Diamond is now a featured mod!

[Vault54]

Diamond is now a featured mod and fully working and playable. Welcome to test and play! Featured Diamond mod uses Diamond Patch Mod as base but can be updated and is now fully using great lua bug fixes of FAF. You can read the change log of diamond Patch Mod here. http://www.faforever.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Diamond_Patch_Mod&action=edit

== What is Diamond Mod ==

Diamond Mod is designed for pro gaming purposes. It has tighter gameplay than original Forged Alliance so map control is more important. There are less shortcuts to victory so you have to really dominate your opponent to get a win. Fixes also most of the bugs found in game. You can now use every tactic, unit or acu upgrade found in game without being labeled as "insert method here" noob. Of course haxing and glitching is not allowed(offmapping etc.) Diamond uses its own full unit blueprints so even if there are some unit role/balance changes made by FAF, it wont affect to Diamond gameplay. For example Cybran Scathis is still a high cost game-ender in Diamond.

Major differences to FAF gameplay you need to know to play Diamond are:
You can OC without energy storage just like in 3599 and OC damage to Enemy ACU and buildings are in 3599 values
ACU death nuke damage values normalized to 3599 values (3500 inner +500 outer =4000)
Tactical missile launcher is T3 not T2
You need to have a Support Commander to build Experimentals and Land nuke launchers.


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What is new in featured mod compared to Patch mod?

It will auto-download to everyone who is either hosting or joining a game.

Fully uses the universal lua bug fixes that are built in to FAF.

Fixed sera t2 torpedo launcher torpedoes goes though islands issue (This fix will be also in next normal FAF Patch 3613 when its released)

From all t2 gunships the additional hp buff(which is in Patch mod) is removed to to get better balance on small maps. T2 gunships prices were already in 3599 values which are a bit more expensive than in 3603.
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Feel free to discuss about the mod in this thread. I hope you like it

[FunkOff]

You want to include quantum teleportation in your mod?

Also, I have developed a recall feature you could include too. Recall basically is an anti-ACU snipe. It allows your ACU to teleport off-planet when it's health reaches 0, if it has an upgrade. When this happens, your ACU loses it's upgrades and your army is stunned for one minute. However, after one minute, the ACU is teleported back to the spawn position in-tact and you can regain control of your army.

I figure, your mod tries to make the game more strategic and less focused on snipes, so you might like such a feature.

[Vault54]

Im sorry but Diamond is finished project and I only update it if issues(balance/bug) arise.

[pip]

I already reported a balance issue : Sera t3 battleship having a much higher price than other battleships, because you consider it as a nuke launcher before being a battleship. This screws Seraphim t3 Navy and encourages t3 subhunters spamming even more.
It is not necessary to increase the base cost of the Sera t3 battleship, because you can choose to not build a nuke. Instead, you should increase the costs / buildtime of the nuke itself when built by the Sera Battleship.

[Vault54]

The costs are already increased in all naval nukes since they are T3 and land nuke launcher is T4. Normal battleship costs 11250 mass and 75000 Energy and Sera Battleship costs 11250 mass and 200000 Energy. The additional 125000E is "option money" for its nuke building ability and is only 5% of total energy costs of sera battleship + 1 nuke. In 3603 the nuke subs cost 800000 energy so you can build 4 Diamond sera battleships with that energy cost. I am sure that you dont even notice the slightly higher energy demand on sera battleship compared to other factions battleships cause the energy/mass cost ratio is so low compared for example when building air units.

[Veta]

I really like this mod and I think the best course of action (since you aren't updating it anymore) would be for FAF to incorporate a lot of your changes into their later patches.

The buffs on scouting unit HP make some much sense it made me want to facepalm that GPG hadn't done that already.

Tons of other stuff that's really good too, SCU or possibly a T4 tech upgrade on the ACU being required for T4 is a great idea as well.

Maybe a few other things could be thrown in to speed up/optimize the game pace as well.

Edit: Would it be hard for FAF to borrow/copy how you fixed some of the most game breaking bugs (Upgrade Exploit for example)?

also thanks again for this mod, plays much better than the original game

[Vault54]

Thanks man. I am doing few maps right now but after that i will do at least one minor update to this mod. We are playing this mod almost every night(mainly ffa's) so feel free to join us. FAF has rights to use Diamond fixes and last 2 faf patches has had fixes mainly from Diamond mod. Maybe they implement more fixes on the future as well.

[Veta]

That sounds good mate, I'm actually finishing class this week (hence all the freetime to check out FAF) and i'd definitely be game. Gonna try to get some of my old buds to play with me as well, now that supcom doesnt kill computers as much

Oh and I was reading some of admiralzeech and zep's old ideas to address different issues (the false choice of adjacencies, t1 engie spam, etc) and I thought a few of them would fit in pretty well in FAF/Diamond (especially if they get tried and proven in Diamond first).

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