Spidernl's Brainstorming Thread

[Alium]

Imagine a bot that could take requests from the then 2 "highest" exp people. These 2 people would establish the lineup for the zone. Then they would each get to pick their numbers one by one. This way the teams could both of a set fixed number of players at SOME point. Once the the players had been picked and the game started, nobody in either team could hop due to being locked/auto sorted back to team. The game would not begin without both leaders consent or maybe a vote from the top 3 players in team. Could be managed by a team sorting bot. In this way even if things go downhill from there the number of players and specificially who could be determined before things go downhill.

 

The plus side to this being, if the game is looking to be stacked, ie the same people together, the leaders could argue it and fix it themselves. Also people who got disco'd during an fg could get back in without worry. Could even work with cold's donated jp idea.

[toxic_intruder]

Yeah, there'd have to be some way to balance stacking and freq locking

[spidernl]

I'm not much of a fan of a "captain" system in pub. Far too many players to pick from (if the zone is doing well), people leaving during the "team creation", etc. Pub should be just that, pub. It should be easy to join the action for 15 minutes if you want to and then log off.

[Alium]

I dont mean stacking on the fly, I mean at least in the start the leaders choose what people they want, one by one. If it starts to look stacked in the beginnning they can redo or adjust the teams till they both agree.

This is already whats being done right now but with the players deciding the lineup without any option for the other freq to have any say in it. This type of behaviour simply promotes more of the same and rewards it when works. (and its often)

We are talking about deliberate and agreed upon stacking beforehand but this time if you feel like You've been setup to lose you're leader has a say in it from the start. Once the teams are setup in the beginning you are freq locked, this will cover the biggest players/hoppers. The nice thing is that if you want to participate in the fg you need to be present at the start of the fg. If you get disconnected during the fg you will be able to return to your starting team and ONLY your starting team. If you weren't there when it started, you don't get in. Period. Considering the time it takes to get a jackpot up and running I think this might be reasonable. Meanwhile people waiting for the current FG to end can duel/goal/play the King of the hill idea previously stated.

[toxic_intruder]

I see what you mean, like organized flag games. We just need responsible players to be the leaders. and.. uh... yeah, once we get that part figured out...

[Alium]

Could a bot include an option or a request for a vote to determine leader? If so, problem solved. Even if you regret your pick later, at least you had a say in the matter.

[toxic_intruder]

Seems reasonable enough. Also, maybe have a ?mutiny option where players can vote out a captain if he really sucks. Kinda like in battlefield 2. Would be interesting to actually try this out in gameplay

[Dr Brain]

Lower Exp requirements on the bottom 1/3 of all items to zero. Yes, zero. Cut the middle 1/3 by 50%. Leave the top 1/3 alone.

 

Remove the shark as it exists now, and replace it with a free mid-level newbie ship (with wb/jav radius). Shark sucks anyway. Make sure the ship enforcer puts them in the shark when they don't own any ships. This requires a few fixes for free ships in the code base that were introduced back when armor went in. Shouldn't be a big deal though.

 

Bring back "private" 5-man frequencies, and 2 public teams. You'll have to recode the private team module from scractch. The existing one was written way before the freqman overhaul, and is totally obsolete.

 

Remove the mini-base and all FR goals. Put two goals in the center, one on the center left, one on the center right (better yet, transwarp entrances leading to self contained goals). Make the goal rewards *very* decent. Ball game is something like first public team to 11 goals wins (or whatever. point is it has a definite end, lasting an average of 15 minutes). Then, this is the important part, the ball game doesn't restart for 30-60 minutes. Might be a good idea to put a check in the flag game module so that the flag game win timer is stopped during a ball game. Alternatively, the flag game could be totally reset when the ball game starts (rewarding teams based on the current flag distribution). Think of this like mandatory centering 25% of the time.

 

This would give the zone a bit of a schizoid flavor, but it'd help draw the newbies in.

 

EDIT: this isn't an edict passed down from on high. These are my thoughts on fixing the "newbie" problem, nothing more.

[spidernl]

Yeah, I was planning on making a more substantial and worthwhile item pool for newbies to pick from. Could be achieved by lowering the experience requirements on a portion of the items. I've already worked towards this more subtly before by making Reinforcement an item with a role, rather than just a bad version of a normal item.

 

A complete 'reset' to 0 experience of a large number of items might be unneccessary if the shark is modified to be a starting ship. If I recall correctly, this role for the shark was already suggested long ago.

 

Private frequencies are on my todo list, but there's more on that as well. It'll happen eventually. They'll probably not be allowed to flag, though.

 

As for balling, I'm not really sure if letting it 'interfere' with flagging as a seperate game will be fun. The current system, with a few tweaks to prevent 'camping' (or at least make it a lot more difficult) seems to already do its job, as I see a lot of flaggames start when the jackpot hits a certain amount. Scoring just needs a bit more "newbie favouring" so they have a 'job'. Seeing as the shark is already set up to have a long ball-hold-time, making it the newbie ship will go well with this.

FR goals have already been gone for about 2 weeks.

[Dr Brain]

The shark was a free ship many moons ago. The code is all there (ship buy == 0 && ship sell == 0), but it doesn't play nice with the spawner because of global properties (added to allow armor). A few if statements in the right places would clear it up.

 

There used to be balling like I'm suggesting, but it meant that the flag games just never happened. So I removed balling for a long, long time and only let Arnk bring it back on the condition that it would suck (more or less). Anyway, this means I know it's possible to have a really great balling game, but it really can only happen at the expense of the flag game. So I guess the trick is to get it to nicely switch between the two.

 

An added bonus is that when the established teams switch from balling to flagging the vets on the team can help the newbies on the team understand what's going on.

[spidernl]

Keeping the balling game in the minibase and simply "locking down" the minibase (this is easy enough if there are periodic 'kill sequences', all I have to do is make these occur constantly) whenever flaggames start (or the jackpot hits a certain amount) would do the trick, I think.

 

Balling is already significantly more rewarding in terms of cash-per-time than balling in flagrooms was, right now.

[Corey]

Balling (the way it is now) is helping flag games start very well, there is an idea I had with the new system. Once the jackpot reaches a certain amount, say 10k, the flags would be moved to a random base, either in the flag room, or scattered throughout the sector. A message would appear stating "the flags have been shifted to sector (whatever)".

Obviously the flags wouldn't be shifted if there were already flags dropped in a flagroom, or if the flags were all in 1/2 sectors.

[spidernl]

Well, I do agree that the 'chore' of gathering flags delays flaggames from time to time, so this might be useful for a flaggame quickstart.

[Corey]

Yeah, I find that's one of the main problems right now, It's that no one wants to bring 3 loads of flags to a base. Also, if there is already a flag locator, when the command ?flag is used, it should show the co-ord's of the flags as well. Like the staff ?flaginfo command.

[toxic_intruder]

The Almighty Brain has spoken. Let it be done.

 

So, if there are going to be self contained flagging areas, can there be a self contained center safe too? Where you get it of safe by warpy things

[spidernl]

So people can't 'safelame' by quickly running into safe? I wouldn't mind that.

[Corey]

Edit nvm lol Edited October 27, 2011 by Corey

[toxic_intruder]

Edit nvm lol

Edited by Corey, Today, 04:56 PM.

 

I really want to see what was before the edit now.

Edited October 28, 2011 by toxic_intruder

[Corey]

You will never know. hahaha

[kevinz000]

is this topic dead?

i want flashbangs

[toxic_intruder]

They're not coming.

[kevinz000]

get this topic alive already