This was a new problem over the past two years only, when a player is defeated I am losing control of units for a period as long as 5 seconds. I just lost my com in a match to this as a tele-mazer was at maximum range and I could have easily outran his range, but because his teamate left the match right at that timing I was helpless to move to counter is range play vs my t1 PD ball nearby.

Please figure out why players are unable to control any units during the player leaving cycle, and remove this problem.

@auricocorico The thing I see is that there could be more gameplay at standoff ranges with anti missile and homing missiles added aside from turtle. Right now missile just miss moving armies and are only effective when formations are still or moving on predictable lines (e.g. shooting at one column and hitting something behind).

So if you had anti-MML units in your formations, and either a second rapid fire mml shooting somewhat homing missiles either by toggle or unit composition, then the game could show more standoff meta instead of being a close range only unit ball game.

Yes mml still works against static positions if they are not microing their artillery correctly. But this change would be more about moving armies at medium and closer ranges where MMl and anti-mml would be a t2 support unit of more importance instead of just being an auxiliary tool or something to intensely micro the shot pattern of to predict movement.

I'm not usually one for drastic suggestions on here (well maybe once or twice) but I was watching the Gyle cast this week and had the thought that maybe a mobile missile rework could be in order:

Add a mobile TMD.

Split mobile missile launchers in to two groups or have two settings on them, one for normal operation (best vs buildings) and another higher rate of fire, lower damage, and partial unit locking setting (making them much more usable vs spam units.

Not perfect locking just somewhat better (IE splash hits on units moving in straight lines but missing jukers)

anyone else have thoughts?

The ground fire is my main issue, just take it out alltogether. Also cybran frigates should be weaker with all the t2 stealth trickery invovled.

Well the pattern I see here is that lots of noobs or low level thinkers come in here and shit-post about this or that needing to be changed and everyone seems to get a default approach of trashing any post that comes through (because statistically that is a good guess without even reading the post).

Then when people actually raise good points the normal crowd does it's hatchet job and theres more counter-argument than there should be so it stalls or appears on a numerical post basis to be unpopular. Gonna take some special kinds of insight to work around that so hopefully you'll see what I'm talking about and act smartly.

@Deribus Right well with most factions you put the experimental up front to bludgeon through and make room for your army and get stealth attack.

With seraphim you really want it going in last and using every hp from other units to give you travel time inwards further than you would have gotten so the storm hits something juicier.

@Blodir One Minute is a ridiculously long example as I'm sure you know. There is some wiggle room that should be allowed for connections that seem to have random intermittency but does not stat disconnected for long enough periods to get them out of sync with the overall model checks.

Also I do have tons of empirical experience with the game play and when it lags, and how this looks on the F11 screen. You can see who is behind, and you can also tell from this and enough experience that people who do not have connection issues often register as the problem due to a reflection of the the initial problem complicated by high.er ping.

My question is why does not the connections with intermittency problems re-route to another node? and also all of these problems get solved by a server so even a basic attempt at a fund raiser to move partial gameplay over to a test environment to see if it's game-changing would be worth it. If FAF gets eyeballs waiting for games, then that is ad revenue, and after a test period large cost offsets or full cost coverage could be possible.

As for the netcode rework, It should be a piece of cake. Mostly deleting lines cross checking position commands taking at the same time on P2p and replacing them with an almost identical server based central response. The result is small problems no longer slow the game down to 1/2 speed, less disconnection problems overall, hopefully better re-routing of net access, and I don't get blamed for lagging living in the USA playing with mostly euros. Also more sales and return of USA player base would be likely.

Right now one glitchy person on the P2p net, and everyone is getting flashy cursors, slow gameplay, endless RE cycles, and frustration instead of competition.

Look I do send a monthly bit of cash to downlord to help. Its not much but its what I can send on my humble musician lifestyle.

As for research it doesn't take much more than above brain-dead levels to know that peer to peer is over 15 years outdated. If I can play cs go with russians and have some lag than the I should be able to play FAF with mostly east of atlantic lobbies and have it be playable. These guys literally just point fingers at me and say "spy lags, fix it" and I have 550 mbps down and 500 mbps up with 12 ping to node. My internet could not possibly be more blingy. Streaming is not taking even 10% of that data rate.

The issue is one p2p branch is getting throttled by some node somewhere and the game doesn't re-route around that intermittency so then the slowest person by range to those players goes behind. Many times the player who is getting blamed is the one getting delay on this once removed. And since USA has largely all gotten bug eyes at cyberpunk 2017 and is going "wut do elo score?" I'm literally alone here. USA is a big country (and our neighbors north and south) so something scared them all away and this is it. Getting blamed for some shitty netcode.

Just buy some server space in France and build in an add portal on the lobby screen and FAF client. Should even out.

So after years of study, countless hours playing and supporting the FAF player base, I'm fed up.

The players from USA cannot play with people from Europe currently because of this game's fossil level P2p netcode. Nothing about the data rate of this game is preventing it from functioning correctly, its 100% over-strict p2p coding that could have easily been resolved by now.

Sitting through almost 3 hours now of streaming faf, and premiering a my map design, and I still did not get one single minute of lag free gameplay. The game needs servers to run a central clock and manage small packet losses so the thing doesn't just automatically run at 1/2 or less speed all the time. Figure out a scheme of donations or monetization to make this work, or I'm leaving like most of the American player base already has.

It would be a significant balance change if anything was done here. If your losing a lot of ground units to the e field then your either not planning well or getting caught of guard by some surprise element that wasn't scouted.

Seraphim may lose heads up to aeon, but for late game seraphim t3 shield size and strength gives them a big advantage for arty wars, and seraphim cant ras, so they will have engineer coms to brace with which are way more potent than the aeon's ras ball. Also the size and strength of t3 shield land units gives you options if you cycle them through right.

So bottom line is that hitting a terrorist timing to get some damage done early on when 1-2 experimentals are possible is the seraphim prime time, after that your parrying their offense behind t2 turtle and managing experimental count and defense and t3 to hold the line and get the reclaim.

As long as your hitting a good t3 arty timing and keeping them from being able to work on a paragon effectively (eg forcing them to focus shields) you'll win here. 8v8 experimentals is just dumb for seraphim to even take
just use 5 experimentals and ridiculous t2 creep and defend vs his 8 and laugh at him crying about the mass donation afterwards.

@John73John If your reclaiming something then use your hives to help with that. You may be having issues selecting your drones as it takes some skill to nail the selection just get your actions focused with both your engies and your stations and this issue won't happen. If your unsatisfied with what they're doing then hit stop, or disable them all together.

Theres only a few buildings that are production holes like your talking about. Just hold shift and set up the orders you want done first then it will land on the sml or smd or nuke or experimental.

patronization aside I pitch lofty goals because it up averages the actual balanced expectations. Since many here are of the doom gloom please up my anti-depressant dose crowd I had to play the opposite.

Main issue i have with all of this is the ground fire frustration from an ease of play and realism standpoint. You have advantages garnished from losing intel. I say cut all restrictions on ground-firing spotted units so you don't get the blocker on your position in ground fire mode, then nerf damage in some way if not all the way because its bullshit and the shells would just explode or change course on impact.

The spool up time would help with op shield assist too. Today lost a game where a mavor got built under t3 seraphrim shileds with some rediculous amount of hives assisting shields. We had 2 dukes, 6 satellites, and assorted battleship and cruiser fire all hitting together but the hives were too much. Every shield we broke, it instantly was able to brace another shield with sooo stupidly much build power. No other faction can pull that off unless your running around with 8+ engineer scu's or something.

Change something.

And again back to possible solutions:

Add engineering stations of some type to all factions (I thought i saw this in dev notes somewhere but might have been for a mod)

Add a spool up time for the hives.

Remove the 2nd upgrade for hives.

Ok well since this topic has been hijacked several times over, i'll reguide the focus back onto the fact that while ecoing, losing some build efficiency using hives vs engineers is not a big trade off if your completed goal adds more income to your rates. So when you look at the possible curves players can pull off ecoing, Cybran is simply out of balance as they will never lose that race. Add any overflow or throw style play (which happens often when players intentionally lose their front position and fall back). No engineer clumping, and to the range of hives, once 4-8 t3 fabs can be completed, the hives can then just sit on a quantum gateway and keep their production value in use. Not to mention as stec did in the example, your eco is so popping at that point that you can just quickly build more hives in new positions to eco more. I just can't imagine doing that as a seraphrim player under any conditions with the 33% Build buff gone.

As for all this map fluff rubbish i have to listen to on any post, dual gap is a popular map, it is ranked, it follows the no-allshare meta that seems to be more popular in tournaments (somehow that still hasn't been standardized). If every map wasn't a canis clone, then there wouldn't be such a call for conformity. Look at the maps i've designed and uploaded for smaller or different versions of the role-based style. Lets start getting more play on maps that are like our favorites, but are not our favorites just for academic sake.

are we talking about for mods? I would support adding engineering stations to all factions as a way to keep things in line.

@ETFreeman What you are saying is how can I defeat my guncom opponent without upgrading my own com? Units only?

This is kind of a silly decision, but it is however possible. The real logic table for bread and butter play is gun com and prevent turtle, or turtle and prevent pushes from your opponent and beat them into t2 arty creep. If you are ruling out these two very very very standard options, you will need to simply outnumber them

The build you need calls for mass factory drop and t1 tank/ arty spam. You will also need to essentially feign defeat when he comes in with his gun com and let him move forward some, then having built up numbers from your large number of t1 factories, run him over with your units and just keep your com out of it, or mopping up some back units (its severely outranged).

T2 units die to quick to oc so just use numbers of t1 and a bit of surprise to catch him off guard. Again I emphasize the need to let him "win" some and lose only a few units while getting him charging recklessly forward, then go in for the kill.

No guarantee you'll polish off the com here, but you can beat that timing just by backing up just a bit and swarming.

Really though, use the main two options the most. They have higher success rates.

@deribus nowhere was I discussing mods. Also dual gap not that outlandish of a map. It has player roles just like setons does, just like tons of other starting positions suggest. I would like to see more maps like this rather than the "if its a not a bunch of 1v1's on lanes its not a real map" argument.

If players play passive and use com/turtle and minimum required defenses on canis for example, the same thing can happen. Overflow to some cybran eco junkie and the games maximum potential eco is totally offset by hive's fast transfer time and the ability for that player to spend that overflow seamlessly without engineer clumping, and slam rapidly through tasks without a single bit of transfer time. Please read my posts again and look past your blindness.

I see the normal dual gap hatred has been the main substantive reply to this post.

Heres my constructive feedback:

Problem is switching gears between rapid expanding production and eco cannot be done with other races. UEF get's close, but the 3rd upgrade on hives vs 2 upgrades on kennels and the drone movements across distances prevent them from matching up .

Solution: make a spool up time on hives. Change nothing else but set an early falloff that makes their initial effect a fraction and follows a linear acceleration up to current balance effect. This would fix all the problems I'm seeing.