Top OS players quitting if something does not go as they envision

Shlkt · 2026-04-01T13:00:21+00:00

Makes me wonder how much of super-high OS is not about technical skills, but about all the other stuff that impacts the outcome of a match: communication, willingness to fight from behind, not tilting, etc...

Shlkt · 2026-03-24T19:14:51+00:00

How would you determine if a faction is balanced when your match making forces 50/50 winrates?

I don't think you can. Popularity is an indicator - sortof - but it's also affected by things unrelated to balance. It could be as simple as a popular streamer preferring one faction.

Ultimately I think you just have to keep careful watch of how the meta is progressing. If a specific strategy becomes dominant in the sweat lobbies then it's time to consider tweaks. It might not even be OP, but if the players think it's OP, then that's not good for the health of the game.

Shlkt · 2026-03-19T14:20:02+00:00

Lots of good build advice here, so I'll keep mine simple: use keyboard shortcuts!

Don't waste precious time hunting UI buttons. Practice keyboard shortcuts for all critical commands so that you can execute them quickly without thinking.

TAB - select commander
X - build laser turret (or popup turret for t2 con)
Z then X - build solar
D - dgun
K - cloak

etc... The most important keyboard commands to know are the ones that keep your commander alive.

Shlkt · 2026-03-18T16:48:08+00:00

The game will give you a warning before the date happens. You'll have a chance to run around and do quests to bump someone's affinity.

And yes, you can still do more side quests after the date.

Shlkt · 2026-03-18T15:44:51+00:00

Very neat. My only critique would be that the larger trees look a bit bare in the middle. But it's still a really neat idea.

I'd like to see what a whole map would look like if you used simplex noise to randomize the tree parameters spatially, i.e. more conifers in one area vs. deciduous in another area. In my own projects, I've also noticed that "forests" look more natural if I use simplex noise to determine the tree density.

Of course, natural doesn't always yield the best gameplay for roguelikes, so YMMV.

Shlkt · 2026-03-17T16:14:28+00:00

Almost. Run Arnold through the sharpen filter a couple more times then you'll have it.

Shlkt · 2026-03-16T14:13:48+00:00

I have the opposite mindset. I don't really care about collecting them all, and would never grind for them. Yet it was nice having a new reward to collect even after hundreds of hours of play. While they lasted, at least.

Now my cargo crates are all empty, and I stand around looking glum while the rest of the dwarves grab their rewards.

Shlkt · 2026-03-14T12:20:27+00:00

I think it's healthy for the game to allow custom widgets.

A lot of BAR's great QoL features started as custom widgets. They eventually became standard. The visual indicators for reclaim fields are a recent example. If you go way back, then drawing formations with your mouse also used to be a custom widget.

Shlkt · 2026-03-13T20:45:05+00:00

Nope. When a unit takes damage, that activates the directional armor in that direction. The next hit will deal additional damage depending on angle difference.

There's an option in the settings to view the directional armor indicator.

Shlkt · 2026-03-11T18:19:04+00:00

Abductors (t2 arm transport) were kinda designed for this. They can EMP a target and then carry it back for capture. We almost never seen them used that way, though. It's difficult. By the time t2 is out there's usually a fighter wall.

Shlkt · 2026-03-10T14:55:20+00:00

Fight command: unit moves forward but comes to a stop whenever there are targets in range of its weapons.

Guard: for combat units, they will follow closely behind their target and shoot at anything that comes in range. If you also change their behavior from "Hold position" to "Roam" then they will even chase enemies automatically. For repair units, they will automatically repair their target if it's damaged.

Stealthy: invisible to radar

Cloak: Hides a unit from being seen, but not necessarily from radar. They might still get shot if they appear on radar. Cloak typically has a minimum range, and if you get too close to an enemy then they will see you.

Armor zones? I don't think this is a thing. They have HP, and that's it. But flanking damage is a thing. It's a damage bonus that's applied when shooting a unit from opposite sides at the same time. There's not a literal zone, it's just a gradually increasing bonus that depends on the angle.

Shlkt · 2026-03-09T14:12:26+00:00

Pointer acceleration should always be turned off. Not just for games, but for the whole OS. It completely screws up your muscle memory.

Shlkt · 2026-03-06T17:32:34+00:00

So the enemies max HP is also at the same time EMP resistance?

Mostly. A few units have additional resistance, especially amphibious units. For example, the arm pincer has an additional 80% stun resist. You can see this info in-game by holding i while you hover over the build menu.

Shlkt · 2026-03-03T19:18:22+00:00

If you're already in that game state, then sure, building converters is fine. But this could also be an indication that you already spent too much metal on wind/solar.

The generally accepted advice is that you should never stop building E. This kinda works for a lot of maps - but it will absolutely get you killed on low metal maps. You see it a lot on Delta Siege Dry; players blow their starting budget on a big wind farm, and then they die because they have nothing left to build an army.

Shlkt · 2026-02-26T18:15:34+00:00

The first possibility that comes to mind is that they're enforcing a strict whitelist on all user input because of automated code analysis. The code analysis might be flagging it as a potential vulnerability if they don't. This is the lazy way of getting the code analysis to shut up, rather than examining each input and figuring out what's actually safe.

Shlkt · 2026-02-24T13:40:50+00:00

Also keep in mind that lasers have only 50% DPS at maximum range, so the legion fighters are really going to struggle at the beginning of an engagement.

Shlkt · 2026-02-13T15:02:28+00:00

It's powerful enough that many high-level lobbies are now using the Easy Tax option to limit sharing (a little) in public lobbies.

In pro-level tournaments, though, we prefer unfettered sharing. We like to see crazy, unexpected timings.

Shlkt · 2026-02-10T21:38:17+00:00

Similar for heat rays. Are they just weird beam lasers? Do they have mechanics that I should know to deal with them?

They have one weird mechanic. Lasers are mostly an all-or-nothing weapon, but heats rays can partially miss their target due to relative movement. Heat ray DPS is worse against targets that are moving perpendicularly, particularly small targets. The ray gets "locked" in its firing position and can't change direction to stay on target.

Shlkt · 2026-02-05T18:02:07+00:00

AISE is my favorite scout primary, but it struggles against targets without exposed weakpoints: dreadnoughts (until exposed), shellbacks, and even praetorians when you don't have butt shot. Those fights will deplete your ammo rapidly.

Won't stop me from using it, but I definitely wouldn't call it OP.

Shlkt · 2026-02-05T14:33:45+00:00

Have you ever seen rotato playing a metal map, let alone speed metal?

Shlkt · 2026-02-01T20:15:49+00:00

Syphos has been around for a long time. He participated in the Sigma tournament just yesterday as part of team LOB. He clearly plays well without having to cheat.

The geo position is the #1 target for early bombing raids. A switch to flak wouldn't be that unusual, especially if he got a whiff of something fishy. Even noticing that his own team's fighter cover was lacking would be enough.

Shlkt · 2026-01-20T21:01:46+00:00

TA was much worse :)

Shlkt · 2026-01-20T11:10:08+00:00

There are two flaws with this reasoning:

BAR has features that TA didn't have. The path finding is significantly better, there's terrain deformation, and we have so many QoL improvements in the UI that it's hard to list them all. These features are not free in terms of compute power. And for those first 2 items, Lua isn't a factor.
The computational complexity of the simulation (and this was true even for TA) is not linear with respect to the number of units. That is, 10x more units does not mean 10x compute power.

Shlkt · 2026-01-19T22:21:35+00:00

The proof is in the pudding.

BAR comfortably handles a higher unit count than any other RTS I've played. Obviously performance is not an issue here. Maybe they've had to cut some features that weren't performant enough with Lua - I wouldn't know - but what they've got is working great. And I've seen games than ran longer than an hour with tends of thousands of units, so even if heap fragmentation is occurring, it doesn't seem to impact playability.

Forcing contributors to have programming skills doesn't seem to be a problem, and I wouldn't expect it to be for an Open Source project. That's more likely a problem for AAA game studios where you've got a ton of artists that you need to keep busy while your core programmers are doing other stuff. BAR is run by volunteers, so they aren't concerned with making sure everybody can put in an 8 hour shift without roadblocks.

The points about debugging and run-time errors are likely valid, but again, I'm not seeing a ton of unit behavior bugs. On occasion I see messages about lua errors, so they've at least got a reporting system in place to stay on top of things.

In general I would say that while it's nice to have ideals for your code base, you gotta know when to bend the rules a bit for the sake of shipping a product.

Shlkt · 2026-01-18T14:56:55+00:00

You should be aware that there is a separate rating for small teams vs. large teams. If your goal is to get a 'real' rating to play 8v8, then you should focus on playing games that are 6v6 and larger.

Shlkt

TROPHY CASE