Have recently been thinking on this, right now introducing a friend to FAF also, I have been exclusive ladder player so far, and quit for a few years up until november 2020... some thoughts:

• Why did my eco suddenly crap out?!
  • Starcraft 1 Says "Not enough minerals." and displayed "Not enough minerals... mine more minerals."
    FAF should say (yes audio) "Power Stall" and display text "power down shields, radars and stop aircraft production"
  • The post-game score screen should flag power stall and mass stall events.
• Game introduction is rough, because the rating system completely ignores friendly games and games vs. AI.
  • Give AI players a fixed rating for teamgames.
  • Give checkbox for AI players to appear in ladder for low rated players
  • Allow practice games, uneven games etc should be rated at max 0 - and always as if a victory for the negative rated players (you are bound to have learned something).
• Team games... I still struggle today. Long ago, when I made my account, I got a 1200 rating for free. I am affraid to join team games, I just play ladder 1v1 - soon hopefully ladder 2v2.

Language barriers basically prevent teamwork, or restrict it to a few pings, while there is an easy solution available. Having a chat wheel or list with standard messages translated into all needed languages.

1. We would need to first list the required messages.
2. Get people fluent in the language to make a good translation
3. Mod it into a menu of sorts. In my opinion the menu should be prominent, immediately visible to new players (like 0 games played new).

This topic focuses primarily on the required messages, I would like to structure the discussion into two areas:

• #S Specifications
• #msg Messages

Please separate your post into these two parts, and use it as a title for your post or use the hashtag. If you comment on only one include only that title.

Gathered messages from all responses up to october 20th

• This is too vulnerable, get AA/TMD/SMD (x3)
• Assist me with this (x2)
• Attack here now (x2)
• Fall back, stop (x2)
• Reclaim here (x2)
• You idiot, unwise (x2)
• Attention (x1)
• Defend (water) (x1)
• Don't give up, we can do this (x1)
• Experimental under construction (friendly/hostile) (x1)
• Focus (anti air) (x1)
• Follow my instructions (x1)
• Give me an engineer (x1)
• Give up? Any way we can still win? (x1)
• Great idea (x1)
• I am going to do [strategy] (x1)
• I need AA cover (here) (x1)
• Low HP ACU (friendly warning/hostile warning) (x1)
• No, negative (x1)
• Please take the lead (x1)
• Point defense (friendly instruction/hostile warning) (x1)
• Prepare to attack soon (x1)
• SML here (friendly instruction/hostile warning) (x1)
• TML here (friendly instruction/hostile warning) (x1)
• What should I do with this (x1)
• Yes affirmative (x1)
• You are blocking me here (x1)

Why is everyone going nuts on the hidden global rating? For most of its existence Starcraft 2 has hidden it.

Sure, they show it now, but hiding it can only be considered sensible if they did it.

The mercy basically replaces the bomber of Aeon, it fits quite nicely, a mercy deals twice the damage of a normal T2 bomber in one run and is incapable of making a second or third. This fits Aeon theme of doing everything better.

Sadly however, because they are such good ACU snipers they are nerfed into the ground and still good because they can still snipe ACU. Lets remove the snipe and make it a fun bombing unit to snipe eco etc like normal T2 bombers except kamikaze.

Mercy:

• Hitpoints: 200 10
• Shield: 480 (because Aeon, manage your power grid)
• Fuel use time: 5 minutes, can refuel
• Damage: 2300 2400
  - Damage vs ACU: 600

It seems the balance team and leadership also suffers under community toxicity. I would suggest a strict code of conduct, that also protects volunteers from 'free speech' to some degree.

To the balance team:
I would like to repeat that your work made me come back lurking to the forums and if I do find myself playing FAF again it is entirely thanks to your work.

If those decals don't matter for gameplay, is it possible for one player to play without the decals while the other does?

In that case, make a normal and high res version of each map where the latter has no or small size decals.

Automatcher only ever downloads normal versions. With a button you can download all high res maps at once.

I thought you said merge them into support factories, would that not be a solution?

Allow Aeon and Seraphim engineers to "Garrison" into T2 and T3 (support) factories, just like with air transports. For example 16 T1 engineers into T2 factory and 32 T1 into T3 factory. (and offcourse T2 and T3 engineers to ratio)

All "Garrisoned" buildpower is made available to the Factory.

@BlackYps said in Why would you have left FAF?:

Well do you want it? Being toxic is already forbidden behaviour, but you need to actually report the people or nothing will happen.

I think nice people will generally feel it is inappropriate to report people for "not being nice".

If this actually needs to be reported then say so:

• Put a thin banner above the custom games list stating for example:
• "Please report players for verbal harassment and toxic behavior to help us keep the community a friendly place for everyone."

Absolutely, not just for engineers.

If you could assist to a military unit too then you sort of have a mobile army waypoint where a factory can just reinforce an army wherever it is

@archsimkat Being able to separately (multi-) queue for 5x5, 10x10 and 20x20 random maps would be great... (long term) - I like them all but for which ones I queue would depend on my time. 5x5 queue would be great for during work-breaks

@jip Hearthstone solved that with 6 standard messages, especially if it is just text it shouldn't be to hard to develop, write and mod in.

1. List the required messages. (Example: Prepare to attack soon, Scale up Eco & Tech, I take your lead, Follow my instructions, No / you idiot, Yes / good idea - to be accompanied with pings and general understanding)
2. Get nationals to write it in every language.
3. Mod in under hot menu

Tbh I might use this sometimes even without a language barrier...

@ftxcommando said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:

Except subs still have a game usage beyond alt clicking at a battleship and seeing who wins the boxing match.

That is your (justified) concern, we do not know for sure that will happen. However, I hope you too can admit that the current ground-fire meta is silly on face value. Again, some silly things are kept for skill reasons or otherwise, however, we should just try if we can remove the silly things.

To re-iterate my point, with some clarification:

Sub Grounf Fire Nerf

• Because ground-firing subs feels wrong
• Because some consider that the subs are pushed out of the game at T3
• Acknowledging this might adversely affect the T3 high skill water meta

The following change is implemented:

• Direct fire splash damage against subs is reduced by 95-100%

Near future:

• Players are asked to watch the T3 navy game carefully and report to the balance team
• The balance team will revisit this issue the next patch, and possibly revert this change

What about making the shard a hover ship? - with balanced over-land speed obviously

As it stands frigates are the dominant military ship, so making the shards hover does not protect them against their "natural enemy". However it renders them immune to submarines mixed into a fleet slightly reducing their damage taken.

Importantly, it makes them immune to torpedo bombers. This makes them a much safer T1 AA choice because the dominant air-to-navy attack option is useless against them, this allows for a more aggressive transition to T2 navy - ie not starting with a cruiser if there is an air threat.

Aeon also depends more on air control to protect aurora, this augments Aeons ability to perform amphibious warfare at T1 by using Shards instead of MAA. With T1 amphibious warfare boosted, Aeon can stop complaining about weak frigates.

I was turned off on teamgames by 2 toxic incidents (out of 3 games tried) around 2013-2014, then did nothing but ladder 1v1.
When I try teamgames now (a whopping 2 or 3 times discounting 2v2) my experience is the same. Small sample size sure.

Looking at the streets in real life though, and social media, there is a lot more toxicity in society and even violence now.
I wouldn't be surprised if toxicity has somewhat increased here proportional to real world attitudes, but my experiences don't reflect that.

@CheeseBerry said in Why would you have left FAF?:

@biass said in Why would you have left FAF?:

Sure, people can be toxic - But a lot of the time it's unfortunately warranted.

What do you mean about it being warranted?

I did a lot of 1v1, where you spam T1, so I entered teamgame and spammed T1. Apparently I was going to feed mass to the enemy and "lose us the game" - second game one player gave helpful ping on my T1 army and said "ctrl-K"

Technically they were correct, it is a shame that many people think that being right and a noob being wrong warrants toxic behavior.

I don't know a better living RTS that is diverse enough to reward my preferred playstyle and tactics.

This used to be Starcraft 2, I was waiting for the last great patch that never came (because top people became FrostGiant). Starcraft 2 had become repetitive and stale for me.

The brick-wall difficulty curve of FAF (1v1) is keeping me here quite well.

@biass I'm just asking a question about how this works, not making a declaration to be disected.

Edit to: Energy is unlimited but requires investment.

Hope you are happy now and can either answer the questions in the topic or just leave it if you are not interested to provide info or speculate.

@FtXCommando For me this election is like a referendum in you, you score 5/5 stars in every category... but when I first ventured back into FAF last year after many years you almost made me leave on day 1 after posting something on the forum - (admittedly I wasn't doing good mentally at the time).

Do I want a Player Councillor who gets things done and is rough to (new) people, or do I want a Player Councillor who is nice to people and we hope for the best on the rest?

1. How do you think your social mannerism has or has not affected the FAF community?
2. Do you have any plans to improve this?

OMG @FtXCommando can you try harder not to get the point @Emperor_Penguin is making?
@Morax do you care to respond to your view on the points @Emperor_Penguin is making?

We must absolutely keep pings after death.

If it really is such a problem can't we simply not kill dead players? If ACU is killed then either kill (share until death) or give away (full share) all units and make it impossible to receive units.

Now dead player is not an observer but still dead.