Why did you stop playing FAF regularly?

[Memhave]

maybe you should try to read changelogs before posting so much nonsense

I do, it makes me laugh because none of the issues are hardly ever fixed. Thanks for proving the community part of this thread correct.

[TheKoopa]

Nice, you have somehow made lichking look like a good voice.

[Nepty]

7. Mods/Scripts a lot of mods or scripts are seriously lowering the skill level and competitiveness of the game. Auto-OC, ecomanager etc. Any game moderator/developer worth their salt would have banned these from their conception. They are cheats. They are not acceptable to run in game. You may say - "Oh you can download them too", anybody can download aimbots, ragehacks or wallhacks does not mean they are not cheats - get ******.

*Gasp*

That post contained too much truth. You may have damaged some pro's egos, and made them cry. For that you must accept the consequences. I don't know who you are, or where you're at, but I have a set of skills I am going to use... I will find you... and I will give you a cookie...

...Although I'm guilty of using the strategic icon mod to identify strategic missile launchers easier. That should be banned too. If we can't tell the difference between a nuke defense and nuke launcher icon, we should be nuked just like in the GPG days. Any alterations that lower skill should be banned in my opinion... Other RTS games would never allow such alterations, as I stated before in another thread.

As a reasonable, logical person I do understand the need to make the game easier to attract more players. Kinda a double edged sword. Thankfully I'm not in charge, but we don't wanna end up with a 'play game for you' mod. We're on our way to that. The mass fabrication manager mod is proof. ( It's amazing for long team games. It's like magic or something.)

[keyser]

7. Mods/Scripts a lot of mods or scripts are seriously lowering the skill level and competitiveness of the game. Auto-OC, ecomanager etc. Any game moderator/developer worth their salt would have banned these from their conception. They are cheats. They are not acceptable to run in game. You may say - "Oh you can download them too", anybody can download aimbots, ragehacks or wallhacks does not mean they are not cheats - get ******.

*Gasp*

That post contained too much truth. You may have damaged some pro's egos, and made them cry. For that you must accept the consequences. I don't know who you are, or where you're at, but I have a set of skills I am going to use... I will find you... and I will give you a cookie...

...Although I'm guilty of using the strategic icon mod to identify strategic missile launchers easier. That should be banned too. If we can't tell the difference between a nuke defense and nuke launcher icon, we should be nuked just like in the GPG days. Any alterations that lower skill should be banned in my opinion... Other RTS games would never allow such alterations, as I stated before in another thread.

As a reasonable, logical person I do understand the need to make the game easier to attract more players. Kinda a double edged sword. Thankfully I'm not in charge, but we don't wanna end up with a 'play game for you' mod. We're on our way to that. The mass fabrication manager mod is proof. ( It's amazing for long team games. It's like magic or something.)

http://giphy.com/gifs/pokeball-TBX0MTgLRT7DW
throw tatsu into the battle !

[Blodir]

way to destroy a thread

[Nepty]

Fine, I'll repair it with a support commander.

I temporarily stop playing FAF because other games...

From GTA 5 to free android tablet games. I'm playing Resident Evil 7, and StarCraft 2. Sometimes I like to make kids scream/rage on Call of Duty. Just an infinite amount of other sh*t to do... That feeling when StarCraft 2 gets a new patch and everything changes. Magical! No more flying tanks.

Kinda sad cause missing just one day of FAF HARMS your skill. ( Ground fire on water with skill to defeat HARMS.)

[Plasma_Wolf]

4.0. Balance - Its completely ******. The amount of strategies available now and those that were available in the patch after 3599 is like comparing a puddle to an ocean.

There weren't that much possibilities in 3603 either. Granted, with Aeon it's Har-Har-Har-Harbingers but it's always been that. Conversely: Janus bombers are useful. Naval battles are more dynamic.

4.1 "Community Balance / Council of Setons" players are doing a really bad job of balancing the game. They dont know what they are doing, and they keep publishing patch after patch. Air has been completely dominant after the ASF changes. Air snipes are stupidly hard to do due to SAM changes etc. ASF change was for performance reasons. It didnt help and it wasnt repealed or fixed.

Can you point out what the last ASF changes were? Because the last change that affected ASFs was the RAS nerf and that delayed T3 air.

4.2 I loved Phantoms, due to the buffs RAS and sACUs have had, phantom is just mega turtle spam. Nobody knows how to play Phantoms because thats what they do, theres no psychological games anymore, its either rush exp and hope other Phantom joins you or spam sACUs.

Agreed, but it's been this way since the start of FAF. Compared to what it was in the days of GPG, no single phantom game (and I played a lot of them in early FAF) has been as mental as in GPG. The best psychological thing I did was unintentional but hilarious. I didn't eco up as much as the other phantom and so the paladin was suspected by the two other innocents (the third was dead). The second phantom and one innocent attack the paladin while I build a series of Tempests. When I'm prompted to attack the paladin, I have to pass the island of the attacking innocent. I fire one shot and the innocent ctrl-Ks becuse and accuses me of being a blind noob. I was just laughing.

Sadly, the message of it was lost. He self destructed, called me a noob, idiot, banned me from his future games and left before I was revealed as phantom. Making people make mistakes in who to attack and find out they've been the ones who were wrong (instead of me) is way more fun that winning the game.

Another sadly, I didn't get to win that game. Playing the psychological game means you're handicapping yourself in the economy game and that means there's a big chance you'll eventually lose.

4.3 Seraphim are in awful spot. The aim of the game these days is to rush to T3 ASAP. There are hardly any naval maps that are good or played. Sera has weak Air & Land comparably.

The aim has almost always been "get to T3". Harb rush, Brick spam, Percival spam. Only percival spam is beaten by T1 spam at the start, because of the percival's firing cycle. This also has been a thing since GPG.

The Seraphim strength is T2 Ilshavoh spam. Late game you'll want sniper bots, artillery, T3 mobile shields and Ythotas. Experimentals are always less effective than T3 spam, but the Ythota has an AoE weapon which is at least semi-useful. This however has been a problem since GPG released FA. Seraphim are pretty weak in navy too. Their destroyers are not more impressive than the other destroyers and the Subhunter has 4000 health so the Solace hard-counters it. Maybe they need better torpedo defence. This is more a thing for the balance discussion.

Having said that, if you're not happy with how the balance team does it (and I think they were doing it quite well, also given that they really DID listen to input, but most people complaining about balance changes don't know that there HAS been input), then give them your suggestions.

4.4 Setons is easily the worst shit to ever happen to FAF. I like Setons, but it is so over played its worse than Dust 2 or turtle rock. "Council of Setons" is a joke, just like the map.

Setons has been around since the early days of GPG and it's been a community splitter even then.

The point is not Setons, the point is to make other maps played. Burial Mounds is barely played but it's promising to be fun just because of the setup! Your point 4.4 should be: "not enough different maps are being played". That's something that won't be fixed by complaining about it. It's fixed by getting people together to play these maps.

7. Mods/Scripts a lot of mods or scripts are seriously lowering the skill level and competitiveness of the game. Auto-OC, ecomanager etc. Any game moderator/developer worth their salt would have banned these from their conception. They are cheats. They are not acceptable to run in game. You may say - "Oh you can download them too", anybody can download aimbots, ragehacks or wallhacks does not mean they are not cheats - get ******.

Calm. Down. Ecomanager won't make the difference if you have an equal APM to your opponent. At 20 APM, it's noob level and having to click less to get the optimal mass fab going isn't going to make you win. Upgrading mexes before building the mass fab is. If that's being done, you're probably in a game where 5 megaliths fire at 5 megaliths. Then the mass fab won't make the difference, having the megaliths placed correctly is. The effect of ecomanager is overrated.

At 40 APM, the difference will be made by having the right unit movements. T2 armies attacking T2 armies in the right way. Not sending 20 gunships into flak. That makes you win games, not some automated system to activate mass fabs and deactivate them a bit later.

At 80 APM, don't tell me that you need ecomanager because you don't have the time to enable and disable your mass fabs.

As for Auto-OC. This does have an impact and it's a good impact. I'm looking at this the other way around. Any unit fires automatically, so why not overcharge automatically? It should've been in the game at the start imo. I'd like to know how you think that this will significantly reduce the skill required to play the game properly.

What else do you want gone? Hotbuild? Preset SCU upgrades from the quantum gateway? SCU upgrade templates? Build templates in general? These were all things added to make the game easier to manage. Not to make the game easier to play and win. All of these things also have a bigger impact on your APM level than ecomanager.

8. Oh and Bombers not being reliable and bomber micro abuse.

Bombers are sometimes not dropping. That's annoying. I agree. Today I've had a bomber failing to drop two or three times when it really should have. As for bomber micro abuse: if the bomber is not failing, it's more logical now, hoverbombing is more difficult. The only downside: bombers have a tighter turn rate than interceptors. I once had a game on Hollow where I couldn't kill a bomber because of its turn rate. Still, some better micro-management and predicting would've dealt with it sooner. Then again, on early hollow there's plenty o things to do.

All in all, I'm definitely not negative about the new bomber. Hoverbombing is almost impossible now but bombers are still as effective early on, if you do it right. It's more logical now.

Things about moderators in FAF

I can't comment on these, I never have anything to say to moderators, never have a problem with other players etc.

[Memhave]

There weren't that much possibilities in 3603 either. Granted, with Aeon it's Har-Har-Har-Harbingers but it's always been that. Conversely: Janus bombers are useful. Naval battles are more dynamic.

To some extent yes, it has. Going to t3 has ALWAYS been an advantage. My key example on how its change is air. There is no t2 air in game teams anymore.

Can you point out what the last ASF changes were? Because the last change that affected ASFs was the RAS nerf and that delayed T3 air.

Just before SAMs were made AoE, ASF were changed dramatically to improve performance. Lots of number changes and such. They had less HP, less fuel I believe and a few other changes. There was another option - remove ASF trails, this was considered but rejected.

Another sadly, I didn't get to win that game. Playing the psychological game means you're handicapping yourself in the economy game and that means there's a big chance you'll eventually lose.

Maybe so, but isnt that what Phantom is all about? The mind games, being good at build orders and having efficiency. Nowadays its simply prebuild t2 and spam artillery and sACUs

The aim has almost always been "get to T3". Harb rush, Brick spam, Percival spam. Only percival spam is beaten by T1 spam at the start, because of the percival's firing cycle. This also has been a thing since GPG.

The Seraphim strength is T2 Ilshavoh spam. Late game you'll want sniper bots, artillery, T3 mobile shields and Ythotas. Experimentals are always less effective than T3 spam, but the Ythota has an AoE weapon which is at least semi-useful. This however has been a problem since GPG released FA. Seraphim are pretty weak in navy too. Their destroyers are not more impressive than the other destroyers and the Subhunter has 4000 health so the Solace hard-counters it. Maybe they need better torpedo defence. This is more a thing for the balance discussion.

There is simply very little point to t2 these days except for a key few units - shield, stealth, MML/TML, SMD etc. T2 lasts very little of the time, its eclipsed so quickly.

Having said that, if you're not happy with how the balance team does it (and I think they were doing it quite well, also given that they really DID listen to input, but most people complaining about balance changes don't know that there HAS been input), then give them your suggestions.

That may be one of the issues, very little communication. How about people get to vote on the balanced changes. I would MUCH happier with longer patch cycles if they were much more stable. If Zock insists on making massive changes every patch, maybe to force meta, maybe not - who knows. Maybe allow a meta to develop ala other games.

The point is not Setons, the point is to make other maps played. Burial Mounds is barely played but it's promising to be fun just because of the setup! Your point 4.4 should be: "not enough different maps are being played". That's something that won't be fixed by complaining about it. It's fixed by getting people together to play these maps.

Why should I wait 1 hour to fill a game with 1k+ just to play burial mounds and have someone lag/quit/not even join. It isnt worth my time. Balance patches seem to favour these massively slow beasts of game, hundreds upon hundreds of ASF and turtle-fests.

Maybe it is time for a separate balance one for team games and one for ladder?

Calm. Down. Ecomanager won't make the difference if you have an equal APM to your opponent. At 20 APM, it's noob level and having to click less to get the optimal mass fab going isn't going to make you win. Upgrading mexes before building the mass fab is. If that's being done, you're probably in a game where 5 megaliths fire at 5 megaliths. Then the mass fab won't make the difference, having the megaliths placed correctly is. The effect of ecomanager is overrated.

At 40 APM, the difference will be made by having the right unit movements. T2 armies attacking T2 armies in the right way. Not sending 20 gunships into flak. That makes you win games, not some automated system to activate mass fabs and deactivate them a bit later.

At 80 APM, don't tell me that you need ecomanager because you don't have the time to enable and disable your mass fabs.

Sure, but if my opponent and I both have the same APM, should we not have to make the same sacrifices, be it macro for eco or micro for units? It provides a massively UNFAIR advantage. It does not matter at which skill level. It would equate to introducing a soft aim-assist CoD, imagine the outrage if it were introduced to CS:GO. It is an advantage that is not natural, inherent or talent (blah blah mouse this, screen that, very different argument). It must go.

As for Auto-OC. This does have an impact and it's a good impact. I'm looking at this the other way around. Any unit fires automatically, so why not overcharge automatically? It should've been in the game at the start imo. I'd like to know how you think that this will significantly reduce the skill required to play the game properly.

What else do you want gone? Hotbuild? Preset SCU upgrades from the quantum gateway? SCU upgrade templates? Build templates in general? These were all things added to make the game easier to manage. Not to make the game easier to play and win. All of these things also have a bigger impact on your APM level than ecomanager.

Because OC was developed not to be a second automatically fired, but an expensive manual, otherwise it would be automated.
I DO want hot-build gone. I would not mind presets if they were slightly more expensive (say 10-15%) of their cost to offset the micro required to upgrade them.

All I want is a level playing field without mods, scripts, auto that auto this. What is this Factorio? Next why dont we just automate a build order for every map. Less APM is good right? I'm sorry but I'm very against scripts and mods like these.

All in all, I'm definitely not negative about the new bomber. Hoverbombing is almost impossible now but bombers are still as effective early on, if you do it right. It's more logical now.

We'll thank f*** for that. What use is gunships when you have hover bombing? Early bomber should be high risk vs high reward - not micro and win the game in 30 seconds.

I can't comment on these, I never have anything to say to moderators, never have a problem with other players etc.

That is your prerogative.

Thank you for your decent response. It is only a matter of time before mods come and shut down this, they seem rather against dialogue.

EDIT: If someone can find a backup of all patch notes since 3599 I would happily point out where it went south for me.

[IceDreamer]

Patch notes from 3599 are more than 60 pages long. I gave up at that point.

Also, you're very poorly informed on a number of issues regarding both the current state of FAF and FA, and they way things generally work around here.

The only thing I have time to explicitely respond to is wanting HotBuild gone. Are you bonkers insane? Literally every RTS game out there has the ability to rebind keys, and has a single key do different things with different units selected. That's all hotbuild is.

Primarily we're trying to make SupCom a game of thought, not a game of mechanical talent. If a barrier exists between a player deciding "I want thing to happen" and efficiently getting the game to set about doing "thing", we'll try and remove it. What we don't want to do is things where code makes a decision for the player. Certain UI mods fall foul of this, but it's harder than you would think to disallow them. Of far more concern to me is the imbalance created when one player has the mod and another does not, in a single game. It is far preferable to integrate such a function (EG: Mass fab toggling) if it's not possible to effectively remove the mods, purely so that way everyone has that leg up.

To be blunt with you, at the end of the day if you view mechanical prowess as the preferred measure of skill, SupCom isn't the game for you in the first place.

[Memhave]

Patch notes from 3599 are more than 60 pages long. I gave up at that point.

Also, you're very poorly informed on a number of issues regarding both the current state of FAF and FA, and they way things generally work around here.

The way things work have not changed, at all. Maybe back end regarding issues sure, but there is still very little communication, issue that are in the game and have been for a VERY long time are STILL in the game. What is the point with adding new units, changing how things work when players are STILL struggling to connect to each other?

The only thing I have time to explicitely respond to is wanting HotBuild gone. Are you bonkers insane? Literally every RTS game out there has the ability to rebind keys, and has a single key do different things with different units selected. That's all hotbuild is.

Then you have failed to read. I realise that it is incredibly difficult to moderate and enforce what mods and scripts use - which is a double sided sword. I only want hotbuild gone because all scripts must go, it is near impossible to allow one, but not the other unless I am mistaken (as its mostly client side). FYI There are other programs that can help you rebind keys outside of supcom.

has a single key do different things with different units selected

Less micro for one player than the other due to scripts. Not a level playing field, this specific discussion is very akin to that of jump binds from CS:GO.

Primarily we're trying to make SupCom a game of thought, not a game of mechanical talent. What we don't want to do is things where code makes a decision for the player. .

RTS is much more than just mechanical talent. I LIKE SupCom, I love the universe and the scale.

If a barrier exists between a player deciding "I want thing to happen" and efficiently getting the game to set about doing "thing", we'll try and remove it

Please give some examples, because it is very difficult for me not to liken this to EcoManager. "I don't want to powerstall" - Ecomanager will efficiently not power stall you. Try a different example so I can see it from your side.

Of far more concern to me is the imbalance created when one player has the mod and another does not, in a single game. It is far preferable to integrate such a function (EG: Mass fab toggling) if it's not possible to effectively remove the mods, purely so that way everyone has that leg up.

Therein lies one of the major parts of the issue. In theory it is a good idea to expand and evolve the game, but there are too many issues. It's like buying games before you've even ordered a single PC part.

Do you not believe that players should be ASKED before they want the integration of x mod? There was a time when ZePilot would ask and provide choices (such a surveys and such) regarding balances, issues or map pools.

Certain UI mods fall foul of this, but it's harder than you would think to disallow them

Is it harder to disallow UI mods full stop or harder to disallow certain mods or scripts. I believe the former is a much lesser evil than the latter.

To be blunt with you, at the end of the day if you view mechanical prowess as the preferred measure of skill, SupCom isn't the game for you in the first place.

Mechanical prowess IS a measure of skill fullstop and it is one of the MAJOR measures of skill in any RTS, especially SupCom.

Mechanical Prowess is not necessarily just 1230901382 APM. It is also unit interactions, numbers and awareness.

I like SupCom, I would like to LOVE SupCom again.

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