• BO advantages can be massive and can be caused through BO whoring or just dumb luck (both players improvise BO, but one happens to get a good BO by chance, or happens to win the rock-paper-scissor mechanics BOs can have in 1v1: aggressive vs greed vs passive)

• "Minor" (non-)interactions like a lab finding an engineer VS missing it, a bomber only barely grazing past ur scout's radar range and proceeding to do game-winning damage, an interceptor losing a 1v1 to another interceptor, a transport only barely (not) landing, or a proxy that went unscouted for a little too long, can cause massive impacts on the game. This makes earlygame sometimes come down to pure luck

I enjoy 1v1 once it gets past minute 5-8 with even odds. Sadly this occurs very rarely and it can be seen from the fact that tons of the semi-competent ladder replays are around 15 minutes in duration (and this is ignoring time added by players continuing to play in a lost position)

@mach said in How come you don't play ladder?:

teamgames provide stability for game to get played to its fuller potential unless you are a pro that can do all of this solo while having fun doing it, it kind of seems you need to have "minimum mastery over the game" to be able to enjoy 1v1, and it seems pretty high

i agree with this too. im ~2k in 1v1 and I can only play close to full potential on 10km. Playing 15km or larger makes me feel like I'm doing a terrible job at everything. It also increases the odds of these minor interactions with potentially massive results that i was talking about earlier.
That's just personal preference though, and i do not suggest removing >10km maps from ladder.

@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:

Are homophobic, racist, political, or otherwise offensive

Can I have a mod statement about IndexLibrorum's use of words in the Discord server? Shouldn't rules regarding homophobia, racism, or otherwise offensive words be consistent in anything FAF-related?

I hear @Strydxr received a warning for a man in a gif lip-reading the n-word. That is, the man supposedly said, or looked like he was saying the n-word in the gif, but the n-word itself was not mentioned anywhere.

Yet... this is okay?

The apostrophes do not remove the meaning from the words.
There's more instances of this, by the way.

Delete this message if you like for whatever reason. Just apprehend your moderators first. I've also not seen or heard anyone but the moderator team complain about renames by the way. Most people think it's pretty funny, so the other changes are just taking away the fun that can be had with renames.

I used to enjoy watching upsets in ladder and seeing if someone had gained a large amount of rating since last checked. I have no idea where between 1700-1900 these two players place. The leagues tell me next to nothing.

I think I heard this change was made to reduce complaints regarding "odd" rating changes, but this just isn't it

Cybran engineers/acus with T3 build suite have the ED4 shield available to them, which can be upgraded to ED5, but either one of them are awful.
Aeon 18k HP 2400 mass
UEF 17k HP 3300 mass
Sera 21k HP 3600 mass
Cybran 16.5k HP 4260 mass (or 13k HP 2460 mass)

This is either way too weak for its mass cost or way too expensive for its shield HP. To keep in line with cybran shielding being weaker (like in T2), I'd suggest making ED5 the main blueprint for T3 buildpower and reducing the build costs for ED5.

this is the simple solution, alternatively you could rework all of cybran shield's phases because as it stands now, upgrading them is a massive scam

Chrono Dampener was nerfed recently, but I don't think it was enough. I couldn't even tell you what was changed about it because it's still broken.

The issue with Chrono is not directly the frequency or duration of the stun, but the fact that the stun will bring units to an immediate standstill. After the stun expires, the unit movement speed will be 0, and it has to reaccelerate to its max speed, which can take a second or two. Sadly at this point the next stun will have hit, bringing the movement speed back down to 0.

So, not only does Chrono stun units, it also significantly slows them down. This makes chrono extremely powerful (basically unkillable) when the ACU is retreating. I believe the best two fixes would be, in order of preference:

• Allow units to keep their momentum after being stunned
• Reduce the frequency, but increase the duration of stuns to allow units to get back to their maximum speed, and maintain it for a longer period of time

lotta text that i aint reading but i very very much prefer the old factory looks, especially HQs
if it is not possible to make them look like that with better shading/animations, then i'd prefer there be no shading/animations and we keep the old models

@TheCodemander I don't think you could've missed my point harder. Well done.

mapgen only 1v1 will just make people bored of mapgen too. after a dozen games u start to realise mapgen isn't all that diverse either

Can a downvote button be implemented?

@h-master I consider Dual Gap an interesting and dynamic map in the sense that many different strategies can lead to victory. As opposed to most other maps, Dual Gap does not have a defined meta. Ask a group of random Dual Gap players their favourite playstyle, and you'll be surprised with the variety in their responses that aren't simply ecoing up. If the players co-operate, they can easily beat the "stale Dual Gap eco meta" with quick T2 air plays into the main bases. Furthermore, strat rush, nuke rush, notha rush and t3 arty rush are examples of more strategies that can be found on Dual Gap. Not only this, but standard land pushes through middle (which can be done in many different ways) have shown to be exceedingly successful, along with attempting to attain naval domination and destroying the turtle bases from the sea.

Compare this to the generic t1/t2 spam + gun ACU gameplay you'll find on the more generally "accepted" teamgame maps, like Wonder, Canis, Hilly Plateau, and Pyramid. You'll find that Dual Gap is infinitely more interesting than whatever else everyone plays.

I think especially stealth boats are awful because frigates have great aa so even with a scout stream you'll see very little, and only for a split second.
Here's me unable to see cybran navy even with up to 4 air facs spamming scouts, resulting in the crazy situation where I end up having to use a t3 air scout stream:
https://replay.faforever.com/24700304

At some points you may think "why didn't he go in he had more???" or "why did he allow this fight he had less???"

1. For all I know there's a stealth boat hiding 5 destroyers
2. I can't see what he has in totality which is a very important factor in deciding when to fight, and if opponent decides to shift g his army into you you have a limited time window to react, and that time window can just not exist if you can't see the navy

now compare that to how often i made splash gun or lazer in tmm in the last year!

@Sainse

1. Aeon (double) shield + advanced range is easily the strongest combat ACU for its cost. It is better vs percivals, bricks, harbinger, othuum, and T4s than double nano splash or cloak laser are.
2. The speed gun can later be replaced by omni sensor array, adding up to 3 combat upgrades anyway
3. 3k e is like 20 seconds of e production for that stage of the game (assuming you don't pause literally everything else). Having a gun upgrade 20 seconds before your opponent can be pretty devastating.

Each faction's gun upgrade costs 800 mass and 24000 power, and they take 1:20 to get.
Aeon's two gun upgrades add up to 800 mass and 21000 power, and they take 1:25 to get.

Add to this the advantage that aeon's gun upgrades being split into two gives them more flexibility, it is obvious that aeon has the superior gun upgrade for no reason.
It's cheaper, more flexible, and takes only 5 more seconds.

I propose that, to counteract the flexibility, aeon's upgrade should cost more than the others, not less. Something like 800 mass 27000 power or 900 mass 24000 power sounds reasonable to me.

P.S. Range is one of the most important attributes in this game especially at higher levels of gameplay, the range upgrade costing only 300 mass and 6000e should not be underestimated.

@AleksanderDerIch i am of course referring to the situation where a lab or tank fails off to kill an engineer

@AleksanderDerIch 4 mass for a gun that can finish off engineers, scouts, and radars sounds like a good deal to me, because 4 mass is entirely inconsequential. sometimes seraphim has the short end of the stick because their scouts can't see anything allowing raids to get by more easily. I would rank the scouts aeon > uef > cybran, with selen being able to rank anywhere from best to worst depending on the map

Looking at the wrong games for titans probably

UEF does look like it should be tankier visually speaking but unfortunately faction diversity must be thrown away unless it's about aeon being the best in every regard

Yes that is why most people will tell you the factions can't be put in broad categories like that. Does any faf source state faf is the slow and tanky faction?

Anyway,

1. You're nitpicking about 4 mass for a gun that can kill radars and has contributed in engineer/lab/radar kills frequently enough to justify that 4 mass. It can also chase away spirits and moles from scouting you. The selen has piss poor radar range, that is its weakness.
2. Pillar is a good unit but indeed does not fit the "tanky" characteristic uef should have(?)
3. True parashield is just worse for no reason and it's a shame
4. Titan is a good unit you are likely just using it wrong. It's dominant against everything that isn't a harbinger, othuum, percival, brick, an acu, or t4. The shield regen is more impactful than you think.
5. Percival range does matter, and they're a fine unit. UEF's main weakness in that stage is the lack of a direct fire t4. I do feel percivals are just a little weaker than they "should" be
6. Correct
7. Correct but categories aren't real

@maudlin27 it's challenging, but low risk and very high reward.
Acu tml in general is a bit overpowered so nerfing it would lightly address the problem in this thread aswell

@Pro it doesn't matter how you did it, you still beat 1300-1500s. Try our u1500 bracket