Posts made by John73John

@mostlostnoob Dang it... alright, thanks for your help. I'll look around and try to find what's up.

@mostlostnoob I tried downloading it 3 times and it's still not working. The download will go for a bit (very slowly) and then stop because of "Network Error". If I try to resume it says "Failed - Needs Authorization"

By the way that link appears to be the same URL as the one I was using before.

@mostlostnoob Alright I'll give that a try

I'm trying to install the FAF client on a new machine, downloading it from the link on this page. The download starts but it goes extremely slow, around 20 or 30 KB/s. At some point during the download, it might be after only 10 seconds or it might be an hour and a half and almost finished, it stops and says "network error". I try to resume but it immediately stops again and says I'm not authorized.

I have an account and I'm logged in and everything. I've restarted it at least 20 times today and it just won't work. Is there something going on with the server? Or some other reason it would be doing this? It's not my internet -- I can stream movies on high def with no problem. I did all the usual stuff, like restarting my computer and trying the download with no other programs running.

@nooby said in [simple mod request] Commander teleporter balance change:

I would prefer if teleport required a large amount of instant energy in use - Like the eye of riahhne. This would make it easier to scout by the large ( think 20 + ) E storages required.

Making it more expensive use wise just means you can stall your eco for a few more seconds then forcing storage.

I like the gradual charge-up (too overpowered if you can just instantly escape from danger) but stalling your eco by a significant amount (dropping your shields in the process) is never a good thing.

@melanol said in [simple mod request] Commander teleporter balance change:

Cybran laser coms would love it.

How so? Making it more expensive per-use would make it harder to TP in and out.

The issue is this: building the ACU teleporter basically requires a bunch of extra generators and storage to avoid crashing your economy, but once it's built nothing else needs energy on that scale so it largely goes to waste unless you suddenly decide you need to spam shields or something. Once it's built, using the teleporter is so comparatively cheap it might as well be free. So if someone could make this mod, that would be awesome:

-- Teleporter build cost reduced from 1.5M to 30K (that's right, it's only 2% as expensive as before!)
-- Teleporter energy use increased from 100K to 500K (5x as expensive as before)

So equipping a teleporter still requires that big power station, but you have to keep it around if you want to keep teleporting.

I like your idea of making TML/MML go through shields. "Just put up a shield it'll stop everything" no longer works, you would now need more TMD and if there are a lot of missiles some could still get through.

@Psions UEF doesn't have regen. Also sometimes a PD gets down into the red and another attack wave is coming -- better to repair it fast than have to build a new one and start over with the veterancy.

@Sprouto Alright, fair enough.

If I were designing the game from the ground up, this is how I would handle submarines:

-Submarines (when submerged) are only vulnerable to torpedoes and depth charges
-There's no such thing as "underwater vision". You can see your own/allies' subs, but submerged enemies will never be visible. If you have sonar coverage then you'll see a grey "submerged unit" icon. The only exception would be EXP units, they'd have the circle icon. Sonar can see how big it is, but that's it. No indication of which enemy player or its remaining health. No way of telling if it's even a sub or an assault bot walking across the sea floor.
-Subs don't provide vision either, only sonar. So they can only tell the location of surface ships, not whether it's a cruiser or destroyer or which player owns it.
-Make destroyers/torpedo boats and UEF Battlecruiser more anti-sub specialized. How this is done would vary between factions. They could have better torp defense, use depth charges instead of torps (meaning a sub's torp defense does nothing), built-in sonar... I'm sure there are other possibilities.

What I was thinking was something like this: if you manually tell an ES to do something, it will stick to that job until you give it a different command or the job is finished (building or repairing something) or forever (factory or SML). If the ES just picked a job automatically, then it's allowed to change jobs again every few seconds if a higher priority one is available. You can override this by telling it to do something else, so you can still rush your nukes.

Another thing I thought of is the range limit on UEF drones. Often I CTRL-click a drone to get several in an area and tell them to do something, but I don't realize that I also selected a bunch of drones from the front lines. So I pulled everybody off repair duty because even though it's way outside their range limit I can still manually order them apparently. So, I think making it so they'll ignore orders outside their base's range would be better.

@Sprouto said in Atlantis:

Actually, it's no mistake, it's just an unintended side effect ... I think it was just overlooked...

So, a mistake then? Those are awfully fine hairs you're splitting there.

"No, teacher. I didn't make a mistake on the assignment. I just overlooked that part of the question. It was an unintended side-effect of not reading the whole thing before filling in the answer. Full credit please?"

What's wrong with players "having" to engage in submarine warfare? This is one of very few RTS games that even have subs, and for me that's one of the main reasons I play... but if they're made so weak and ineffective by the groundfire mechanic, then what's the point? If you don't want to play with subs, just disable them in the unit restrictions.

The thing about depth charges is the "depth" part -- they sink to a specific depth (set just before deployment to whatever depth you think the submarine is) so that they're as close as possible to the sub when they explode. If the explosion were on the surface most of the blast would go up (where the low-density, easily compressible air offers minimal resistance) rather than downward to any significant depth.

But Gameplay > Realism. We have advanced weaponry, why not just replace all PD guns with lasers and have them shoot down aircraft as well as surface targets? They should have no trouble dealing with artillery shells, tac and strategic missiles, even Novax satellites... All your "Reality + 1000 Years" arguments could be made here too. But that would (in my opinion) be BAD for gameplay.

I LIKE needing different weapons to deal with different enemies. It's not like we don't have ways of fighting subs. Torp bombers, subs of your own... there's even a unit called a Sub Hunter. That's what they're for. The groundfire mechanic is a mistake, someone forgot to check that the AOE stops at the surface.

This mostly has to do with the UEF Engineering station, but I've had trouble with the Cybran one as well. I've seen a couple of issues with their behavior:

Problem 1: I start a building but then change my mind, I want something else there. So I tell the engineer to reclaim the building. I come back a minute later and realize that a nearby ES has repaired it.

Proposed solution: When you order an engineer to reclaim something, mark that object as "do not repair".

Problem 2: A few bombs or artillery shells make it through the shields and damage some buildings. I quickly check that the ES's are still intact, they are, so I go elsewhere. I come back later and see that nothing has been repaired -- the ES's have been stuck helping an SML reload for the last couple of minutes.

Proposed solution: Prioritize better. Repair things first. Assist factories second. Build missiles last. They should be able to change targets without waiting for the current target to finish, so they can immediately go repair as soon as the damage happens. If that's not possible, maybe make it so they CAN'T assist SML's? Their contribution there is insignificant, it's far better to leave them free to repair damage as soon as it happens.

I didn't know that -- thanks!

@biass said in Atlantis:

Weapon tech can advance over thousands of years, the foundations of basic physics cannot. Unless you want to state that there is some magic unobtanium metal that allows it to sink but only so much, and can be randomly removed to then float again.

Um... not sure where you're getting this magic unobtainium metal thing... all you need is ballast tanks flooded with water to dive, and then blown out again to surface. Like real world submarines actually do. Sure, you would need bigger tanks that could fill/empty faster in order to dive/surface a bigger submarine, but I don't see a problem there.

I don't like the groundfire vs. submerged units mechanic either. Purely from a gameplay perspective, the role of the Battleship is surface bombardment, especially against shore installations. Killing subs is what torpedoes are for.

Regarding the Atlantis, these are the changes I would make to it:
-Increase AA and torp range
-Increase torp damage (so they can stand their ground against Sera T3 subs)
-Increase the amount of time it takes to dive/surface (do this for all submarines)
-Make it able to build aircraft while moving (if possible -- though back in the day I think I remember this being something the game engine can't do)
-Increase cost to balance

Sorry if a mod like this already exists, I've searched the vault and didn't find it. It seems like it should be a fairly simple thing to write (?) but it's been over a decade since I did any FA modding myself and I don't remember a thing about how to do it.

Hi, I have a question/comment. How hard would it be to allow the AI to start with a naval factory if its spawn is under water?

I've been playing Uveso AI's on maps like Saskiya with underwater resources and start locations. The AI doesn't have any trouble building on aquatic mass or hydrocarbons, but it has problems if its start location is under water. What it usually does at the start is something like this:

1. Walk over to the closest land.
2. Reclaim a few trees (pointlessly -- it hasn't built anything yet so the reclaimed resources are wasted)
3. Turn around and go back to the start location.
4. Repeat 2-5 times.
5. Finally build a land factory and start actually playing, maybe 5 minutes in.
6. Some time in the next couple of minutes it'll usually go back and make a naval factory.