Currently sparkies have equal GuardScanRadius (GSR) to engineers, which results in sparkies being worse at reclaiming when attack moving or patrolling when enemies are nearby.

Guard scan radius is the distance a unit will initiate pursuit of enemies/reclaim from their patrol or attack move route. Its the reason why when you give an attack move engys may run backwards to get the trees behind them or branch off to get reclaim adjacent to the route.

The issue with Sparkies and having an equivalent GSR to engys is that, the sparky will switch from reclaim mode, to attack mode. Once an enemy enters the 26 radius, and the sparky is not actively sucking up a prop for reclaim, it will beeline for the enemy to engage in combat and stop reclaiming.

Reducing the GSR to 8, is a trade off, that makes the unit require more precision in patrol and A-move orders, but will not enter pursuit mode until a unit gets within 8 range.

This leaves a nice 8-18 range where the sparky will defend itself from enemies while still reclaiming.

The change makes sparkies worse at reclaiming uncontested, and with imprecise orders. Yet better at reclaiming when a enemies or engys are within 26-8 distance of it.

Video of default 26 GSR

Video of 8 GSR

Anti-Torps on subs is not a fun, engaging or decisive game mechanic. It would be like if T3 air had "aa defense-flares" which let them ignore a SAM, T3AA or cruiser missile every 2 seconds.

A unit is in a domain that only three (and a half) weapons can damage it- torpedos, depth charges, reclaim and ground fire.

Of those four torpedo's is infinitely more prevalent and less micro intensive. Torp bombers should drop depth charges that are immune to torpedo defense like they did for years.

Torpedo defense belongs on destroyers and torpedo boats.

FAF's Issues with Transports and Engineers

Forged alliance has a robust queuing system and transport system, that seem to be at odds with one another in plenty of cases, especially engineers.

• 1. When an engineer is on a transport, it cannot receive any orders barring an unload order.
• 2. When an engineer with queued orders are on a transport its almost impossible to determine what order is has vs the other engineers.
• 3. In the selection bar, its impossible to see which engineer, is assigned what.

So simple efficiency such as, dropping six engineers on six different mexes to build them all queued up is borderline impossible.

Previously one needed to ensure they got on 1 by 1 in the right order, and that you remembered which order you queued the mexes. Or the player needed to drop them off one by one without a queued build order and just give the order as they land.

Additionally, we all know the most efficient way to eco generally is to have a cluster of engineers upgrade a mex 1 by 1. However, engineers are the slowest (non ACU/scathis) unit in the game. Making travel time a major factor to be worked around. Resulting in an ideal eco having a couple groups of engineers alternating pause orders. to mitigate travel issues.

Queuing up transportation in-between was possible but extremely tedious and error prone.

DropEngie mitigates and simplifies these problems

With one hotkey both of these issues are solved.

Select engies->hold shift place a move order->hold shift, right-click on transport->hold shift queue a mex for each engie selected->distrubute orders->once engies are loaded into transport, select the transport -> press the hotkey, release the hotkey-> hold shift and left-click on the queued mexes-> the right engie will drop on the right mex everytime

WIP at some point i may have nice gifs and guides but currently watch the video and read the description.

Video Overview

REQUIRES REUI

Options to exclude control groups for land selection and to include torps under the regular bomber hotkey.

Four hotkeys for air combat management:

• "Select Fighters" selects all friendly fighters, excluding any that are currently excluded.
• "Select Bombers" selects all friendly bombers, excluding any that are currently excluded.
• "Select Gunships" selects all friendly gunships, excluding any that are currently excluded.
• "Select Torps" selects all friendly gunships, excluding any that are currently excluded.
• "Exclude / Include Air Combat from Selection" toggles whether the selected fighters, gunships, torp and bombers are excluded from the selection hotkeys.

Adds Five pairs hotkeys for land management:

1. "Select all onscreen mml/sniper", "Add selected units to MML/Sniper selection"
2. "Select all onscreen directfire", "Add selected units to Direct Fire selection"
3. "Select all onscreen land AA", "Add selected units to Land AA selection"
4. "Select all onscreen shields/deceivers", "Add selected units to Shields/Deceivers selection"
5. "Select all onscreen direct/fire experimentals", "add selected units into Direct Fire experimental Selection (when engineers are selected this hotkey interrupts pathfinding instead)."

The simplest QOL change would be to increase the assist range to 15, so it serves the dual purpose of being a reverse guide.

This is amazing

This looks tremendous. Please offer them in 1440p and 4k friendly sizes! I know there is a console command/setting to scale the icons, but that tends to distort them.

@BlackJaguar This is frankly the only right answer. ACUs, GC & Salem are the poster children of the franchise.

I'm not sure if you can disable GSR.
But a super low GSR they will literally only reclaim things on the line of the attack move.

GSR set to 2

Amazing, I was thinking about making something like this in a webapp, this is fantastic. No more going into skirmish to test your templates!

oh this is a webapp, just needs to be deployed on a site

This is fantastic. And opens the door to all types of lobby skins and QOL features. Is this supported/Ban safe?

Okay animations aren't safe. But things like LOD cut off and HP bar size are almost certainly replay/desync safe. And could potentially be exposed for UI modding

@Saver Loved the animations and your factory work. Shame its wrapped up.

As an aside. Has there been any consideration to expand the white list of "sim safe" .bp values to change? It seems like plenty of fields (LOD cut off, HP bar size, selection size, selection priority) are all desync/sim safe. And could be exposed to UI mods similar to the way strategic icons are.

If animations are sim safe, users could have whichever animation or mix animations they like. Its just a shame that someone like Saver has to climb a mountain to get his work integrated. When users would 100% pick and choose which of Saver's animations they like if it were enabled as a UI mod.

@BlackYps You're concerns are valid. And this map drawing desync situation is perhaps a worse case scenario. Of creating a new issue, that chameleons as a standard issue of FAF, while not being so overt and clear, to cause an immediate rollback/investigation.

Although some of the engine patches seem to be working client side without causing desyncs in game or replays. FAmods, Allied Radar Rings and Minimap Range Rings for example. Holding back new QOL features or mechanics from being tested due to fear of lack of testing seems counterintuitive.

There is a consideration, that perhaps engine patches (along with exciting/experimental balance changes to entice hosting) should be pushed to beta-balance to get testing and samples. I don't know if there are metrics for the most played beta-balance/develop period, but when the SACU changes were live it seems that we got a large sample of games to pull information from.

Yeah the pressure and negative feedback directed at team leads for FAF issues (which they rarely had anything to do with) is unfair, and generally helpful.

Thanks for all you do!
Cheers,

If this has a working noah unit cannon in FA my dreams since 2010 have come true.

If you have REPO please share, thank you again and cheers.

Amazing, I was thinking about making something like this in a webapp, this is fantastic. No more going into skirmish to test your templates!

oh this is a webapp, just needs to be deployed on a site

I have not tried it but by "slaved to their carriers" what does that entail? AI control only? limited radius from carrier?, Dies when carrier dies?

A mod to gift units produced out of specific factories, to a specific ally. Still in beta currently, but will be put on vault soon.

Units marked for rally gift are filtered, if mixed with non-rally gifted units. Can hold shift to box select anyway, choosing individually also works. higher resolution video.

Factories are marked, with the ally you've chosen to gift to, and the units coming out are marked too.

If you have the mod enabled, when allies use it their factories are marked, and their way points are marked.

Hotkey Support.

Icon in orders pan of factories. Right click icon to cancel.

Use mouse, numrow or numpad to choose ally.

Escape rightclick or zero to escape menu.

To clarify, one needs teh FAF_Metrics_exporter UI mod, and the website opened and logged into?

@Firv
All engies must have orders before boarding the transport. Send a clip of the issue. The order you drop them in does not matter, the engie with the build order closest to the mouse cursor when is selected to disembark next.