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Hey Stan, Please don't feel bad for quitting your 0 A.D. posts. Health and a fulfilling life go first, and I'm sure that everyone here knows that you have thoroughly thought about it before making your decision. Your work, care, and constructive attitude have had without doubt a huge impact on the development of the game and its community, and have made 0. A.D what it is today: Objectively one of the greatest open source games in the world. It can even compete with the best commercial games in the market which is - given the fact that this is all made by volunteers - not a matter of course at all. Thinking about the huge part that you had in it, what you did is outstanding and you can be more than proud of it! It is only natural that the colossal effort you put into 0 A.D. would at some point wear you down. So don't think about your retirement as a weakness but instead be amazed at how long you kept up. It's also a wise decision to make a clean cut as it's easy to get sucked back into old habits and wrongfully getting the feeling that one was supposed to deliver. Once you have established a healthy mental distance, feel free to drop in for some games or good company without any pressure! I wish you all the best and am sure that you'll find your energy again to have an amazing future :)

Borg's Team South vs Hakuna's Team North

Maybe the food regeneration could buffed to be as fast as 1 fishing boat gathering speed, but you can still make the trade-off to fish intensively with more boats.

Hello everyone, It is with great sadness and a little relief that I am announcing my retirement as project leader of both 0 A.D.: Empires Ascendant and Wildfire Games. It has been an awesome 12 years and 8 months, with its ups and downs. Making it to the team will remain one of my greatest achievements ever. After 6 years of 3D art struggles, getting the chance to join the team was unexpected (and, to this day one of my proudest moments), and two years later to be offered the leader job came even more as a surprise. It has been an incredible opportunity to be the leader of such a project. I would not have met half of the awesome people I met if it were not for it, and I would certainly have not have had the opportunities to go to the places I went if it were not for it. I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. Being able to spread the word about the game around the world has been an honor, and I hope the game will continue to shine at events. Recently, I had less and less energy and motivation to give to 0 A.D. The delay followed by the cancelling of A27 was no exception; I simply could not give the same energy I gave for the previous ones. The lobby became a source of permanent mental load and anxiety, first because of it is lack of moderation, then because of it started becoming moderated, and now because mods splat the community even more and the cheating is rampant. And it went downhill from there, as I started the longest break I ever took from 0 A.D. Those of you that know me know I was not really far, but I was simply not there. On the development side, I cannot seem to find any fun anymore. Everything feels more like duty than an actual desire, which can only work for so long until it breaks. The learning curve is just simply not worth the burnouts anymore. There are so many things I wanted to add to 0 A.D to showcase the true potential of the engine, as it is just immense, look at all the mods have done, look at all the thing people learnt about history, programming, art, bugs.. But I don't feel I can carry that vision anymore. I believe it is time for a change. I am therefore, effective immediately, quitting my functions as programmer, artist, video editor, documentation manager, translator, human resources, moderator, social media manager, public relations, system administrator, mod signer and modder, (all my mods can be considered archived until further notice). It is the only way for me to ever move on. I cannot just keep doing one thing for 0 A.D., unless I get a clean break I will continue feeling everything not covered by someone is on my shoulders, and it is a weight too big for a single person. I would like to thank everyone that made some or the whole journey with me, I will miss you all very much. I hope we shall meet again. I would also like to thank all the players that took action in the balancing department it has not been an easy task. I do not have ideas for the person who can or will replace me, nor do I know whether I should be replaced by a single person. I will leave it for the remaining people to decide what kind of leadership model they want to go for from now on. As for what I'll do next I do not know yet, but I've been working on Godot tools to import 0 A.D. assets and it's been fun, so I might continue that. I'm still working with Activ' Design this year as well. tldr; So long and thank you for the fish. May Wildfire Games and 0 A.D: Empires Ascendant live a long and healthy life after I am gone. Best regards, Stan

This. Saying fishing has no purpose is completely wrong. Fishing requires an upfront, risky investment that pays off handsomely when done well. Heavy fishing maps are also vulnerable to ship attacks late, which can’t be defended without also making ships. If you try to out boom a fishing player with a lot of berries/farms, you will lose 100% of the time against a good player. Making fishing infinite won’t make fishing more viable—it will make farms/berries useless.

Finite resources are somewhat important for rts, so me think it's up to mapmakers to add more fish (more or bigger patches) if that improves a certain map. One problem is the role of fishing isn't that obvious in 0ad as let's say aoe2, where its used to grow eco faster early on and still not lose all purpose later with fish traps by converting wood to food over time in balance with fields.

I think it could be possible to avoid the 'death' of the resource and let it reach 0. That way the fishing rate would be limited to the regen rate. One could even make a fish_depleted model where there are fewer fish in the water and only 1 bird circling above.

The OPEX cost would make the popcap a less hard limit. Which is good IMO.

off-course you do. because you speak without any Idea how is the game developed.

I'm not privy to development stuff but surely 1,000s and 1,000s of bugs have been fixed across the numerous alphas. This thread is silly.

Imo ideally every department should have it's own leader to spread the load, intaked and assigned by someone who knows a bit of everything. But we don't have that luxury. I think you can count all active devs on one hand. Putting everything on 1 person again will just lead to burnouts. Btw the original post is top tier trash, at least catch yourself up to the history before saying all that. Or get your own feet wet in development instead of making demands. Like alre said, you don't even seem to grasp the concept of an open source project.

Stan, thank you for the outstanding job you did. Besides the remarkable commitment and contribution to the project development, I have admired your patience, tolerance, responsiveness and involvement demonstrated to every member of this community, from the newest forum user, to the ones claiming they know better. Even more so, considering the responsibility and high pressure that the role demands. 2023 has been a tough year for 0AD and the project is more fragile today than it was one year ago. My wish for the future is that the new leadership will successfully tackle the "few can ruin the experience of many" problem, that so deeply harmed the game and the community. Fair winds Stan. Whatever you'll do from now on, it'll be a success.

Stan, thanks for the monumental effort that you put into helping WFG. If I had to sum up your attitude about WFG, it would be "I care." Period. You did the tasks others weren't willing to do. You never said "that's below my pay grade," when I brought an issue to you that I couldn't solve myself. You intervened when other staff were being petty. You were nearly always "on duty" and available. I agree that no one person can replace you. In fact, it's not fair for one person to do as much as you took responsibility for. Other staff were ignoring certain responsibilities and allowing you to take care of too much. That only works for so long, and now they see the consequences. Anyone in Stan's position would get burnt out. The work that Stan did should be done by a team of people, unless Stan would be paid for it of course. I mostly agree with this idea. I would instead structure it like this: there is a team leader who has authority to delegate. He has three subordinates who do tasks assigned by the team leader. The team leader is a supervisor who verifies that all necessary tasks have been assigned and are making progress. He also does work on these tasks, but he's not the only one doing that work. Maybe that's what was originally intended, but the subordinates just didn't do the tasks because they didn't feel like it or something along these lines. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the impression that I got. Anyway, maybe a new structure and agreement can be reached. Meanwhile, we have even more of a need for volunteers. It's not only programmers that we need. There are documentation, bug reporting, testing, artwork, scenario and map making tasks available for volunteers here. Contact your nearest dev or WFG staff to discuss how you can help.

Thank you Stan, you're a champ!