Given the stupid amount of energy and words wasted by all kinds of people in the PC election thread, i wanted to present a different idea out there. This not just about PC. It could probably replace several councillor positions, maybe even the entire Council of Setons.

The goal of the system is mostly:

• Transparency about who does what in FAF.

Ill call it the "Badge System" or maybe "Roles system" because i have no better word.

• A person can hold more than one badge
• Each badge is linked to exactly ONE kind of responsibility
• We hopefully only ever discuss exactly one badge at a time, if there is an election. No more "discuss these 30 responsibilities that councillor position XYZ comes with" for fucks sake.
• There is a "Main" Badge for every responsibility that only one person can hold, and that person hands out sub-badges of the same type (but not "Main") to anybody they want. Only Main badge is voted onto a person by election.

Example:

• "Main Tournament director" can hand out and remove "tournament director" badges to anybody.
• "Main TMM director" can hand out "TMM director" badges to anybody
• and so on...

Pros:

• Non-insiders can finally see who the fuck is actually doing what.
• We see more people with badges which makes it look like its easier to participate in FAF. right now "PC councillor" is a scary word.
• FTX can still do everything because he can hold literally every "Main" badge in the world.
• The conversion from the old system to the new one doesnt require any kind of power being handed over so we could get it done without too much drama.
• Maybe we can convert the other councillor positions as well because i see no reason to have a mix of old and new system.
• Badge holders can give their badge to somebody else (maybe a bad idea?).

Negs:

• The forum needs to be able to display all badges a person holds.
• We need to implement a system that tracks who has what badge i guess? Otherwise there will be chaos.
• Handing over badges needs to be done though the mentioned system (like a tab in the client)
• We still need to decide which badges are voted/eleted, so i expect that would be a shitshow of a discussion. But for now we could just make all PC related badges votable and assign them to the winner of the PC election.

Its basically Discord roles on steroids but for FAF.

Opinions?

Edit:
There might the some badges for which sub-badges dont make sense, so maybe restrict those.

People always tend to prefer things they know, when they have a choice. This is why the mapgen can do what handmade maps cannot.

If a person goes into the map vault, they see a bunch of maps they have never seen alongside ones that they already now, and their brain is automatically going to dismiss the maps they dont't know because anything thats new is frightening on a primitive human level.

The mapgen solves this problem by frontloading that choice:

• Do you want to play an unknown map or not?

And then forcing you to stay with that choice by preventing your brain from categorizing it as just another map and therefore reverting your decision to try something new. So the way in which the mapgen creates an advantage is not necessarily by just creating unknown maps, but psychologycally.

Of course the mapgen should eventually still reach higher level of quality. But its important to realize how important the UI is here.

Lets assume that there is a way for the client to automatically select a handmade map that

• Follows some easy to use filters (size, amount of water, etc.) similar to map generator
• Guarantuess to select a map that is generally not very actively played by the community and of certain minimum quality
• Introduces some sort of UI-barrier to backpedalling from the decision to play something new

Then maybe handmade maps could in some way fullfill the same function that the mapgen does. However, we dont have that kind of UI for handmade maps, and as long as it is that way, people will resort to the mapgen to play unknown maps instead of simply selecting a not much played handmade map.

The mapgen also crates some sort of unspoken contract: The map is guarantueed to be new to everybody (in reality thats not true because you can regenerate a seed, but this is still the expectation that people have). This is of course very hard to replicate with handmade maps.

PS:
Could participants in this thread please stop assuming that everybody else argues in bad faith or against their interests? Turning this thread into a mapgen vs handmade war will not create many usefull insights on this topic. Too late probably.

Who event wants 3, god forbid 4 blues? Why?

Does choosing the bright but saturated red color make you a connoisseur of the exquisite art of expressing yourself by choosing the color that represents your inner spirit animal or what? Does sending your professional 4th shade of green into the enemies slightly desaturated (but not quite brown) orange base make you a collaborative map-painter, such that your are creating an interactive piece of modern art by mixing units such that the resulting composition makes you think deeply about the world of shapes and abstractions? Does anybody suffer torment from the idea of having to paint themselves and their units with the brush of a color that has been excluded from the cool color space club that is currently en-vogue in the most accomplished circles of the Illuminati?

Colors are in this game to easily distinguish and call players out. And as long as the available colors do no induce eye cancer, that is what they should be selected for.

Stop claiming that "icon confusion" was intended by the devs.

• You have no idea if that is true.
• The whole point of the stratetgic icons was that it was supposed to allow players to play at the strategic level instead of zooming in. So the icon confusion actually goes against stated goals of this game's design.

@javi said in Introducing Mapgen Week on Ladder:

(thanks Neroxis)

don't forget Sheikah who has improved it a tremenduous amount for more than a year now : )

+1 like to mapgen week.

Massive mushrooms (tree-sized) are a classic of "alien world" design.
And anything that makes water look better (might require shader changes rather than props though). Underwater cliffs/riffs/plants.

The game simulation is updated (recalculated) every 100ms (at speed 0). One such update is called a "tick". Only when a new tick is calculated can inputs be applied to the simulation. This means input is delayed by 5 ticks (500ms / 100ms). So the tick in which the input was made (and sent to others) is different from the tick in which it is applied to the game.

The F11 windows mostly tells you for how many past ticks a player's input has not arrived yet at YOUR computer. For example if you see that "player 2" is behind by 3 updates/ticks/packets that means that you havent yet received the input that you will need from that player 2 ticks in the future. When a player is behind 5/6 ticks, your game simulation stops, because you need his input (which he should have made and sent 5/6 ticks ago) RIGHT NOW.

The F11 window shows you only the connection between you and other players, not between two other players. (every player is connected to every other player), so everybody sees something different in the F11 window.

So when you see that one player is 6 ticks behind in sending you their input and game has stopped, but every other player is 1-2 ticks behind, that means:

• Maybe that players internet has a temporary problem (might reconnect though)
• Maybe that players computer/game has crashed so he not longer sends his input
• Maybe only the connection between you and that player has a problem (his connection to other players could still be fine, this is why its useful to ask others in chat if they see the same player being behind)

Sometimes a player is not constantly behind 6 ticks but is oscillating between about 4 and 6 ticks, resulting in a stuttering game, that means:

• Maybe ping spikes above 500ms regularly
• Maybe that players computer is so slow that the game cannot slow itself down enough to account for bad performance.
• Maybe that players computer has performance spikes (thermal throttling) that confuse the game enough to make it not slow down how it should

If one player is constantly sending his input but at a slower rate than other players, the game slows down (time between ticks is increased) until that player can keep up. Thats why game speed for everyone is determined by the slowest players computer (because the game simulation must be kept in sync on every players computer).

Edit:
Keep in mind i don't know if the input delays is fixed to 500ms or to 5 ticks. If it is defined in ticks, that means it would change when you change game speed. Not sure. If it is defined in ms that means that the amount of ticks that somebody can be behind without causing the game to stutter/stop can vary based on game speed.

As FTx said, desyncs are a different problem.

Ok now i want to look at the far future.
Arguably there is still a lot of time until map generator maps reach a level of quality where somebody like FTX will replace 100% of the 1v1 queue with random maps. But still.

Lets make some likely assuptions:

• The quality of the map generator maps will improve, to a point where most people (except handmade map makers) will not notice the difference in asthetic quality.
• More and more people will like the notion of a guarantuee that makes BO-whoring impossible, and we make it so this is actually enforcable (we mark mapgen maps that where created from known seeds vs newly generated as such). What doesnt matter is if BO-whoring is actually a problem, what matters is if people perceive it as a problem and want that guarantuee in ladder.

If we make these assumptions, it should be quite easy to see, that after a long period of transition, the endgame is AOE2, in other words, the death of handmade maps in competitive play. You might disagree with those assumptions, but please think about wether you actually disagree with them OR if you just dont want to follow through to the conclusion, maybe because this conclusion is subjectively horrifying.

Now, in that scenario, a lot of people will just not care and go with it, some people will be sad, and handmade maps will fight a war for dominance, that they will slowly and agonizinly loose as more and more players desire the things that mapgen can provide. This thread is a good indicator for how that will look like imo.

Now, there is another hidden asumption here:

• Handmade maps mostly stay as they are know

But we could change this if we want. We already have adaptive maps. What if handmade maps could provide the same guarantuess that generated maps could in terms of BO-whoring?

• Predefined mex groups that sometimes appear and sometimes not.
• Mexes that slightly move position
• Several possible positions for hydros to appear, sometimes they dont appear at all.
• Same for big wrecks

Im not saying we need to do this. But if the first too assumptions hold, i think that handmade maps need to evolve in the long term. And i think they can, and anyway discussing how that would look like would be much more productive than descussing how far along the trajectory mapgen maps are right now.

In in additon to that, we can think about maybe a better way to present handmade maps or allow players to select them, but that is mo harder to achieve.

I think that the most engaging way (not the most efficient in terms of time spent) to learn stuff as a very new player is by "tutorial campaign". Unlike the vanilla campaign (which really doesnt teach much, it just restricts units/buildings) it would be much more focused and showcase specific mechanics, encounters with specifically restricted toolkit.

• Start with the player only controlling the com and having to escape from an invasion, pretty much a on rails mission, teach about ACU health, survivability and overcharge specifically.
• Teach player how to evade an incoming air snipe, let them run to allied mobile AA safety (teach about T2 gunships vs com health vs AA relationships), dont let them control units yet.
• At some point force the players to have certain upgrades and teach the difference between a no-upgrade sera com and a double nano double gun monster for example.
• Have a situation where player is required to collect X reclaim in Y amount of time so that they can overflow enough mass to let allied AI finish a needed experimental, otherwise player looses. Reward is of course cool experimental saving the day in the nick of time.
• Put the player in a sitation where he can clearly see how having radar affects effective shooting range.
• Have a situation where a player needs to surround kill an enemy com with a fixed number of T1 spam that he cannot increase and one where he has to fend of T1 with com (the beginning of prothyon is quite nice in this regard, but i don't like the second half)
• Have situations where the player needs to counter higher tech units with cheese / lower tech units, and the other way around where they micro a small number of higher tech units against lower tech ones.
• Basically make it fun and interesting first (good story is important for that) but weave in lots of situations that all teach one specific thing.

Some things cannot be thought well like that, for example general tradeoff between eco / tech / bp / units and general game progression, but make sure that the player is aware of the entire toolbox that the game gives them. Its much less frustrating to get beaten in PVP if you at least have some idea about all the tools.

Problem with this is that of course if big balance changes happen, that might cause certain situations to play out differently than planned. The idea itself is not new, i think several people have mentioned the small starcraft missions that you play with fixed units, but those seemed a bit boring because its just the same thing over and over with different units (and im not suggesting to always put the player in fixed unit situations, that is too repetitive).

At the end of the day, if learning is not enjoyable, not many people are gonna try to get gud. When you first joined FAF, your goal was probably not to dominate ladder rating. The competitive aspects comes after you have seen the potential of all the tools that the game provides. The game must prove that its going to be worth the time spent to improve.

@FtXCommando

I said nothing about who should be Player Councillour in my post. you are creating a horror-scenario out of it. The most important point seems to not have come through:

• With the split, the primary purpose of the Player Councillor is not to ACT or DECIDE, but to LISTEN, COMMUNICATE and basically have good social skills. Most general conflicts are caused by misunderstandings. The player councillor would recognize this and therefore be able to facilitate constructive discussions and if necessary de-escalation.

You are the kind of guy that NEEDS to be judgemental to do your job. Because if you don't judge, you cannot act. The player councillor could look at FAF from a completely different viewpoint andi think that could be very valuable.

As it stands, we don't need to do this exact split, but we need SOME split. The current amount of responsibilities that are piled on this position is absolutly ridicoulous. The list of stuff you do is laughably out of any reasonable bounds. We are talking about work that is supposed to be done by volunteers in their free time here. This is not a critique of you, its a critique of the position, you are doing a great job DESPITE the job description.

You can follow this to find out if the port is actually blocked: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/performance/determine-which-program-use-block-tcp-ports

I asked GPT and maybe the code she returned matches the requirement

Narrator: It didn't.

My suggestion: Nuke subs should be..

... a small-radius sniping unit designed to take out single high-value movable targets (battleships, experimental units/buildings, maybe SACUs).

Why:

• RIght now, nuke subs don't really participate in fights agains targets that can MOVE. In my oppinion, this is a shame. Lobbing missiles at static bases is boring and strictly late stage only tactic, and has all problems that Ftx explained
• We still try to keep their interactions with other units intuitive for players coming from Vanilla, ideally they use the FAF version once and immediately get how it changed

Step 1 (Damage application):

• MASSIVELY reduce their range to be a bit bigger than battleships, like 180, so that you actually have to move them to the front of your units when trying to snipe for example a battleship, allowing more counterplay opportunities. We want to see them used in actual T3 navy fights, not killing bases inland.
• MASSIVELY reduce their explosion radius so they do not kill too many units at once. Somewhere between strat bomb and billy radius
• Increase damage A LOT so they can at the very least seriously damage experimentals and kill battleships/spidermonkeys.
• Make missile speed fast enough so it has a chance to catch moving units, but slow enough so oppopnent can micro targeted unit away if missile is scouted early enough.

Step 2 (missile type and anti-missile):

• If a movable unit is targeted, the primary defense against nuke missiles should be MOVING away
• Make subnuke missiles neither real nukes nor tactical missiles, they should have their own missile category. If this is not possible, we could maybe work around by still using real nuke missile type, but change SMDs to react differently to normal nuke vs nuke sub.
• Missiles while flying should have a scoutable icon like nukes (but different icon)
• Give SMD an additional anti-nukesub-weapon that has smaller range than SMD missile and is free (takes no resources to build other thant the SMD building, but is balanced by rate of fire). Since the anti-missiles have no cost, we need to have lower range for them, otherwise, you could cover your entire navy while it is near your base against subnukes by building a single SMD near shore.
• If they are not a new missile type, we need to find a different solution, we don't want to shoot SMD missiles at nukesub missiles because SMD missiles should ONLY need to be balanced againsty actual nukes.
• If necessary we could even have a new building that is like "TMD but against nuke subs only" or add this capability to other units/buildings

Step 3 (air counterplay):

• Create counterplay opportunities for players that are aware of the existence of nukesubs before they fire by revealing the radar signature of a nukesub whenthey fire a nuke for like 10 seconds, even if it is outside radar. Maybe add a ping similar to nuke warning where they are located so their signature is not masked by other signatures when inside radar. This allows intelligent air player to build torps in preparation and target nukesub signatures when a nuke launches. Essentially make "nuke launch" an event that invites air players to fight together with navy player to attack/protect nuke sub after nuke launch, because more fighting is better.

Step 4 (balance)

• Adjust cost of unit until satisfactory usefullness is reached

Btw. do you do all the styling by yourself? Do you need any help? Is there a Github?

If a site author prefers heavily stylized fonts over readable fonts, that just gives me a negative impression, feels kinda like "style over substance". Sure, its far from the only important thing a site should get right. Thanks for all the hard work on improving the user experience.

Rant about Fonts

1. Can we remove font Orbitron from all FAF related things? Its horrible to read for me, painfully wide, my eyes just glaze over the letters. The main font seems to be "Electrolize" anyway, which while im not a fan, Eletrolize has better readability.

2. Can we look into some other futuristic, but better readable fonts as well maybe? Some proposals:

• Electrolize (for comparison)
• Chakra Petch
• Sunflower (language support is a bit meh)
• Titillium Web

I think all of these have better readability, Chakra Petch is highly stylistic similar to Electrolize with worse readability than Sunflower and Titillium, which in my opinion would be good for normal text paragraphs while keeping the headers in one of the more stylized fonts.

Of course this is just the result of single Google search for "fonts similar to Electrolize", so there might be much better ones. Imho a professional looking font that has good readability makes an extrely big difference between a page that looks like it comes from people that know what they are doing and a page that looks like a random blog/fanpage from 2010 that was made to look as "cool" as possible by a 13 year old.

Btw. for light video editing i can recommend Shotcut, is Open Source and free, and unlike DaVinci Resolve (Free Version) it can import most video formats with decoding, and unlike Kdenlive it does not constantly crash under windows. Supports all of the mentioned tasks.

Ok well can't do more then just guess here. I would assume that either client data or something about your drivers is wrong/corrupted. Client reinstalling might help, or windows reinstall if nothing else helps.

Try disabling GPU / enabling software rendering by adding -Dprism.order=sw as an additional line to C:\Program Files\Downlord's FAF Client\downlords-faf-client.vmoptions, also remove -Dprism.forceGPU=true from the file.

@lord_asmodeus said in In the current system, rating 1v1 games is borderline rating manipulation:

@katharsas
When hosting 1v1 Tournaments we do use ladder rating as the entrance barrier.
The issue is we have to host all the matches for these tournies as custom matches which means they affect global rating not ladder rating.

Maybe there would be a way to give 1v1 tournament organizers the ability to count those custom games as if they were ladder games. But i don't know how hard that would be to implement.