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.

The problem is that the sequence is caused by a desync or one or two people disconnecting. I just can't understand the logic of the game authority intentionally disconnecting the rest of the players who are still on and intend to play, and then initiating the system as discussed. You can't un-rank or cancel games after a certain point because of abuse of the system to avoid losses, so its really egregious that were seeing the actual FAF system further disconnect a semi-functioning environment.

@ipconfig-release said:

What? Disconnected players are not bot controlled. If no one on the team does anything with their units/base, they'll just retain whatever last orders were given by the human player, but that's it.\

What I'm saying is they behave like bots who are then afk. Its hard to read who is still in the game, and hard to read if the game is worth attempting to win, wasting time and creating frustratingly slow victories for people playing against mostly or all afk opponents.

Also, just seen this today:

In 2014 it was religion to have good form on disconnect windows and wait 3 minutes for reconnects so people don't full DC from each other and lock the game out. Many serious disconnects to the internet are resolved within the timeframe of 1:30 -3 minutes, but people have gotten to be so impatient and I rarely see the good form expected so many years ago. Why can't this basic expectation of good form be hard coded structurally into the game environment?

Right so your saying: "New system, this is an improvement."

I'm saying this is not an improvement and is stupid. Getting screwed over by DC's is part of the game, but further disconnecting the players that are still in the match with faux replacements is ludicrously stupid. And now people are getting additional elo for knowing silly commands to give bot player bases to themselves to out-control opponents. That's not skill. No one wants to see a simple desync decay into an actual intentional system authorized full match cancel, but wait your in a bot match now, and its still ranked. I'm still fuming just thinking about it.

The system on Beyond All Reason (game cousin to FAF) allows for match pauses and full reconnections while people wait for the crashing player to reload the match, start a live replay and resync the clock back to paused game time. They also use servers to prevent the eye bleed from watching some tiny hink in the peer to peer net connection slow everyone down. Bad connection is between the lagger and the server only and it reduce the effect by >90%. Both of these feature would be ideal for FAF to say modern.

So I play a lot of Dual Gap. You could call me a dual gap whore...

Dualgap is typically played with all share off meaning if comms die or people DC bases and units all die and have to be reclaimed and rebuilt by teammates. Its been this way since the begininng as a direct contrast to most 4v4 maps like setons, just a different culture and it rewards com snipes and makes the game more end-able with the turtle basis leading to stalemates frequently.

I've noticed there's an (sarcasm included) "improvement" to the disconnect system. When some number of people lag out or quit they used to just go up ~boom~ and it was obvious who was still in the map, and the gameplay was still considered legitimate and ranked. Now I'm seeing some message to the tune of "I've disconnected you give me orders in the comm menu" which I don't have any idea what that means, and it doesn't seem relevent.

Bottom line is after this happens, the game is sharded to hell, and some number of unidentified players are still in the game and get overflow mass from now afk teammates with the same names as who are in the game. This doesn't make sense at all, they are either in the game or gone and no all share means it all dies. This isn't an improvement, and it seems that the rate of DC's don't reflect the interest people would obviously have to stay in the match if its still considered possible to win. That's the reason for Elo in the first place.

This isn't an improvement, and needs removal. Whatever was intended by when this was added doesn't matter. If people want to ghost the rest of the map, they can give all units and buildings and park com somewhere in water or next to PD in SMD lines. Not the best form, but that's the typical "I'm going afk" protocol. What we see now is impossible and anti-competative and just makes things look silly.

Anyone else seen this?

In general there needs to be more clear time periods for knowing when its safe to RE and do an unranked cancel, and how decisions regarding leaving, lag-outs, and eligibility for win work in the game system.

This was a new problem over the past two years only, when a player is defeated I am losing control of units for a period as long as 5 seconds. I just lost my com in a match to this as a tele-mazer was at maximum range and I could have easily outran his range, but because his teamate left the match right at that timing I was helpless to move to counter is range play vs my t1 PD ball nearby.

Please figure out why players are unable to control any units during the player leaving cycle, and remove this problem.

@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.