I think that you need to be extremely careful when comparing SC2 and FAF (in context I am right now Number. 3 on FAF ladder and in Platinum league in SC2 after couple weeks of playing), while it's true that if an UI mod for SC2 exist that does what an UI mod for FAF does then it would absolutely busted and banned for sure (eg. a Disperse move for marines to avoid Banelings to kill them with their AOE) because it removes a vital part of SC2 which is unit micro. The same can be said for an UI mod that would control economy in FAF where it would automatically add pgens, pauses everything that uses power (E-please or whatever it was called mod). That's because a lot of FAF depth lies in economy and macro, much more then in SC2 (in SC2 unless you are Zerg (Queen injects) the economy is basically Select all Nexus/CC/Hatchery make drones while having the hatchery's waypoint on mineral line/Gas).
The point:
Now back to the topic, I believe that UI mods like ATP (Advanced Target Priority), UI party, Spread move, Disperse move actually increase the micro potential because of the importance and trade of's of Micro vs Micro.

Note: While in theory assuming perfect gameplay and APM of >300 on normal and probably >500 on big maps this wouldn't be true but we are mere mortals and taking into account that I am top 5 player It's safe to assume that If I can't do this and it's not optimal for me to invest my APM into it then it's not gonna be possible nor actually beneficial for other players.

Reasoning:
I will try to now explain why I think that is and give a couple of examples. First of all we need to consider what these mods actually do, most of them allow us, the player, to better tell the units what we want them to do via orders or improve the way we give/queue the orders. ATP allows us to specify what we want the unit to target, Disperse move allows us to split the units more efficiently, same for UI party. As Archsimcat already stated you still do the same amount of work in game by giving orders, the part that is improved/simplified is the UI. Instead of needing to somehow (different methods for that as stated by Arch) select 5 groups i can select one, give the orders and tell them via a UI mod to just split. You may say that this is bad and takeaways the micro aspect of the game, but my point is that it doesn't, it allows you to better "translate" your actions to units and because of that micro more.
Why is that you may ask? Because if I am not allow to use that option then I won't do it at all, I just won't micro it (Excluding some edge cases like splitting very important units that you give a lot of APM attention like engies early game when there is nothing going on, your first 3 t3 units, your T4's etc.) and neither should you because it's just not worth it. Why would I spend 3 seconds on splitting my t1 tanks so that your bomber has 100 less mass killed value if this would mean that I am inefficient with my Mass/E/BP balance causing me to make 5 tanks less? Because of the importance and focus on economy most of the time it's just not worth it to invest a lot of attention nor APM into extensive unit micro in this game, It's just how it is.
Let's go over a few examples:
Example N.1 Mod in question - Disperse Move
As stated above a situation is as follows, a t1 bomber attacking my t1 tanks. If I would have disperse move option there is a chance I might quickly select my 4 tanks, give them 3-4 move orders around them and use my keybind for Disperse move. Take probably around 1-1.5 seconds. If I wouldn't have Disperse move I wouldn't bother to move my tanks at all, if I would have tried I could probably manage to move 1 away but realistically speaking, ask yourself, do you really see it out side of edge cases like first 2-3 minutes and special units? No you don't, I don't do it, I don't see it because it's too much hassle for little gain and it's more important to queue 1 more pgen so I don't power stall in 2 minutes.
Example N.2 Mod in question - ATP (Advanced Target Priority)
I have a few units doing a run by and I want to kill enemy mexes. I select my units and using ATP I use my keybind to tell them to focus mexes and move them in between mexes. I then have to options depending on the game state, I can either micro the units by giving move orders to avoid enemy units, dodge shots etc. to get maximum value out of them or leave them be if that's not really important. Now the same situation without ATP, I select my units and either just move them in and pray, move in and then queue Attack orders on mexes or just queue attack orders on mexes from the start. It takes a little bit more (given low amount of targets, don't kid yourself you don't need to queue more then 2-4 usually) time and "micro" to do so then using ATP BUT it doesn't at all allow for any future micro, I won't move micro my units cause they will move but stop shooting the mexes so I just queue and forget.
Another thing is a more strategic aspect like deciding that I want to prioritize targeting of t1 arties given the game state and both mine and enemy unit composition. Without ATP it wouldn't be possible and this takes a potential strategic and micro aspect of the game.

Over all the argument is that these mods don't take away micro from the game because Yes, they simplify some part of micro but if it's not simplified it's not used (except some edge cases where the mod isn't actually taking away the skill needed cause given low amount of orders value gained from the mod is so small it can be ignored) so nothing is lost, we actually gain the possibilities for micro and increase the potential of it. I would hate to see banning or blocking via changes such UI mods since it would make the game dumber, more boring and actually decrease both the focus on micro and it's potential.
Another thing I would like the bring up is balance, if the mod follows the basic rules (as stated by Mach) and it's not a cheat mod then it really doesn't make units OP (Few exceptions like Shift G + ATP on ACU priority). Did t2 arty/unit drops became OP after ATP? Yes they can be stronger bcs of ATP but it requires extra attention and micro (in order to get more value you need to set targeting to eg. power and then MICRO your arties so that they don't die to defences and stay at the edge of their range). T1 bombers doing Spread attack? Yes they will utilize their AOE more efficiently but it takes more clicks then just move + A-move or just A-Move.
All these mods do is take an aspect of micro that is in theory possible but not worth it because of the time required to achieve it being long due to UI being bad or UI limitations and making such move a viable one.

Back to Keyser.
"the pr you are showing is here to preventing cheating : UI mods abusing the feature to give order to units (ie auto dodging, auto hover bombing etc etc)" Agree with that, these are and should be considered cheat mods and therefore be banned."
"It is also here to remove the split move to trap ACU with T1 units (balance decision in accordance with the balance councillor)." I think this is a very weak argument for removing such an excellent feature like split move, I also don't see why unit blocking of ACU is so bad while for example while blocking an ACU with spamming of t1 aa is not (absolutely busted since it fucks with pathfinding insanely). I really fail to see how units getting on top of the ACU and blocking it is such a bad thing, yes it may be frustrating but I think it's healthy. ACU's are absolutely busted compared to units and you want to keep your ACU in range of enemy units while keeping your units outside of enemy's ACU range. If you move in your units on top of enemy ACU you should be able to block him at the cost of clumping up your units and making them more prone to OC. After all it's only effective if you have a lot more of units bcs of how attacking vs defending unit formation works. If blocking wouldn't be possible it would make ACU even stronger (bad idea in my opinion) and even if you have 50% more t1 tanks you still wouldn't be able to kill enemy with an all in because of defenders advantage in engagements and Vet on ACU etc.
" Spread move / disperse move not working after that, would be an unfortunate side effect." I think that there should be a focus on finding alternative solution if that's the case, it would be a huge loss for micro and gameplay to lose those mods.

Please make sure that your posts contains some actual information, don't make ridiculous claims like "oh this will make bombers OP" without giving it a second thought nor actually argumenting your position. You can have your own opinion but sharing it as facts is just foolish. This thread as all others derail and become a spam fiesta of people arguing and quoting each other back and forward for no real result. This stubborn guy won't change his mind about XYZ so just don't bother. This is not the place for that. Without deeper game knowledge or game balance you shouldn't really claim anything, you can hint that you think or in your opinion something is ... but it's really not that useful for the discussion. It may seem "elitist" but in 99% of the cases it's just the truth, if you don't understand the game well enough you can't say what's OP or UP cause most of the time you can't properly use it or counter it.

Footnote: I've spent a lot of time on this post and thought it through so I won't respond to some low effort quotation and BS claim by some random guy, so just don't bother. I am looking forward to get some answers from other top rated players, but mostly Balance and Game Dev Team as well as to use it in the near future in any related discussions so I won't need to spend 1h again explaining and argumenting my points.

I don't really understand this whole fuss about balance team in the PC election? Like it's not up to PC to decide about balance nor who is on the balance team ... also you posting random screenshots showcasing people angry about balance and map pool is completely useless and proves nothing. It's balance and map pool, there are always people that are unhappy about them no matter what you do. Another thing is this weird idea that "oh the balance team is not doing what's best in the interest of FAF" yet it consists of players that understand FA gameplay the most and are most qualified to make adjustments to said gameplay so am I missing something? You want to make polls about balance, sure go ahead its results doesn't matter cause 99% of players don't understand gameplay well enough to make informed decisions about it and most of them will just base their responses on personal preferences or something they struggle with.

Can any member of the balance explain why these changes are being made?
Bomber and Scout balance changes
While I like the bomber changes to enable more 1st air openings and buff the air aggression I really really disagree with the scout changes which makes them more expensive and increases the BT massively.
In my opinion people don't scout enough in this game anyways and don't respond to what their enemy is doing so I see no reason why the primary way of getting intel should be nerfed, I don't think that we need to buff cheese like surprise t2 bomber all in snipes or anything like that.
I believe that another side effect of this change will be that first of all 1st air openings with a fast scout on transport rush maps will no longer be viable (which in my opinion is the healthiest meta for transport rush maps since if both players do it they can see if enemy is going for transport or inti rush and adapt their BO and respond accordingly (takes some skill) and avoid the Rock/Paper/Scissors of Transport Rush vs Inti Rush vs 1/2 Inti into Transport).
Another side effect will be the randomness on big air maps (mostly trans rush maps) where you will no longer be able to cover all possible routes of enemy transport (usually 2 or 3 scouts needed) and thus making catching enemy transport even more random as well as decreasing the chances of players actively thinking about where to drop their engies and how many based on the intel of enemy transport position and it's cargo.

While I understand that you want to make the scout more expensive and harder to get in order to force 1st air openings to only build bomber instead of bomber + scout I don't think it's the correct approach since it has massive negative effects on other areas of gameplay.
If you wanted to just nerf scout then I think what should be changed instead is nerfing it's Speed, Turn Rate, and Acceleration to a point where an inti can catch and kill the scout.

Note: Please do not post in this thread unless you are a member of the balance team or a well respected and high ranked player. I don't want this thread to become a shit posting cancer.

After playing quite a few games over the last days and participating in the rush for the highest rating I must say that this is truly amazing, never before was I able to just come online and play games during non prime times without the need to wait in a lobby sim for 30+ minutes. After the ratings are settled I believe that sadly TMM will die out in the 2k+ bracket (although I really hope it won't be the case) but for the rest of the players it's a huge game changer. I believe that TMM will help a lot of players get better at the game and allow them to experience the huge variety of maps and strategies FA has to offer. There are few bugs but they are minor and everything is working really really well especially considering this is just a beta. It's already awesome and it's gonna be even better when there will be full release as well as the addition of leagues/divisions.
Overall huge thanks and hats off to everyone involve with the project.

The main issue of Mercies is the fact that even if a player foresees them and prepares in advance there is a good chance he will still die. I think the design behind Mercies was simple, if enemy has AA next to his ACU he lives, if he doesn't then he dies and you win. While discussing if such mechanic is healthy for the gameplay is another topic the main issue right now is that because of the activation radius which is 25 (that's quite a lot, for comparison the vision of an ACU is 26) and the fact the projectiles that AA shoots needs to reach the mercy before it can transform itself into projectiles that cannot be stoped creates the situation where even if you have a lot of aa around you then if it's not between your ACU and the mercies you will still die.
On the other hand the Mercies are extremely annoying to use due to their fuel constraints and the fact that a single intie can get in kill a few even if you have a bunch of your own aircraft escorting the mercies.
Right now I am playing around with a Mercy rework and I have a couple ideas but there is nothing concrete as of yet.

To be honest the only issue I see is that there is a lack of TD's. It's not like Ftx is opposed to events cattering to not tip top level players. After all he is hosting LoTS and the ladder league tourneys now, one event for top 10 and the other for 1.8k+. The other tourneys we have are hosted mainly by Swkoll who is an individual generous enough to spend both his money and a LOT of time to get some high level tourneys going and it's much appreciated but you can't hold it up against him that he is hosting tourneys for high ranked play and not mid-high, it's his decision. Then again, there was holiday tourney which was quite a success with a lot of sign ups and the tourney itself was promoted and covered so the infrastructure, even if it's not the best, is there, equally for mid and high level tourneys. The problem is that there aren't enough people wanting to host tourneys. I don't see how changing PC would even change that, what would happen? You would host them instead of LoTS/ladder league tourney? Why not do it now? Well, of course you want to participate in them, that's perfectly understandable. So the only solution it seems is to get more TD's to host more tourneys, mostly lower rated ones since we already have LoTS, and Swkoll's Invitationals for high level play. So that's where you should focus your attention instead of complaining that Ftx doesn't host more tourneys for mid and lower rated players

PR is up and merged.
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/3265

Pd's are not the issue at hand here. The problem is that you can spam RAS bois that give you economy but if your enemy decides to push you already have BP in place (Ras coms) that are hard to kill and can easily build tons of PD's.
The problem with the later stages of the game is that the amount of mass you have in units compared to your income is growing. Basically usually the longer the game goes on the longer it would take for your economy to re built the army you have. This indirectly makes reclaim insanely important and thus promotes very static gameplay.
I think that in order to achieve healthier gameplay in later stages of the game we would need to encourage players to trade more during the game. The easiest way to do that would be to reduce the amount of reclaim you get from higher tech units.
We should look over some games and see how the value of Total mass in units/mass income changes through the game when we reach different stages and then adjust the reclaim in order to bring values of different stages closer together.
I would need to go and see some replays but from the top of my head the difference rn is huge. (This is for 10x10 land maps, different maps have different values and it also depends if you make land, air, navy).Early t1 stage is ~2k/~25, Late t1 stage ~4k/~35, t2 stage ~8k/45, late t2/t3 rush ~14k/~60 , t3 stage ~20k/80, late t3 stage ~30k/100. As you can see from this very inaccurate approximation from the top of my head the value of the units on the field grows much quicker.
To address one of the arguments against changing our beloved 81% reclaim value. I really disagree that changing that number for different tiers will confuse ppl so that they won't know how much reclaim they will leave. First of all most people have no idea how much units cost so they don't know how much reclaim a Rhino will leave anyways. Changing the % of reclaim left by t2, t3 units won't really confuse ppl since it's quite intuitable, higher tech units leave more mass, it doesn't matter (in sense of understanding) if a brick leaves 800 or 1k mass, it leaves more then your t2 tank, that's all you really need to know. If we are talking about judging how much mass will a failed attack donate you do it with experience and on the fly judging so people will just adapt with time to those changes.
Another counterargument is that with such changes all the wreck props (reclaimable units) on the maps will be changed with such balance change. I am really not to sure what's the best way to address this issue but I don't think it should stop us from balancing the game. Possible solutions are: Just let it happen, most maps will be absolutely fine with slight reclaim decrease. If author wants to adjust his maps, he will do it, as for GPG maps and Classic ones whose authors are inactive we could look over them and see if any would require changes and adjust the wrecks there as needed.
The other idea is to separate the values for civilian owned units or w/e but I am not sure if this is even possible and it's extremely hacky and then unintuitional for future mappers, so I don't think this is the way to go.
Over all I think there is a need for some changes to the values of reclaim in order to make the gameplay especially during later stages of the game healthier, more action packed and rewarding. If we look at other RTS games, especially SC2 we can see similar pattern. Pro matches there used to be either cheeses or games where something happens in the early game, then both players macro'ed, maxed out and clashed once. Right now games can be a 30 minutes of nearly constant fighting, often in different parts of the map at once.
As for the exact number I don't have a proposition yet, I am not even sure if we should balance it for t1, t2, t3 ,t4 or for each tech stage for Land, Air, Navy separately. It needs to follow a logical progression -> higher tech units yield more reclaim (in total since they cost more) but they yield lower % of their cost. With such changes I really hope that we could also buff micro compared to macro since players would be more rewarded for constantly trying to use their units and to find weakness in opponents defense (as it is currently during t1 stage on most 5x5 and 10x10 maps).

A lot of the games are singleplayer so if we would delete all replays that have 1 player and are older then 1 year we would hopefully reduce the memory usage enough while not removing the abillity to watch older multiplayer games. I do sometimes watch older games, even from 2015-17 because that's what you need to do to actually watch some really high rated 1vs1 games that were not part of some tourney.

I am reading through this thread and I see both sides just throwing stones at each other. This discussion will never work if both sides don't agree on some frame of reference. Anyways, here is my take on this:

T3 mex nerf (be it income decrease or price increase) won't have direct effect on early t3 Land because you are supposed to get t3 land BEFORE you get t3 mexes, that's what we are trying to achieve here after all, so there is no need to worry about balance of t1, t2.
What such change WILL impact:
For 1vs1.
Increase the importance and length of early - mid t3 stage (harder to transition towards more eco) which would be problematic if you don't adjust reclaim since it will deepen the issue of importance of reclaim during t3 stage.
Slow the game down after early t3 stage
For team games:
Force people to actually make some units during t2 stage or rush t3 to defend vs t2 armies (Before making t3 mexes)
Make reclaim more important past t3 stage and slow the game down (people will need to make some units leading to a stand offs with slow eco'ing (bcs of bad map design))

It's nearly impossible to change the game so that Team games become dynamic, the map design promotes more passive and turtly gameplay, and people play those games meaning they want such gameplay. I think that making a slight adjustment to slow the t3 eco switch a little bit would be good and healthy if properly implemented but you can't change the fact that still most team games will be passive and turtly.

I am in!

Some stats must be off cause I veto'ed Aeon against Blast and his first pick was Aeon.

Yes and that extra efficiency is only needed at a high level, I would say 1.6+. If you are below that level you shouldn't worry about such things, attack moving is just fine. If you have the APM and time in game to manually reclaim go ahead, if you don't then just attack move. If we would introduce an area command which would result in manual reclaim orders being placed on all the props & wrecks in the area it would break nearly every single high level BO and also drastically change how the game is played on a high level while making the lower level games actually harder because the economy management would become a lot harder with sudden influxes of resources from reclaim.

@kalethequick said in About the veterancy system:

Option 2 seems workable.

Though as FtXCommando mentioned, the impact of veterancy on gameplay in general is so small. A whole force of veterans will beat an equal force of recruits, but TBH that feels like it. That is outside the topic here though.

Ftx was referring to vet system's impact on sim speed, not gameplay.

If the sim speed decrease is that significant I think option 2 is the best way to go.

@emperor_penguin said in About the veterancy system:

@jip said in About the veterancy system:

(2) We provide the veterancy when the damage is applied, instead of when the unit dies. This prevents keeping track of units.

Keeping it as-is or doing option #2 seem like the best choices amongst the six listed above. Perhaps we should consider having both of them available as rated lobby options that people can choose from (such as they can choose between fullshare and share until death).

I don't think it's a good idea, it's gonna be a part of game patch. We don't allow people to change which balance they would like to use.

However this would probably be a bigger rework. Keyser was already changing the ACU veterancy and we wanted to take a look at different regen rates for different techs and types of units and adjust it so It will probably happen after SACU Rework, not sooner then 6 months probably.

Yeah, same.

With cybran your weakness is the lack of of mid game rambo ACU so don't fight ACU vs ACU. In 1vs1 once you get ahead which you should as cybran during t1 stage you can pick your fights and you should fight where enemy acu isn't. You can use your high speed t1 units and decent speed t2 units as well as stealth. Your t2 air also allows you to threaten enemy acu with Corsairs so he would need to wait for quite a few flaks and shields before he can go all rambo and push through mid. Also once again, medusa are good, really good vs units once you hit mid game, they are borderline broken on some maps.

Sign me up!

Medusa are very strong in mid-late t2 stage because they do fair amount of damage as well as stun units which allows your t2 army to either catch up to units like Ilshavohs or kite away from units like obsidians. You have mobile stealth which allows your rhino armies to get in range easier as well as your hoplite hit squad to shoot from out of range of enemy units. Your ACU is weaker but it has stealth which is very cheap yet effective upgrade due to how vision works in FA.

Well, perhaps the solution is to have a window pop up that says : You don't have all the maps downloaded. Have a button to download all maps but also a button saying Queue anyways or something like that. But in the end this complicates the system and even if it sucks for a very few players the best solution imo for all the players is to force the download of all maps before allowing someone to queue. That's how other games operate as well. It's kind of like if you can't download an update for the game you can't play the game. Ofc it's worth investigating why the map download fails in the first place.
I don't think that we should exclude the maps that undoubtedly look better and are an awesome break through in the mapping scene because few people can't seem to be able to download them. 300-400 MB monthly is not that much after all.