Szasz

There's this bug that fills up the texture of a track mark left behind by Vipers, Fatboys, etc. with distorted+rotated markers for mass spots and hydro spots.

I've heard that it's connected to upscaling the texture for these markers.

Well, the trade-off is not worth it.
Having low res markers would be much much less disturbing that a vibrating visual error that makes me think the game process is gonna crash any second.
You see, the really unsettling part is that these aren’t static artifacts. They keep moving, like some kind of broken kaleidoscope which is quite disorienting.

Recently, not certain when, but I guess in the past months, the explosions were changed into a style that I know as "Fiery Explosions"/"Total Mayhem style explosions". They are, uh, more red.

I dunno about you but I find them very ugly, I've never ever used them out because it is so out of this game for me. (i.e. breaks the immersion)

If there is a way to change it back to the old (vanilla) style, please let me know. If there isn't, please consider giving us the option.

Right now only the login screen provides this option which is gone if login happens - be it manual or automatic.
It would be better if it were accessible at any given moment.

Note: You're just basically looking for the default vanilla behaviour that FAF changed.

Consider "Remove Shield Spillover" mod by Nomander from the vault. It’s fairly old, but it was cleverly implemented so it's light, works great and doesn’t conflict with anything.

I'm not a fan of spillover damage either. It basically puts shield emitters with larger radii at a disadvantage and, as you stated, makes area damage—which has become very common in FAF today—disproportionately strong against clusters of bubbles. At the same time, it still leaves room for microing on/off switches, potentially turning the whole mechanic into a fight against the UI that I subjectively see as bad design.

Hey fellas,

The Inquisitor is nigh unkillable.
I wish I could get a snapshot that features all different angles for the incoming fire. In any case the only unit doing damage was the engineer seen in the pic.
I previously rammed the Experimental with a Mazer ACU, and the only angle from which it was able to deal damage was directly below.
Even torpedoes miss that bastard.

There are still quite a few issues with BlackOps that I'm willing to organize into a list if that would be useful.

Off the top of my head, the Aeon ACU's second intel upgrade -the one with Eye of Rihanne-style quantum optics- costs 270 mass, which I'm pretty sure is meant to be 2700, matching the cost of a similar intel upgrade for another ACU.

(270 is unbalanced for multiple reasons: 1. it grants too much health for such a low cost, 2. the peeping module is extremely powerful on its own, and 3. Aeon can exlusively get their commander into T3 power level in early stages)

Less important but still there:

• Vanisher: T3 T3 Air Transport.
• ED5 UI and economy values (the entry itself is unnecessary IMO due to it being a clutter but right now it's worse: a suboptimal choice that costs more than building ED4 then upgrading it)

These issuesare hard to remember, but very easy to write down in a note when they pop-up in play, so lemme know if you need such a list.

There are also some inconsistencies immersion-wise: Cybran structures lose their regenerative capabilities from vanilla on higher tier (eg. Hydrocarbon Power Plants and T3 Storage), Manticore T3 PD sits on UEF pavement.

Unrelated to BlackOps: the track mark bug in vanilla, produced by every unit rolling on treads like the Viper, Fatboy, etc. is extremely disturbing. Do you know who to reach out to? I don't care if mass spot or hydrocarbon marks are low resolution, the track mark glitches are way worse.

Hey Doompants,

Did you touch artilleries in any way?
The mod '1.5x T2 Artillery Range, 75% cost' conflicts with yours resulting the game getting stuck during loading.
Yet that mod is a simple script changing only a few values dynamically:

LOG('[Blueprints.lua Line number 1 inside mod is line '..debug.getinfo(1).currentline..'] after hooking blueprints.lua!') -- printig the real line number after hooking

local OldModBlueprints = ModBlueprints

function ModBlueprints(all_blueprints)
	OldModBlueprints(all_blueprints)

	for id,bp in all_blueprints.Unit do

		-- build Category Array for faster access like "Categories.LAND" or "Categories.EXPERIMENTAL"
		local Categories = {}
		for _, cat in bp.Categories do
			Categories[cat] = true
		end
		
		if Categories.TECH2 and Categories.STRUCTURE and Categories.ARTILLERY then

			if bp.Economy.BuildCostMass then
				bp.Economy.BuildCostMass = bp.Economy.BuildCostMass * 0.75
			end
			
			if bp.Weapon then
                -- Loop over all Weapons
                for _,weapon in bp.Weapon do

					if weapon.MaxRadius then
						weapon.MaxRadius = weapon.MaxRadius * 1.75
					end
					if weapon.MuzzleVelocity then
						weapon.MuzzleVelocity  = weapon.MuzzleVelocity  * 1.25
					end
					if weapon.ProjectileLifetimeUsesMultiplier then
						weapon.ProjectileLifetimeUsesMultiplier = weapon.ProjectileLifetimeUsesMultiplier * 2
					end
				end
			end
		end
	end 
end 

@doompants I'm curious why don't you use FAF teleport. It's an interactive no-nonsense system that's easy to read and feels well balanced to me. Both with BlackOps or with your balance changes I cannot even tell how much more energy would be needed exactly to port.

@Doompants It's my pleasure to clarify and I'm grateful for your work.
I've noticed that you changed UEF T4 Stellar Generator which is technically not an Unleashed unit.
If you plan to fix EXUnits, you might want to take a look at Seawolves. It seems the explosions of their torpedoes introduce lags, does not damage land or hovering units which they supposed to and can crash the sim.

Crash logs revealed even more:
warning: Error running lua script: 0 damage specified.
[C]: in function `DamageArea'
.../exctorpeffectcontroller01_script.lua

Torpedo script loops and leads to heap overcommit:
Heap: 448.0M / 428.2M

Heap growth coincides exactly with this loop:
Error running lua script: 0 damage specified.
DamageArea()
exctorpeffectcontroller01_script.lua

Still gotta check what unit exactly is
"FORMATION DEBUG: Unit ees0302 does not match any Naval categories."
but I'm gonna bet my ass it's the Seawolf.

@Doompants

• FAF moved air staging platform (static building) from tier 2 to tier 1, but this structure is overshadowed by BlackOps' own T1 Air Staging Facility even at half capacity by being much much cheaper and smaller.
• false build UI stats for ED5 (only for engineers or commanders): 14000 shield value (resets to 16500 when built), 2000 structure hp (will be 500), empty description (every tier in vanilla uses an identical generic description)
• I had a hunch that the track marks texture bug is tied to vanilla and it just rears its head easier while modded. I have only weak observations here. For example it does not happen on White Fire and Winter Duel (maybe frozen maps in general?).

Do you plan to extend your fixes to BlackOps ACUs?

• team chat notifications are off for upgrades (e.g. starting T3 Engineering Upgrade displays T2 notification, starting Apocalyptic Engineering Upgrade displays T3 notification, weapon upgrades are silent)
  - - one of the first Seraphim ACU engineering upgrades has a much lower build time (probably due to a typo) this I remembered wrong (LOUD related)
• assisting a T2+ Mass Extractor with BlackOps ACUs do not place Storages around it but the UI suggests it will (there's a similar issue with field engineers so I'm aware that ideally it would be best if the engine handled the behaviour correctly)
• balance issue on combat engineering upgrades: On average, I think the combat engineering route could be the better choice only about 1 out of 100 times, but I always regret it. Resource route is too useful and gives enough hp regen as it is. They need to be more distinct. Aeon has a slight upper hand here by being unique. Sera combat engi effect is reproducable by a T2 restoration structure on land or by reworked SACUs anywhere. For the rest it's meaningless extra DPS that's detrimental to the health of own units.