The Fortress

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Lucifer
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Post by Lucifer »

no no no, you see, this "If the hole is made on purpose it's cheap, but if not, fine" is a double-standard. Either using a hole is cheap or it isn't. Make up your mind! But dont' bother me with it, I'll make them, use them, and defend against them. The ability to make a hole is what balances the fact that the defender has quite an advantage over attackers in the first place.
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Lucifer
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Post by Lucifer »

Heh, the more I think about it, the more I think you guys are just whining for no good reason. :)

The people that are complaining about holes are also complaining about winzones, right? Why? Are you such a wuss that you cna only draw a wall around your fortress, but as soon as someone steps in, you can't stop them? If that's not the case, then holes aren't a problem for you, and neither is the winzone, because then when it's 1 v 1, you'll open your zone and fight the person man to man. You know, instead of hiding behind a rock and trying to pick him off.

There's a world of difference between a goalie who can draw an impenetrable wall and a goalie who can trick attackers into crashing against his wall and fight attackers that get through. Seems like y'all are whining because you're the kinds of goalies that can only draw a wall, but can't defend for shit.

Fact is, most of the time, it takes 3-5 attackers to get into my zone. :) It takes so many because the first few get killed, leaving holes, and then the rest of you whiners will walk in. Even then, I think besides myself there are plenty of goalies who'll make a good account. A simple cost analysis shows that the team that requires 3-5 players to take a zone has nothing to brag about....

It's a team server, right? Focusing on single combat puts you and your team at a disadvantage. So please, if you whine about holes and winzones and you join the server onto my team, plees, pretty please, join the other team. I'd like to have team players to play with.
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2020
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strange...

Post by 2020 »

i agree with luci...

though i like playing against you
so i can put your theories to the test
:D
hold the line
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Z-Man
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Post by Z-Man »

Yeah. You're demanding from other players to choose the honorable, more difficult way of playing so you can stick to your own comfortable way of playing. Or open up a mutant server that is just the same, but without holes and the win zone.
Edit: Hey, someone did that! It's called Avalon Fortress. So go there and quit complaining :)

Although I could play the "my server, my kingdom" card, let me explain why there is a win zone on the server.

First, you need to understand one requirement I have: The server has to be compatible at least 0.2.6.0 clients, it's part of the proof of concept. 0.2.6.0 only supports ONE zone configuration, all zones will have the same size and expansion speed. So, from the standard feature set, a growing death zone is out, and a static death zone is just useless. So no deathzone.

Second, I really like the .3 conquest/.2 defend/.1 decay settings of the fortress zones. As long as the game is not one on one, they seem to be a good balance between attack and defense.

Third, if it's one on one, the attacker has the advantage that he can pull back and relax in almost infinite space while the goalie can't, but the goalie has the more important advantage that he's already where he wants to be. In order to win, the attacker has to reverse the situation, he has to be inside the zone and the goalie has to be outside. The attacker can compress, but just as easily, the goalie can expand again, neither has an advantage in the fight for gridsquares of the zone. So without tie-breaker and with my favorite zone conquest settings, the defender has an advantage. Without a tie braker, a smart player will not attack unless he feels superior.

Back to First :) The only technically possible tie braker today is the win zone. Full Stop.

There would be other possible tie breakers discussed here, but they all would require coding and would probably only work on this particular fortress map, so they are not useful for inclusion in an official release, another constraint of the my server: It's just a test server. And then, moving zones are also a no go because of the old client compatibility requirement. Plus, move the defender's zone away from its initial position by more than its radius and the defender has lost automatically. Turning the endgame into a sumo game sounds promising, but is hard to balance: put the ring to far away from the defender, and you may as well use a winzone: whoever is there first will block the other and win easily. Moving the attacker's zone over to the defender's zone will make it too easy for the defender.

I forgot one rambling: if it's one on one, the attacker DESERVES a better chance than the defender. Why? Because his team managed to get him to attack. He's attacking because his team's defense eliminated all attackers. He may even be his team's goalie and managed to eliminate the attackers before the now-defending enemy managed to eliminate his opposition. The attacker's team played better up to that point. He deserves a better chance, but the zone mechanics don't give it.

Another tie braker that sounds good at first: Sudden Death. The first to even touch the enemy zone wins. If it was triggered by the usual win-zone condition, there would be the problem that the attacker would wait for it to be active. That would suck. So it probably needs to be triggered by the player count, as soon as it's down to one, sudden death is active. But then, a two player hole attack would always succeed if it's two on one... It's not easy.

Last bit: Hitting the win zone is hardcoded to give the same score as eliminating all enemies (gGame, no way I'm touching that). So no, unless you want the survival victory to be less valuable than the zone take victory, the win zone victory also has to be just as valuable.
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well said

Post by 2020 »

z-man wrote:... It's called Avalon Fortress. So go there and quit complaining :)
i agree with this
and nearly all of zman's analysis
z-man wrote:Second, I really like the .3 conquest/.2 defend/.1 decay settings of the fortress zones. As long as the game is not one on one, they seem to be a good balance between attack and defense.
could you explain what these .3 .2 and .1 settings are meant to mean...
z-man wrote:Last bit: Hitting the win zone is hardcoded to give the same score as eliminating all enemies (gGame, no way I'm touching that). So no, unless you want the survival victory to be less valuable than the zone take victory, the win zone victory also has to be just as valuable.
... not sure what this means

you mean the endzone victory is determined to be eg 10 points
regardless of whether it is the enemy zone you have been fighting the whole round for
or whether it is the winzone that appears suddenly at the end...
if this is the case, then leave it at 10 i suppose

and by the way...
i am loving the 0.2.8beta4 version i am playing
super fast framerates mean more accurate play
thanks
and i am looking forward to the final 0.2.8
hold the line
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Re: well said

Post by Z-Man »

2020 wrote:could you explain what these .3 .2 and .1 settings are meant to mean...
Sure. The fortress zone has a conquest status, it's a number between zero and one. If it hits one, the fortress is conquered. Every timestep, the fortress counts the number of enemies (e) and friends (f) inside, and increases the conquest status with a rate of e*FORTRESS_CONQUEST_RATE - f*FORTRESS_DEFEND_RATE - FORTRESS_CONQUEST_DECAY_RATE. CONQUEST is on .3, DEFEND on .2 and DECAY on .1.
Example: one attacker, one defender. e=f=1. The change rate is then 1*.3 - 1*.2 -.1 = 0, nothing changes. One attacker can't take the zone from a defender unless he pushes him out.
Another one: two attackers, no defender. e=2, f=0. The rate is 2*.3-0*.2-.1 = .5, that means the conquest status goes from zero to one in two seconds. Two attackers can turn over an undefended zone in two seconds.
~*PsYkO*~

Post by ~*PsYkO*~ »

Hey z-man since you don't like to ban people from the server can we make a poll in this forum asking for fortress players to vote on if a player should be banned (yes/no)?

My idea is this..

If 50% of people vote yes player gets suspended for a week

75% of people player gets suspended for two weeks

90%+ = one month

i dunno what do you all think?
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Lucifer
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Post by Lucifer »

Sure. First player, Psyko. :)
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Post by Z-Man »

You can start votes here any time you like, but as you see, you have to be prepared for counter-votes :) And be prepared for me drawing my own conclusions and act on them, like banning the one who suggested the vote as well. I'm not taking sides in personal feuds.
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Post by wrtlprnft »

I think that's a bad idea since the players here in the forums are only a small part of everyone on fortress...

Why don't you just change your name?
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Post by Z-Man »

I forgot, the PsYkO vs Psyko thing. Heh, I was online a few weeks back when Viper and ViPeR or whatever had a quarrel about who used that name first, it was fun :) I was tempted to join in as V1p3r, but I did not want to miss one of them claiming to be playing Arma for 8 years now with that name...
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Post by Lucifer »

Besides, that requires maintenance. :) I wouldn't do it on my server, heh.
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~*PsYkO*~

Post by ~*PsYkO*~ »

Naw I was thinkign of starting a poll vs that PANTS guy.

As far as I know there are 3 people that use my name.

PsYk0 with a (zero)
Psyko
PsYkO

PsYkO only one that I know that truly goes around acting like a jerk to people (he impersonated fe clan or fe sky, he said shit about xzl/sp clan in fortress erver and last night said some shit to aghost in xzl server)
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2020
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the crucible...

Post by 2020 »

a modern day
virtual version
witch-hunt...
hold the line
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Z-Man
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Post by Z-Man »

PANTS? Just silence him, everyone does that :)

Impersonating others can be considered more serious. When you see it happen, just shout "BUG this is not the true <bla>" and if you don't spam, I'll look at the IPs and think about a ban.
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