Posts made by Mach

@snoog said in Nerf Novax radar:

You mentioned something I never thought about in regards to a way to nerf the Novax.

Inertia.

What if we gave it massive inertia, more than any other unit in the game so that it couldn't just turn on a dime and retarget so fast? That's part of why it can be borderline OP, its ability to retarget fast enough to snipe shields being built or other volatiles in quick succession.

It is a satellite after all, it would make sense for it to have such inertia.

I thought more like if it had very high minimum speed and couldn't slow down or stop moving at all, only change direction (because even with high inertia you can still settle on top of a target to wait for sniping, it just takes longer to slow down), also upon reaching the edge of the map, it gets teleported to opposite side of the map, as if it went around the planet.

idk if it is possible code wise though or how you are supposed to control it with move orders if it isn't moving to a position but direction.

@ftxcommando said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

You think the laser coming from that is about as strong as the laser coming from ACU chest?

Meanwhile when I use same logic for things that in fact matter you dismiss them as "real life lore". Your response.

For context the topic was: underwater units should not be able to get damaged by manually groundfiring surface of water above them, which is far bigger and more unintuitive problem than maser upgrade doing same damage as monkey (considering they are the same weapon).

this is the usual situation of bad controls, and with the expected usual excuse of "but there is nothing better to do ingame so its ok" from pros, imo if there is nothing better to do in the game at start than manually clicking rocks, then that's the game itself being bad in beginning in general, outsourcing gameplay to osu simulator doesn't fix the early gameplay, it just makes it annoying to those that don't enjoy clickspamming miningame and gives advantage to those who are good at it (but not necessarily at the game itself) over them, and like said in the op, additional advantage to those who memorized the map reclaim positions and optimal reclaim paths to then execute at start of the game like a recital of memorized text paragraph, there is zero excuse for bad controls that manual reclaim is

anyways for the solution, is it possible to get engineers to retarget reclaim beam automatically (from attack move) as fast as they do when given reclaim order queue manually? ik it would likely ruin the sim speed but it would close the gap between the 2 a bit without any major changes, at least make the engineer consider the next reclaim target while it is reclaiming the current target so it can retarget as soon as it is done without standing there and looking around for almost a full second between auto-reclaims while the manually queued one speedruns the reclaim for no apparent reason

the only thing worth using money for would be to get the IP back and hire developers to rewrite the engine without touching anything else (impossible task in itself), but that would need FAF budget to be in dozens of millions

I don't think there is anything else worth using money for other than keeping the servers and services (like this forum) running

about promoting FAF, everyone on steam forums seems to get triggered whenever FAF is mentioned unless they specifically asked about it, as do some people on supcom reddits, so idk if it would not backfire to go on an advertisement campaign instead of attracting new players

things that matter, improving performance, increasing modding capabilities, reducing friction for joining (recently someone complained they don't use FAF because it is a hassle to set up), derp's new player tutorial system meme, etc all don't seem to cost money to do, but only voluntary effort, adding money to "official" people to do stuff would be toxic to people who already do it for free, and afaik doing things for free is where 99% of FAF development comes from in first place

@morax said in What would make ladder less stressful, intense, or scary?:

@mach said in What would make ladder less stressful, intense, or scary?:

imo only mapgen ladder would be close to "fixing" it because it removes the map knowledge advantage, but it will always be "scarier" than other modes because 1v1 of any kind is hard

This would make me stop playing 100% because after awhile you realize Map Gen is not all that random and it becomes business as usual.

Not to mention a lot of the biomes are really awful to look at…

sounds like mapgen just needs to be improved more, the concept behind it is sound itself

The previous hq models were a bit excessive in size in my opinion, but the new ones seem too far into the opposite. Perhaps the best would be to keep the normal model for support factories and just add something obvious but not as over the top as it was to the hqs.

Another possible solution is to use the same model but add a obvious different texture to hq to differentiate the 2.

Not trying to change anyone's mind, just state my own take on the topic properly.

I thought game design is about making meaningful decisions and not picking the most optimal use of apm on menial tasks. Still trying to figure out what is "fun" in manual reclaim.

Also on topic but forgot to say, changing the gun range will also effect things like dealing with t1 pd, mobile arty, aurora, experimentals and telesnipes.

@ftxcommando said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

Saying a “strategy” is involved presupposes a choice is being made. That choice is between manual and auto-oc. Saying a unit should attack automatically (therefore arguing manual might as well as be removed) actively removes the largest strategic element of OC.

It removes """"strategic"""" element of choosing between "microing ACU to have it act at baseline value" and "playing the rest of the game", thus allowing you to freely play the rest of the game where you can utilize real strategy involving units/buildings/economy/intel instead of looking at 1 unit constantly so it doesn't trip over a rock, because with auto-oc you know your ACU isn't going to "forget it has OC unless you choose to sacrifice playing the rest of the game for manually shooting its oc every second", it may still be better OCing manually (which it already is, that you keep failing to remember with your "may as well remove manual", which I never even hinted) but at least it will still use OC at all, like every other unit uses all its weapons at all.

To ad absurdum your post as well, tanks shooting their guns automatically also actively removes the strategic element of manually telling tanks to shoot every individual shot.

You could say having option to micro something to have far greater effect than on its own in fact removes strategic options from the game because now you have to manually do said micro as enemy, who does, will otherwise have physically better units than your own. Is strategy to you merely "who can micro more units at same time and thus have same units but physically stronger"? I prefer it being about coming up with a better plan than the enemy and then having the units do it as I ordered them to. It's supreme commander, not supreme micromanager.

Also your original post was about making t2 get used more in game, which according to you is due to specifically auto-oc and nothing else, have you still not considered buffing t2 in some other way to make that happen instead of nerfing ACU's "anti-t2 superpowers" so they "only exist if and only if you are manually shooting it"?

Obligatory reminder that this same thing already and still exists with battleships groundfiring submarines, where they also gain a schrodinger weapon, as it only exists while you are looking (manually telling them to groundfire) and never otherwise.

my take is units should attack things on their own instead of having to be told manually to do so for each shot, yes

last I checked this was a strategy game

idk why it is even a consideration to make something act worse even for "balance", there is already enough bad unit behavior without making additional things work worse, they should only improve and be balanced around their proper behavior

also don't understand why or how you are supposed to make things be used differently based on rating, as if rating is some kind of physical parameter that can consistently or at all effect whether a unit functions or not

basically to make auto OC worse than manual OC you have to either make it act stupid (like mazor joked and I obviously disagree with such change) or have it physically a different and weaker weapon (makes no sense but at least the controls are intact, however now you have a weapon that only exists while you are manually using it (in an rts game)), and it already is better to manually OC if you can spare apm as you can pick better targets or wait a second for units to clump up instead of spamming it off-cooldown and hit less units with it, the only advantage auto OC has is it can shoot without stopping the ACU movement and other orders and ofc, without player babysitting the ACU and instead playing the game

hm never saw that happen, only bug with selections I notice is that when you select many units/buildings at same time with shift drag, pause button is grayed out forcing you to deselect random units until it appears, but idk if it is ui party related or general

I noticed the ACU selection bug but it is minor, also I think you can force select acu by holding shift while selecting it?

idk what second bug means though so maybe it didn't happen to me

mods can adapt, some mods also hide the diplomacy window by default (ex. ui party that I use), and idk how many players even know about diplomacy itself to see they can mute someone at all, meanwhile scoreboard is always there

confirmation "are you sure you want to mute, you won't be able to receive messages/pings from x player" also works to prevent accidentally muting someone, making it difficult to use is not the solution to it, muting should also only last for duration of the match btw, not become FAF-wide mute like foeing is

maybe pings and chat should be separately mutable, some people spam pings but not chat, so you won't lose all communication with them

if you mean acu's storages, it is tied to the unit itself so yes

@snagglefox said in Proper mute functions:

UI wise - Could add a mute player button in the diplo menu.

it would be funny that muting someone is done from diplomacy menu, but I suggest instead adding mute button to scoreboard next to every player's name

imo only mapgen ladder would be close to "fixing" it because it removes the map knowledge advantage, but it will always be "scarier" than other modes because 1v1 of any kind is hard

@thomashiatt said in How come you don't play ladder?:

I think people experience similar anxiety in every game that has a ranked queue mode. Even in Hearthstone a lot of people talked about ladder anxiety.

never experienced anxiety in any other game's ranked mode, but then again I never played multiplayer in general in any other rts

@ftxcommando like I said idk about mapgen because I didn't play it yet, it just seems less predefined than static maps that players played thousands of times over and already know exactly what each unit should be doing for first few minutes down to individual reclaim and move orders in queue for each, than when they play a map that never existed before where they follow some more general sequence of actions

the point is that you need to know all this "overhead" startup stuff in ladder just to start the game on even ground as the players that already know it, which is different on every map that is randomly picked even if ever so slightly, or you will be behind your opponent from start which only escalates farther into the match, and like I said, maybe build order is not the term for it but that doesn't make it not exist or irrelevant

since everyone else is talking about build orders

the problem with build orders is if your build order isn't as good as your opponents, which is different on every specific map (oh you missed 1 reclaim wreck here, you didn't take this path but a longer one, you should have sent transport here earlier, etc etc), you will not be starting on even ground and will be at a disadvantage from beginning and for the rest of the game in a constant uphill battle, and next game you will get a different map with different optimal build order that you will fail in a different way for same result

so you have to get past (master) build orders to even start playing the game itself, which are specific to each map, maybe it is more like "openings" in general rather than build orders that I mean, it is not just about what buildings you build but everything else you do in beginning, such as the path your engies take and what/whether they reclaim in between, which definitely isn't the same on every map

all the "pro" players that are saying otherwise are simply too good to notice what they even do in beginning of the game because it is second nature to them and just seems "normal", meanwhile to those that don't it is like their opponent starts better off than them and they have to play catch up instead of the game, all because they didn't memorize what to do in beginning of this specific map

in mapgen (didn't play yet so idk) it seems this is removed because no one knows where mexes or reclaim will be to have a predefined optimal opening for the specific map (because it never existed before) to gain immediate advantage over someone who doesn't, they both have to figure it out on the fly instead of one of them going "ok I should take this path with this engi, don't forget to send a raid to here, no one expects it, this path with this engi, reclaim these wrecks in between..." while other goes "what even is this map, I better expand here, oh wait there were wrecks in other direction, where did those labs come from?..."

all you need is a t3 scout atm, and other factions any scout at all