View this replay and watch Stec:

https://replay.faforever.com/12950928

This shows why hives need a nerf. Stec goes hardcore eco and gets overflow from other players or mass pass and hits insane early eco timing. This is not possible with any other faction, the build speed is just not fair. Kennels won't do it as they don't have enough production power and can't move targets fast enough. Seraphim t3 engineer bonuses have been stripped. Aeon doesn't fare a chance, even following the same macro layout and using t2/t3/t1 engineers to build. Too many spastic things happen blocking build locations and not applying build power efficiently.

Hives just stack into a hard parabola too fast without any trade offs. Basically every player is getting Cybran tech gifted now as a result of this. Its terrible to see balance out of whack this badly.

I know my team overreacted to what was essentially a "decoy" nuke build instead of a proper rush, but the timings Stec hit are broken, even with mass throws. I'd like to see hives nerfed some to fix this. Put them down to 2 upgrades and bring them closer to in line with UEF kennels.

So again, every hero build I see uses hives, every super fast macro I see uses hives. Every impossible to deflect nuke rush uses hives. Every hero defense of areas that don't have sufficient defense uses hives. They are broken and need to be put down in effectiveness some to make the game playable on random.

I urge you to research reverse engineering. A first time develop of something cost a much large around because they are stabbing in the dark and making first time implementations of things. Also source codes can be "decompiled" ask any military or intelligence expert. Its not exactly rocket science here, we have a functional model working on peer to peer. It needs to be run server-side simulation to cut out all the extraneous layers of client to client preparation, streaming, and error correction. This last sentence surmizes everything that is going wrong with this title.

Do what's necessary to fix these problems and you will likely very rapidly move from #4 to #2 on the top RTS list on google.

Holding out the source code vs the larger body of the company is illegal. I'm not in that company and I wasn't around during lay offs, but I can smell a bit of a fish here and some sort of mediation would be preferable. If not just brute force the box open as much as possible and remake functionality (which is much easier to replicate than design as we already see the intended end product in action)

The spool up time would help with op shield assist too. Today lost a game where a mavor got built under t3 seraphrim shileds with some rediculous amount of hives assisting shields. We had 2 dukes, 6 satellites, and assorted battleship and cruiser fire all hitting together but the hives were too much. Every shield we broke, it instantly was able to brace another shield with sooo stupidly much build power. No other faction can pull that off unless your running around with 8+ engineer scu's or something.

Change something.

So after years of study, countless hours playing and supporting the FAF player base, I'm fed up.

The players from USA cannot play with people from Europe currently because of this game's fossil level P2p netcode. Nothing about the data rate of this game is preventing it from functioning correctly, its 100% over-strict p2p coding that could have easily been resolved by now.

Sitting through almost 3 hours now of streaming faf, and premiering a my map design, and I still did not get one single minute of lag free gameplay. The game needs servers to run a central clock and manage small packet losses so the thing doesn't just automatically run at 1/2 or less speed all the time. Figure out a scheme of donations or monetization to make this work, or I'm leaving like most of the American player base already has.

@ETFreeman What you are saying is how can I defeat my guncom opponent without upgrading my own com? Units only?

This is kind of a silly decision, but it is however possible. The real logic table for bread and butter play is gun com and prevent turtle, or turtle and prevent pushes from your opponent and beat them into t2 arty creep. If you are ruling out these two very very very standard options, you will need to simply outnumber them

The build you need calls for mass factory drop and t1 tank/ arty spam. You will also need to essentially feign defeat when he comes in with his gun com and let him move forward some, then having built up numbers from your large number of t1 factories, run him over with your units and just keep your com out of it, or mopping up some back units (its severely outranged).

T2 units die to quick to oc so just use numbers of t1 and a bit of surprise to catch him off guard. Again I emphasize the need to let him "win" some and lose only a few units while getting him charging recklessly forward, then go in for the kill.

No guarantee you'll polish off the com here, but you can beat that timing just by backing up just a bit and swarming.

Really though, use the main two options the most. They have higher success rates.

@deribus nowhere was I discussing mods. Also dual gap not that outlandish of a map. It has player roles just like setons does, just like tons of other starting positions suggest. I would like to see more maps like this rather than the "if its a not a bunch of 1v1's on lanes its not a real map" argument.

If players play passive and use com/turtle and minimum required defenses on canis for example, the same thing can happen. Overflow to some cybran eco junkie and the games maximum potential eco is totally offset by hive's fast transfer time and the ability for that player to spend that overflow seamlessly without engineer clumping, and slam rapidly through tasks without a single bit of transfer time. Please read my posts again and look past your blindness.

Well the pattern I see here is that lots of noobs or low level thinkers come in here and shit-post about this or that needing to be changed and everyone seems to get a default approach of trashing any post that comes through (because statistically that is a good guess without even reading the post).

Then when people actually raise good points the normal crowd does it's hatchet job and theres more counter-argument than there should be so it stalls or appears on a numerical post basis to be unpopular. Gonna take some special kinds of insight to work around that so hopefully you'll see what I'm talking about and act smartly.

@auricocorico The thing I see is that there could be more gameplay at standoff ranges with anti missile and homing missiles added aside from turtle. Right now missile just miss moving armies and are only effective when formations are still or moving on predictable lines (e.g. shooting at one column and hitting something behind).

So if you had anti-MML units in your formations, and either a second rapid fire mml shooting somewhat homing missiles either by toggle or unit composition, then the game could show more standoff meta instead of being a close range only unit ball game.

Yes mml still works against static positions if they are not microing their artillery correctly. But this change would be more about moving armies at medium and closer ranges where MMl and anti-mml would be a t2 support unit of more importance instead of just being an auxiliary tool or something to intensely micro the shot pattern of to predict movement.

I'm not usually one for drastic suggestions on here (well maybe once or twice) but I was watching the Gyle cast this week and had the thought that maybe a mobile missile rework could be in order:

Add a mobile TMD.

Split mobile missile launchers in to two groups or have two settings on them, one for normal operation (best vs buildings) and another higher rate of fire, lower damage, and partial unit locking setting (making them much more usable vs spam units.

Not perfect locking just somewhat better (IE splash hits on units moving in straight lines but missing jukers)

anyone else have thoughts?

The ground fire is my main issue, just take it out alltogether. Also cybran frigates should be weaker with all the t2 stealth trickery invovled.

Well the pattern I see here is that lots of noobs or low level thinkers come in here and shit-post about this or that needing to be changed and everyone seems to get a default approach of trashing any post that comes through (because statistically that is a good guess without even reading the post).

Then when people actually raise good points the normal crowd does it's hatchet job and theres more counter-argument than there should be so it stalls or appears on a numerical post basis to be unpopular. Gonna take some special kinds of insight to work around that so hopefully you'll see what I'm talking about and act smartly.

@Deribus Right well with most factions you put the experimental up front to bludgeon through and make room for your army and get stealth attack.

With seraphim you really want it going in last and using every hp from other units to give you travel time inwards further than you would have gotten so the storm hits something juicier.

@Blodir One Minute is a ridiculously long example as I'm sure you know. There is some wiggle room that should be allowed for connections that seem to have random intermittency but does not stat disconnected for long enough periods to get them out of sync with the overall model checks.

Also I do have tons of empirical experience with the game play and when it lags, and how this looks on the F11 screen. You can see who is behind, and you can also tell from this and enough experience that people who do not have connection issues often register as the problem due to a reflection of the the initial problem complicated by high.er ping.

My question is why does not the connections with intermittency problems re-route to another node? and also all of these problems get solved by a server so even a basic attempt at a fund raiser to move partial gameplay over to a test environment to see if it's game-changing would be worth it. If FAF gets eyeballs waiting for games, then that is ad revenue, and after a test period large cost offsets or full cost coverage could be possible.

As for the netcode rework, It should be a piece of cake. Mostly deleting lines cross checking position commands taking at the same time on P2p and replacing them with an almost identical server based central response. The result is small problems no longer slow the game down to 1/2 speed, less disconnection problems overall, hopefully better re-routing of net access, and I don't get blamed for lagging living in the USA playing with mostly euros. Also more sales and return of USA player base would be likely.

Right now one glitchy person on the P2p net, and everyone is getting flashy cursors, slow gameplay, endless RE cycles, and frustration instead of competition.

Look I do send a monthly bit of cash to downlord to help. Its not much but its what I can send on my humble musician lifestyle.

As for research it doesn't take much more than above brain-dead levels to know that peer to peer is over 15 years outdated. If I can play cs go with russians and have some lag than the I should be able to play FAF with mostly east of atlantic lobbies and have it be playable. These guys literally just point fingers at me and say "spy lags, fix it" and I have 550 mbps down and 500 mbps up with 12 ping to node. My internet could not possibly be more blingy. Streaming is not taking even 10% of that data rate.

The issue is one p2p branch is getting throttled by some node somewhere and the game doesn't re-route around that intermittency so then the slowest person by range to those players goes behind. Many times the player who is getting blamed is the one getting delay on this once removed. And since USA has largely all gotten bug eyes at cyberpunk 2017 and is going "wut do elo score?" I'm literally alone here. USA is a big country (and our neighbors north and south) so something scared them all away and this is it. Getting blamed for some shitty netcode.

Just buy some server space in France and build in an add portal on the lobby screen and FAF client. Should even out.

So after years of study, countless hours playing and supporting the FAF player base, I'm fed up.

The players from USA cannot play with people from Europe currently because of this game's fossil level P2p netcode. Nothing about the data rate of this game is preventing it from functioning correctly, its 100% over-strict p2p coding that could have easily been resolved by now.

Sitting through almost 3 hours now of streaming faf, and premiering a my map design, and I still did not get one single minute of lag free gameplay. The game needs servers to run a central clock and manage small packet losses so the thing doesn't just automatically run at 1/2 or less speed all the time. Figure out a scheme of donations or monetization to make this work, or I'm leaving like most of the American player base already has.

It would be a significant balance change if anything was done here. If your losing a lot of ground units to the e field then your either not planning well or getting caught of guard by some surprise element that wasn't scouted.

Seraphim may lose heads up to aeon, but for late game seraphim t3 shield size and strength gives them a big advantage for arty wars, and seraphim cant ras, so they will have engineer coms to brace with which are way more potent than the aeon's ras ball. Also the size and strength of t3 shield land units gives you options if you cycle them through right.

So bottom line is that hitting a terrorist timing to get some damage done early on when 1-2 experimentals are possible is the seraphim prime time, after that your parrying their offense behind t2 turtle and managing experimental count and defense and t3 to hold the line and get the reclaim.

As long as your hitting a good t3 arty timing and keeping them from being able to work on a paragon effectively (eg forcing them to focus shields) you'll win here. 8v8 experimentals is just dumb for seraphim to even take
just use 5 experimentals and ridiculous t2 creep and defend vs his 8 and laugh at him crying about the mass donation afterwards.

@John73John If your reclaiming something then use your hives to help with that. You may be having issues selecting your drones as it takes some skill to nail the selection just get your actions focused with both your engies and your stations and this issue won't happen. If your unsatisfied with what they're doing then hit stop, or disable them all together.

Theres only a few buildings that are production holes like your talking about. Just hold shift and set up the orders you want done first then it will land on the sml or smd or nuke or experimental.