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    Mach

    @Mach

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    Best posts made by Mach

    Very long post about spread attack, UI mods and why improving player's controls and UI is apparently and wrongly considered a bad thing in FAF, also balance

    So I just got to point with fixing spread attack where some things are possible that are apparently controversial:

    Capture.PNG
    Now I dont know if my fixes will even go live from github once whoever decides things about FAF sees them and their potential, and these fixes may instead have that someone remove necessary code from base FAF that allows this, and possibly other mods depending on it, from functioning, causing this mod to go into oblivion instead and further ruining what I am trying to improve, but I managed to fix it (because it wasnt written properly in first place) and as a consequence, what is described here (as far as I understand it) is possible.

    aka I can queue multiple different units to different move orders of any different numbers and then select all of those units and queue attack orders that spread attack then mixes properly without failing, all units will continue on their queued move orders and then proceed to attack every target like spread attack normally does. In zlo's example, I can queue strats to fly around aa in different paths each, and then queue attack orders and press shift+g to turn them into spread attack while strats are still flying to move orders.

    Not only that, but this can be repeated in queue as many times as player wants, I can again queue move orders after a queued spread attack and once again queue spread attack after those new move orders which are already after previous spread attack and so on. Each spread attack will only effect last group of attack orders and leaves everything prior alone. This allows player to plan attacks way easier instead of having to manually give those orders after strats got into position first. You might say this removes micro from the game, but in my opinion, it merely allows that micro to be done beforehand if player chooses to. Player still has to queue those attack orders (micro), they just now have ability to queue it before if they want to instead of having to do it on spot when they may have something else important to focus on. This is almost exact situation as being able to queue units of factory that isnt completed yet instead of only being able to do so after it is finished and I find it hilarious that it would even be considered OP.

    While I think a lot of pro players will see this as overpowered for their own reasons, these controls that I fixed literally allow a player to do nothing more than what they already could do, except easier, they dont give any units additional abilities or allow them to do something they couldnt without them, a player can already do all of this manually, they simply allow player to better tell those units what to do within limitations of what those units already physically can do, nothing more. And I think that its objectively correct that players should be able to tell their units what to do as effortlessly as possible, because the point of this game isnt to fight the controls, but to fight other players.

    Speaking of fighting controls, some pro players may have gotten very good at managing their attention and APM to fight bad controls and this may, to them, ruin an aspect of gameplay or remove value of their skill (at fighting the controls) cough Heaven, even some strategies that are designed to rob your opponent of attention and APM by doing something that they have to "translate for a long time" the response orders to (even tho they came up with them in split second), a strategy that wouldnt work if your opponent could "translate quickly" the response orders to, you can see how it has nothing to do with who can "come up with orders" faster or with better ones, but how fast they can translate them into the game thru UI, sure coming up with them exists already, but translating them thru controls shouldnt even have a time component to it, let alone entire strategies or even needed clicking skills. So instead of who can translate orders faster or attack opponent in a way they have to spend more time translating orders to counter, I think strategy is supposed to be only about who is better at coming up with orders in first place, translating them into unit orders thru UI after coming up with them should be effortless.

    In general I think its time we separate player's controls and their "skill" in fighting those controls to tell their units to do what they want them to do, from balance equation and instead allow players to tell their units what to do in any way they want, because strategy is about that part, what should the units do, not how do I get them to do what I want them to do. And I think having to fight controls in fact reduces the strategy aspect of this game and we could see a lot more interesting things in games if players were spared the bad controls and could instead communicate properly with their units and thus have more time to come up with plans and better plans, and give out more plans in same time, when they wouldnt need to have a massive "time to translate their plan into orders". Instead of fighting on 1 front, player could be fighting on many, if only they could tell their units what to do easier instead of fighting the controls to get them to do something so simple that they could explain it in 1 short sentence "go here first and then bomb everything there" (which is what player can do with this spread attack fix). Are we really considering translation (not coming up with) of this simple sentence into unit commands a gameplay element and skill?

    APM and attention resources imo arent supposed to be used up "trying to control your units", but trying to beat your opponent in strategy, the control of your units should be as easy as saying what you want them to do like example above. APM and attention should be used solely for coming up with those orders in first place. If you remember before advanced target priorities were a thing, bombers could fly into your base and take no damage from your aa and do their bombing freely simply because your aa was busy shooting at fighters, and you had no way of telling them to do otherwise other than manually telling turrets to shoot specific bomber (and likely missclicking on a fighter). I already used this example in infamous steam forum discussion, but this simply shows that bad controls lead to bad gameplay, should the player really have no way of saying "shoot the bombers first" to their units other than frantically spam clicking? Should it really be a strategy to send fighters with bombers, not to protect them from enemy fighters, but to distract enemy aa because other player has no way of telling those aa to ignore fighters?

    Better controls may open different problems where units may suddenly become overpowered because they can finally be controlled properly and you may object to that, but like I had pleasure of explaining in Atlantis thread already, thats when you balance those units, instead of another problem with the game "balancing" them. Fix that problem first instead and then balance those units, because only then will you see them in their real form, the units you are currently seeing arent being used at their full potential because of those control problems. If fixing the controls reveals those units' real power by them becoming overpowered, thats when you balance them because only then do you know what they are really capable of. Not hiding behind double negatives to cancel each other out.

    I know allowing any UI mods can escalate into players basically having AI microing their units up to point where player doesnt even press a button during a match so I have solution for where the line should be. For example there was a "russian hacker" story here on FAF where someone had a ui mod where units would automatically surround another unit, ex. labs surrounding a megalith. This was considered overpowered and bannable, because labs would otherwise have to be microed around the megalith manually, but this isnt a problem of ui mods, its a problem of labs countering megalith.

    While I dont know the specifics of how that mod worked, this shows where UI mods can start "playing the game for you", because if this player had to tell his units to "surround the megalith" imo its fine, because this ui mod simply allowed that player to tell those labs what to do easier "surround that megalith", but if those units instead "automatically surrounded the megalith should it walk into range" it isnt. imo the line for UI mods that are allowed should be where the units themselves start automatically giving themselves orders depending on circumstances (aka "AI"), lets say a fighter that automatically stops attacking and gives itself a move order back to base if it flies too far from patrol waypoint.

    This said in abstract form, where its easy to tell if its allowed or not aka a "rule" is: no UI mods that give units "AI" aka allow translations of sentences like "if this then this else this" or "in case of this, this" into orders, but only "this, then this, then this". There can be no decision making that unit itself does, but any order queue of any orders that player wants to give them or manipulate, they should be able to do effortlessly and is fine.

    This game was designed from start to give players easier control over their units than other RTS games had thru its UI with the very strategic zoom and many features of orders and queues, they even tried to create something similar to the very thing I started this post with with coordinated attack, where you can queue move orders of different units and have an attack order that they attack at same time from different places. It is ridiculous that progress in better player control is being stalled like this for any reason.

    Here are some interviews with linked relevant times where Chris Taylor himself states things about supreme commander's control system and what it is supposed to be:

    Its not about who can click faster
    With formation move as an example, you could say that not having formation move would add micro skill as you would need to manually give units move orders so they stay close together. Consider formation move a UI mod for example and say is it overpowered?
    About player's control, queues and coordinated attack
    I already showed factory queue above, if you replace this single attack target of coordinated attack (destroyer) with multiple targets, it literally is this very thing of queued move orders of different units that all then attack multiple targets (instead of 1).
    Same coordinated attack from video above

    There are probably other interviews mentioning things like this as well that I didnt find yet. You should still watch the whole playlist of those videos anyway because they are good.

    Here is a video showing what properly working spread attack combined with Disperse Move UI mod can do. I dont understand how you can considered that overpowered. To me it is merely proper control of your units to get them to do what they could have always done.

    TLDR:
    Players should be able to give out explicit (no decision making by unit) orders in any way they want thru UI mods, and giving out orders should be as effortless as saying them. Balance should, instead of considering how bad controls are as a factor in balancing (micro) and thus banning any UI modification that improves that control thus tilting the balance which was based on that control being bad, balance units around their maximum potential that becomes more apparent as playerbase's controls improve thru UI mods and UI upgrades in general, allowing players to tell those units what to do easier and thus revealing the real power of those units to balance them based on.

    The player's control over their units thru UI should be improving by FAF itself, not banned from it as "cheating", the line between mods "playing the game for you" and not (aka allowed or not) should be where they are giving units orders automatically without player action (unit "AI" basically), and those letting player more easily give and manipulate manual orders and queues of any complexity being allowed. This is better explained above in bold text.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Atlantis

    @HintHunter said in Atlantis:

    Meh they can still get manually fired up on by battleships, the splash dmg from cannons fulfills that role and prob for the better of the game.

    underwater units shouldnt be able to get hit by surface weapons except for massive aoes like nukes, a submarine is supposed to be below the surface where surface weapons cant reach them, which is the whole point of them

    if we consider it balanced that underwater units should be getting hit by surface weapons like battleship cannons, then why cant battleships simply target underwater units automatically to shoot at them considering they can technically hit them when manually groundfired? this whole thing even only works when microed intentionally, the current situation is basically exploiting this flaw in game code where surface weapons can hit underwater units simply because water levels arent deep enough for how large aoe those weapons have for their uses and balance on surface combat

    so if we consider this situation ok, then all surface weapons that can reach underwater units with their aoe should be able to target underwater units like they do any surface unit, this may seem silly but in this extreme you can see how that ruins the point of underwater units as they get picked off easily by things that shouldnt be able to hit them in first place, atlantis is just one of units that is most effected by it because of it being slow and big and thus easier to groundfire, but all underwater units have this problem that shouldnt exist

    just think realistically how is a battleship supposed to hit a submarine with its cannons while its underwater and how nonsensical that is, yet considered fine here apparently?

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    Disperse Move

    This is an edit of Spread Move mod that only gives 1 order to each unit instead of all of them as a queue.

    More specifically, once you give a group of units a queue of move orders and press the hotkey, the mod cycles thru all orders in queue and for each order selects the closest unit to it, which it then gives that closest unit as its first move order, deleting the rest of move orders for that unit. If there are more units than orders, it repeats this until all units have a first order by restarting from first order in queue again, evenly distributing all units among all queued orders. If there are more orders than units, only the orders up to unit count get given to units as first order and the rest of them get deleted (because there are no units left without a first order).

    Another thing is if there are orders that arent move orders queued before move order queue, only the last queue of move orders gets effected (ignoring all non-move orders and all move orders before those non-move orders), allowing you to chain disperse move with other non-move orders in queue. Some orders like reclaim and attack move wont work with it tho and will be deleted.

    You can find it in vault under name "Disperse Move".before.png
    after.png

    idk how to credit but it is obviously based on MrNukealizer's Spread Move (and is literally few lines of its code changed) and whatever that was based on (I think split attack).

    posted in Modding & Tools •
    RE: Atlantis

    maybe this picture explains it easier

    test.png

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Very long post about spread attack, UI mods and why improving player's controls and UI is apparently and wrongly considered a bad thing in FAF, also balance

    yes it is not possible to remove unit controls or "translating orders time" as factor from RTS, it being a real time game, but it is possible to reduce its impact by improving the controls, so while you can have 2 players with same knowledge and the one with better apm wins, you should minimize the impact of whose apm is better to point where it matters as strongly as it can whose game knowledge is better and it is as irrelevant as it can be whose apm is better, so you can easily have 2 people with apm difference but the one with worse apm wins anyway because they have better game knowledge

    I know whoever is not using ui mods is at disadvantage vs those that do and I think some ui mods should therefore be integrated into base game so everyone has access to those same better controls and thus no one is at disadvantage, however some UI mods are subjective and obviously shouldnt be forced onto those that dont want to use them (like ecomanager)

    and it isnt about appeal to authority, it is about showing you what the game was, compared to others at the time and what it was set out to do (improve controls player has over units), and using examples of controls you dont even think are overpowered (because they were in the game from start and not future UI mods) being basically the same thing as what UI mods allow you to do (better controls that dont change units' abilities)

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Different icon for drone engineers

    I think you could change them so they have air icon with engineer symbol in it maybe (because theyre a flying unit after all)

    posted in Suggestions •
    RE: The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance

    what if they could only get either mass or energy generation but not both at same time, and if they get mass generation they drain energy while its on like a massfab, basically splitting ras upgrade into only mass or only energy

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Updated Supreme Score Board (UI) Mod

    so idk if you can do this via UI mod, but I notice that some people in aeolus ask how to mute someone ingame, so adding a mute button next to every player on scoreboard might be useful considering doing it via existing chat window is kinda complicated

    posted in Modding & Tools •
    RE: Atlantis

    there is suggestion you missed which is to have it deeper underwater so it cant get hit by things it shouldnt be able to get hit by, like battleship cannons, while it is underwater

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Very long post about spread attack, UI mods and why improving player's controls and UI is apparently and wrongly considered a bad thing in FAF, also balance

    you see, like I said in my post, UI mods that dont do decisions for you should be allowed, not those that do, in your aimbot example, aimbot constantly makes decisions about where to move cursor based on where enemy is, this would be in FAF something that microes units for you by giving them orders by itself, not something that allows you to better and easier give those units specific orders

    idk if you even read the post considering

    posted in Balance Discussion •

    Latest posts made by Mach

    RE: Should the ACU stomp T1 units?

    from what I remember, what I used was just adding "massive" category to ACUs (which causes crushing) and trying to mess with other unit categories and stomping "weapon" in blueprint to limit it to tech 1 only (given experimentals that are massive don't crush other experimentals for example)

    the code for crushing enemy units by walking over them in itself was not available anywhere to rewrite as far as I could tell so my guess was that it is part of closed source engine (like pathfinding etc. is), I think someone even told me so at the time

    doesn't mean it is impossible to do though

    EDIT: forgot to mention, another thing it caused was that acu ignored collisions with other mobile units, maybe using this and setting damage to 0 (so it still walks though units but doesn't damage them) could be enough to avoid "getting stuck" in swarm of units, problem was once again, it meant all the units, not just t1, so you could walk through a group of percivals the same as over some t1 tanks

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Should the ACU stomp T1 units?

    I tried to mod this exact thing (ACU being able to walk over t1 units) but unfortunately there seems to be no way to differentiate between tech level of units in code and ACU could either walk over everything no matter the tech level or over nothing like it does now

    I may have missed something though as I didn't really go far into it

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Novax bug in new patch

    @jip said in Novax bug in new patch:

    And a lot of times it just works as usual. We didn't touch the Novax, as far as I am aware it has always been like this.

    do you suppose this may be due to novax not rechecking for new target before the beam stops (if target checking change is already live), I know it is (was) very sensitive to that and stops the beam early if it doesn't have any other enemy unit in range to shoot at, not checking for new targets fast enough automatically may cause the same effect, I'm not saying it is the cause, it was just first thing I can see could be

    posted in General Discussion •
    RE: CounterIntel

    for diversity reasons, what if aeon or seraphim had the opposites of radar jamming, for example, units that create a visual illusion of another unit but are broken with radar instead of the other way around, I know radar cover is pretty long range and cheap and wouldn't be as strong, but it would cause a problem for those just sending their units into enemy without intel cover because they don't need it in current situation, especially if it auto reset like toggling jamming does for jamming

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Weapon target check intervals

    I just have to say this is a very dangerous thing to be messing with, one of, if not the main, reasons that this rts stands far above any other for me is the fact that it is a full simulation, sacrificing parts of that for performance gain is not acceptable (yes I know it would still be a "simulation" even with this, but lesser than what it was, and how far will this continue in the name of performance?). I would rather play it at -2 during larger fights than play at +0 something that isn't it, so I hope this isn't the first in many performance improvements that are gained by sacrificing the game's soul for it.

    Unresponsive and stupid units are a bigger problem to me, which it seems this will cause. Therefore I do wonder if many players consider this less of a problem because it only interferes with "automatic unit behavior" rather than "manually microed units", as I really prefer to set up what units should do ahead of time rather than to have to constantly babysit them to do it in real time (manual reclaim and dodging for example), and supreme commander's another key reason for being better than other rtss is that it has far better control over your units and automation of menial tasks.

    As for solutions, considering advanced target priorities mod proves that it is possible to change target priorities of individual units on the fly, even if they had to be set up in files beforehand, is it perhaps also possible that the variables used for target check interval times can be controlled the same way as target priority lists and thus be changed mid-game for any unit, even possibly automatically? and then, automatically change depending on how many enemy units are nearby? so that way we could have both "normal" and "optimized" target check intervals at same time, used at appropriate times?

    So that in case it doesn't matter, such as asf fights or some scouts flying over 100 frigates or even... 100 mantis vs 100 mantis, the units don't check their targets as often since the outcome is the same, and in cases it does matter, such as when there are few units around, they pick their targets more carefully? No I don't want to nor should need to micro them to not act stupid or not ignore enemy in front of them.

    Also what effect will this have on target priorities mod? Will we be forced to have small priority lists considering players can manually control these in their files to be any size? I for one have many manual lists that some may consider weird.

    We really need access to the engine...

    posted in Suggestions •
    RE: Updated Supreme Score Board (UI) Mod

    so idk if you can do this via UI mod, but I notice that some people in aeolus ask how to mute someone ingame, so adding a mute button next to every player on scoreboard might be useful considering doing it via existing chat window is kinda complicated

    posted in Modding & Tools •
    RE: Increase T3 mex cost & reduce reclaim to reward aggressive gameplay at T2 stage

    @archsimkat its only 6, 9, 27 mass yield if you built that mex from scratch, if you upgrade it it only increases mass yield by 4 for t1 to t2 for example, while costing 900 mass, because t1 mex was already giving 2 mass/s

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Scouting overlay mod.

    is there a way to have more smaller squares for more accuracy? or would that kill performance?

    also idk how code for this works, but maybe square should only consider itself "scouted" (that turns it green) if it was completely inside vision range of a scout, currently it seems to even if only a small part of it was scouted, which means there can be something inside it that wasnt scouted

    I thought about doing something like this but using another "vision layer" like we already have for normal vision (the thing that puts a shadow over things you dont have vision over), which turns more red the longer you dont have vision over it (starting with completely transparent and resetting when scouted)

    posted in Modding & Tools •
    RE: Disperse Move

    Yes I uploaded it to fix that very bug, sorry should have mentioned it

    posted in Modding & Tools •
    RE: Change price politics for strategic submarines

    the reason t3 pgens are built over t2 is because they are more mass efficient, all pgens get more mass efficient the better tech level they are, while all mass extractors get less mass efficient the better tech they are

    posted in Balance Discussion •