In the Key bindings menu, under "Camera" category you will find everything.

Activate free mode, then press space and move your mouse. You can do this at lower camera hights without free mode but then it resets automatically.

Tracking is also there.

@arran Ah! That's right, I forgot the SMDs! For V4 they will have graduated from elemantary school, promise!

Casts, I know.. sorry about that You know what, I will write some YT comments and ask if they want to try it!

V2 had LOG calls that will run every tick on factories, my bad. V3 uploaded and fixes this

V2 released

@arran This is why

I made everything to be in line with the color scheme of Color Coded Strategic Icons, but yes some sort of color picker is a good idea. I love settings, as long as there is a good default out of the box!

I have made so many of those fixes to UI-Party and other mods to make it all work together, and I think I remember having that problem and fixing it. With 38 mods running in total () it all runs smooth for me now after all.

You ideas are great as always, thanks! When it's time to start working on it I will come back and go through everything in detail.

@arran Let me share the current state of things, maybe you have some ideas!

I actually built it from the econtrol in UI-Party, but beware: I have made other changes in there as well and some things are removed after my personal needs. So it's not just UI-Party with a modifed econtrol. Need to clean that up sometime.

If you want to try:

mods.zip (Includes my slightly modified common mod tools that fixes a problem I had with UMT SetHiddenSelect.)

It works but it's been left like this for a while, but my ambition for it is to be much more configurable, yet should be simple to use as well. I've found it hard to figure out how it will look to fulfil both of those and also integrate all my ideas.

It already:

• Shows expenditure (green/pink bars - left side is abilities, right side construction)
• Pause whole category (red square - right click the bar area)
• Show how much resources were spent before pausing (red/turquoise bars)
• Autopause (orange square, ctrl-right click bar area)
• Continue (left click bar area)

I'd like it to:

• Set specific threshold for each category to control which units gets autopaused first (now they all autopause when less than 80% or something like that).
• Profiles, that can be saved and activated quickly during the game.
• Prioritize, meaning pause everything else unless over a resource threshold
• Autopause on mass thresholds as well
• Expandable subcategories: T1, T2, T3 factories for example, right now I just have land/air etc.
• Set autopause/prioritize only, or ignore some, specific units - useful for autopausing for example all radars/shields except your most important ones.
• Special cases like for launchers. Maybe there is something more
• Auto activate, for example Cybran ASF stealth capability that starts off even when overflowing energy.
• And more, these are just the things I could remember

If you get an idea of how to puzzle all of this into the UI, let me know. I'd be very grateful. At this point the coding feels much easier to me even though that's a lot of work for sure.

@arran It's a rare thing to have a bug work in your favor!

You know, I think the wish a mod foundation might just be able to grant your request.

This idea has been on my mind too for a while, but I am thinking it has to be possible to set each individual launcher differently. For me I don't see how it will be that useful if I am locked to one level, and who has time to go to the menu mid game? Instead, I'd go all the way and put everything into a UI and have an overlay of the number to go along with it. With the ability to save the default number to persist between games as well.

It so happens that I am working on a mod that autopauses any category of units with the click of a button. Only on low energy right now but should be easy to add other conditions. I need to finish up the icons mod first but after that it might be time for me continue on it, and it would fit to integrate your idea there I think. It is a lot of work though, I wouldn't hold my breath. Maybe someone else can make a simple one first. I'd be happy to copy some of that code when I need it

@Arran

T1ArtyBalance.zip

https://github.com/FreadyFishFAF/T1ArtilleryBalance

Seraphim is not how you described, I made it as a low arc instead. I'll look into if I can apply a different gravity to it to create that effect you're looking for but this will give similar effect on gameplay, ie the shell arrives faster.

Aeon will also have to be looked into, haven't done something like that before. But I am thinking we can do all those cool visual things last if we manage to get the balance in order.

Relevant code below, it should be easy enough to play around with. Change the "local ____DPS = X" and the Damage will be calculated automatically based on RoF.

-- Disable predictive projectiles to make them ineffective against moving targets
bp.Weapon[1].LeadTarget = false

-- Double the cost
bp.Economy.BuildCostEnergy = bp.Economy.BuildCostEnergy * 2
bp.Economy.BuildCostMass = bp.Economy.BuildCostMass * 2

-- Increase weapon range by 2 units
bp.Weapon[1].MaxRadius = bp.Weapon[1].MaxRadius + 2

if id == "uel0103" then -- UEF T1 Artillery

    local uefRoF = 0.5
    local uefDPS = 2

    bp.Weapon[1].RateOfFire = bp.Weapon[1].RateOfFire * uefRoF

    bp.Weapon[1].Damage = bp.Weapon[1].Damage * uefDPS / uefRoF

    bp.Intel.VisionRadius = bp.Intel.VisionRadius * 2

elseif id == "url0103" then -- Cybran T1 Artillery

    local cybranRoF = 1.5
    local cybranDPS = 1

    bp.Weapon[1].RateOfFire = bp.Weapon[1].RateOfFire * cybranRoF

    bp.Weapon[1].Damage = bp.Weapon[1].Damage * cybranDPS / cybranRoF

    bp.Physics.MaxSpeed = 3.7

    bp.Weapon[1].DamageRadius = bp.Weapon[1].DamageRadius * 1.5

    bp.Weapon[1].FiringRandomness = bp.Weapon[1].FiringRandomness * 1.25

    -- Stun
    for k, v in bp.Weapon[1].Buffs do
        v.Duration = v.Duration + 2 -- default is 3s for T1, 2s for T2, this makes it 5s for T1, 4s for T2
    end

elseif id == "ual0103" then -- Aeon T1 Artillery

    local aeonRoF = 1.5
    local aeonDPS = 2

    bp.Weapon[1].RateOfFire = bp.Weapon[1].RateOfFire * aeonRoF

    bp.Weapon[1].Damage = bp.Weapon[1].Damage * aeonDPS / aeonRoF

    bp.Weapon[1].DamageRadius = 0

    bp.Weapon[1].FiringRandomness = 0

elseif id == "xsl0103" then -- Seraphim T1 Artillery

    local seraRoF = 3
    local seraDPS = 2

    bp.Weapon[1].RateOfFire = bp.Weapon[1].RateOfFire * seraRoF

    bp.Weapon[1].Damage = bp.Weapon[1].Damage * seraDPS / seraRoF

    bp.Weapon[1].BallisticArc = 'RULEUBA_LowArc'
end

@arran Haven't made a sim mod in a while but should be easy. We basically just throw around some numbers and change some trues to falses and we're done!

I think you're onto something here! Arty spam is ugly and works too well. Especially those annoying seraphim floaters. Ugh. Would like to see how it works in game. How about we make a demo mod for it?

@arran Good catches!

The asymmetry is actually present for all icons. It seems as if its the surrounding glow that gets cut off, on the inside of the glow not the outside. Very strange. Any attempt of mine to mitigate it by changing the icon only makes it worse. When changing colors through the "use team colors" or whatever it is called, it's displayed more properly. Red works bettar than blue for example. This is the extent of my findings.

Does anyone know some more details of how to work with the icon player color? I just set it to a gray with 70% luminance and it works to show the different colors automatically. There is probably something more to it. What thresholds are used for it to count as a player color for example? Not sure where to find info on exactly how it works.

That I havent noticed the bloom problem makes sense since I am going for full performance settings (ie my computer is slow). Will experiment and see if I figure something out, but without that other mod I take it that it is still showing as purple then. I am guessing the only solution is to change the color, to something darker perhaps.

Only showing overlays after building is finished. I tried self.unit:IsBeingBuilt(), but get error: attempt to call method `IsBeingBuilt' (a nil value). Will do some digging.

I actually didnt add UMT as a required mod for two reasons, 1 it can work without it so didn't want to force anyone to download it, and 2 I guess if UMT is updated this will cause a problem. I don't think there is any dependancy management like UMT >= 12 to solve the issue. But UMT is pretty standard and I can always update my mod with new dependencies whenever there is a new UMT release so I will consider it!

Thanks Arran!

Not sure if it is related, but during my last games I was notified that my party-mate was "offline", and when game finished (without any in-game problems) we were not in a party anymore. No restart required for us, just invite again.

@arran Thanks Arran! Glad you like it!

Haha my LEGO-navy icons, as I like to call them. My favourite detail must be the legs on the Salem

Next release is coming any day (or week) now actually!

• Overlays will be optional checkboxes via UMT options menu.
• Every base game unit now has an icon, some have been updated slighly for better consistency.

After uploading the beta I realized I was in the middle of trying some stuff with the factory overlays, so yeah that's my bad. They will be working in V2. For V3 I'm thinking of having the icon change depending on what is currently being built, like when building engineers now. But color coded this time - of course.

About the shields, I am not sure what you are refering to. I haven't had any problems with them. Could you elaborate a bit, or if you have a screenshot?

Feel free to try the current version, maybe it's something I have solved unknowingly. I would also gladly hear your thoughts before the release:

https://github.com/FredrikBergelin/FAF-Mods/tree/main/ColorCodedStrategicIcons

ColorCodedStrategicIcons_V2_PRE_RELEASE.zip

I am totally up for ideas on the design. As is evident from the experimentals, I am no Picasso. Maybe they should not be depicted at all like now, instead just some generic symbol? Spider definitely deserves a cool icon (not that I am biased towards Cybran or anything.. )

The size/zoom thing, I have thought about it too. I don't think it's possible to solve unfortunately, for the same reason many icon mods have 1080/1444/4k versions. Everything is pixel based in a specific format, so they are not intended to scale. It might be possible to create a new set of smaller icons, and load dynamically on certain zoom breakpoints. If anyone knows some limitations here please let me know. Realisically this is a V4 feature at the earliest.

@StormLantern I feared that might be the case, but maybe there is an easier solution for the inflation problem? I'll share some more details of my own experience:

I (around 1200) played ladder with a new player, skill level around 0 rating lets say. Because of having no previous games, ranking increased quicker than mine for each game we won, until we hit a point where we started losing more and more, bringing my rating down faster than theirs. In the end I think my teammate rached 7-800 and was crushed when not being carried, making it basically impossible to play alone.

I guess it's not exactly adviced to play with such large gap in skill level, but this might reveal a problem that exists for any party with a rating disparity even if it's less noticable usually. I don't know much about how the rating system works but I could have a look at it and give some more concrete suggestions. If you think I'm onto something and wouldn't rather dig into it yourself.

Yes, basically or potentially even more, since for each unique team composition there is a seperate rating. So you can have a rating with friend 1, another with friend 2, and a third with both of them. But I suppose this only needs to be saved if a party is deliberatelly created, not from any custom game with friends. So most people probably won't end up with 20 different ratings, more like one or two.

In Starcraft 2 I remember having a seperate rating for each party. Is this something that could be implemented in FAF?

It is more fun to have a common rating to work on, and more importantly it would allow higher and lower rated players to play together without destroying or inflating their individual rating.

Update:

Instead of assigning keys to actions, you will assign actions to keys. As well as the context conditionals.

Obviously there are many things missing here, but I think something like this is how it must be.

Let me know if you see a better solution, before I get too far down the line

You select the key to edit, and scroll the list to the left and to find and add actions from there.

About the IF, ELSE IF, ELSE - its not super clean, and might be a bit unfamiliar for non-programmers. At first I wanted to have tabs or something to seperate the contexts, but I realize that the order matters, as a unit can be part of two contexts. So I see no other way than to specify this in each key, then perhaps add a filter to show only those with a certain conditional. This list will be very long, so the main issue I see is how to find what you're looking for, and to understand what it does (especially when importing someone elses preset).

Actions can be modified (or even added from scratch as ConExecutable code). For example you might want to add "+inview" to a select, which would give you only units currently on screen. This gives a high degree of freedom for those who understands coding without having to make a mod just for adding simple commands. This is of course optional.

I will aim to make it simple and clean, and those more advanced parts will be accessable from a drop down menu or something. The goal is to make it accessible to everyone.

PS:

@Nomander Thanks for the feedback, I'm in there time to time trying to get familiar. Will try to stay in line. Still wonder though about how to do this so that the team is happy about the functionality as well, not just code.

What if everyone decide the maximum balance diff they want to be matched on. A simple slider.

Personally I don't care that much if our team gets crushed, it's a learning experience once in a while. Also sometimes it is kinda fun to dominate. Better than no game.

Others might find it frustrating and boring, and would rather go to bed. I respect that.

That's a good source lol, I stand corrected. Where is this code exactly? @CocaineDiesel

@firv Hmm, strange. I never picked up on that. Will test.

In the replay it does shoot twice though? Is this to be expected somehow?