Mods in ranked games.

Just to get a handle on the impact of possible AI-assistance: Is such assistance not equivalent to playing a shared armies game? And if PA is supposed to be a macro game, shouldn't the number of controlling entities be irrelevant?
Or, boiled down, why on earth should APM matter? Because there isn't enough of a game left? Can't be a macro game then, can it?

As with all things it isn't black and white. PA has a much lower APM requirement to be decent than many RTS titles.

Also whilst shared army mode is *very helpful* for big games, I'm not sure playing shared armies in a 1 v 1, on a single planet with *1 commander* would actually be helpful at all. The team of players would probably just interfere with each other to the point of costing the game.

Shared armies increases the amount of starting units by the number of players for one thing so the scenario isn't really a fair comparison.

Totally forgot about starting conditions on 'Shared Armies' proper; the gist of my post remains, though. And as you rightfully pointed out, assistance and concurrency can turn out to be detrimental, as well. So whence comes the love for 200 APM babysitting?

First of all the seperation between Server and Client mods cut's down on ability to cheat immensely.
Server mods simply won't be used by the server in ranked play. That reduces a whole bunch of issues to nothing.

It is often said there are three resources when playing PA:
Metal
Energy
Attention

Due to the seperation between Server and Client mod, the only thing client mods can affect is Attention.
How much Attention the Client mods can save is also limited by what events the client raises and what data it exposes.
A map hack like in SC 2 does not work if your client doesn't HAS the full map data.


AutoFactory is clearly saving you a ton of attention. So it is clearly cheating you attention resource. But then again most competetive players have thier factories on loop build anyway. Maybe (client) mods should just not be able to give build orders.
Hotbuild 2 - I don't use the mod. What exactly does it do? Afaik it only gives you an alternative way to navigate the build menu. if that is true, it will not save you relevant attention resource.
Auto-Loop Factory - that one I do use and it might be tricky. On the one hand, you don't have to set factories on loop mode manually. On the other, you cannot set them to single build instead (always have to use Ctrl override). And you have plenty of time to set loop mode at the same time you set up the queue during building. I would even say it prevents accidently having the UI not register your loop command.


Wich other client mods are there that can save attention resource?

Every client mod is designed to do this, that's what the entire UI is for, to provide you information in an efficient way. I use Better System View to display metal values from planets rather than spend time counting the spots (which is so resource intensive you'd never do it). That's an attention "cheat". Your final mod is you bending over backwards to come up with ways as to why that one is OK. And therein is the issue, everyone draws the line in a different place, so drawing the line in the first place seems silly when the support to do this is built right into the game.

They're all attention time savers. And the game was built for them, modding was a top ticket item from day one, so frankly you're better off getting on board and using mods to compliment your game.

And really, this is all pretty silly. If you think that when top competitive players are playing for money they're not using every edge you can get then you're kidding yourselves. There's a reason none of the top players use Auto Factory, and it's because they manage factories better themselves than the mod does, not due to some moral compass.

This is the very definition of tempest in a teapot.

Then you get a third party macro to do it. More complicated, just as possible. Then you need to design the game to detect those and punish the user. Then, the macro is simply adjusted for variations on click location and click timing to spoof the detector to humanistic actions. Then, the war on that shtuff begins.

No, just let the freaking client do it's job. If you add a quickscope specific-frame-of-accuracy-tighten like TF2, people are just going to need to use macros to time it better. People are just going to use macros to automatically click a series of places with a margin of error in location and timing, in order to quick-assign factories queues and junk.

I mean, it would be nice if the factory just built, already started with a queue, and could be set, to turn off automatically if power is scarce, by default in the vanilla game.

Matter of fact, the power had a "conserve" setting in TA that automatically turned it off when negative. We need that @jables . The factories starting looped with a queue, it wouldn't be so bad if factories could assist other factories to copy their queues as well like in SupCom I hear.

Its a much more efficient way of placing buildings / setting factory build orders than the crap one that is in the game by default. I can have large build orders for my fabbers or commander up in no time using it which would be quite painful to do using the default system or clicking.

Well having watched streams of many of the very high APM PA players.... they waste a lot of clicks. Whilst very high APM *can help* I really don't think it's actually that necessary. It's just a way many people play due to backgrounds in Starcraft and such...

Trying to block client mods will be an arms race, and I don't want Uber to spend time racing.

Disclaimer: I don't really play ranked, and I'll never be on top if I do. I look at the ranked play as a way to find people about my skill level to enjoy the game, and I enjoy the game a lot more with mods.

Pretty sure there is no automatic conserve energy in TA. You could turn metal makers off manually alright of that's what you mean.

Using mods at all is not an issue. Using mods in competitive play (Ranked, Leaderboard, Events) IS. And that issue is this thread talking about.
Actually, "but the modding API allows it, so it cannot be cheating" is a common argument used by cheaters.

Regarding "everyone has a different bar":
I guess competitive play must have rules about allowed mods. It is one of the cases where whitelisting is more usefull then blacklisting.

Please don't mix up two totally different things or interpret obviously dumb stuff into what I said:
Removing critical stuff from the client mod API (and to the serveer modding API) IS NOT EVEN REMOTELY the same as trying to detect third party tools. The later is ridiculous. You can never win the war against third party tools. I specifically did NOT say anything that could be interpreted as such, because I do my best to be not stupid

I talked only about moving critical stuff from the Client Mod API to the Server Mod API.
- It would remove the whole "but the client mod API allowed it" argument. Wich is a powerfull fake argument used by cheaters.
- It would not hinder single player modding relevantly (if it is worth a Client Mod, it is worth a server mod; in fact the sever mode can do mroe anyway).
- And in case any system is not working with server mods right now (like GW does), that is not a counter argument. It is a bug. It will be fixed either way. And of course changes that collide with a bug have to be delayed until the bug is a non-issue. Something that won't be an long term issue can delay a change, but not totally prevent it.

I don't like autofactory, as it can hamper my control. Especially considering it makes factories only build ONE specific unit per tier/unit type which is definitely not what I want.

I'd argue that some people like it as it goes well with how they play whilst with others it just hampers their play.

Heck, imagine a ui mod ai that made units kite. That'd be so damn annoying when I want them to run on full force to a defensive line.

First off, I have been a game hacker since 2001, don't even bro.

Second off, you can't move player inputs to the server side lol. Do you even mod bro?

If you "locked the code" for the client to be able to allow inputs, then you get a third party. Then it BECOMES AN ARMS RACE BY DEFINITION.

Basically, I am using whatever I want in a match, and th'ain't shizz anyone can do to prove it.

I hacked minesweeper fastest times on my family computer in 1996. FBI still havnt found me.

Let me cast a ficticious game here:

"Okay, both players are starting, and ohh purple really has the edge on setting up the starting queue for commander, doing it 3 whole seconds faster than green, wow that is really going to leave green at the disadvantage, what skill shown by purple, that is why practice counts, what amazing players with their speedy clicking, definitely better than their opponents at the game in all the ways that count.

Oh, and now purple and green are losing some economy, and purple reacted to adjust their eco by turning stuff off a whole 6 seconds faster than Green, their power is going to come back online so much faster because of that amazing gameplay, and leave them time to micro their attacking dox while green still fumbles with their power settings. Wow, green is blundering today.

Now, both teams have a nuke, and purple shows the best gameplay ever, he switches his power consumption off of armies the very moment he didn't need them, 15 seconds before green, and his nuke and antinuke are both up before green's antinuke gets build-priority, GG purple, stomped green in equal strategy by their superior speed in clicking the MOTHERF***NG KEYBOARD ABOUT 500 TIMES A MINUTE AND" ...oh to hell with this...

...I am dropping the metaphor, it is a real time STRATEGY game and if they start servere capping on the real time inputs then it will be hard to call it a real time STRATEGY game anymore. Sure it is REAL TIME, but it can be realtime while facilitating everyone with fast-reactions and not turn into turn-based, while lacking this facilitation turns it into REAL TIME ISSUE-MORE-ORDERS-FASTER game and removes the questionably low amount of strategic skill-level currently found in vanilla.

Theoretically, if you want to play a micro-intensive real time wiggle-the-unit thing, I suggest RenX, it is an arcadey shooter and shines in that sort of gameplay.

If you want to play a strategy game, then strategy should likely affect the outcome. Not one guy clicking left-right on dox and winning, but one guy using the right units and sending them to the right places, to secure a decisive victory. Walking dox through other dox by microing yours, is getting free results seperate of strategic decision.

Sounds more like you are being envy of those who have the skills required to craft mods. It's not cheating just because you don't know how to do it, you are just lacking a few years of experience.

It's never cheating as long as you are acting withing the defined bounds of the simulation as you are not breaking any game rules.

But we can end this discussion once and for all:
If you don't want to play with mods, find other players and make your own ladder with blackjack, hookers and your own custom "no mods allowed" rule. Well, given that you won't have mods probably neither blackjack nor hookers.

That was before you confessed to the world ...

You were a kid, you probably didn't make the time believable. Noob mistake, setting it to 1 second. I could actually beat one in like 4 minutes (a lot of failures just trying to rushdown it).

Nah, I will join his ladder and use mods and say I am not. I won't win, goodness no, but I will still join just to use mods and deny that I am using them.

Don't worry I blocked the fbi.

But the client needs to have an API to implement the default UI. There are close to none specific "this is an API for modders" routines. 99% of what we have right now are mods that basically take the API that the default UI uses and just offers a different UI for the very same API. The only way to really remove a specific ability, i.e. to build stuff, would be to remove the whole "please queue something now" API. Now that would prevent the default UI from doing so as well. They could try to do ugly hacks to make it harder to re-purpose certain API calls, but that's just the stupid arms race that we should prevent. "Evil" modders like me are quite dedicated to find ways to do "that's impossible" things with API that wasn't meant for it.

A good example of this is the ability for mods to give commands, i.e. move commands, in world coordinates. The PA client has no obvious API for that, from what we know because: a) it's not required by the default UI and b) Uber did not want to think about this "mods are cheating" stuff at the time and was not giving any obviously super powerful API out. That's not to say there won't be better API, that is an open discussion, as we can see in here, but they did not want to spent time on it a few years ago

So there is no API to give "move selected unit to world coordinate" commands.... it seems. But actually:
- The call that the default UI uses accepts a 2D screen coordinate of the holodeck that the player clicked (a worldview, basically a pip, the main-view is just a big pip).
- Usually the player clicks somewhere, the UI takes the 2D coordinates relative to the holodeck and passes them to the active holodeck as "move there" command.
- Now pips can be created via code. That's an important API for all the pip-playthings PA has, as well as a basis for further multimonitor support.
- The "click alert to move camera" call works by calling "move camera to world coordinate x/y/z on planet p"
- A mod now can create a hidden small pip, i.e. 71x71 pixels. To realize a "move selected unit to x/y/z" it moves the camera of that hidden pip and then triggers "move selected unit to 36/36 on the hidden pip". this is the center of the hidden pip, which happens to be exactly the camera position.
=> unit starts moving towards x/y/z world coordinate.

So without Uber explicitly implementing the API to "move unit to x/y/z" it actually is possible. All of the used elements are required by various other parts of the default UI. None can easily be removed. The only way for Uber to prevent this would be to analyze exactly what my code does and then try to break it without breaking their UI.
=> arms race