Hi all,

I'm the guy that's responsible for FAF replay server, here to talk about stuff. Tl; dr if you have issues watching live replays and want to help out, scroll down to the bottom.

A long time ago there was the original replay server. That thing had a bunch of issues and had to be restarted every once in a while. Some time back I rewrote it and the new version has been running ever since. The replay server does two things: it streams live replays and it saves them to FAF vault. Right now saving replays works perfectly fine, but streaming doesn't quite work.

Many of you know that there's a bug with live replays where if you're behind on replays and the game ends, the replay ends abruptly. I know about this bug, but never managed to fix it. I can't reproduce it myself and I have absolutely no clue what causes the bug. Maybe it has something to do with how Python deals with TCP connections, maybe it's the FA executable acting up, or maybe there is some bug in the server I missed. I don't know. Here's a possible way to fix it.

Not long ago I rewrote the replay server again. This version is IMO simpler, more tidy and it's done in Rust rather than Python, meaning it's faster, multithreaded and easier to maintain. I spent some time polishing it, making tests and so on, the last bit that's left is testing it with a bunch of real games, then deploying it. Now, we held off for a while on that last step. From our (dev) perspective, current server has been working fine, in a sense that replays were saved properly and nothing crashed. Here's where you come in.

• First, I need to hear your opinion on live replays so us devs can gauge how serious of an issue this is.
• Second, I need a bunch of people for a testing session on the test server, maybe a mini-tourney of sorts, with some people playing and other people watching. This way I can verify that the server works fine, and with a little luck the live replay issue will be fixed as well.

I don't have any timeframe for the testing session, but we'll figure something out, maybe on some weekend. Come help out pls!

You'll end up with people flaming about kill stealing and accusing one another of stealing rating.

Jesus Christ people what are you even talking about

I know I don't do much dev work, but please, please listen to my heartfelt plea. I know it's hard to do when we're 100 posts deep into accusation and hurt feelings, but it's just a videogame. There's no reason for any of this drama to exist.

I'm not the kind of person that likes the "toxicity + inclusiveness + CoC" HR nonsense, but maybe we can accept some provisional rules to get this thing under control. I don't want another ZeP episode over nothing.

• Assume good faith, even when first impression tells you not to. We're all adults here, we should assume by default that we're not driven by pettiness, even if we sometimes lash out.
• Get angry in proportion. Being direct and sometimes offensive is fine, if the thing at hand warrants this approach. If something is bullshit about a thing, call it bullshit. If we ban getting angry, people will vent through underhanded office politics bullshit. OTOH no one is obliged to respond to every rant and people who rant all the time start being ignored, so save them for things that really matter.
• When in doubt, deescalate. If things get too heated, deescalate first. Get someone else to arbitrate. If you're a bystander, support the person that chose not to escalate, not in what they're arguing about, but in their stance. An argument is a dollar auction game and beyond some point betting higher should be made not worth it.

Can we all agree to this? I hate to see people who contributed this much more to FAF than me lose it over petty nonsense.

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.

Jesus @Askaholic relax. I don't care about complaints or people being annoyed, I just want to get something done.

Following recent balance forum rule changes, I decided to check how often beetles are actually built. So, I did the following:

• I grabbed 2000 replays from id 13370143 downwards, skipping IDs that gave me a 404.
• I ran the replay parser on replays with the following script:

  #!/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
  

  This basically counts the number of replays in which commands were given to a unit type "xrl0302" (or fire beetles).
• Finally, I counted replays in a similar fashion for a bunch of other gimmicky/niche units.

Here are the results:

• Beetles: 18
• Sparkies: 100
• Mercies: 79
• Janus: 187
• Continental: 99
• Spearhead: 42
• Shard: 76

Hey, an announcement. Here's my idea what we will do.

• We meet up on Sunday, June 6, 18:00 UTC. I think it doesn't collide with any events. That's a provisional date, if you have better suggestions please let me know.
• We meet on IRC and Discord. I'll be in Discord's #faf-testing channel. If IRC on the test server works, I'll also be in client chat. Voice chat is an option I guess, I'll be in one of Discord's voice channels. Apparently my mic sounds like a WW2 fighter pilot, but we'll manage
• We login to the test server. This means: log out if you have autologin enabled, select "Test server" in the dropdown menu and use 'foo' as password.
• We organize a few games, some people play, other people watch live replays, no particular format. I hope we can get maybe 4-6 games.
• I check if everything works as it should, you report if the short replay bug is gone. I go back to dev chat with results and we decide if and when we deploy the new server.

Let me know what you think.

@mozy said in Proposal: Cybran ACU upgrades:

All there is for cybran is lazer which is a meme

it's a good meme tho

This thing is good, it parses tick count real fast, it's thanks to this thing that we get to preview in-game time for replays, you should adore it

@Gatsik I took a look at your commits , and as a long-time Python client maintainer I officially bless them as good.

Is it possible in-engine to split the dead unit into multiple parts before it crashes? Washer has a huge hole in its hull, it would only make sense if it fell apart on death in the air.

I think these logs are a red herring, this looks more like loading map previews for games showing up in the game browser.

Fun fact: Aeon and Cybran ints deal less than 50 damage per volley, while UEF and Sera inties deal 50 or over. Coupled with HP differences, this means Cybraa/Aeon ints need 7 volleys to kill a UEF/Sera ints, all other combinations need 6. Aeon and Cybran ints also need 11 volleys to kill a T1 transport rather than 10. Aeon/Cybran ints used to cost 2 less mass to compensate, but it was equalized at some point. I wonder how it compares to Cybran versus Sera frigates.

@thewheelie said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:

Yes it definitely justified this response.

I've seen multiple balance threads in the past get dismissed by you with witty one liners. If you don't want people getting fed up with this shit and going "full clown", you should give a minimally useful reply instead. "Cool" takes as a balance team member just make you look like a snob.

Also beetles currently perform more roles than most other mainline t2 land units, so i don't really see why they need to do more.

That's a hot take. I can probably name most mainline T2 land units that are useful more often than beetles. Main tanks for all factions, flak for all factions, hoplites/mongoose, stealth/mobile shields, arguably blazes since they're fast so they're not just anti-navy. What's left is sparkies, other hover tanks, MMLs and Wagner. I can agree with MMLs since they don't seem to be in fashion right now, maybe hover too. Definitely Wagner after its brutal HP nerf.

This idea of yours is even more limited to their role then they currently are.

It'd turn Beetles into land Janus in a sense, so I don't imagine it'd be limited to just base raiding. It's the smallest modification from the original that keeps their power, but removes the com sniping cancer.

@thewheelie said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:

I point it out, not in the most "professional" way, but on the same wave length as you wrote your post, and then you go full fucking clown on me.

Your response was hardly "the same wave length". I'm not inside your head, I'm not aware that "billy something something" means "beetles are actually being used". Focus more on being understood rather than being smug.

Still i've seen a fair quantity of acu snipes or other uses for beetles

I can't say I've seen the same. I made and posted a script for counting games where X unit was built, I wouldn't mind seeing how many times beetles were built over the last 10k games.

I still don't even understand how you think the new beetles are worse at all from a gameplay perspective compared to the old ones. When the old ones were literally uncounterable if you saw them too late and they relied on luck and cheese, while the new beetles rely on intel sniping, unit positioning, baiting armies in, etc. From a pure gameplay point of view the new beetles are, in my opinion, infinitely better than the old ones.

I don't. Old beetles were cancer, I just think they should've been taken in a different direction. You gave them one single role that they never had before: anti-T2 army, limited size at that since beetles have to be microed one by one. Plus occasional com snipe that would be better served by corsairs. I suppose since mercies, absolvers and sparkies exist, it's justified? Then again, even mercies have more uses since you can spam them against experimentals.

I'd rather see beetles evolve towards raiding/airdrop/anti-base role to make up for low capacity transports and bad anti-building T1 arty, hence the damage over time idea. Alas, what do I know.

@thewheelie said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:

I shouldnt need to respond to a lazy take of you with full research. Not my fault you put words in my mouth i never said and then criticize those imaginary words. Maybe if you wouldnt go in full aggro mode at every possible opportunity people would respond to you more seriously. You know, like what happened to strykers posts.

Also you, in a beetle balance thread ways back:

beetles are already good since the latest patch. It will just time for people to notice just like it took half a year for ppl to realise mongoose were busted

I can't believe you got me to go dig it up. I'm still waiting for people to realize beetles are busted. I'm not copying my diatribes on why beetles aren't good, go find them where I got that comment from.

@thewheelie said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:

@mazornoob said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:

I'm still waiting for that "community realizes beetles are actually good and starts using them" moment that was promised to me over a year ago, where is it? I was told that beetles are super good, that I don't know better and all the good players will figure it out any day now. What happened to that?

Got put together with the "wtf billy is shit reeeeee" camp

That's the kind of faux-smug bullshit that caused balance stagnation this thread is complaining about. Your whole idea of beetle usage is based on personal preference and that one meme game of beetles killing mexes of a turtling team without radar. Any complaints about them or other stuff is met with "lmao you don't know better I'm the BALANCE GOD here". We set high standards for posting on the balance forums to discourage stupid and lazy takes, maybe these standards should apply to the balance team as well?

I'm still waiting for that "community realizes beetles are actually good and starts using them" moment that was promised to me over a year ago, where is it? I was told that beetles are super good, that I don't know better and all the good players will figure it out any day now. What happened to that?

@comradestryker said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

The Cybran ACU has one of the strongest upgrades early on - Stealth.

Correct, early on, meaning late T1 stage at most. Look at other factions' options:

• UEF gun + nano
• UEF gun + T2 + shield
• Aeon double gun
• Aeon gun range + radar
• Aeon chrono
• Aeon double gun plus shield
• Sera gun + T2 + regen
  Most of these can't be fought toe-to-toe with a Cybran com until lazer. By the time you get lazer, it's T3 land time and a Cybran com with its 12k base health gets kited to death by 3 percies/bricks or 3 snipers. Only after you get cloak you can go rambo, and that's assuming your opponent doesn't have omni, or built a GC, or groundfires an experimental or strats at you.

The Wagner has probably one advantage no other amphibious tank has - The ability to go under the water and not above it.

That's a sidegrade at most. It means that outside of spamming T2 artillery Cybran has zero tools to get back in the water after being pushed out.

T3 mobile arty used to be OP, then deployment time rebalance happened. No mobile shields = no protection from air = dead arty.

This is quite a fair point, but why build them if you don't have air to cover them?
It's all situational.

All the more reason for Cybran T3 air to be strictly better, no? Other factions can shield their T3 arties and don't need air dominance to use them.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the Cybran AA (T1 & T2) can fight against land units... so it's a multi-purpose unit. It's not defenseless and it will attack land units, too.

T2 Cybran flak doesn't fight land units. You don't seem to play Cybran very much. No one seriously uses T1 AA's land DPS either, I'd very much prefer another faction's AA that doesn't take 5 years to kill a Mercy.

Let's not forget about the Viper! That MML is annoying to deal with as its missiles split when destroyed.

A while back all MMLs except the Viper were buffed, so it's not quite the terror in comparison that it used to be.

@comradestryker said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

I beg to differ that Cybran has weaker land stages, as to me, all factions have quite equal strengths - for the most part.

It certainly does.

• The ACU has very few options for combat at T2 and T3 stages compared to other factions, save for T4 stage lazer + cloak.
• Arguably the worst T2 tank. Don't have Pillar's amazing HP to mass ratio, doesn't have Ilshie's range, doesn't have Obsidian's close range DPS and tankiness. Misses half the shots depending on balance patch. Is saved somewhat by medusas being great at T2. Amphibious tank after HP nerfs is a T2 lab and useless for anything but raiding.
• Stealth is alright and deceivers + hoplites are good, but UEF and Sera have long range counters to them and Aeon have the gun, so they're not OP.
• Beetles are a meme.
• Worst DPS per mass T2 PD. Designed for fighting T1 rather than T2.
• Loyas somehow became weaker than Titans after balance changes and have a meme ability no one ever uses.
• Bricks are good, but no mobile shields to protect T3 armies from strats hurts.
• T3 mobile arty used to be OP, then deployment time rebalance happened. No mobile shields = no protection from air = dead arty.