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!

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

tl;dr Gap player problems

Cybran T2 mexes have 1800 HP, so we'd have to nerf strat damage by a massive 40%.

Back before building HP nerfs Cybran strat was arguably the least powerful one, since it couldn't oneshot T2 mexes (2750 damage, 3k mex HP). This was somewhat countered by its huge AoE making it undodgeable and able to kill huge fields of engies, as well as stealth.

After the nerf, the strat feels a bit too OP in my opinion. It's now by far the best strat for killing infrastructure, often able to groundfire 2 mexes at once. Other than some niche situations like killing structures with exactly 6k or 9k HP, the main disadvantage of Cybran strats is gone.

I'm not providing any rationale for the above since I think it's not really necessary, I think everyone is familiar with strats and groundfiring. I suppose a counterargument could be made that the UEF bomber has just one less AoE, I am not entirely sure how much of a difference that makes.

As a nerf, I'd suggest splitting Cybran bomber's AoE into an inner an outer ring, like nukes are. Details could be figured out I'd throw out two examples:

• 2750 dmg/5 AoE, 1500 dmg/7 AoE,
• 2750 dmg/6 AoE, 1000 dmg/7 AoE.

Normally T2 PD is a very easy counter to gun on extreme chokepoint maps. I guess there might exist some kind of "turtle meta", where one team devotes all their mass to eco and gets killed by an unscouted gun ACU, but that's very different from how the game is normally played.

The test has ended, mostly successfully. We had 1 case of a replay prematurely ending, of course we failed to reproduce it afterwards. I'll have to think about it. Other than that the server seems to work fine. Many thanks to all the testers!

A quick reminder that we're starting the test in 2 hours.

@nine2 said in Calling for nine2 to resign as Promotions Councillor:

the reality is the council has let me continue for now.

Can we get confirmation from councilors on that, whatever the decision process is?

There is 2v2 matchmaking, yes. FAF has trueskill, which I think is similar to elo. 1v1, 2v2 and custom games all have separate trueskill ratings.

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.

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.

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