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

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.

This is an edit of Spread Move mod that only gives 1 randomly selected order to each unit instead of all of them as a queue. You can find it in vault under name "Disperse Move".

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).

maybe this picture explains it easier

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)

@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?

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

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

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

well it isnt useless but its heavily countered by something it shouldnt, reducing its power in ways it isnt supposed to, a submarine shouldnt have to worry about a battleship shooting surface of water above it and move around underwater to dodge them, because its a submarine deep underwater, it should worry about anti submarine weapons like torpedoes and depth charges instead, and thats what it should be balanced around

and I dont consider groundfiring underwater units with surface weapons a fundamental feature of navy, but then I suck at navy anyways so what do I know, point is submarines should be balanced around things that should be able to hit them, and not around what shouldnt, those 100s of easier way to buff atlantis each ignore fixing groundfire exploit (which also effects all underwater units not just atlantis)

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

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

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

these dont seem like spread move issues, more like spread move showing you the real issues (ACU getting pathfinding blocked by landspam and being weak against sufficient number of it)

I cannot reproduce what happens to you, are you using latest version of mod (v10)? To me there is no call for that variable at that line at all. What are you doing before giving these orders and pressing hotkey?

Well so far found these 2 things:

From unit.lua. Changing ACU's SizeX and SizeZ to that of GC allowed it to walk thru any non t4 units like they arent there. Cant find any smaller "minimum size" to get it to work on specific tiers only or where code that uses this even is yet.

From GC's .bp file. This seems to be the thing that causes damage to units that GC and thus ACU too, touches (works even without part above). Cant find this weapon in weapons.lua tho or anywhere else yet. If this is removed the unit just walks thru same units but doesnt deal damage.

edit:
HMMM

(armordefinition.lua)

yes but experimentals dont kill each other or ignore in pathfinding, so obviously they are ignored somehow

@speed2 said in 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:

Can you make it walk just over T1 units?

Well so far I only got it to walk over anything and deal damage, but once I find code that t4s use for that I might be able to copy it and change so only t1s get killed by acus and ignored in their pathfinding.

idk if I mentioned it here, but for spread moving t1 landpsam into acus a simple solution is to allow acu to walk over enemy t1 land units like experimentals walk over non experimental units, ignoring them in pathfinding and dealing damage to them, idk what balance problems this may cause but it sure would remove pathfinding abuse

@techmind_ said in Disperse Move:

@Mach you can issue come to move under unit itself +/-1 unit to clear queue. Moving in exact same position will get canceled by engine, dunno if it clears command queue.

Ill try that but idk if issuing new move orders or moving existing ones to positions where player didnt manually place them before (which would be the case here) is considered "okay"

@biass said in 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:

@Mach You've gone from a couple of relevant movement related UI mods, to quote "any number of UI mods" to now "all ui mods". Stop inflating your position.

This is YOUR UI mod that is being questioned here. Don't try and hide this important point of information by claiming that removing the split g function will randomly destroy namestuff or supreme economy.

I'm sure if you call keyser a nazi a couple more times he will randomly change opinion and support you dude, real smart moves

Its not only about my mod if what allows all ui mods to have anything to do with move orders gets removed. Also when did I ever say anything about keyser? I dont even know who is deciding anything about this in first place because FAF is being illuminati about it as always. Is it only keyser then?