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Good discussion, some thoughts: Strongly disagree here. Initiates garrison is the ultimate defense against land units. A full garrison wipes out an entire army of tanks and makes any early game rush meaningless on city maps or maps with pinch points + garrisons. It's really insane what WOL did with this when the other two garrisons (conscripts+gis) are perfectly fine. The other 3 points you mentioned in that block where more or less debatable. As much as I like what Ravage is aiming to do -- I agree with this. From a scientific background it's significantly easier to change one (or very few) variables and see what happens compared to changing a ton of variables at once and seeing what happens. As a side effect, I think a patch would have much more support when it's incrementally changed rather than abruptly changed all at once. My key changes to Yuri would be something like: - Magnetron changes - Initiate garrison change, this is a simple one that is obvious IMO, allows yuri to be played against on more city maps. - Genetic mutator change in some way, can't have it giving infinite money all game - Naval change, this is necessary and would open up so many more maps for Yuri warfare. -Also, would be nice to give some sort of delay for the dominator. Perhaps it shouldn't be as long as the nuke. All other changes are highly debatable in my eyes and would require serious testing. For the yuri players that are against any patches and this patch, I would stress for them to realize that they've been ostracized in this community for years... a patch would allow us all equal ground to come together and at the end of the game be happy to say "gg". Let's work together.

@dkeeton @Grant any updates on this common error of free points being distributed due to connections?

Yeah... a 3 minute bail time solves engi-eating, engi-rushing, and even soviet super-rhino rush. It's really not too bad of an idea. *Not saying that I think it should be promoted in this day and age after 10 years of doing without it.

I can go either way on this one. Personally, engi-rushing has never been a big problem for me to stop. However, I voted "YES" to multi-engi on. There's 15 years of complaints from players supporting a consensus that dislikes the idea of being engi-rushed. I want to see what happens when it's not a possible tactic. I've never considered seal or Tanya rushing to be lame, or even ivan-rushing as lame. The reason is because those units require advanced tech and thus more $$$ up front making it that much easier to stop as you have more time to fend off against them. I also don't think that this makes yuri that much more difficult as others have stated. I always found yuri amazingly difficult to engi rush against as they often build a gattling tank early to scout and have it around to stop engis+drones. For me, engi rushing against yuri was a waste of time unless I walked it in in the first 1 minute. Once yuri has a magnetron out, engi rushing is useless against them. I think this is a simple solution to the lamest tactic in the game of immediate engi rush.

Ooo, that's a good work around from the clan ladder. While a clan ladder would be hard to imagine/design, this might be a lot of fun! Just have the winners gain points as usual on the ladder (as they would in 1on1's). I wonder if there would be a way to match together with a buddy or not, tho.

I understand where you are going with that, but if you hold off on capturing the oil derrick, the other play will grab the derrick and then have no problem defending it.

highly disagree with that comparison. Engi eat is dog-based while the rhino+drone attack I can micro my way out of it rather easily by just clicking the miner and clicking the drone. Perhaps it's not 'easy' per se, but it has a high success rate for the top level players permitting they scouted.

In my example, I mentioned how 1 dog defeated 3 dogs. You are right that this has a lower chance of happening, but it does happen and it's a pretty shitty way to lose a game when the alternative is to just balance the techs to each and not fight over them. The reason why it's such shit is because it ends the game in the first 30-60 seconds without any other units/fight. I brought up Offic map B due to how quickly it occurs in the game. There's no real way to stop it 100% of the time unless you are buying 5++ dogs and even this has the rare (but all too familiar) occurrence of failing. If there was a way to build sentries there or have tanks determine the oil distribution, then I'd agree it's a game of risk analysis and thus, skill. But it's a video game... and it's being determined by 1 dog going crazy and eating 3+1 engi of the opponents.

You are pretty new here, huh? Yuri has notoriously been banned from games due to its imbalances.

Yeah, I'm not really a fan of putting limits on games played. If there was an active player base of 500 or 1000 then sure, by all means -- spread the games around, but there's only like 50 of us actively playing here. Need all the games we can get with each other.

Because if there is, say, 5% of the population playing as Yuri, there is less of a chance to see a higher percentage of yuri players at the top. We know that there is a very limited player base that plays (abuses) the yuri faction due to a number of variables: 1) The yuri faction is considered lame by many players 2) The yuri faction is inherently a different gameplay style compared to the more traditional ra2 allies and soviets which most of the population is accustomed to. 3) Over the past 10 years, RA2 XWIS has dominated the population so there hasn't been much of a chance for yuri players to grow. But, it's also a flawed statistic because with such a small sample set (CNCNet QM has something like 50-100 active QM users) there's high volatility. All it takes is one abuser (Andy) for it to make a large impact. We have Reano, Andy, Leo, ico as yuri players in the ladder if I recall correctly.

It's pretty simple: Dogs are pretty much 100% luck on this game. Many times we have seen games decided because 1 dog killed 3 opponents dogs in a row and ate 2 engis. That's pretty lame if you ask me considering no skill whatsoever went into that situation and the opponent did everything in his power to stop it. Think of a game like Official tournament map B where the oil(s) are very important. This is a map known for engi-eat laming going to the extreme. 1 of your dogs could realistically eat 3-4 of my dogs and thus have easy access to up to 3 of my engis. If that happens thats $200 for you and an early loss of $2100 for me and the loss of my oils, my game is done if you are any good. That's why, historically, players tend to balance the map by saying 'no eat' and allowing others to get half of the tech buildings on the map so that the game can really get going and be down to the skill. There is just no skill in engi eating, at least, most of the time. In fact, I'd argue there's more skill in engi rushing than there is an engi-eating.

Woah, we got ourselves an extreme traditionalist here.

That'd be smart, but the problem there is that you'd be giving away your identity for free. Maybe not the biggest deal if you are some machine like Marko, but for a lot of players who are good but not great and go with a 60% or so win rate that could put them at a disadvantage due to others knowing their play style now.

Once again, this has nothing to do with my personal opinions -- I have no problem with playing against lames. This thread has to do with the players that refuse to partake in CNCNet QM due to what they view as an extreme-lamer environment due to not being able to see who their playing. My only bias is to get as many players enjoying QM as possible. This sentiment presented by DoDger is what I've seen posted around these forums many times. I know @ShowtimeRa2 has talked about this in his posts. I think players like Marko and TJ have also spoken about this. Marko, TJ, and Showtime are the types of players we need to see in QM for QM to succeed.

True. I see it from both sides -- Mustache is right that a more incremental approach would have been ideal, however with the state of this forum and game, an incremental approach would have likely led to incompleteness (Since admins seem to only care on some days/weeks). Either way -- I'm a fan of this big time. I think it would be logical to add the country specific unit patch to this so that it could be played more in FFAs. As for the patch, the thing I'm weary about right now is what Leo's pointed out in a few spots: - Masterminds : It seems odd that their range would increase making them potentially over powering, yet their limit would now be only 2 making them seem kinda useless in some respects. I'd be interested in gameplay involving this. Maybe we need some good YT videos. And 2: How does Yuri overcome cliffs now without the magnetron there to reach? I think this is a good idea from the patch to limit the mag and cliff as an example would be Dry Heat where Magnetrons basically own the fucking map and can kill a persons entire miner army in a matter of seconds, however this might make yuri extremely vulnerable to cliff based war? Not sure.

I'm not worried about it... but I've read many posts on these forums from players saying that they don't QM because QM is a lame-fest. I decided to play some QM last night, and from my very limited sample set, it seems that they are correct. On XWIS, there was a 'who's a lamer' topic, and people knew all the lamers in QM by mid-month... on CNCNet we don't have that community bond and we don't see QM players names so I think that aspect turns off a lot of players.

Love the constructive dialogue going on so far. Hopeful that more yuri players explore the options and stay away from attacks like "youre just changing this to avoid andy" which is downright ridiculous. We've known the yuri problems exist for over 13 years now. On initiates: Their garrison was completely broken prior to this patch. Garrisoned initiates could take out an entire army of tanks within moments and it made city maps or maps with many garrisons unplayable vs. yuri. This one change could make yuri more manageable to face off against on a few more maps. In general, I like what Ravage is doing here. Also -- I know this patch's intentions are to balance the broken yuri faction, but I wonder if you could throw in the balance of special country specific units in it as well. Might be a nice option for the FFG players who don't care about the yuri faction, but want to have fun with things like Russia/Cuba/Germany etc. By making the specific units like Tesla Tanks, Tank Destroyers, Terrorists, Demo trucks, snipers more useful/less costly it could introduce more fun into the FFGs and be a reason to have this patch turned on more frequently.

One common complaint we see about the current framework is that there is A LOT of lamers in Quick match. For a quick definition of laming this means: Engi eating, Engi rushing, Engi+Drone rushing, perhaps alting. For example, I played my second QM of the month today and, while it was an easy win for me, the guy tried to engi eat me 3 times on Stormy Weather, he walked an engi around the map on me, and used a flak trak + 2 engi + drone on me. Now, I personally don't mind laming. I prepare every game I play to be lamed. One thing I like to do in almost every QM is build 2 terror drones to stop laming. However, an allied player is much, much more prone to being lamed and costing them the game and other soviet players tend to even stop QMing due to this. What can be done? We have a small debate going around on whether or not names should be visible in loading screens which would allow us to know a head of time if we are vsing a lamer or not. We have multi-engi option that we could turn on or other options to look into. Also, is laming bad for you in QM right now? Is it a problem?

Looks like another good/great month for ladder competition. It's only the 22nd and we have a top 10 over 900 points and a rank 1 at 1614. Let's push for the top 10 HOFs!! Also, if there's anyway to make ranks noticeable in the lobby that would be a BIG HELP as it gives people some meaning to get top ranked.

Yeah. I'm not big at all on the holidays, but if there's something I can be thankful about it's the great work the CNCNet team does here for absolutely nothing from me (Well, I do give my opinion here and there) :D. The fact that I logged on today, had a QM in 30 seconds, was able to be in a lobby with 237 YR players is quite remarkable.

Anything constructive to add about the patch discussion? Why do you not like it? I don't think this needs to be true.

There's definitely some nice ideas here. A lot of thought went into this. Props!

I don't have a dog in this race, but this does seem to be a problem with the CNCNet ladder... due to their being no auto-ss and no way of telling what is going on in the games, I could theoretically push with someone for 30 wins in a given month and there would never be conclusive evidence available to stop me. I don't have a solution for it, and I'd wish there would be a better competitive spirit than what we saw with that particular incident... anyway, thanks for the reply Grant!

So it seems like 1. We definitely need to look at the DC and win rate problem and get that fixed. I can't imagine this being too hard... @dkeeton Is there any way to fix this easily? All we need to do is not let the win rate count DC wins as losses. If you need further explanation of the problem, let us know. and 2. Yuri is an annoying problem in QM. Which there is not much to help against other than the hope that Ra2 QM will some day be on CNCNet. I never had a problem with 'lamers' like engi eat and engi rush. My suggestion would be to know your strats/maps and focus on getting yours in QM. Make an extra dog or two or three in the beginning to make sure you get your oil derricks and that you scout as well as possible. If your soviets, make a drone and keep it around, hell make two. If you are allies, it's a bit harder to stop. Making a few extra dogs and 2 drones won't cost you the game, but it will make you much much more safe.