T
Offline
I just think it would really help if information like these would be more visible somewhere in the FAF application, eg. on the Matchmaking page.
Teaching the players the "right" online connection behavior would go a long way for the stability in the multiplayer games. Less mid-game drops or connection losses -> less frustration & more games.
I try to inform people while in game but way too many believe their 2,4GHz Wifi con is "just fine".
Hi guys,
The admins and everyone helping to maintain this great community project for this, best RTS Game ever, do an amazing job.
The main issue und joy killer, to me at least, is the very fragile multiplayer connection architecture of this game that causes lots of disconnects.
Since changing the game’s networking model isn’t realistic, I’d like to propose a community “Multiplayer Etiquette”: a simple, practical checklist that helps players minimize connection problems on their own side, for the benefit of everyone in the lobby.
Step 1 - ensure stable internet connection
The biggest problems are unstable connections (packet loss, jitter, WiFi issues)
How to address this:
WiFie micro drops and jitter spikes are one of the main reasons for random freezes and reconnect attempts in FAF
Step 2 - Avoid upload saturation ("bufferbloat")
Upload congestion causes latency and jitter spikes that FAF’s lockstep model handles very poorly.
If all, or at least most, players would consider these two steps, this would help to reduce connection loss in games by 30%
There are of course more steps that could be taken but these are the two most straight forward and easiest to apply.
Is it possible to put a Text note like the note about the discord server, on the matchmaking page with these tips? It might help to nudge the players into the right "multiplayer connection behavior" to have less disconnects.
Thanks in advance for the consideration dear admins.
Yes, because I only managed to find the stats of the unupgraded SACU on the faf github page. On the SupCom Wiki page I saw now that the SACU with RAS upgrade is 2500 mass, so only 500 mass more than the base SACU. Not a game-changing difference.
On custom maps with players having a specific role (like on dual gap), you dont tech up all branches, you tech up the one you need. So navy goes navy, air goes air etc. Therefore countering SACU's in Water with Bricks is not an option because you dont invest in that Tech tree.
@maudlin27 said in SACU's in Water too hard to kill:
I don't understand the argument that if your opponent gets say 5 SACUs for 10k mass, and you get 18 T2 subs for a similar mass, that you are at a disadvantage on navy - seems like the reverse to me since SACUs can't do much to help the navy fight (basically limited to reclaiming wrecks and building torpedo launchers for even more mass which are weak at that stage of the game) whereas the subs can help win a navy fight.
Checking stats 'vanilla' SACUs also aren't much tougher than bricks for their mass, have an aoe explosion (so in larger numbers aren't as durable), and lack the torpedo attack and defence of bricks.
It's not like you are choosing between building 5 SACU's or 18 T2 Subs, the SACU's you build anyways in lategame, they are part of upscaling your eco. But their use as a factor for naval dominance is what I believe was never intended.
From my observation their impact is more than just reclaiming debries. At some point they creep so much forward it almost feels like being under siege by these SACU's. They get under the opponents Navy and start reclaiming ships and that is an additional (and a quite significant) amount of damage. Trying to kill them feels almost futile.
I think it would improve the game re-Balancing the SACU's. A Rambo-SACU should of course have an impact on the battlefield, since that is it's purpose. But RAS-ACU's (which are built 99% of the time) shouldn't be as useful on the battlefield. They are now being used for teleporting and taking out nuke defenses or Game Enders or, as stated before, in the water to gain Naval dominance.
@Sainse said in SACU's in Water too hard to kill:
Why should they be easy to kill?
I didn't say they should be "easy" to kill, I said they are "very hard" to kill. If in late game you opponent has a few of these in the water you would need like 20 t2 subs each to kill it in reasonable time or shew it away.
@deletethis said in SACU's in Water too hard to kill:
Are you saying you can't kill them the same mass in subs/destros? HARMS were already nerfed heavily.
I disagree this is an issue. RAS SACUS in particular (i.e. with no survival upgrades) die pretty easy.
A Support ACU costs 2'000 mass, a t2 sub 1'100. So by this logic 2 t2 subs should be equivalent mass-wise and be able to kill it but that is basically impossible. If you change your navy composition to deal with the SACU's you are not having the right composition to kill your opponents navy. SACU's only take damage from torpedos but Torpedos are shit against most surface vessels in late game.
My general opinion is, that it is worth looking into it. It feels unbalanced, almost an exploit, to use the SACU's in Water to gain an advantege in late game Navy scenarios.
Hey guys, last year there was a vivid discussion about the re-Balancing of SACU's. I am not sure if something got changed but I noticed in my games that SACU's are very hard to kill in Water.
In long matches on big maps with sea, like DualGap, Ressource Allocation SACU's appear at some point in the water and start building t3 Trop launchers (cybran) or do reclaim or just slowely creep forward claiming more and more sea area. They are very hard to kill with torpedos since they dont receive much damage from it, and activelly participate in the navy engagement by damaging ships by reclaiming.
I think this is an issue because:
What I would suggest:
Or do I miss something how to kill these suckers efficiently with the current tool-box?
In custom games the host can change the default from assassination to full share. A possible solution might be to change the "default" to full share in all team games (custom or automatch). This way a rage quitter can still leave without ruining the game for everyone else. This is the case in many RTS games actually (Starcraft, Warcraft, etc.) where the base stays intact if a player leaves and the controle of these units and the base are being shared among the other players. In FAF I think the guy with the highest score gets the base, which is also fine I guess.
And if the leaves decides to activelly destroy his base or harass others before quitting, then it's a very clear case of someone who needs to be reported and possibly banned.
This should also apply to people just "pulling the plug" on their connection or force quit the game which makes everyone wait for them to time out and sometimes cause desync.
Like I said, I don't understand anything about the technology that is required to run this thing and I appreciate all the work that has been put in it. I was just describing the current situation and the feedback of the players and I didn't "tell" you to rush things. I wasn't even aware that you are the only one working on this.
You are absolutely right, the glory days are probably over, people get older, have families etc. and no time left to invest in complicated hobby like this. I didn't mean to offend anyone.
There were some suggestions within the community to maybe "hire" some professional contractors who could help solve these issues if the manpower and/or time is an issue. Although the glory days are over FAF still seems to have a strong core and maybe a financing model with a monthly membership fee for regular users could be implemented if that would solve the problem of the capacity needed to tackle these ongoing DDoS attacks or help you develop the client further. I don't know, I am just trying to help find solutions.
By the way, where are these DDoS attacks coming from? And is there any clue who or why they are attacking FAF?
The game seems very unstable since the last patch. First the Client had a bug (2025.5.1) and then the new one (2025.5.2.) seems to work but most games (I don't think I exaggerate) break down due to connection issues. It seems to happen more often in custom games.
I don's know the reason behind it and don't understand anything of the technology but I just want to point out it's going on for a while now and people are really starting to get frustrated, calling the game "lobby simulator" and such.
I appreciate all the great work that the Dev Team is doing for keeping this game up to date and alive but this issue needs to be addressed fast. There are evenings now where it takes hours to get to play a game from start to finish due to all the connection issues.
I guess these issues are no news for many but I just felt the magnitude of the current problem had to be stressed.
@maudlin27 said in Connection issues never been this bad:
Unfortunately FAF is still suffering from DDOS attacks which are causing issues - see the announcements for further details. A solution is being worked on, but will take time:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/6680/ddos-update
Well, I am grateful that there are people working on it. After all FAF is a "community project" of people loving the game and help to ensure we all can still have fun and enjoy it. There is no monetary motivation behind it. As long as this community has awesome people like this, I am hopeful we can get through this tough time.
Hey Guys, I understand that there were some DDOS attacks by some idiots on the FAF Servers and that the new client should hopefully solve this but it still needs some work I think because I cant remember a time having connection issues this bad.
Came back to faf some weeks ago (you know, family, life etc. makes it difficult to play it regularly) and I tried to have some random Team and custom team games in the evenings but I managed to play maybe 3 games in a week of trying. In most games someone drops within the first 3min and the game gets restarted. Every time waiting another 10 min until the game fills up, balancing etc. just to re again after the first minutes.
Quite frankly, this is killing the game. If we can't find a stable way of playing team games again this will cause the playerbase to die out. No one want's to spend the little free time he has trying over and over to get into a game just to be canceled after a few min again.
Just sharing my experience and hope there will be a stable way of playing soon again. Or has anyone some solution? should we all just focus on 1on1's or something instead or 2v2 custom maps?
why would we want to attract StarCraft 2 players anyway. FAF is completely different and being a guy who played Warcraft 3 and Sc2 extensively I wouldn't go back to it.
They are welcome to try FAF but I wouldn't change anything in FAF to get it closer to the gameplay of SC2.
I would support the idea to make engi (and therefore tech sharing) impossible. I don't know another RTS game where you can do that as casually as in SupCom.
This would make Team Games more interesting since it would require some thinking about the team composition before starting the Match and would benefit Teams that ACTUALLY play and support each other instead of just handing each other the tech.
At least give the option in custom games to deactivate engi trade while leaving in ranked. might be worth a try.
@exselsior
Well, one of the problems seems to be that we lose new players too quickly. by creating a less competitive 'safe zone' for newer players in form of a ladder it would help keeping these players longer and give them a chance get more familiar with the game and learn to love it.
Right now the learning curve for new players seems too steep and it's frustrating to get blown away by a 10min spam rush or 20min nuke while being called noob. no wonder newer players leave and don't come back.
since this game is old and most players already play it for years even the skill gap to a mid range rated player is huge. So I think creating an artificial more noob friendly area by automated ladders for specific maps or limited rating range would go a long way.
The way I understood it so far from the comments paying core developers for additional features is very expensive and brings future problems or dependencys. I said giving better tools to map developers and paying the license of these tools for instance.
adding additional ladder options aren't that difficult or costly to implement I imagine. maybe something like an arranged team ladder or some noobs friendly ladder with build timer and with the option to be unranked. just ideas...
if there is no option to improve the connection or lag issues through further investments that's of course a pitty because that is THE major issue with the multiplayer in this game I think. everyone is bothered by the restarts you have to do sometimes because someone drops early in the game no? would be great to find some solution or work around to this problem
Spending money on developpers, casters etc. seems to be problematic and "marketing" the game is not a very efficient use of the money.
I would suggest the money should be spent to just optimize the game. better tools for map developers, a few ladder options more and some nice servers to reduce the lag and disconnection issues. Just anything that makes the CURRENT playerbase happy.
let's face it, the period we have in our life where we enjoy playing a game like this is limited. And FAF did already an amazing job as a community to keep this game alive. But I dont think the goal should be to re-promote the game to try to catch up to games with larger player bases. I dont see any way that could be successful nor is it necessary.
Just use the money to optimize the game itself further (technically and if possible with new features) but let's not try to go down a "game publisher" kind of way.
@ftxcommando Sup Com 2 was exactly trying this no? Easier economy and more big robots. It didn't work out so well.
Marketing doesn't have the aspiration of being "realistic" so people dont get disappointed. The goal of Marketing ist to get people interested and try it out. Watching the sup com trailer (the best RTS Trailer of all times imo) again it does a decent job showing that the game is about base building and (very) large battles with some cool units and even nukes. If you ask me it already attracts the people who are less into Starcraft 2 and more into big scale Macro heavy RTS games.
I think considering that there are not many new RTS games around this game just needs a bit more visibility, easier accessibility for new players and a "modern" reward system and it would do well gaining more players.
@azraeel said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:
Game has fundamentals issues and its hard to have retention unless you are dedicated to improving or you play purely for fun and eventually people who play purely for fun go away.
I think a lot of people also play pvp a few times then just quit because toxicity and just generally ass maps/players on global.
I don't think most play ladder Because it's not pushed enough to the front. If anything we need to start making matchmaker more of a focus and push global into a arcade type style like SC2 does.
So paying many to promote FAF is a huge waste of money when nobody is dedicated to actually dealing with core issues that just make players not want to come back.
Everything money wise for tournaments, promotion etc could be a lot more if we had a more dedicated fan base instead of people who just play with 0 interaction. I think that stems from a toxic mentality and an inability to actually change major components of the game and not only the game but how even the client is structured and etc.
I kind of agree on many aspects. Marketing without improving the accessibility to the game and the motivation to come back is not an efficient use of the money.
If you want more people to stay or come back you have to consider your audience. Generation Z is not so eager to get into steep learning curves and has a low frustration tolerance. So basically you need to "dumb" it down a bit for players new to the game and make a reward system where they can gain coins or rank or something to keep them motivated.
Specifically I would suggest the following:
An optional Ladder which is unranked so people can just fool around while learning the game and try new stuff without being punished losing rating points.
An automated "noob" friendly Dual Gap (I know, I know, but people love it) bot that creates a game noobs (definition: < 50 games and 800 Rating maybe) can join anytime and just start playing as soon as it's full (auto balance). As rules you can put 10min build up time and ban nukes, that shoud keep them entertained for hours while getting the hang of the game and learn to love it.
How about making new "Skins" as reward for playing x amount of games or reaching a rating? Can be just a new ACU skin for the start and later maybe from other units as well. I know, this is probably the most difficult one to implement but also something that could motivate a lot of players to play more or come back to the game to earn new skins or whatever.
@arkangel_ Thank you! Very helpful.
I like the Idea of a mapgen ladder. Also I have no problem with includint AI as a possible opponent in the lower ranks (let's say below 500?). On chess sites you can also play vs AI of different difficulties which are considered to have a certain rating (Elo).
Of course you can set up your own game vs the AI but the element of randomness with the mapgen and the match getting rated sounds pretty appealing to me. It would also help newbies getting some expierience without getting crushed from more experienced players and avoid some frustration.
Another thing could be a 10min build up timer for games in lower ratings so you can focus on your bo without getting harassed.