Forged Alliance Forever

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T14:41:33+02:00

Some other changes worth mentioning:

ACU can't ride in a t1 transport. Only T2/T3 transports can carry the ACU. This change makes perfect sense, for reasons of game balance. Imagine how strong it would be if a t1 transport could move the ACU in the first 4 minutes of a ladder match. But also it would be an extreme gamble because of how easily t1 transports can be shot down. The change makes perfect sense, it's just not something that you would expect if you come over from vanilla FA and it's not immediately obvious why your ACU refuses to get into the transport.

Veterancy: it used to calculated by counting the exact number of kills. Now, it's based on the mass of the units killed, and you get proportional credit based on how much damage was done during the unit's life (you don't ONLY get credit for doing the killing blow). And you only get half-credit for killing non-combat structures like mexes.

While your economy is stalling, nukes and nuke defense barely load at all. This is nice because if your economy is stalling, you probably don't want to be paying for a nuke to load. If you really want the nuke to load, you'll find a way to stop stalling. E.g. you can pause some factories or engineers until you stop stalling. It is just something to be aware of. Again it's not something that would be obvious just from playing the game. I don't know whether this was part vanilla FA. I didn't remember it being part of vanilla FA when I came over to FAF.

Shield "overspill": this is worth mentioning because it's so not something you would notice. Let's say you have a t3 power generator that is being attacked by a gunther (t2 artillery). You make a single uef T3 shield to cover it, which has 15k hp. So the shield bubble can absorb 15k damage from the arty before it drops and the pgen can die to artillery. So far, it's simple. But let's say you want to be safer, so you make 3 more uef t3 shields to cover the pgen. The total combined HP of the shields is 60k. Which is 4x as much HP as just 1 shield. But you don't actually get 4x the protection, because of overspill. When the artillery hits overlapping shields, it damages all of them. It doesn't do full damage to all of them, but the total amount of damage done (measured in HP) is bigger than if it was shooting just one shield. I don't know the exact formula for it, but the point is that doubling the number of shields over some building doesn't actually double the protection you get.

These are not the most important things, but they're things you might find surprising if you remember vanilla FA.

Statistics: Posted by armacham01 — 31 Dec 2019, 14:41

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T13:29:18+02:00

ZLO_RD wrote:
DeltaBravoLima wrote:Does T3 arty have better fire rate than T2 arty lol? I tried for UEF...

Need to specify

Stationary. I.e. klink hammer vs Duke.

Statistics: Posted by DeltaBravoLima — 31 Dec 2019, 13:29

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T13:14:21+02:00

DeltaBravoLima wrote:
Does T3 arty have better fire rate than T2 arty lol? I tried for UEF...

Need to specify if you are talking about mobile or stationary arty. Units tiers are sometimes arbitrary. T3 mobile arty is not very expensive, smaller range than t2 stationary, accuracy and damage vary from faction to faction.
You can check units statis in database, or just host a sandbox game with "cheats" enabled, press Alt+F2 and spawn units in and play with them, can use groundifre or play against AI.

Statistics: Posted by ZLO_RD — 31 Dec 2019, 13:14

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T12:53:38+02:00

Does T3 arty have better fire rate than T2 arty lol? I tried for UEF...

Statistics: Posted by DeltaBravoLima — 31 Dec 2019, 12:53

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T08:53:38+02:00

you can play skirmish by starting the game via the exe located in C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin

Statistics: Posted by PhilipJFry — 31 Dec 2019, 08:53

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T08:30:53+02:00

Is there a way for me to set up a 'skirmish' match that I can save? I did this in vanilla FA to experiment with different adjacency bonuses and make build templates. Saving was good so I didn't have to tech up every time.

Statistics: Posted by DeltaBravoLima — 31 Dec 2019, 08:30

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T04:49:35+02:00

Anything associated with FAF for the casual end user will be done through the client. It doesn’t change anything in your base FA so if you want to switch between steam and FAF you are always free to do so.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 31 Dec 2019, 04:49

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T04:26:58+02:00

Thanks all. Forgive my noobness. I will play some games and learn.

I'm guessing I run everything from the client? I.e. to play FAF I wouldn't open the steam app directly?

Also if I want to play vanilla FA with friends who I might not be able to convince to get FAF I would just run the steam app directly in this instance?

Statistics: Posted by DeltaBravoLima — 31 Dec 2019, 04:26

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T04:12:17+02:00

T3 rebalance wasn’t done because t2 units were garbage. It was done because every game at high levels was devolving into two decisions: do i go all in t2 push or all in t3 rush?

T2 was honestly quite well balanced and the problem was more with t3 being steroided to the point getting 2 harbs out essentially made any pillar army irrelevant unless a shield acu was present in the pillar army. You could call that meaning t2 “was garbage” but it would be like saying t1 “was garbage” if t2 tanks were buffed to move at mech marine speed.

But honestly you don’t need to read this stuff to get back into the game. A lot of the changes are intuitive and playing a dozen games will be more fun and enjoyable and likely feed you a lot of the info you would learn through reading boring patchnotes. It also would give replays for people to look at and then more experienced players can tell you what game mechanics you overlooked at the FAF Discord. This advice can then point you to what you SHOULD focus on reading about rather than doing the equivalent of highlighting the whole textbook before an exam.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 31 Dec 2019, 04:12

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T03:52:35+02:00

DeltaBravoLima wrote:
armacham01 wrote:The headquarters system is there to add a one-time cost to increasing your tech level. (Assuming that your headquarters isn't killed, you only have to pay this cost once.)

….

If you kill your opponent's HQ, any high-tech units still in production can be completed by the support factories, but after that, they can't make more until they get another HQ. So if you kill your opponent's HQ (with a straightforward attack, or with a snipe) that can cause problems for them.

A few questions around this:
1. Can I have multiple HQs for redundancy?
2. If I can't build multiple HQs can I build some 'normal' factories that don't need HQs to tech-up?
3. Can I build a T3 HQ with T3 end or do I have to build T1 and then upgrade through to T3?
4. Does the HQ have global effect or do you build multiple local HQs across the map?

Basically I am just wondering how you distribute unit production across the map if you have good control? Typically in Vanilla I would try to decentralise production so if a base got taken out I could still produce elsewhere and possible recapture the former base. If you have a single HQ for the map it seems fairly fallible, so if I have good eco and map control I would want to build some redundancy.

Thanks everyone for the help. It seems the next step for me is to jump in and play!

ad 1)

Yes, but its expensive as f***. Only very rarely worth it in a serious game. its so rare that you would need 1000 games to be good enough to understand in what situations it would make sense. so never do it.

ad2)

your question shows that you dont understand what arma wrote about HQs. Read it again. Simple explanation:
Make one HQ to get higher tech. Then you can upgrade any other T1 fac to a cheaper T2 fac which is NOT HQ, but still able to produce T2 stuff.

ad3)

you need to make a T1 fac, upgrade it to T2, and then upgrade the same T2 fac to T3. Its the same building but twice upgraded.

ad4)

its a tech level. Its "global", which means that any factory can be upgraded to support factory, after you got an HQ. It doesnt transfer to other players, everybody needs their own tech. But you can give an engineer of a certain tech level, or a support commander, to your ally to give him higher tech. Tech is only not global in so far as units need to travel to be effective everywhere

So if you want to disperse your unit production you make an HQ in a rather save location, and then just make support factories where you want production. If you lose your HQ, then you are screwed. but come on, if you lose your main base, where you power is located and maybe your acu and your core mass, then you have lost most of the time anyway. so the whole redudancy argument of HQs is more a theoretical argument most of the time, because if you lose your HQ you are in a losing position anyway, most of the time.

if you wanna see how the best players play the game, look here:

just last weekend we had a big tournament

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/528038966

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/527952344

good luck with faf. its a hard game, but its worth the grind.

Statistics: Posted by Bennis- — 31 Dec 2019, 03:52

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T04:22:39+02:00

armacham01 wrote:
The headquarters system is there to add a one-time cost to increasing your tech level. (Assuming that your headquarters isn't killed, you only have to pay this cost once.)

….

If you kill your opponent's HQ, any high-tech units still in production can be completed by the support factories, but after that, they can't make more until they get another HQ. So if you kill your opponent's HQ (with a straightforward attack, or with a snipe) that can cause problems for them.

A few questions around this:
1. Can I have multiple HQs for redundancy?
2. If I can't build multiple HQs can I build some 'normal' factories that don't need HQs to tech-up?
3. Can I build a T3 HQ with T3 end or do I have to build T1 and then upgrade through to T3?
4. Does the HQ have global effect or do you build multiple local HQs across the map?

Basically I am just wondering how you distribute unit production across the map if you have good control? Typically in Vanilla I would try to decentralise production so if a base got taken out I could still produce elsewhere and possible recapture the former base. If you have a single HQ for the map it seems fairly fallible, so if I have good eco and map control I would want to build some redundancy.

Thanks everyone for the help. It seems the next step for me is to jump in and play!

Additional: do I run everything through the client? i.e. do I ever open FA from steam? Also it couldn't initially find my FA installation so I directed it to steamapps/common/forged alliance, just to the folder, which seemed to work.

Statistics: Posted by DeltaBravoLima — 31 Dec 2019, 03:37

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-31T02:41:45+02:00

Also, here are a few basic things that might help you:

Right-click on a T2 mex or T3 mex to automatically give orders to ring it with mass storages

Right-click on the "overcharge" button for auto-overcharge

You need to make energy storage in order to use overcharge. at least 5k power minimum and up to 15k for the biggest OCs.

There are many other changes to the interface and how units behave. E.g. t3 gunships won't chase after enemy spy planes now. Most of these things are so subtle that they're not even worth mentioning. You should just play the game and see how it is.

In original SupCom/FA, there was no reclaim in the water. Now, there is, which obviously is important. And you will find maps with underwater mexes. They work as you would expect.

There have been many balance changes, e.g. TMLs have more expensive missiles, that sort of thing. You can read the patch notes to get an idea of that (but of course, some of the untis have been changed multiple times, so if you're reading old patch notes some of the changes may have been changed again). I don't think it's worthwhile to list out every balance change. The basic idea is that units have been balanced and rebalanced many times in an attempt to make them all somewhat useful. We don't want to have any "crap" units that no one ever makes.

The biggest balance change is the "T3 rebalance." Basically, T2 units are no longer garbage. Combined with the "new" HQ system (it's not really new, it's been around for many years now) that makes it more expensive to get T3, you will see players actually get their tech level up to tech 2 and make tech 2 units, instead of switching from t1 spam straight to t3. Switching straight to t3 still happens but in most games, especially 1v1s, it is normal to spend a lot of time at tech 2.

A major balance change, at least for team games, is how much damage ACUs do when they explode. They do less damage to buildings now, so you can't just sacrifice one player's ACU to wipe out the enemy base. The magic number to kill an enemy ACU with your own ACU death is 2500 hp left on the enemy.

They fixed sharing, meaning that if "full share" is not turned on in a team game, units built by you will die right after your ACU dies. If you give them to a teammate before you die, they still self-destruct.

One of the balance changes is to unit movement. "Hover bombing" is less of a thing now.

Quantum Gateways now give you multiple options for pre-upgraded SACUs, which can be easier than trying to upgrade them. Also, you can upgrade multiple SACUs at once if you just select them. It's not like the bad old days when you had to click separately on every SACU in order to give it RAS. You can queue up ACU upgrades as part of a list of queued orders. So you can say, "go here, build 3 flaks, then get T3 engineering upgrade, then build a SAM and a T3 pgen" - as long as you are holding shift you can queue up all those orders.

A lot of units that used to do friendly fire damage, now don't do friendly fire damage. Mostly it was done to prevent abuses during team games, like using TML to snipe an allied ACU. But there are still many weapons that deal friendly fire damage.

Air staging is now a t1 building instead of t2. I don't know if it was always like this, but air staging is a very mass efficient way to repair your planes and of course you refuel them too.

T2 arty has a giant minimum range now.

Another aspect related to friendly fire is whether friendly units will collide with projectiles. For example, if your ASF flies under a friendly a strat bomber, the strat bomb wont trigger if it his your ASF. But it will still trigger if it hits an enemy ASF.

I'm told that adjacency bonuses are more important now than they were in vanilla FA. So you will see people make an "air grid" that is multiple air factories with a lot of pgen adjacency. The classic version is a t3 air grid that is a checkerboard pattern of t3 pgens and t3 factories, but you will also find t1 and t2 versions. Engineers assisting factories don't get adjacency bonuses. So if you assist air factory with engies it can cost a lot of power. not necessarily a bad idea (sometimes, it's absolutely the right decision) but it's something to keep in mind.

Many of the integrated mods like Zulan's hotbuild have keys you can bind. So definitely pull up the key binding menu and take a look at your options there. For example, I have 1 bound to "select nearest idle air scout" and 2 to "select all fighters" which makes it eaiser to move air around the map.

Hold "ctrl-shift" while you're playing to show where reclaim is. Anything bigger than 9 mass will show up on your screen.

I don't know if this was part of vanilla FA, but you can order transports to drop just 1 unit, or just specific units, and then fly on to some other place. So if you have 5 engineers loaded, you can order the transport to drop them in 5 different places.

There are a lot of resources built in to the client. We have tutorials now, the unit DB, replay vault (you can watch games while they are happening, or look up games from today or 5 years ago), mod vault, map vault. For example, if you want to get a decent build order for one of the ladder maps, you can search the replay vault for ladder games by high-rated players on that particular map. You could search for games where the map name contains "Desert Joust", the game mod name contains "ladder," and one of the players has a ladder rating of at least 2000 points. If you watch a few replays you can find someone who has a good build order and steal it for yourself. And it's not just the build order, it's also the way they play the map. Do they get quick t2 land? Do they make 4 air factories? Do they make 15 land factories even though they only have 12 t1 mexes? That can give you ideas to try to out. Then you could host some custom 1v1 games on that map, and play it 20 times in a row, which is a lot less overwhelming than trying to play on 20 different maps.

Statistics: Posted by armacham01 — 31 Dec 2019, 02:41

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-30T23:05:14+02:00

The headquarters system is there to add a one-time cost to increasing your tech level. (Assuming that your headquarters isn't killed, you only have to pay this cost once.) It's pretty straightforward:

If you only have a t1 land factory, you can only make t1 units and t1 factories.

The only way to get a t2 land hq is to upgrade a t1 land factory.

After you have a t2 land hq, you can make t2 land units out of it. You can also upgrade t1 land factories to t2 "support" factories (which have less hp than the hq, but are cheaper, and produce units just as quickly). And you can directly build t2 land support factories, which are t2 structures.

The only way to get a t3 land hq is to upgrade a t2 land hq.

After you have a t3 land hq, you can make t3 land units out of it. You can also upgrade t2 land support factories to t3 "support" factories (which have less hp than the hq, but are cheaper, and produce units just as quickly). And you can directly build t3 land support factories, which are t3 structures.

If you kill your opponent's HQ, any high-tech units still in production can be completed by the support factories, but after that, they can't make more until they get another HQ. So if you kill your opponent's HQ (with a straightforward attack, or with a snipe) that can cause problems for them.

And of course it's the same story for air and navy HQs/support facs.

It is still efficient to have engineers assist a factory (HQ or support factory). And it is also efficient to use support factories to produce units. And it is efficient to have engineers assist factory upgrades because they take so long un-assisted.

Statistics: Posted by armacham01 — 30 Dec 2019, 23:05

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-30T20:09:59+02:00

Hello DeltaBravoLima,

welcome to FAForever.

i am amazed to hear that you are looking for an better AI.
many functions of the original GPG and Sorian AI has been improved.

And i can present you also a brand new AI made by myself:
http://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=88&t=16381

In FAF you can install an AI mod like any other mod. Just coy it into your mod folder and activate it inside the game.

In case you want to give feedback or you are interested in AI development, join our AI development server on Discord.
(link inside the first post of my AI topic)

Statistics: Posted by Uveso — 30 Dec 2019, 20:09

Re: New to FAF

2019-12-30T19:59:09+02:00

you can upgrade a factory to HQ to unlock the corresponding tech level. Then you can upgrade/build assist factories of the same type and tech level, which cost way less than HQ.

Statistics: Posted by keyser — 30 Dec 2019, 19:59