I would like to announce that I will start hosting regular Open Training Sessions that everyone can join and learn together how to better play this awesome game. The training will focus on 1vs1 play and will take place in a form of replay review where I will be going over replays submitted by the players participating in the training. Anyone is welcome to join and participate, there are no rating restrictions.

Next Training Session - TBD

It will be hosted on the Official Discord channel in the Open-Training Voice channel.
Official FAF Discord: https://discord.gg/9bCRpMcM

The training will be also streamed on my Twitch channel :
https://www.twitch.tv/tagada14

The previous training sessions that took place can be viewed on my YT channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXpzgZmO1dCS-9DDQl2F4-A
The most recent one is often a VOD on my twitch channel.

What kind of replay should you submit and how to do it:

• Make sure it's a 1vs1 replay, either ladder or custom 1vs1
• Games shorter than 30 min are preferred ( if it's longer then we may watch only a part of it due to time constraints)
• I would prefer to review games of players that have at least 600 ladder rating since there are excellent guides (linked below) explaining the ABC's of FAF that will teach you better than I can over voice

If your replay meets these requirements please submit it through discord DM : Tagada#7635
Include your FAF name the replay ID that can be found in the replay vault, the length of the game, and your ladder rating.

Links to excellent guides :
The FAF Guide going over all the ABC's of FA :
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13S4nBDfcBK4WmFtykXGKNmvIPe9L2nbiriISpHNgE4U/edit

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

I can offer 1vs1 lessons as part of the prize for the winners of both brackets (1 for each winner, they usually last between 45 mins - 2 hours)

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

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.

If I could I would but I can't, it also changes the unit a LOT, and the balancing of these units with new units would be really hard. I can already smell the salt when because of the fact that with perfect micro the new aurora would be much stronger it would need to be made much weaker so now you are punished even more for miss-microing your tanks.

If you "fix" hover unit movement (the ones without turret) some of them will become OP like aurora and fobo since it's a huge buff to the kiting ability of those units that already have more range then other tanks.

Not to mention commands like top words that achieve the same thing but on a smaller scale.

I mean, it's just presenting public information in a more organized and readable way. It's the same difference as instead of looking at rating changes from each game in the replay vault there is a tool that shows you rating changes of each user every day and other similar tools eg. Kazbeks tool that allows you to see what map a specific user plays. Yes, in theory, it can be used in a harmful way, idk shaming someone for thrash-talking people or swearing at them or something.

The chat logs are already published in the vault so I don't see how this is any different tbh

I've played a game vs Turbo on a 40x40 and it was quite boring. The game is usually decided by who gets more map control early on with transports and bombers killing random engies but then the game takes like another 20 min to finish even though 1 player has like 90% of winning at that point.

I began reworking mercy some time ago (half a year?) but never finished it, the idea is to make mercy a dedicated 1 use anti-army unit with low alpha, big AoE and DoT forcing enemy to move their army out of the AoE effect. It could also be used as a Area denial weapon (ground fire in order to discentivize enemy to move through there to avoid taking dmg)
If i get motivated again and finish such rework and it would get approved then there is a chance it would be included in the next balance patch, soon tm.

Aeon gunships are partially filling up the role of a F/B already (precisely because Aeon doesn't have a F/B) and atleast in ladder I don't see myself using such a unit. In order for it to be worth it you need to get to a high value target like a T2 mex/HQ/T2 pgen that's in your opponent's base and for such a new mercy it shouldn't be possible to reach it without a totail air control (otherwsise it would be OP, imagine 3 nothas/corsairs being able to 1 shot your HQ) or without utilizing some stealth attack. Again if I have total air control why wouldn't I make gunships that are : harder to kill, can kill both low value stuff (raid around the map) and undefended high value stuff while not being a single use weapon. The new mercy would either be balanced and not used or OP in certain scenarios and even more frustrating then right now (right now you can be prepared for a mercy snipe, imagine if 3 units that are decently hard to kill and quite fast sneak around and insta win a game by sniping an HQ)

Nice idea however I doubt it would be used because in most scenarios you would just make gunships.

People don't even like the sound of the pings, let alone a voice that gets spammed.

/4