Sudden Death Balance

[Stof]

Have you ever been part of a strong human team? It consistently keeps pressure on the aliens and effectively forces them to play defensively. If a team in its offense depends heavily on defensive structures, it is a very bad team.

No matter how good your human team is, it takes only one 2 evo point Mara sneaking behind their back and killing the armory to end it. In fact, your suggestion would mean that as soon as SD hits, a good part of the humans that were pressuring the aliens should ASAP get back to defend the base or lose the game.

Properly positioned acid tubes in good bases are more effective than the average turret. Furthermore, just because a human can get a bsuit (assuming he can), doesn't mean he will.

Funny, I thought that properly positioned acid tubes were either too far to make enouth damage or to close to the ground to avoid grenades. And if you find the sweet middle spot between those two, it means all acid tubes are regrouped in a small zone ( the sweet spot is after all very small ) and then, a single charged luci blast will annihilate them all. That is, in 95% of the alien base locations of course.

Alien turrets are just a speedbump in the way of a good stage 3 human team. On the other hand, human turrets are vital.

Are you saying that egg hunts are an essential part of the game that should not be changed? I think the game you are looking for is hide and seek.

No, egg hunts are annoying and a bad part of the game in my opinion. What I am saying is that until there are some rather official announcement about such change or until the next version is out to be tested, I cannot make any suggestion based on such supposed change.

The purpose of communicating ideas is to improve on good parts and fix bad parts. You are welcome to dislike my ideas. You are also welcome to try improving upon them.

That's what I'm doing : pointing out to you how unbalanced SD will be once you make your changes and suggesting not to do it.



Also, about the part where you reduce the BP in SD, just make sure it doesn't make the team go into negative BP or else they'll have to remove all turrets to replace the armory.

[Vector_Matt]

I'm with TJW on this one.

[Undeference]

That's what I'm doing : pointing out to you how unbalanced SD will be once you make your changes and suggesting not to do it.

What you are doing is responding to selected segments from my post, which explain why my ideas might not be as bad as you think they are, and you disregard facts I pointed out; common argumentative tactics of a defensive individual.

If you were actually interested in being constructive, you could have responded to my post (if you felt the need) in one or two sentences: "I don't think that disabling defenses during sudden death would help the problem [because ...]."

You instead started your response by implying I am incompetent: "Are you kiding ? Did you play Trem in SD more than a couple games ?"

You then reiterated the underlying purpose of the thread, implying I am too stupid to recognize it. You continued with some unrelated opinions and drew the conclusion (presumably from the opinions) that my ideas are without merit.

Finally, you discredited your entire post by providing contradictory information and implying that one of my ideas wouldn't make a difference anyway. (Something cannot unbalance things and not make a difference at same time.)

Your other posts replied to select pieces of my responses and implicitly relied on the accuracy of your conclusion to support that conclusion. You also suggest that supportive hear-say is irrelevant because it is not currently applicable.


Any proposed solution has to be tested before being rejected or accepted. That is the whole purpose of this thread. Drawing conclusions based solely on seemingly logical deduction may not be sufficient. I can think of positives and potential negatives for many of the ideas, but any little thing can have a large impact. (And I decided to discuss relatively large "things" .)

I intentionally did not suggest either of my ideas because I do not have sufficient evidense to support whether they are good or not. I stated that they would be interesting, as I think they would be (and perhaps useful information can be found from testing them). I don't have any expectation of either being used. But maybe my ideas will be useful in some way. (How could my ideas go wrong? Can these apply in other ideas? Do we need to take them into account? Would some aspect of one of my ideas be desirable?)

[Stof]

Oh well, back to the original point for me I guess :

Shuting down turrets sure helps the SD end faster but I don't see any argument why it would make SD more balanced. Once again, the point here is to make SD balanced, not to make is shorter.

On the contrary, if the turrets shutdown at SD I'm sure a single alien marauder without any buildings left could take down the human base ( armory first, reactor second ) and kill the defenseless humans one after the other once they run out of ammo. This in my opinion would be a major imbalance in favor of aliens in SD which is exactly the oposite of what we are trying to do here.

So, before we go on a version with ( once again, IMHO ) such a broken feature, maybe you could give some arguments as to why it will "fix SD" before.

On a side note, I'm sure it'll be dead easy to implement though. Since the game already supports shuting down turrets with the reactor/overmind is down, it's probably easy to add a small condition testing also if we are in SD.

Also, I didn't talk about the limited respanw because I didn't have much opinion on such feature. Very hard to make a guess as to what will be the effects in the game. Still, I think it favors aliens : good Tyrant players do not die often and a human player without armory needs to die to get ammo and fight, aliens ( dretches ) do not. And last, I think it'll cause even more camping during the SD since dieing means losing the game.

PS : don't you feel like an Alien player that likes it's SD advantage pitched against an Human player that fights to get more balance out of that part of the game? I sure do in the end Your post opening starts with
[qoute]Allowing armouries to be rebuilt would make the human SD more even to alien SD, but I think it takes away any likelihood of a lucky alien win.[/quote]
It spells rather clearly that you do not want to balance that part of the game Probably what have sent me of with the agresive reply.

[PHREAK]

I feel the need to throw away my 2 pennies.

First off, egg hunts are a good thing. The whole point of being an alien is alien behaviour. Aliens do not need bases nor defenses. Spreading eggs is a valid tactic and tubes are there to soften up hummies, not to kill them. Fact of the matter is, alien builders need to stop building "alien bases" as if they were hummies.

As far as SD goes, kill SD! It makes absolutly no sense. If a strong team keeps attacking the enemy base yet can't make it thru due to fast rebuilding and intelegent defenses, the other team deserves a tie.
If you play on normal servers (12 slot, lets say), SD is not an issue since most games will end well before SD is hit.

IMHO, the best way to balance SD is to do away with it.

[tjw]

That's why I suggested cutting build points down to the amount that would cover existing rebuildable structures (plus explicitly disabling the building of other structures so those points couldn't be misused). That way you wouldn't have 10 armouries (maybe two meds instead of the med+armoury you started with, but that's not a problem) unless you built them all before SD started... which would be pretty stupid because those turrets you can't rebuild in SD are pretty important. This way the game would never have to dictate how many of each structure can be built.

I've hacked up your suggestion.  

Currently the buildings which can be rebuilt in SD are Reactor, Repeater, Armoury, Medistation, Overmind, and Booster.  I've left Hovel and DefComp off the list for now, but I'm not sure about them.

I'm currently testing it on trem.tjw.org to see how it plays.

[Undeference]

I was thinking, and it seems that the reason sudden death isn't even is due to the differences between humans and aliens more than anything. Aliens only need an overmind and spawns, but humans need a reactor, spawns, an armoury, and a medistation. If any of those are gone, the humans are crippled.

Also, an alien can run away to heal (if it's clever it can even ambush it's would-be pursuers by its lonesome), but a human who's already used his medkit and is low on ammo can run back to base, heal, and reload; die trying; or take as many aliens with him. (A good tyrant may respawn very infrequently, but a good human doesn't have that luxury.)

Trying to quantifiably even out sudden death, while perhaps a bit better, still does not approach the real problem with sudden death. Short of crippling the aliens in SD, I don't think it can truly be evened out. (I guess that's a vote for nixing SD.)

If sudden death won't be even anyway, can we make it really fun and crazy?
Hehe. During sudden death, newly spawns humans have a 1/100 chance of spawning as a :eek:
Oops, that was really an
Hey, my lucifer cannon is firing blaster shots!
Can you say "hitscan :dragoon:s"?

[Stof]

I've hacked up your suggestion.  

Currently the buildings which can be rebuilt in SD are Reactor, Repeater, Armoury, Medistation, Overmind, and Booster.  I've left Hovel and DefComp off the list for now, but I'm not sure about them.

I'm currently testing it on trem.tjw.org to see how it plays.

I thought of a small problem with that solution : what if the armory gets killed just before SD and before humans can rebuild it. Will they still get the BP to replace it after SD starts ? I hope so

[Stof]

As far as SD goes, kill SD! It makes absolutly no sense. If a strong team keeps attacking the enemy base yet can't make it thru due to fast rebuilding and intelegent defenses, the other team deserves a tie.
If you play on normal servers (12 slot, lets say), SD is not an issue since most games will end well before SD is hit.

IMHO, the best way to balance SD is to do away with it.

As for killing SD, I don't think so. You make it sound as if it is an exceptional thing to do ( be on the defensive for the whole match and survive until the last minute ). My experience differs quite a lot, especialy on ATCS. That map deserves to steal a famous Quake 3 map name : "Camping grounds". The original human base location is so strong that aliens have little chance of breaking it, even in SD ( if SD lasts only 5 minutes and they don't have the points to sacrifice enouth Adv Goons ). If an human team decides to go for the stalemate, they WILL last until SD if their builder is halfway competent. It is an easy thing to do.

[tjw]

I've hacked up your suggestion.  

Currently the buildings which can be rebuilt in SD are Reactor, Repeater, Armoury, Medistation, Overmind, and Booster.  I've left Hovel and DefComp off the list for now, but I'm not sure about them.

I'm currently testing it on trem.tjw.org to see how it plays.

I thought of a small problem with that solution : what if the armory gets killed just before SD and before humans can rebuild it. Will they still get the BP to replace it after SD starts ? I hope so

No they wouldn't get points for it.  That sounds like a legitimate alien strategy.

The armoury doesn't need to be built though, as long as it's building at the time sudden death starts, it counts for points.

[tjw]

As far as SD goes, kill SD!

Any server operator can already kill SD by setting g_suddenDeathTime to 0.  This is about changing the behaviour of the feature for those who use it.

[Stof]

No they wouldn't get points for it.  That sounds like a legitimate alien strategy.

The armoury doesn't need to be built though, as long as it's building at the time sudden death starts, it counts for points.

Fair enouth. I don't think it'll matter too much anyway.

Still, I would have loved to see a base composed entirely of armories

[PHREAK]

Stof,
ATCS is the easiest map for aliens, when it comes to killing the reactor; regardles how good defenses are. In s2, build up 9 evo + adv mara, jump reactor and munch. If/once you die, rinse and repeat. That gives you 4 adv maras to kill it.

On topic
Prevent alien regeneration if the OM is not present during SD. This should even it out. This makes the OM = Med, armo and reactor.

[Lava Croft]

tjw, you are on the right track.

[vcxzet]

That's why I suggested cutting build points down to the amount that would cover existing rebuildable structures (plus explicitly disabling the building of other structures so those points couldn't be misused). That way you wouldn't have 10 armouries (maybe two meds instead of the med+armoury you started with, but that's not a problem) unless you built them all before SD started... which would be pretty stupid because those turrets you can't rebuild in SD are pretty important. This way the game would never have to dictate how many of each structure can be built.

I've hacked up your suggestion.  

Currently the buildings which can be rebuilt in SD are Reactor, Repeater, Armoury, Medistation, Overmind, and Booster.  I've left Hovel and DefComp off the list for now, but I'm not sure about them.

I'm currently testing it on trem.tjw.org to see how it plays.

SD should mean "dont expect to rebuild deffences you are on your own use your evo/credits to evolve/buy stuff"

[DarkRogue]

Stof: SD still favors aliens greatly mostly because on such servers usually humans have failed to get off their asses and actually attack. Playing primarily on AKKA there have been DOZENS of games where I will suicide run the OM by myself because the team is sat behind their turrets....I either run out of creds or aliens wise up and keep a tyrant on guard which kills everything in short order if there's no 'fly space'.

So rather than force the human team to get organized, get some skill and actually work to not only survive but also attack it's easier to allow the rebuilding of half the base shit....

Now don't get me wrong, yeah a mara or goon or tyrant can just dive in and suicide themselves on a human building, but considering how pathetic alien defenses can be on normal bp servers what prevents humans from using the exact same tactic?

Not a damn thing beyond skill and intelligence.

Here's another thought: if things remain buildible how about disabling builders? Beyond those that exist at the time of sd disable the option to spawn as granger or with a ckit/buy a ckit from armory.

See sudden death is where key decisive attacks SHOULD be the end of the game. Where yes if you wipe out the om it's out for good and aliens can't evolve. Yes the aliens can wipe out the armory and make it unable for humans to get better weapons. It's the period in which you end a game.

By allowing majority of things to continue to be built...what's the point of sd to begin with? As another suggested just disable sd and let the game timelimit all the time

[|Nex|TrEmMa]

Here's another thought: if things remain buildible how about disabling builders? Beyond those that exist at the time of sd disable the option to spawn as granger or with a ckit/buy a ckit from armory.

Would be fine for aliens, but humans have to repair their own stuff .

[Jaradcel]

I think Phreak's idea on preventing regeneration is fantastic. Is it easy to do though?

I'll be sure to head over to TJW's more often right these few days to test out SD (if it even gets that far )

[Stof]

Stof,
ATCS is the easiest map for aliens, when it comes to killing the reactor; regardles how good defenses are. In s2, build up 9 evo + adv mara, jump reactor and munch. If/once you die, rinse and repeat. That gives you 4 adv maras to kill it.

On topic
Prevent alien regeneration if the OM is not present during SD. This should even it out. This makes the OM = Med, armo and reactor.

I doubt you'll be able to pull that out against a human that knows where to place turrets.

Stof: SD still favors aliens greatly mostly because on such servers usually humans have failed to get off their asses and actually attack.

I'm not the one to contradict you here. I'm mostly concerned about the fact that a human team that actually attacks but doesn't manage to kill of the aliens are at a disavantage during SD. All that because humans are more or less doomed if they lose the armory and the medistation at that point. Think of the poor humans returning from a successful run against the alien base in SD only to find those vital buildings missing because even a weak basi can kill an armory in a very short time.

PS : if endless egghunts are part of the game and a valid tactic for aliens, then human camping until SD and storming the aliens with a few Luci is also a valid tactic

[PHREAK]

Agreed Stof.
Only problem is that most normal games, camping hummies lose.

As far as the Reactor kill on ATCS, while I don't want to get too off topic, only way to succesfully prevent that is to move reac slightly forward.
Simply placing turrets well doesnt help much if I still have 9 evo after the turret kills me.
You should watch me do it sometime

As far as my suggestion regarding alien regeneration goes, it seems to be right on as far as balancing goes without messing with build points and buildable structures in SD.

I'm just afraid that it might shift SD in favor of hummies.

[DarkRogue]

Stof: if a basi can get near your bases most important team associated building and kill it before itself gets obliterated: the team deserves to lose. I mean honestly think on that situation you just presented, if the human base is well placed and there's a ckit (or 2) on duty to repair damage there's NO EXCUSE for allowing a lone basilisk to kill humans weapon shop.

Yes if a group of maras throw themselves into human base and kill the armory there's not much you can do but that's suppose to be the way things work, a well co-ordinated attack force with an objective in mind should reap the rewards of their assault. BEcause to be honest, usually the second the DC goes down the rest of the alien team pours in. Regardless if you could rebuild half this stuff humans simply lack the mobility of alien base placement.

In the end the only thing that really needs changing is making the om stay dead and getting humans to improve, skill wise. Both base building and how to assault an alien base need serious work alot of the time.

Again consider: When aliens need to move the om you have at least 3 people offering to help defend/decon/rebuild. Humans....you're lucky if one other person goes builder...and unlucky if that builder decides to build in a 'cool' new spot forcing you to fix what he/she has screwed up.

[Stof]

How long does it take to kill an armory as an alien ( time from first attack to the last attack ) :
- 4.8s for a Basilisk
- 4.0s for an Adv Basilisk
- 3.0s for a Marauder
- 2.4s for an Adv Marauder
- 2.1s for a Dragoon
- 1.8s for an Adv Dragoon ( 2s using 3 barbs )
- 1.5s for a Tyrant

By comparison, here is the time it takes for a blaster to kill the various aliens :
- 5.4s for a Basilisk
- ( do I really need to continue ? )

I hope you've packed that famous akimbo blaster with your ckit

Edit : time to kill Basilisk was wrong

[Jaradcel]

After some thought and arguments from the others here, I'm leaning to say the Dcomp should NOT be rebuildable in SD now, but we keep the armory and medistat.

Aliens OM can be rebuilt, but they lose regeneration? How would that sound? That would mean that the aliens would become slightly less kamikaze in SD, but also push both sides to start picking up teh pressure (Humans because now they KNOW the guy won't run away and return in 5 seconds fully healed, Aliens because they KNOW they need to get those things down and get it down NOW)

Thoughts?


PS: Phreak: How the heck does that ATCS base work? I need pics man

[vcxzet]

yeah med stops functioning but aliens regen health regardless of OM

[Undeference]

Most games I've played that have reached sudden death, the game has ended as a result of one player's activities. Many aliens won't start risking their precious evolution points until the defense computer and/or reactor are down. Many human teams win only because 1 player actually attacked (instead of those half-assed "Look at me, I'm not camping! Okay, let's go back to base now" attacks) and ended the game before sudden death.

I think that the real problems with sudden death now are that the aliens at large are too frightened to lose their preciously earned (throwing themselves at turrets until they get lucky kills?) evolution points to seriously attack and the humans at large are too frightened to lose their preciously earned (spamming at their turrets until they get lucky kills?) credits to seriously attack. When sudden death comes around, the aliens and humans are still frightened, but the aliens a little less so. The result is often the aliens camping around the human base and the humans camping inside it.

The reason I thought of disabling base defenses is because aliens like that are typically not the best players. On ATCS I have seen unarmoured humans run through a horde of tyrants without taking any damage, and getto the alien base just to die from an acid tube. I figure that if that human can manage to get past a bunch of tyrants actively trying to kill it, it deserves the win. (At the same time, if the humans let themselves be trapped in their base, they deserve a loss.)

[Stof]

I think that the real problems with sudden death now are that the aliens at large are too frightened to lose their preciously earned (throwing themselves at turrets until they get lucky kills?) evolution points to seriously attack and the humans at large are too frightened to lose their preciously earned (spamming at their turrets until they get lucky kills?) credits to seriously attack.

I agree completly with you about the main camping cause ! But my solution would be to make it so that you do not lose your equipment anymore when dieing But that's not the only reason. You see, I'm a rather agressive player and I tend to get very often out of cash :oops:

I say, we should remove as much features that get in the way of agressive play ! But that is for a different topic.

[PIE]

But my solution would be to make it so that you do not lose your equipment anymore when dieing But that's not the only reason. You see, I'm a rather agressive player and I tend to get very often out of cash :oops:

Wow...
This is an interesting idea.. it is annoying to go out on a limb and get killed when you bought a ton of stuff and have to try to earn those points back and get it all again before the armory is destroyed in SD, but a bunch of humans with B-suits and luci/chainguns that can't loose that in SD would crush the aliens.. it would be pretty unbalanced it would seem.. They'd all just save until SD.
This might be a neat mod though.. that would be a good way to test if that is actually what would happen.

[Undeference]

a bunch of humans with B-suits and luci/chainguns that can't loose that in SD would crush the aliens.. it would be pretty unbalanced it would seem.. They'd all just save until SD.

Or a tyrant would just keep attacking. If there's no repercussions for attacking, then everyone will keep attacking. It might be interesting, but it will definitely emphasize differences in skill.

[Chojin]

What if the armory gets killed just before SD and before humans can rebuild it. Will they still get the BP to replace it after SD starts ?

No they wouldn't get points for it. That sounds like a legitimate alien strategy.

What is the reason for this? Because they had no armory (building) at 54:59, they are not allowed to build one at 59:59 ? Because they had an armory at 55:00, they can build an armory at 59:59 ? :O

Is the same rule applying to Reactor, Repeater, Medistation, Overmind and Booster?

[Seffylight]

Well, it obviously wouldn't apply to the Overmind, Reactor, and Repeater -- as those already cost 0 bp to construct, so are rebuildable during SD. However, the medistation and booster wouldn't be buildable if the building points were not occupied when SD started.

Question, though. As not having played on tjw's lately, I haven't seen this new system in action. How does it keep turrets from being rebuilt?