deribus I think your turret yaw change suggestion is quite frankly perfect. I 100% support.

I don't think changing the AA guns to TMD is a good idea. I agree that the fatboy needs mobile TMD, but let's be honest, the fatboy's AA is not bad. Sparkies should have TMD instead of their pee shooter, though. I can make a thread about that if you want. Using sparkies together with fatboys for TMD is a match made in heaven.

@snoog I would like you to find a single LOTS game in which they were used. (I believe I saw one, myself, but just one. And I wont tell you which it was )

@indexlibrorum If the balance team deems it necessary to reduce the raw DPS of the T2 static artillery for this purpose, then I'm sure it is a needed change. I will only add that a transition from low arc to high arc will likely change the effective DPS of the T2 static arty without needing to change the raw DPS because it's much more likely to miss entirely and less likely to hit valid targets behind the intended target even when nominal misses occur. Therefore, the high arc will reduce the raw DPS somewhat, but a range increase may make a nominal damage decrease necessary in addition to that.