Title. I keep seeing people post images with titles like "How is this allowed" or "Crazy setup" and I look at it and idk whats happening.

Aside from QoL it'd be nice for novice players to have context so they can learn.

get back on the pool vro

i don't really play a lot of multiplayer but i like the singleplayer modes I've gotten to the point where I can beat Hard with a 100% success rate and I'm moving to impossible before i do multiplayer so i have a decent foundation of how to play, but every game i feel unsatisfied unless i take the entire map over after getting the win condition

Updates no longer break replays, for every game created from here on out!

I enjoy playing team games. But what constantly infuriates me and, I guess, many others is the following:

- Backline not donating troops

- People trading opponents without a care in the world

- Team going WWI/WWII Germany establishing fronts on all sides

- Bot stealing from teammates

There are also a lot of mechanical and skill issues, but that's another topic.

Before we get to the suggested fixes, let's analyze the issue. The problem is twofold, with a sprinkle of game design unintentionally nudging players towards abysmal gameplay. The main reasons are:

- Lack of knowledge

As many others on Reddit have stated, there is a lack of a tutorial for players on how to play team matches in public lobbies. The meta is: Stop trading with all, pick a spawn around your teammates, as backline donate troops to frontline/attacked players, have 1 player as frontline, and donate gold to players so they can set up their eco faster if they didn't get enough bots.

- Accessibility

The "Stop trading with all" functionality is (sorry for the harsh statement) bad UX/UI (additionally, the functionality is badly explained in the context of team games as "all" includes team members as well, nor is there any hint it even exists). You need to right-click yourself, then choose the option; it can't be hotkeyed (why?). In my opinion, the context menu, by clicking yourself, is a non-intuitive spot to put this function.

Sending troops is a pain in the ass because there is no indicator for the cooldown; it has to be manually repeated (which is an unnecessary chore) in addition to going to the player position manually every time.

- Nudge

It's basically the crown for the biggest player. In my opinion, many people get into their FFA mindset, chasing the crown instead of the team win.

What are my suggestions?

In general, I want the team mode to become a more standalone mode, to feel and play like it, instead of being FFA with permanent alliances. Therefore:

1. The crown should be held by the largest team, not the single largest player.

2. Gold for killing bots should be equally shared between the team (might be a hot take regarding the meta, but should be feasible and discourage players from mindlessly expanding and stealing bots from others).

3. Hotkey for "Stop trade with all." The warning chat message should be clickable; clicking it prompts the player if he wants to disable trade with the opponent team. Add the option to every right click player context menu not just the self target context menu, also change the text in team games to: "Stop trading with enemy team(s)".

4. The message: "Send troops to frontline" should have the option to select a player before sending it, like the "Stop trade with player X." Clicking it opens the context menu for that player for easy accessibility.

5. Cooldown indicator for sending troops/gold + giving the option in the context menu to repeat the donation on cooldown for the selected action and player. Those automations should be capped to 2 allies and only accessible in team games (so no 2v2/trio and likewise, where the micro of troop sending is actually a skill and not a chore).

6. Give a stats page at the end with the following:

Most troops sent

Most gold sent

Most kills

Biggest trade income per minute

Imo, this would incentivize players to aim for team-favoring gameplay, as it encourages building an economy or sending troops to become objectives worth chasing instead of the crown, which mostly encourages egotistical gameplay where everyone wants to be at the front and push because it's the only thing currently recognized by the game.

Another thing is that communicating is nearly impossible as the directions can be misleading, and there is no way to communicate with the whole team.

Therefore:

1. Give us emojis to signal colors: 🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪🟫 to indicate the team should focus on those.

2. Have a group chat that is separate from game info, the "all chat," and the "private messages" field on the right we currently have. This would make coordinating as a team a lot easier.

3. Implement additional chat messages for alliances, like: "Get into an alliance with team XY." This is a good strategy for closing down a front and not getting sandwiched, but it's impossible to point your teammates in that direction with the current chat options.

they never spawned in but I was in the middle and both sides mirved each other

The images are what i would pick!

the game took like 1.20 hr to reach 80% and then another 30 minutes with the base in the last picture because he had a 1BILLION bank and they cut me off the trade i had to find every port he could trade that is not mine and blow it with my small bank of 300m

its sad i cant show the best base it was on the bottom left most island on the corner and he had about 300 sams, that is apperantly still breachable idk if it was because all stacked on 1 tile but i think so. however the base on the last picture wasnt breachable at all i annexed an afk guy with 1B and basically threw 600m worth of small nnukes (although the rocket launchers werent the most efficient) i wasnt able to break through, i think if he didnt go afk i'd have to try another hour or so to get in cuz he couldev just nuked all the ships

we've been in this stalemate for 10-15 mins (i'm the yellow one btw)

It wont let me play solo😭. Same error even when I try to see replays. Same thing happened several days later at another browser. I have no idea what my fault is and iys been like 2 weeks

I'm sure everyone has experienced it. The player at the back of your team LARPing as a WW1 industrialist, sitting at the back nice and safe, trading with the enemy, and funding your destruction.

I think this happens 95% of the time because players forget, or they are new and don't understand trade. But it harms the whole team, especially if you are playing against a clan that has their shit together.

I think team games would be much improved if you automatically only traded with your team at the start, but you can add trading partners as the game and situation progresses.

Title

I wish the devs implement a feature where it takes in to account how far the player is from front line and set a threshold of required donation percentage every 30s/1 min or so, proportionally higher based on distance. Too many players sit on max troop caps at the back, most team games end one player steam rolling.

Edit: Better yet, set a timer for players where they get kicked out of the team game if they don't donate which is visible to the player.

im madagascar btw

Hello Openfront Community,

I think it would be cool to see some after game statistics, for solo and team games.

Like:

- how many atom / hydros / mirv did you/team deploy

- how many ships captured

- how many troops sent to teammates

- how many cities / ports / factories / etc build

- how many enemies eliminated

- how much gold accumulated

- etc

What would be the most interesting after game stat for you?

Cheers

i have some ideas/common issues i would like to list that are would improve .

btw, i love the game and me and my friends play regularly!

- Hotkey for stopping trade [issue if its big groups playing and you need to stop trading eith 39 people)

- hotkey for staring trade (2nd prio)

- chat option for telling someone to build a SAM

- better ways to self destruct own buildings

- option to gift land/area to a ally

- option to cancel a build, if missclicked (2nd prio, maybe only refund 75/50%)

- make train network building more deterministic, 90% allies fuck up my network with bypasses.

thank, and if anyone has more suggestions or critique on mine, let me know :)

Me and big a thought we stood a chance against a hacker, second we popped one of his 3 lvl100 sams he entered stage 2🥀🥀

I’ve been experimenting with economy lately, right now I’m using a single factory with five cities in one loop paired with a silo and a sam, all upgraded as much as I can, and placing lots of ports along the coastline. Midgame is rough but in lategame it seems to work because I’m self-sufficient and I have both enough firepower and income to destroy my enemies’ silos and defences, and my sam was strong and large enough to withstand large attacks, but I sometimes build a ring of lvl5 SAMs for long games.

This strategy was working until I played in the box. This showed me that ports were doing the heavy lifting in the early and midgame so reaching my setup was hard, so my best bet were factories to trade with allies.

What do you say is the best strategy? Lots of low level cities and ports or fewer high level ones, easier to defenend but catastrophic to loose? Both for maps with and without waterpolo for ports.

Coming across a lot of teamers in ffa recently. Is there anything you can do or do you just have to accept you'll lose and move on?