In short, decapitation means you get to keep your stuff after your commander dies, but if all commanders on your team die, it's game over. Decapitation is currently an unrated mod.

I think it should be rated, or even better, just integrated into the game as an alternate victory condition - that would mean games using it don't show up as modded, and since the option to show modded games is off by default, the games would have higher visibility. As long , of course, as there are no glaring balance issues (discuss), and as long as that's not too much work for the Game development team.

Why should it be rated? It's a better option than fullshare for casual team games with wide rating distributions, and it's a better option overall than Annihilation or Supremacy, because the cleanup required with those is tedious and meaningless. Right now, in fullshare, people have to actively avoid killing an 800 if they've got a 1600 on their team ready to take over their economy. It might, although this remains to be seen, also encourage new players to be a bit more adventurous with their commanders, which is, in my opinion, a good thing, since making best use of their com is something they learn pretty slowly, with experimentation being very expensive (you die).

As far as I can tell, the benefits outweigh potential problems with this game mode, one of which might be com bombing by high rated players. I believe this is so rarely encountered that people haven't figured out how to mitigate it at the t1 stage, when t2 transports aren't available yet. It's also not something I think is that easy to abuse in order to farm rating. A decision to make it rated could also be reversed at any time, should com bombing or anything else prove to be a big enough problem.

I'm looking for ways to make life easier for new players, in the hope that this will prolong this game's life in the long run.

@Deribus said in the Q&A Thread that noobs are often confronted with the following problems:

• Getting kicked from custom lobbies
• Long queue times in matchmaking, and very imbalanced matches for the first 10 or so
• Few similarly ranked players willing to play anything but dual gap and astro
• Very steep learning curve

The #gameplay-and-training discord channel is focused on helping with that last bullet point, and I commend everyone there for their effort and success, but upon talking to the members, I got the feeling that the other issues are not really part of their mandate (which, upon reflection, is reasonable)

So could a similar community effort help make those critical first few games more straightforward to get, and also a pleasant experience? How did #gameplay-and-training get started? How were the trainers recruited and how are trainees finding their way there? How do big clans like ANZ or CpC organize so well to fill lobbies so fast? Does anyone have any thoughts on what such a community might do to help? Are you interested in taking part?

I'm thinking a good starting point would be finding people willing to host around the clock, build enough reputation to fill lobbies reasonably fast, and compete with the endless gap/astro lobbies for noob attention, with a focus on making a good first impression, but I'm kind of lost when it comes to the organizational part.

Percies? Bricks? What are those? I thought you were only supposed to make titans and loyalists

After having hosted countless all welcome games on randomly generated maps I can attest to the fact full share makes the games more fun to play, for both sides. Without it, games end at around 10 minutes, after the first player death, with no chance of recovery for their teammates, after some 2v1 or unfortunate first engagement. This drastic, game-ending outcome often comes as a result of rock-paper-scissors dynamics in the build orders (much more prevalent on random maps), not some grand masterminded strategy that could potentially be scouted and countered in time.

I am, however, dumbfounded by the amount of people that join only to immediately throw a tantrum because they see full share on, then begin to educate me on its shortcomings. Very few games have ended in victory for the team down a player, so the oft repeated argument that full share makes snipes meaningless just doesn't ring true to me. Being down a com and placing more burden on another player does not make the game easier for the losing team, and, at least around my level, it takes time for the the unified economy to compensate for these disadvantages.

I really hope more people give it a chance, and, as funk said, learn to adapt their decision making to this change in rules. Snipe economy, and press the attack once you get a kill instead of zoning out and going sim city.

Everyone responding to players expressing their reasons for leaving with "you're wrong" should just shut up. Your arguments will not convince someone to keep playing once they decided to leave and you're only discouraging others from speaking out. Doesn't matter if you're right, you're just shitting up a rare, useful feedback thread for no reason.

The ddos is a pain in the ass but I'm still having loads of fun with this game. I'm really excited to try out the new mapgen, and I started playing tmm a bit more and I think it's great.

People that are generally happy with faf or don't agree that things "suck so much" are generally not going to seek those conversations out to share their thoughts, so you disproportionately have to deal with negativity in such interactions although this doesn't necessarily reflect the general attitude.

I'm sure you already know this though, and still, it's hard not to let it affect you. What helped me in this situation, at work, was getting my managers to do most of this emotional labor so i could focus on technical stuff, although I realize it's not a pleasant task to dump on someone, but some people actually enjoy arguing on forums. I have no idea if this is an option for you, but I hope it is since I wouldn't want to lose such a contributor to petty bullshit.

If it isn't, I would personally be happier if you and people that feel the same kept doing what you do without having or trying to explain yourselves, even as some people will start bitching that nobody's communicating with them to the extent they feel entitled to.

I generate random map. Looks like it might be good, but the preview, it's the size of a stamp. A tiny stamp because I made 12.5km and it's got a big black border. There's this black gradient over the bottom that ensures the very interesting map name spanning 2 lines is readable so I squint harder than Clint Eastwood. No use, can't see shit. My old man vision can't even pick out the spawns if the map is of the darker kind. So I click create game. I zoom into the map using the NEW BIG LENS BUTTON and notice something I don't like. Close lobby. Go back to host dialog.

I realize this host dialog was never designed to nitpick generated maps, count mexes per spawn, see the difference between cliff and ramp and all that stuff. We didn't have mapgen back when it was made. But maybe it's possible to add the NEW BIG LENS BUTTON in the game creation dialog thus fixing it?

Generally I think a turtle style feels way more comfortable for new players, and this is reinforced by a bias towards safer maps like gap or astro when it comes to the games they play.

For them to become ladder players, if they ever do, they have to go through a phase where they unlearn some bad turtle habits, and try out and succeed at being aggressive. They tend to do this by playing more open maps in custom lobbies, the lower the skill and confidence, the more players.

There's already a big cost in attention needed to use the ACU offensively, as compared to just making some obscene firebase with a t2 com, a very, very common noob trap. And attention, specifically, is a beginner's most scarce resource. They often forget radar, tmd, scouting in general, they may idle their first high tech engies for minutes if they get distracted, or attack then look away from the fight, because doing these things right is not yet second nature to them. They spend more time doing any one thing and often get tunnel-vision on some random task because they have to think about it and it's not just busywork as it is to a veteran. This makes multi-taksing harder.

I'm worried about the nerfs you suggested because they make the climb from astro noob to ladder player steeper. I'm sure, FTX, you're very familiar with all the things I described, with all your mentoring experience on discord, and with that in mind, maybe I shouldn't be worried, but I'm still hoping you can think of another way of solving the problem.

I think the recent speed boost to t2 is a welcome change, and in general, I think I'd prefer some solution (which i don't claim to have) that emphasizes decision-making. The same way an air player rushing t3 air might conclude he has a window of opportunity and a need to do damage with a very early strat if he sees his counterpart making t2 bombers, and the same way a less skilled air player like myself decides to pay a mass tax and always shield their t2 pgens, even as i know some better players skip this sometimes, by scouting better and being able to determine if they're far enough behind that a shield is needed.

There's another point to be made regarding player experience.

Since without full share, you are usually punished with an agonizing and inevitable defeat when your teammate dies, sometimes through no fault of your own, player deaths are often followed by toxic interactions between teammates, "moron" tags peppered around the map and stuff like that. Full share helps a lot with this problem.

It also seems to me that people more often stay in the game instead of leaving immediately when full share is on, maybe partly because they want to see their stuff put to use. For one thing, this means defeat feels less bitter since fewer rage quit. But it also increases the chance that dead high rated players instruct lower rated players on their team, and that dead low rated players stick around to learn from their teammates. These are the only times casual players get to see high level play and actually pay attention to it, since very few of them spectate games or watch replays, and actually incentivizes high rated players to teach, since they can salvage their rating if they guide their teammates to victory.

These are not minor concerns. This community is plagued by the unreasonable popularity of maps like astro craters or thermo or gap. If a lobby features some other map, it's almost always rating limited. New players end up joining the only lobbies that will have them, the aforementioned shit map trifecta. Some never leave this comfort zone even after gaining a white rating.

TMM is one of the few developments in years that has a chance to change this, and, if I'm not mistaken, it's whole purpose is specifically remedying this situation. We should not overlook player experience when deciding how to structure team play. Even if it turns out full share is not the best option, TMM should arguably use it at launch to be more noob friendly.

@askaholic said in Introducing Mapgen Week on Ladder:

Let’s rename it to "Neroxis and Sheikah Map Generator". And while we’re at it let’s rename the faf client to "Downlords and Axels and Brutus’ and Sheikahs and All those other guys FAF Client"

Praise Neroxis when mapgen is good, blame Sheikah when something is wrong with it. This is the way

@FtXCommando As I said, I understand some are attached to the more interesting dynamics this flaw of the UI created but it also created some shitty dynamics as well. Gameplay depth should rely on players' choices, and the game should properly convey all the information needed to inform those choices.

Gameplay depth should not rely on noticing damage values or 3d model variations. It's a RTS not a "spot the difference" game.

If the original devs had included units that don't have associated icons, I'd have to concede that this was an intended mechanic, but they never did. Instead they went with stealth, cloak or jamming when they wanted gameplay elements revolving around intel gathering. That's because hiding icons (and thus information down into the detailed 3d level) runs counter to the goal and usefulness of the continuous zoom feature which defines this game to a much greater extent than the stuff you mentioned in your post. And when those aforementioned abilities trip you up, it doesn't feel like it's the game screwing you instead of your opponent.

Game does that for allies, not for enemies. For enemies players need to watch out for big gun acu themselves.

The game alerts you when teammates get upgrades and build experimentals via chat messages. These were implemented in faf and are not in the base game - another example of info that's relevant, poorly communicated, that got a fix which I think is imperfect because it's transient and lacks location information and is at odds with how the game usually presents info: using icons. As for enemies, "gun acu" text markers are quite common in the early game, players add this info to the map themselves, after scouting it and recognizing it, because the game doesn't do it. Getting the information isn't the problem, showing it is.

My suggestion would not make the information easier to get. If a com got gun and I didn't scout it, the invisible unit that would show this upgrade icon next to the com would not be revealed to me until I had vision of it, same as all other units in the game. How is that a "legal map hack"? Literally the only difference would be I wouldn't need to zoom in to see the big gun. Why are you so attached to this oddity in the game's presentation? Is that what you call gameplay depth?

@Sainse if the information is available to players as you say, scouting it should highlight and label it as it does other information.

@TheWeakie apparently you're unaware "you can calculate com upgrades from HP and visuals". If Sainse is correct, he depth you refer to is that of your own ignorance of obscure, unintended, clunky ways of gathering intel when the game fails to communicate it and also fails to hide it. Either show this information properly or, if you're gonna argue for keeping it hidden, hide it properly. The way it is now is due to oversight by the original devs and players figuring out workarounds.

Here's some of the things that usually show up on text markers in team games: "com upgrading", "experimental under construction", "TML ACU" - all of that stuff is often scouted, the information is often revealed, the players do their jobs, but since the game doesn't do it's job of labeling and disseminating it, teammates have to do this part themselves too. There's no gameplay depth in leaving this burden to them.

I understand some are attached to the more interesting dynamics this flaw of the UI created but it also created some shitty dynamics as well. Gameplay depth should rely on players' choices, and the game should properly convey all the information needed to inform those choices.

Maybe a good middle ground is to give the upgrade icons stealth.

I'd like to suggest increasing ACU TML minimum range to 130% gun range or something thereabouts, enough to ensure that if an opponent is hit by a missile as they're approaching, they have just enough time to turn around before they are finished off by the gun. Moreover, the TML com would no longer have such an easy time retreating from a fight by forcing their opponent to dodge, and it would solve the problem that at very close range, dodging requires luck.

On a related note, I'd like to also make a suggestion for fixing one of the UI's glaring flaws: add secondary icons to ACUs to represent their upgrades. Broadly speaking, it's our job to make and send scouts and it's the game's job to label and present the information they gather in a consistent manner - icons. We shouldn't have to zoom in and squint at a unit's 3d model or peculiar glow (while upgrading), and this information should persist for players to take note of even after vision is lost, provided there is radar coverage. I vaguely remember @Jip saying that changing the ACU icon is not possible, but maybe an otherwise invisible, unselectable unit can be made to accompany it and show the upgrades as icons right below it.

@maudlin27 currently, the TML com is very strongly incentivized to time their first missile to hit just as they enter gun range - a high probability hit since very few players zoom in and take note of the backpack. After that, the TML ACU can pursue while both shooting and lobbing missiles that are at their absolute hardest to dodge so close in, even experienced players need to get lucky to avoid taking hits. If their victim wants to disengage, they have to zig-zag as they go, making them effectively ~10% slower.

I like attacking coms with TML but I don't want a single well timed surprise hit just before an engagement to mean inescapable death for them.

@Caliber I didn't know this. Do multiple stacked shields survive?

@Nomander the projectile's motion need not be flat. By deciding how the billy flies you can adjust how valuable intel is to dodge it - make the landing take a proportionally larger chunk of the flight time, or a projectile that starts off fast and slows down as it goes, and scouting is less relevant.

I personally would like a reduced billy range more than tweaks to its speed, and even a reduced ACU TML range to be honest, but I would have thought it to be a more radical suggestion since it's very counter-intuitive that an upgrade to the tml have shorter range, and since it impacts billy's performance against static targets which I didn't think was the problem. This is why I suggested what I considered less drastic.

If you did go for the range reduction, would you let players still fire regular TMLs after upgrading to billy? If yes, how would reloading work? I don't care either way, just wanted to know what you thought.

@Nomander I guess you have a point, it wouldn't help noobs in particular. Should you agree that it's cheaper at lower skill and in larger games and consider it a problem, shifting its cost towards mass and away from energy might address that more directly.

However, I think it's a strange to suggest my proposal would make the weapon 99% useless and call it a nerf instead of a change when I was so vague with the parameters and even explicitly called for a cost tradeoff. You're also apparently estimating its usefulness against static targets, which would actually go up, to reach at most 1% after such a change. Consider that telebilly would never have even been suggested in the first place if static targets were that unappealing.

Should you decide to be a bit more charitable though, I would rather you imagine a changed billy being effective and cost-efficient at ~2x gun range against skilled opponents and falling off gradually beyond that, to the point where getting your army hit at max range is cause for ridicule. This would make it a bit trickier to use when experimentals are pushing or air is contested, but more interesting, since you would actually have to put some thought into the ACU's positioning.

If you get maser or splash or advanced gun range then just chill among static shields and pd forests, it feels like a waste. Venturing out with your com to make use of these powerful weapons is part of what makes them exciting. I'm not saying billy is unbalanced, but it's not as fun as it could be.

I'm sure there's enough leeway here to work with, but if you don't like my suggestion, I would rather you explained either how it would be detrimental to this weapon's current intended role, or why there is no combination of numbers that could achieve it. If you don't respect arguments for noob-friendliness, consider them arguments for fun gameplay, and avoid straw men please.

@FtXCommando it's true that the billy is quite expensive, especially energy wise, but it's efficiency quickly scales as the number of players goes up. Similar to how on setons, for instance, one nuke launcher forces 4 smds, the very large range of the billy allows it to stall or complicate pushes from several players on many fronts very fast, especially if you also get a continental. Another reason it scales so well with more players is because of energy overflow. It spreads the cost out among teammates and this means the investment into a billy doesn't leave as large gaps to exploit for the opponents in a 6v6 as it might in a 3v3. This also makes it "cheaper" in lower rated games, where overflow is way more abundant, but the experience, reaction speed and attention management needed to defend against it are at more of a premium. The fact it leaves no wreck behind, unlike broadswords, also grants it a comparative advantage as the average skill goes down.

And while defending against broadswords might be more expensive mass wise, it's definitely cheaper attention wise. I fear the skill floor might be too high to push against the billy properly for quite a few players, which is another reason I suggested making it cheaper but slower.

I wouldn't mind a nerf to billy speed, even if it were made significantly cheaper to compensate for this nerf. Its very generous range makes it too safe to use in my opinion, compared to other late ACU upgrades. If it flew slower, there would be more of an incentive to get closer before launching, or it would be less frustrating to play against because dodging would be easier at max range.

That being said, here are some things you can do to counter it on the move @Caliber. As soon as it's revealed, split your armies up into small, spread clumps, start a few t1 air scout streams in the UEF's general direction, start spamming t2 or t3 engies to the front from at least 1 factory, and avoid pushing until they get there. Later you can switch out the engies for sACUs if you want, they can do this more reliably.

If you're seraphim, add more mobile shields to the army mix, they block the billy so incredibly well that you can just keep everything clumped. In the longer term, if you're aeon, you can also consider transitioning to GCs instead of mass t3. Whatever mobile anti air they need can follow behind the build power and still be effective, while the collosi themselves are so tanky they make for very unappealing targets.

In general I found billy a bit less annoying to deal with after I started mixing t2 or t3 engies into the army in all my games instead of relying only on t1 engies to reclaim in the lategame, as I had been doing before.

@Firv, with other late-game upgrades, you get maybe a few minutes of value before the armies become too big to face, whereas billy you can potentially keep using to good effect almost indefinitely right now, sitting cozy under shields behind percy walls, lobbing rockets across the map. The risk hardly increases as the game progresses, like it does for other com upgrades, since there's not much incentive to get anywhere close to threats in order to use it. In addition, because armies tend to get bigger and less wieldy, the care you have to put into your aim actually goes down as time goes on. Plus, you can pair it with t3 which is a defensive upgrade. The change I suggested wouldn't mean you absolutely must bring the com into knife distance either.

Also, it doesn't impact tele billy at all, because in that scenario you're shooting at helpless and static targets. If you're hunting armies, teleporting is actually worse than airlifting because you can't adjust your destination as the move orders shift around plus your fire rate is shit.