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Ya, it was fun! With stats and things!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9KYWurlE9M

Axe! Best of luck in your endeavors! Hurry Back

You cant change just one players ship, if you change the settings for one shark, you change it for every shark in the arena.

2) There is some skill in timing your rocket rush and bringing it to bear. Despite what i may infer in some situations there is some skill involved. But lets just create a hypothetical situation which is not uncommon. Lets say a player (1) enters the zone and chooses a ship, greens up to get a respectable stock of items and a full stat ship. Now, another player (2) enters the zone, sees a decently high bounty and someone doing marginally well defending themselves, and fighting when the situation dictates. They (2) enter zone, have a basically well stocked ship or cycle until they have one. Now they rocket rush player (1) spamming items in attempt to take them out. Player (1) is forced to expend some items to counter. Once player (2) is out of items, the immediately cycle ships and commence the rocket rush before player (1) can recover the items lost. So the skill set I refer to is choosing when to rocket, and reacquiring the target quickly after a cycle. Its lame to be sure, but someone who is not conditioned to playing that way, such as myself, probably couldn't pull it off without some practice. A skill set which would become largely irrelevant if you had to green some specific toys. These problems are repairable, but I don't believe moderation is the answer. It was my experience that when you get personally involved in disciplining a player for abusive actions or words it becomes a "personal issue" whether it really is or not. "You just have something against me, and so and so does the same thing all the time" I don't think ships need to start totally bereft of any items or status. Just like you say, a few tweaks or changes to the way ships start out would be sufficient.

Green Settings - The high amount of greens is literally the only counter to the rampant ship cycling. If one was to reduce the green spawn, then ships need to start without toys(in fact they should no matter what). In that situation you are going to alienate at least one set of players. If you reduce green spawn then you make it even easier for someone who has no moral aptitude about what should be considered fair play to keep changing ships for more items to spam against someone who is trying to play the game as intended. If you change the ships to start without toys, those ship cyclers will suddenly find that the skill-set they have been maintaining is obsolete. So either you leave things the way they are, or you make a choice between satisfying one camp of the other. Honestly ship cyclers are the burnt out folks who have reached a peak in what they are capable of doing so they resort to choosing ship 6 and hitting the rockets. Take away the items on spawn and you basically neuter them. Would not be a huge loss, as players of this type generally don't put in long consecutive hours of game-play. They do, however, get players that are playing with the confines of not abusing the system, to quit playing. You take away items on spawn, you lose one player, who doesn't play that much anyway. The way it is, you often lose two, the ship cycler often quits out once he manages to achieve his goal, and the player that was the target of his abuse of the system. People rely so much on specials, its often hilariously predictable. Being raised in DZA, where there were no items, every time someone comes after me specials blazing, uses them all up and then disengages is absolutely hilarious, and as good as a win.

Thanks PoLiX, Hope you find success in your other ventures.

Um, Sure.

Well since that was my map and therefore my goal, Ill address that. First you should understand that It was I who approached Hallu with the idea of trying out a different map in pub, not Hallu seeking a new map. You can sleep at night knowing that Hallu does not care for the goal either, and expressed as much right from the get go. I continued with my map for a few months and presented the map as finished to Hallu who agreed to give it a trial run. My goal was not to destroy your idea of what you think chaos should be, it was to try and improve the zone through action, not idle complaining or stagnating inaction. I would like nothing more then to see player counts rise, and I made a serious attempt at providing some positive development to such an end. So if you think I was "using" "your" zone for some form of self glorification you would be dead wrong. I just made some things for a game I like and want others to like as well.

Who is doing what? This is just talk Nine I cant speak for him, but I think its quite safe to say Hallu isn't going to do anything radical for any extended period of time. Instead of such a brief display of dismay at the mere mention of a change in gameplay perhaps you would offer up your opinion on why or why not such changes would be a good or bad thing. The game in question here (to the best of my knowledge) is one that has existed in chaos before. One or two no timer flags that upgrade a ship. Nothing more.

Not sure what you mean. But take the flags as we have them now. Change the two settings that give an upgrade if you are carrying a flag. Now when you pick up a flag your weapons get upgraded and perhaps other various things occur. Add a PB(s). Now, regardless of whether or not you are flagged, you can pickup the ball. Picking up the ball alone (You are not carrying flags) does not you give you an upgrade unless you have the option in the config set to use the flagger upgrades/downgrades. If the flags are not giving upgrades or downgrades, picking up the ball will have no effect other then those inherent to the soccer settings. So you can run both games, both can give upgrades/downgrades, but you cannot have just the ball give upgrades, the flag settings control that, and the soccer settings "borrow" from that. Not an either/or scenario.

As far as I know, you cannot have the ball give an upgrade if the flags do not. Both can run at the same time.

Ya there is always that Plowy McTankerton to deal with

Yes indeed. L4s! However in this particular SVS setting, L4's are a death sentence. If this game comes to be, and I am flying a lev, I would be wise to avoid the flag. Problem 1) The increase in energy cost to fire. Fire two of these bad boys and your pushing it. Problem 2) The Prox. Now I just fired two and then I take some of my own prox damage, hell, Im just about dead! If you don't agree with me, go ahead and lev it up and get that flag, and Ill show you a problem not inherent to the settings, but to the conduct of the zone in general. Nope. Jav.

If you give me a jav with l3 bombs and bullets, you will come to know this "blight"

Its been that way for a while. It turns it off so that people who go to safe and afk for a long period are not anti-warping people.

Yes, I believe so.

I could swear I used to have them, looked high and low. Alas...no settings. Perhaps I need to dig deeper into some old backup disks. The only person I can think of that might have them around that may still be active is LT of T3 Gauntlet.

Thanks for all the things you have done over the years there PoLiX. Subspace surely doesn't just keep going on its own.

I'm going to have to go nay here. This used to be the standard game type in my "Home" zone Witch Doom. This worked in WD because even a non-powered up ship could overtake a flagged ship with proper application of luck and technique. Would that hold true here as well? Sure. But there are some major differences in how giving that upgrade to a SVS ship vs that upgrade on a WD ship will effect the final potency of the ship. WD ships were balanced Super-Ships(Fast moving, not uncommon to spray groups of 10-20 bombs) In SVS the variance of ship abilities is too closely matched to give one a power up in proximity and bullet damage and not have it be overpowered. The nature of WD ships made the upgrade matter a lot less. It did give you a slight advantage, but not one that would induce complete frustration. SVS ships are too slow and closely balanced to upgrade them in such a way and not destroy the balance.