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We all think it's hard. If reworking netcode is a piece of cake for you, then do it. You'll be a FAF hero.
Following recent balance forum rule changes, I decided to check how often beetles are actually built. So, I did the following:
#!/usr/bin/fish for file in scfa/* ./fafreplay commands $file -c IssueCommand 2>/dev/null | grep -q xrl0302 if [ $status -eq 0 ] echo $file end end | wc -l
Here are the results:
@Gatsik I took a look at your commits , and as a long-time Python client maintainer I officially bless them as good.
I've never seen a more wrong opinion about beetles.
A beetle snipe didn't set you back 4k mass when you could load up 4 onto a T1 transport and kill a full HP ACU 5 minutes into the game. You're not getting flak this early unless you're paranoid and immediately rushing T2 or keeping your ACU in your base the whole game. Flak doesn't work 100% of the time either. Mercies are a bit different in that people don't counter them properly, the best counter to mercies is scouting and suiciding in a handful of inties to kill the whole lot in 1 pass before they leave the base. Unlike a tanky transport, there's no defending that.
Unlike nothas, beetle drops can be stealthed and you can drop engies with them to steal the mass. I used to steal T2 and T3 mexes that way, of course it's much harder now with halved reclaim speed. It's also more cost-efficient than nothas assuming old beetle damage and much harder to stop once they land. Just like arty drops really.
tl;dr Gap player problems
Remember that current replay format is a bit wasteful and we can cut down replay size by 40% or so with better compression. Patches to the java client and current replay server that do just that have been ready for a while, maybe we could merge at least the java client patches? This way we could switch to the new format once, say, 1.5.0 is out.
Other than that I vote for throwing out all replays (currently) older than 5 years. And all dualgap / thermo /astro replays while we're at it
I already hate you for this mod.
This just turns beetles into worse PDs. There's an easy way to fix beetles: get rid of gimmicks, bump up the damage and make the explosion deal damage over time.
Randomness is bad for FPS games with low TTK, where randomness can decide who dies in a 2 second encounter. That doesn't happen in an RTS. Recoil patterns are an artificial way to raise the skill ceiling, an RTS has a high skill ceiling already.
Community is worth nothing If the only game experience available to newcomers is shit. How many people comment under youtube casts that they've watched a lot of casts, but are anxious about playing multiplayer? We should give them an alternative that's not shit for their first twenty games.
Nobody said that it has to be strictly "training" material either. Give them a bunch of tough scenarios that will take many attempts to beat as well.
@FtXCommando A lot of people in the thread mentioned how they were put off by multiplayer in one way or another. Getting kicked because no games, or getting wrecked repeatedly in ladder, or joining a high level game and getting raged at, or landing in a thermo / gap / astro loop. The point of adding singleplayer / coop scenarios is to give them something else that's less frustrating while steering them towards proper game style. This does lead to retention, because when you get frustrated by multiplayer you have more choices than either trying multiplayer again or playing another game.
More importantly, this is something that's obviously doable. An absolutely minimal implementation is adding a bunch of missions to the coop tab, that requires little more than designing, say, 20+ simple scenarios. A lot of effort, but straightforward. More stuff can be added to it - achievements, running a singleplayer game, a dedicated tab, matchmaking, etc.
Your proposal is more ambitious, but requires more resources and constant upkeep.
It's better, sure, but not relative to required effort.
I think newcomers are very intimidated by multiplayer. Other than a few campaign scenarios there isn't any singleplayer content.
How about we make use of the achievement system and make a bunch of low-effort scenarios to beat? Something along the lines of "you vs. AI, T1 only", or "you vs. 2 AI", or "you, air-only, with a teammate, land-only vs. AI", all on existing maps. We have so many good AIs for that right now, don't we? It'd give players something to do instead of quickly gravitating towards turtly games.
@Spy_Emanciator Give us a team of devs that can reverse-engineer FA binaries, rip out its netcode and replace it with something better than what guys at GPG with access to sources came up with over entire development of SC and FA.
It's "at least hundreds of thousands in total salaries" level of hard.
I'd love to see tests against microed corsairs. Well microed corsairs can fire and retreat with almost no damage from mobile flak, I wonder if it fails against static flak.
@Deribus There's no scouting, no enemy movement, small engagement scale and clumped up enemy units. Beetles (at least right now) are very bad at targeting moving units.
IIRC the justification for wagner nerf was that they are extremely powerful for raiding on larger naval maps like Roanoke. The nerf does make them pretty awful even compared to other hover tanks.