Ceiu

Lulz. I just gave it to you. Also: It's close because there's six people (well, five and a certain someone who doesn't even play in league) who are worried about losing their edge. One thing that really makes me laugh whenever I think about this topic is that we're essentially voting whether or not team Unix wins or loses. That in itself should explain the five "yes" votes. Probably not. It's still preseason and still an opportunity to work out some of the bugs with the system. Maybe it will, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Having people bomb while you sit in spec does not constitute an "understanding" of how bomb damage works. You keep demonstrating this over and over again. Bomb Damage = Base * ((Level * Blast Pixels - Distance)/(Level * Blast Pixels)) With current Warbird/Jav size a non-prox hit will do, at minimum: L1: 606 L2: 688 L3: 715 L4: 729 *This does not account for close-bombing, which is stupidly common in this zone because most of you are awful at this game. No. You won because you had more Temporal Core users. I gave two examples of game-changing events that were averted simply because of energy/recharge values that are only reasonably achievable with Temporal. I'm sure that if I had the bot turn on ?watchdamage and really evaluate the damage of a given match, I could point out several other instances almost immediately. If anything, I would say our organization was about the same. The only thing you guys did "right" was covering you during your recoil after the ever-popular Unix Rush™ (which, for the record, wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of working without Temp).

Lulz, There's Yes vote number two. Choprock has Temporal and Shock. As we discussed before, HE requires a direct hit so it's doing a minimum of 688 (555 w/Shock) if it detonates at the furthest possible pixel (which is unlikely; see below). Don't confuse HE with Smart -- the damage variation due to distance isn't as high as you keep trying to suggest it is. Avg damage is going to be ~730 (~590 w/Shock). My hits on Chop were pretty solid -- The last two made him puff. Min damage hits on bombs are incredibly rare: 4/961 chance on wb/jav. Max damage being even more unlikely @ 1/961 chance. AFK HOCKEY

Well, most everyone reading this has probably seen my ranting at some point or another, but I'll do a quick recap just in case. The $3M HSD Alien Techs are overpowered, no question about it. Having them in pub isn't a very big deal, but when it comes to league there should be at least some semblance of balance. Temporal, specifically, is throwing off the game so much, that the team that fields the most ships with Temporal Core wins. In the case of the games I've personally played in or watched, the games were damn near sweeps as well. As an example: The one game I played in, I would have eliminated both Choprock and sprinkle, had it not been for the fact they had more energy/recharge than they would have had without it (Choprock: 3 consecutive HE hits [~1800 damage w/shock], Sprinkle: 2 while he was firing [~1500], 1 while he was redlining [~750]). I understand that some people believe that grinding out for the "best" items should be rewarded. However, I believe that skill should be the deciding factor, not which team got the players who've put in the most grind hours. If said grinding made the players better, then they should still be able to perform. Sadly, my personal experience tells me that this isn't the case and explains why some people are so resistant to the removal of the 'techs. Also, keep in mind that the 'techs were never balanced with a league in mind. They were designed to be money sinks for late-reset players. When you only have pub to worry about, balance isn't nearly as big of an issue as it is when you have a skills competition event. For those who are willing, and should we decide to do so, I will provide those in league a one-time full refund on a 3m 'tech on their league ships. This should ease the pain of having to use items which aren't completely screwing with the game. Update: Due to the strong suspicion of certain people abusing the fact I'm hiding what people voted for, the poll needs to be restarted. Fucking people...

The Unix Rush™: One of the many moves only possible with Temporal Core.

They don't play here. And if they did, they'd also laugh at you guys for your silly idea of using broken items to replace skill.

Cuz u terribad.

In your case it's defined by how many broken items you can fit on one dueling ship. lulz.

You should mess with them during a match for optimal trickery.

All terrible. Next?

Successful troll is successful.

Shredder and Mass Driver have never really been much of a concern due to the fact Exoskeleton makes them laughable -- On several occasions, I've let a Mass/Shredder user hit me several times to bait them just because I know it's not going to hurt all that much. Prox is cake if you play a more in-your-face game and don't redline. Temporal doesn't have a counter. There's nothing I can buy short of temporal which counters it, nor is there a playstyle that can be used to make it less effective. It simply outclasses everything else. The whole "fight fire with fire" argument is stupid. No item should be so good that the only way to effectively deal with it is to use the same thing. Point defense: Whoever thinks this is bad needs to have their head examined. It effectively denies many opponents from getting close to you, allowing you to dictate where and how the battle takes place. Combine this with a prox bomb and some solid rotation and you are officially a pain to deal with. Doubly annoying during basing as it allows you to spam guns and bombs. Everything else that people said that was stupid: Most standard weapons that have low usage counts I've found a very effective use for. My personal favorites were the L4 weapons. Gigajoule is gross in tunnels (See: large corridor in base 7, most of base 5), as even with the best armor (Adam) you're taking 196 damage per shot (but more likely than not it'll be in the 250-350 range). That quickly cuts through even the most high energy setups. Nova on a weasel makes very short work of defenders turtling in a base spamming guns. Of course, you have to worry a tad about taking out your own team with it, but if you're smart you can easily shut down a wall of spammers. Point is, as Brain said: Everything has a use. I still remember when I was one of four or five people using plasma because everyone said it sucked. Numbers seem quite different now... That's not to say that some items aren't completely outclassed by others, but that's what this discussion is supposed to fix. However, try to keep in mind that some items just aren't comparable to others and that often times what makes an item bad is public opinion and personal values rather than actual usefulness.

I've started a similar topic in the staff forum with some potential ideas on what to change in the near future. Normally I'd post such a thing publicly, but my fear is the myriad of useless posts by people who are thinking more about very isolated situations, their own well being or are just trolling throwing the topic in a direction that makes the entire thread useless (I count two already). Anyway, this is what I've said there: Pulse Laser/Gamma Ray: Remove one of these completely. [*]All Guns: Increase firing cost Reduce firing rate [*]L2 Guns: Need significant change. Fast firing & low cost L2 guns are brutally strong due to the fact there's no a solid counter against them. Very apparent when looking at Sharppinger and Trap Laser. L2 guns need to be very middle of the road compared to everything else. [*]Falcon: Reduce firing rate considerably. Enable bomb safety (no close bombing) [*]Smart Bomb: Reduce firing rate slightly Would be better balanced balanced by a slightly improved Shock Matrix. [*]All Armors: Need adjustment. Specifically: The armors should be amazing against their target, but fail at something else. Right now only Exoskeleton really falls into that category. Also, Radiating coils needs to not be a sig. [*]3M 'techs: Balance or remove. Broken items are not acceptable to keep around when leagues exist and make use of the public item set. Regarding Temporal: While some may argue that the better player should win regardless, that still doesn't mean it's going to be an easy task (or if it's even necessarily true). When you factor in what Spider noted in that Temp allows a user access to even more "free-spam" setups and they get an ton of energy to go with it, it's certainly going to be an uphill battle for anyone they are up against who isn't using it. Can they be beat? Sure. But it requires a great deal of effort. For an example of how good Temp is, use every other non-tech item you can to try to match the stats you get with it. So far a few players have matched energy/recharge by using four other items, but the setup comes with massive downgrades to other stats which, incidentally, Temporal also makes better (thus, completely eclipsing said build). There's simply no comparison to it. Also, a couple quick arguments to possible defenses of Temp: (1) The amount of grinding required to obtain an item is not a balancing factor and (2) The amount of times it's nerfed does not indicate how balanced it is. I'd like to go more in-depth and cover what BD has suggested, but I have places to be today and have already spent too long posting here. I'll go over it later, but I will say that, for the most part, I agree.

These rules are based heavily upon the 4v4 rules Premier league uses, with some minor modifications. Scoring comes straight from hockey, again with minor modifications. They've worked well for years, and I imagine they would continue to do so. Again with the bot: First of all, my bot implements all of the rules I just said (save for the 3 spec limit). Secondly, the only reason I don't run 24/7 is because there's rarely any interest in 4v4. It's run roughly 10 games that I haven't personally attended to, and even when I stick around, people get bored and leave shortly there after.

I am. The rules are overcomplicated for not a whole lot of gain for doing so. Here's a simple replacement: Match scoring: - Matches consist of 3 rounds. A team gets 1 point per victory in a round. If a round ends in a tie, it will go to the team which got the first kill. These points are cumulative throughout the season. - Teams must play at least one unique player per round (meaning a total of 6 players must play the match). Failing to do so results in a 1 point penalty per round. - Forfeits for any reason result in an automatic +3 points for the opposing team. Should neither team show enough players, no points will be awarded. - The team with the most points at the end of the season is the winner. Lagouts/Subbing: - Players may only leave the match a total of three times, after which the player is not allowed to play for the remainder of the match. - A player's slot may only be vacant for a total of 30 seconds, after which it is closed and all remaining lives expire. - Players may voluntarily leave the match within 15 seconds of a death to be subbed by another player. After this time, players subbing others will be burned of all items. - Once a player has been subbed, they may not return to the game for the remainder of the round. Ship Changing: - Players may change ships once within 15 seconds of a death, but before engaging in combat (repelling upon spawning to disengage does not count against the player). - Ship changing for any reason at any other time results in an automatic loss of life and is burned of all items on the next. Regarding the bot: I don't see why you have it in your head that it has to be all or nothing. There are two bots that can run the game perfectly, you just have to go through the trouble of locking/unlocking the arena and adding up scores from the bots output at the end.

Hooray!

Don't forget to save at least 50k for me to cover the bet.

Last night A while ago I spent a few hours throwing together a quick Last Man Standing bot to help assist in running league matches and pracs. And, as I'm sick of seeing gambling bots, I figured I'd share it with the rest of you. Maybe you jerks will learn a thing or two and I won't have to put up with abortions like UB-Game or UB-Girlfriend anymore. The package includes everything you need to compile and/or run it. There's not a lot of documentation, but the design is solid and you should be able to follow what's going on without much difficulty. If you find a bug or two in there (as I imagine you should), let me know so I can fix it before league. -C Repost updates: - Fixed a bug with the slot assignment, added mvp/lvp and some other junk. - I'm no longer including the 4v4 bot's username and password in the package. Heh. Update: Added some stuff. Fixed some stuff. Changed some stuff. Normally I'd say check the changelog but there isn't one. cnlms.zip

Interesting approach. Some notes: - For a simple bot like this, this design is probably okay. But, I'd imagine it'll get real messy in a hurry once you start adding other features. Perhaps consider a more OOP design in the future? - I wasn't aware of the Properties class and that it could be used for some simple configuration. Neat. - As of 1.5, Java supports printf style formatting via PrintStream.printf(...) and String.format(...) methods as well as the Formatter class. You may want to check that out. - What happens when a player dies less than five times, lags out, quits or otherwise doesn't finish? Also, can they be subbed? - Speaking of things you should check out, are you aware of jcnlib? It implements the entire chatnet protocol for you, as well as provides some utilities. If you're going to use Java for a chatnet bot, this may save you some time. Also, the 4v4 bot I made is written around it, which you can check out here.

What happens to the money in the event of a typo?

You should post the source.

@ipwn: One of these guys can take my place.

Ceiu> You guys are all too asshole-ish for it to work. L Y N X> ^ op2rules> i BET you op2rules> i could make it happen Ceiu> lulz. op2rules> everyone has that attitude Ceiu> I'll bet you 50k that you could never do that for 4 games with 20+ people. vitaminc left arena op2rules> i guarentee i can convince the zone within a week to do it