Turf

[Gar]

Turf's the future of HyperSpace. Turf is just plain fun as !@#$%^&*. Current basing is quickly losing its appeal, as it contains far too many illogical optimum strategies and far too much frustration. Turf has its problems, too, but I think we can remove them with some slight reward modifications. First I shall convince you that Turf is wonderful, then I shall speak soft words to you of how best to implement it.

 

Logic/balance problems with current basing:

1: Restraint. It's often in a player's best interest to not do his best. 'Don't kill the lanc!' is the common cry, as well as teamsends of 'Don't kill them too badly or they might not come back.' There is no stronger mood-breaking moment, for both sides, than the realization that the weaker team is only present because the stronger team wants them to be. Turf fixes this by rewarding true victory. Clear the enemy, grab flags, cash in. This goes from a currently backward system to a straightforward system with Turf.

 

2: Stacked teams. Current basing relies on a simple team-vs-team flow dynamic. One team pushes, one team defends. The 'better' team has a higher Dollars-Per-Time-Spent, so people quit that team less and join it more. Naturally, the better team becomes stronger until the weaker team can no longer compete. Ever flown your ship into ten levis tacnuking down a tunnel? It's not fun. There's really no way for the weaker team to compete because the totality of both teams are fighting eachother in the same place. In Turf, however, many sectors must be defended. A stacked team of 12 people becomes a bunch of smaller teams of 2-4 people spread out through the zone, while the weaker team of 12 people becomes 12 people attacking the same place. This allows the weaker team to take and hold enough flags to prevent total lockdown by the stronger team, giving them a fair 'proportion' of flag earnings relative to their victories (instead of nothing, as with current basing). Included in this but mentioned later are brickwarping and lanc killing, as chances for the weaker team to significantly turn the tide in a specific sector of flags. On the flip side, summon allows the strong team to actually have a chance of locking down all 20 flags.

 

3: Grief play. Current basing allows for many items and strategies that really are just grief play, because not only are they overpowered or ruinous to gameplay, they're just not logical - you want the enemy team to stay and keep fighting so you can make money, so if you wipe them out with cheese, you're not doing it for personal monetary gain. These tactics include brickwarping the lanc, clearing the lanc, coffin maker-ing the whole team, m!@#$%^&* thoring a whole team, and so on. In Turf, these things transform from 'grief play' into 'great play'. Think of it this way: coffin maker kills every enemy around in a cheese fashion. In current basing, that's all 20 of you. In Turf, that's just a handful of players, and only one flag-sector. The benefit of coffin maker thus becomes closer to its cost. In addition, in Turf, you WANT the enemy to die. You do NOT want them to stick around like in current basing. Thus coffining and brickwarping become natural tactics rather than illogical grief play.

 

4: Private freqs. Private freqs are currently impossible to balance. You all know the problems, so I won't go into them here. In Turf, however, private freqs take up a perfect position in the power structure. I think even privs might prefer turf to current basing. A private freq can hold one sector with absolute strength, but it cannot hold all 20 flags. Private freqs just don't have enough people to do that. So private players either must play in pub freqs, which is beneficial to the zone, or they must hold one sector for long periods of time against greater numbers of weaker players. Priv's dream right? A ton of weaker players attacking your small base, because your little base is costing them quite a bit of cash due to the curved nature of Turf rewards. I'm sure the bountying opportunities are enormous. Also, due to the curved nature of Turf flag rewards, multiple priv freqs cannot share flag income effectively. 2 teams holding 4 flags each does NOT equal 1 team holding 8 flags. Priv freqs ultimately become opportunities for privs and a non-game-ruining mechanic for normal players.

 

5: Flag victories kill population. Very simple problem: game's over, everybody specs or quits for awhile. Turf aptly avoids this problem by having a never-ending game. I can't emphasize how important this is. This could totally restructure the population dynamics of the zone. Imagine logging on every night to 50 people all the time rather than 70 sometimes and 20 the rest of the night?

 

 

 

 

 

How to adjust flag rewards for Turf

So you've hopefully seen why Turf is superior to current basing, but the problem still remains that Turf has unbelievable cash output. What's to be done? We must consider:

 

Problems with Turf flag rewards:

1: Collusion. It happens. Both teams decide to just center while they sit with 10 flags each and rake in the cash overnight. This was actually fairly easy to maintain the moment the mods left.

 

2: Lack of compe!@#$%^&*ion. One team leaves for whatever reason, the other team sits on 20 flags and rakes in the cash. This is not to be confused with collusion, where players are in the zone, they're just agreeing not to steal flags.

 

3: Constant cash flow. Players that play all the time will have gigantic amounts of cash just through the flow of time, even if they sit in safe. Players that can only log on two hours a night will gain little to nothing. Current basing has a slight advantage here, actually, but the typical 4k to 7k jackpots from current basing probably won't be missed.

 

 

 

 

 

THE SOLUTION!

How do we account for collusion, lack of compe!@#$%^&*ion, and the constant cash flow of Turf, yet still keep its advantages over current basing? We want Turf because it encourages people to stay on as long as possible. It encourages people to get the )#$# out of spec and play for once. It inherently balances the zone by its very nature. It offers opportunities for rich and for poor. It's simply a better way. So how do we keep the incentive but dampen the out of control money production? Can we, in fact, enhance the benefits of Turf even further?

 

Components:

1: Flag rewards scale based on population. I believe this is already partially implemented in Turf, but it seemed a little off when I played it. Currently the flags just give less if less people are in the zone, and more if more are. Instead, I believe that kills should add to the next flag ding just like they add to the jackpot now. This presents an 'organic' way to add to flag rewards without allowing m!@#$%^&* numbers of people to simply sit in safe and milk. The important thing should be that a kill only benefits the killer's team, not both teams, and the kill should scale based on the flags the team holds, too. For example, if Freq 1 Bob kills Freq 2 Joe, and Freq 1 holds 12 flags at the time of the kill, $12 is added to Freq 1's next flag reward. If at that same time Freq 2 Joe killed Bob, Freq 2 would get $8 added for their 8 flags. Edit: The reason this is so important: freqs are now spread out across the zone. Most won't share normal kill money.

 

We have to be careful to counteract the negative penalty of scaled rewards, which is that people will view it in reverse and not want to play when pops are low. This brings us to the next component of the plan...

 

2: Low population relief. I'm a firm believer that the most attention must be focused at low population times, because they are the seed for everything else. The shorter you can make the dead times, the greater the population the zone will reach overall. Powerball is the first option that comes to mind, with high-reward center goals that have rewards that turn to 0 once ten people are in the zone. I also think that kill rewards, as described in Component 1, should function even if Turf is 'off' due to too few people, and that rewards should be boosted the fewer people that are on. The toughest situation for players is when just you and one or two other people are on: why not just spec and wait? Instead, why not let these few duke it out with double or triple reward for kills? It might encourage them to actually stay in and get some more people to join in. The cash won't get out of hand because with so few people kills are slow and far between.

 

3: Equal flag amounts result in nothing. Simple change: if both teams have the same amount of flags, neither team gets anything for that ding. This immediately makes collusion very difficult. Which teams gets 11 flags? Which gets 9? Why should you guys get the 11 flags and not us? In addition, I would make a significant additive boost in the rewards curve at 11 and above, so that a team with 9 (for a totally meaningless numbers example) is getting 500, while a team with 11 is getting 900. Try to convince someone to collude then, right? It also makes sense, as that is the point of 'majority' (> 50%) where one team is now technically winning.

 

4.a: Negative penalty for team number differences (pub only). Freq 1 has 20 players, Freq 0 has 5. Cut Freq 1's flag+kills ding money by 75%. If it was 20 and 10, cut it by 50%, and so on. This neatly takes care of 'Lack of compe!@#$%^&*ion'. Are you going to sit bored on a freq making $40 a ding or are you going to hop to the smaller freq and grab just a few flags for more cash than you're making now, because of 4.b? No need for an autoevener - i'll do it myself!

 

4.b: Positive bonus for fighting outnumbered! (all freqs). If your Freq has 5 and the guy you just killed's Freq has 20, multiply his kill->ding money by 2! (as in half of the ratio they outnumber you by - 20/5 = 4, half of 4 is 2). This is not just for Lack of Compe!@#$%^&*ion. This is to help privs do their thing in their little base, bountying.

 

 

 

 

I think this series of small changes would make a huge impact on the zone in addition to Turf, and fix Turf's problems. Collusion is fixed with the @11-flags-boost and the equal-flags-nullify-rewards change. Lack of compe!@#$%^&*ion is fixed with team-difference bonuses and penalties that will encourage players to balance things themselves. Low population relief and scaled rewards will help to balance the cash flows of all-the-time-players and peak-only players: peak will have significantly large cash flow from all the kills, and will hopefully last longer, so peak-only players won't miss out too badly.

 

Adjust all the numbers as you see fit, I'm at work and bored

Edited July 22, 2008 by Gar

[Suicide_Run]

Gar, its nice your one of the few people who actually think before posting (or at least I feel you do)....but you need to summary your points and stop turning your post to essays where 1 sentence becomes a paragraph

 

Thou I kinda want the mini-base in center to get a flag cause then people can still kill in center but its non-profitable to spend a ton of people in it. But thats just me :/

 

Some of your solution seems nice

[Stibbymicto]

-applause-

[Rivel]

Too lazy to have read that

[Unix]

Too lazy to have read that

[Exiili]

-applause-

Second that

[Gar]

The post isn't going anywhere, so take your time in reading it. Silly me for thinking the point of a forum is discussion.

[nolan123]

onyone waana sum it up in a sentance or 2?

[Suicide_Run]

Yes Gar, very silly of you. Apparently you never thought that if no one reads your post, its obvious there is no discussions.

 

Nolan, heres a basic summary:

 

-Turf > Current Basing (so replace current basing)

-Fix some problems in turf to make it better

-Problems such as uneven teams when 1 freq gives up and stalemating for continuous cash flow

[Unix]

Turf "can" be better than the chaos style flagging we currently have.

 

Biggest problems are... Uneven teams (again) - HUGE cash flow potential - Bases are too far apart and kills a lot of items and makes some items too powerful.

 

Uneven Teams:

-After X amount of time, the zone will setfreq half of the two teams and switch them

-The zone does "hosted" games automatically where after X amount of time the game is reset and top players are shuffled

-Tons of other ways to do it

 

Cash Flow Potential:

-Dont allow teams to get 15+ flags in a row bonus

-That's all I can think of right now

 

Bases are too far apart:

-Yeah I know that's the point, but because of that it creates a ton of new problems. Transwarp Key, cloak, etc all become too powerful.

-Need lanc's too much

-Make bases only have ONE entrance that way teams cant get flanked by cloakers

-Nerf cloak/TW key to a certain extent when this happens

-Rotate flags/bases periodically throughout the day so we dont spread the people too much (I remember Brain saying it would be possible, just a lot of work)

[Rareitanium]

I guess we know what Gar spent his ban time doing. Writing essays that everyone's too lazy to read.

[Gar]

Don't get me started on ridiculous bans for no reason. It's really unprofessional of you guys to allow mods to have personal biases.

 

Uneven Teams:

-After X amount of time, the zone will setfreq half of the two teams and switch them

-The zone does "hosted" games automatically where after X amount of time the game is reset and top players are shuffled

-Tons of other ways to do it

I think artificial moving of people would be very bad. That's why I suggested the money changes, so that players would move themselves and thus not feel so bad about it... stop the 'ARGH SETFREQD!' and 'GOD FIX SETFREQ' cries before they even start.

Edited July 23, 2008 by Gar

[op2rules]

Too long to read sorry im sure your idea was good tho

[Unix]

I would rather have it artificial, that way I know that if I'm on the losing team I know there's a chance I can all of the sudden be on the winning team.

 

Or we can just base evening on squads, allow people of the same squad to be together more.

[Suicide_Run]

Or we can just base evening on squads, allow people of the same squad to be together more.

Setting yourself up for target practice eh?

[nolan123]

-moved- Edited July 24, 2008 by nolan123

[spidernl]

I would rather have it artificial, that way I know that if I'm on the losing team I know there's a chance I can all of the sudden be on the winning team.

 

Or we can just base evening on squads, allow people of the same squad to be together more.

 

 

(People, just act like this is a good idea, she might believe it won't make for huge stackedness)

 

I like the way Gar worked it out, even though people will most likely ALWAYS find a way to stack teams. The good thing about turf would be that you can just shuffle teams everyone once in a while, since bountying isn't the major point.

[Unix]

First suggestion more than likely wont.

 

Second suggestion makes squads have some importance and you can be with people you want to be with on a team. If the squad is stacked, then of course the teams will be too.

[Dr Brain]

There's a far easier solution to most of your issues: players in the center sector don't get flag rewards. Probably have to exclude sector 8 and the empty sectors too. Flag rewards come often enough to not hugely effect players respawning. A more permanent solution can also be found where you get a % of the flag reward corresponding to how much you were out of the center.

 

1: Flag rewards scale based on population. I believe this is already partially implemented in Turf, but it seemed a little off when I played it.

 

There's a reduction in reward money for playing on an unbalanced team already in place. You're probably confusing it with a pop based reward.

 

Currently the flags just give less if less people are in the zone, and more if more are. Instead, I believe that kills should add to the next flag ding just like they add to the jackpot now. This presents an 'organic' way to add to flag rewards without allowing m!@#$%^&* numbers of people to simply sit in safe and milk. The important thing should be that a kill only benefits the killer's team, not both teams, and the kill should scale based on the flags the team holds, too. For example, if Freq 1 Bob kills Freq 2 Joe, and Freq 1 holds 12 flags at the time of the kill, $12 is added to Freq 1's next flag reward. If at that same time Freq 2 Joe killed Bob, Freq 2 would get $8 added for their 8 flags. Edit: The reason this is so important: freqs are now spread out across the zone. Most won't share normal kill money.

 

Seems like there are better ways to solve the "issue". I'm not really sure it is an issue, though.

 

2:Low population relief. I'm a firm believer that the most attention must be focused at low population times, because they are the seed for everything else. The shorter you can make the dead times, the greater the population the zone will reach overall. Powerball is the first option that comes to mind, with high-reward center goals that have rewards that turn to 0 once ten people are in the zone. I also think that kill rewards, as described in Component 1, should function even if Turf is 'off' due to too few people, and that rewards should be boosted the fewer people that are on. The toughest situation for players is when just you and one or two other people are on: why not just spec and wait? Instead, why not let these few duke it out with double or triple reward for kills? It might encourage them to actually stay in and get some more people to join in. The cash won't get out of hand because with so few people kills are slow and far between.

 

Lets get it working at higher populations before muddling the issue?

 

3: Equal flag amounts result in nothing. Simple change: if both teams have the same amount of flags, neither team gets anything for that ding. This immediately makes collusion very difficult. Which teams gets 11 flags? Which gets 9? Why should you guys get the 11 flags and not us? In addition, I would make a significant additive boost in the rewards curve at 11 and above, so that a team with 9 (for a totally meaningless numbers example) is getting 500, while a team with 11 is getting 900. Try to convince someone to collude then, right? It also makes sense, as that is the point of 'majority' (> 50%) where one team is now technically winning.

 

My solution above doesn't have this issue, since they can't collude without idling in the bases (possible but much less likely)

 

4.a: Negative penalty for team number differences (pub only). Freq 1 has 20 players, Freq 0 has 5. Cut Freq 1's flag+kills ding money by 75%. If it was 20 and 10, cut it by 50%, and so on. This neatly takes care of 'Lack of compe!@#$%^&*ion'. Are you going to sit bored on a freq making $40 a ding or are you going to hop to the smaller freq and grab just a few flags for more cash than you're making now, because of 4.b? No need for an autoevener - i'll do it myself!

 

See above. There's already a factor for unbalanced teams.

 

4.b: Positive bonus for fighting outnumbered! (all freqs). If your Freq has 5 and the guy you just killed's Freq has 20, multiply his kill->ding money by 2! (as in half of the ratio they outnumber you by - 20/5 = 4, half of 4 is 2). This is not just for Lack of Compe!@#$%^&*ion. This is to help privs do their thing in their little base, bountying.

 

Too easy to abuse. Get on a priv team of 1 and play in an arena of 30. Grab one flag and you've got 30x your normal reward.

[Gar]

I like no rewards in center. That makes things alot simpler. I do have to disagree with the 'let's get it working at higher pops' comment - there's no reason not to approach the whole design at once, and in fact it will only lead to problems later if you don't.

 

Too easy to abuse. Get on a priv team of 1 and play in an arena of 30. Grab one flag and you've got 30x your normal reward. Too easy to abuse. Get on a priv team of 1 and play in an arena of 30. Grab one flag and you've got 30x your normal reward.

Actually, the big freq would be 15 players, and you'd thus get about 7 times your normal reward. Still too high. I for some reason did the math with the ^name for a priv freq in mind counting, which would make you by yourself get 3x normal rewards when the biggest team has 15. I think that's actually pretty decent considering you have major opposition and you're not getting flag money.

 

 

Aside from all that, as a player I can guarantee you that we will collude if it is at all possible. Yes, idling in bases is possible. The *moment* mods leave, everyone will collude, because it's simply the optimum strategy. I've already seen it happen twice. As soon as Rareitanium left, a few players took the lead in setting up the collusion and everyone else just doesn't care and goes along with it. I am dead certain that the only way to guarantee absence of collusion is making it impossible for two freqs to equally share flags.

[Dr Brain]

I've implemented the code for checking how much time the player spent outside of the center sector (and empty sectors). I still have some tweaks I want to apply to the imbalance penalty though.

[Unix]

I think the map needs an update of some sort to make it more enjoyable and a few of the items need a nerf.

[vetta64]

I think an arena with like 4-6 slightly easier to get to larger bases ,more like 6-2 less like 3-5, would be nice. I love the turf though