Fortress tie breaking

[MaZuffeR]

First I'd like to say that I don't think the 1v1 fights are a problem. I enjoy watching them, not as much as playing them, but still.

interesting ideas posited
but most clutter the general minimal design...

I definitely agree with 2020 on this.

Don't for get my very simplicistic idea (requires some ugly gGame hacking or zonesv2): Have the winzone give only half as many points as conquering the enemy zone/being the last team alive. Maybe that would make less people complain if someone uses it.

I like this idea very much, but I think Rain is right, most people wont take it anyway.
Maybe not half of the points, maybe just an "end round" zone that doesn't give any points. Players can opt to take the zone if they think they will lose, but not gain any points by doing so.

Let's analyze the possibilities one attacker has against one defender (many attackers is less of a problem, they can squeeze from several sides if a false sense of honor or the free points for the defender or other considerations rule out a hole attack):
1. he can try to push the defender away or squeeze him, sumo style. The defender has the clear advantage here of already being in the position he needs to hold, so this takes time, effort and risk.
2. he can try to squeeze through the gap, possibly killing the defender and at least reversing the situation.
3. he can move about threateningly, pretending to plan 2., hoping the defender will make a mistake and die.

Just want to point out that these strategies don't exclude each other, good attackers do two or all three at the same time. Or you could say that 3 isn't really a strategy, just a less aggressive version of 2 since the attacker will take the zone if the gap is big enough.

It has been suggested to remove or reduce the tail shrink setting; that makes defense harder. Unfortunately, that means the defender is more likely to screw up on his own, making 3 a better strategy. Strategy 2 gets easier, too, since the defender will have to leave a larger gap again.

Also makes strategy 1 more effective since it'll be riskier for the defender to follow his own tail as closely as he can do with tail shrink.

[Rain]

there are some fortress server up. what about to try all these different settings in there? i can set up °°ps arena and 2020's (if he agrees) with 2 different style of fortress.

[2020]

sure
rain

the trick is
to get enough players on the same server at the same time
to test out the settings

[Rain]

/me thinks 2020 is a graphomane

[Lucifer]

Yeah, lots of good stuff. The 1v1 fights are only a problem when you have, say, an attacker that's really wussy. You could easily sit for along time waiting for the attacker to commit himself to an attack and either lose...or win.

Ironically, we had the same problem with two guys in my fencing class a month ago. Neither would commit to an attack, so no decisive action was taken. Their bout lasted 25 minutes (tournament bouts up to 5 points are also timed at 8 minutes, but in class we just play to 5 points) One of them has since figured out that it's nearly impossible to win without some amount of assertiveness...

I don't know if the two zones moving towards each other in the center will be better than waht we have now, but it will break up the worthless 1 v 1 fights while still retaining the wonderful 1 v 1 fights that we all enjoy playing *and* watching. It also adds new strategies, making the front of the zone slightly less valuable than being inside the zone. Defense will need more coordination, and will generally have to work harder.

[ed]

If I'm defence against 1 attacker I will always take it to sumo, give him half the zone and take it from there. Battles are much more fun to play and watch, and usually over quicker too.
So, how about, after n seconds of only 2 players left the tails momentarily shrink to 0, then grow again back to 400, this will set the scene for a sumo style battle to take place. The attacker will have the slight advantage as he is not forced to stay in the defenders zone, but then he should have the advantage, his team has earned it.
After n seconds of this, if it's still not over, I dunno, take rubber away or something, ensure skill rules supreme, yet it's still fun.

[2020]

played on the huge shrink
absurd
and played on the tiny shrink
and it was good...
no idea if this will prevent protracted 1v1's though

simple solution though

[Z-Man]

Thought about this some more. I think 2020 and others are right when they discourage game physics changes. It's not that much of a problem. I personally like the moving zones, but it would be a different game and not really solve the problem. I don't really like the lowered wall shrink, it feels unnatural now. wrlts half score for the winzone wouldn't rehabilitate the winzone.

So I'm thinking, if we can't change the physics, maybe we can change the scoring to give players the right signals? If a quick attack can be given a score bonus over a slow attack and of course a successful attack given more points than an unsuccessful one, this may work. Only, how could we tell the various cases apart? Whether a victory was a successful attack or defense can be seen from the zone touch history. If the round ends with a zone conquest, it was an attack victory. If not, but the winners' zone was touched by an owner recently, it's a defense victory, otherwise an attack victory again where the defender was killed. But how long did an attack take? Specifically, when did it start? Would the death time of the next-to-last defender or the last time the attackers' zone was touched by anyone (whatever came later) be a good indication? We don't want to give very quick victories a lower bonus than a long drawn battle that ends with a quick attack, so I'd say the round start should be the reference time.

So what I'm proposing is this scoring change:
- If the round ends in zone conquest, the winning team is labeled the attackers, the others the defenders.
- If the round ends with one team eliminated, the team whose zone was touched last are the defenders, the others the attackers. In the unlikely case that no zone was touched recently at all, nobody is labled attackers and nothing further gets done.
- No matter what the round outcome was, give the attackers bonus points; more points for an early round end, less points for a later round end. Even if they failed, they deserve credit for trying to end things fast and managing it to be the attackers in the first place.

[2020]

as long as it is clear to the players what the points are at the end of a round
rather than having to wait and deduce who gets what score...
i guess what you are suggesting might work...
i think i need some simple examples and some concrete scores...

however
does this solve the protracted 1v1 situation
which i think is the only problem

[Rain]

it could be easier.
conquering the zone gives 10 points. you start from 10 points (edit: or maybe 12) and decrease of 1 every 30 seconds, at 300 round ends, if no zone has been conquered and at least one player per team is alive, it is tie.

edit: same as i wrote about other scoring.

[Lucifer]

Heh, right of way comes to arma.

Um, except I don't think it solves the protracted 1 v 1 problem. In the case of a player lacking assertiveness (and therefore not committing to an attack, even if he's already walked across the grid to the other fortress), he's still going to play in his wussy way, and justify being wussy about it by "well, getting less bonus is better than not getting a bonus at all".

If it's two players who both want the other to attack, it might solve the problem if, upon becoming 1v1, a center message is shown that says who should attack and who should defend.

I'm partial to the solution that requires no code changes, just use a massive death zone that appears after either at a fixed time or at a time after the extra 2 v 1 player died that's considered a reasonable general-purpose interval during which someone should attack. (Some experimenting will be needed for anything that's not absolute from round start)

An alternate solution that also requires no code changes is to just put two death zones outside the arena that grow and after about 5 minutes kill both defenders. This has the added problem of closing the back as well for some of that time. If the defenders don't stay and die, they go out into the grid to fight each other and the fortresses themselves no longer matter (and can't be conquered anyway).

I'd just as soon do timed rounds, though, via death zone. While you lose the really good, long fights, you get added emphasis on teamwork. In my experience, it's usually a team falure if the round is left to 1 v 1, and it's a failure on both sides, so the both teams should suffer together for the problem existing in the first place. The number of instances where the round is left at 1 v 1 for good reasons are far fewer, in my subjective experience.

[Z-Man]

"well, getting less bonus is better than not getting a bonus at all".

I guess I haven't made myself clear enough here. The "Fast attack" bonus goes to the attacking team no matter whether the attack is successful or not. As the attack bonus function, let's pick the following as an example: during the first two minutes, it is 8 points. After two minutes, it decreases by 1 every 20 seconds until it reaches 0 after 4:20 total round time (the first decrease already comes exactly at 2:00).

Team blue manages to get a rush attack through, overwhelming gold's defense in a matter of seconds. On top of the 10 round win points, team blue gets 8 bonus attack points.

After a somewhat long battle (3:30 round time), team gold manages to take blue's zone while an attack on gold's side is still going on. Gold gets 10 round win points and 3 attack bonus points.

Blue's defense manages to wipe out all of gold's offense and kills gold's last remaining defender at 2:50 round time. Blue gets 10 points for winning and 5 attack bonus points.

Gold kills all of blue's attackers, but all of gold's attackers get eliminated by blue's defense at 2:50 round time. Blue gets 10 points for winning, but gold still gets 5 points as attack bonus.

Blue's wussy only left attacker only finds the heart to try an insertion at 4:10 and fails: gold get 10 points for winning, and blue gets a meager 1 attack bonus point.

The next round, same situation, but Blue's wussy attacker is less wussy and makes his move at 2:30, still getting killed, of course: 10 points for gold, 6 points for blue for trying hard.

Had the attack in the last example succeeded, it would have been 16 points total for blue. So a quick attack is favored over a slow attack, and a successful attack over an unsuccessful one.

I think Lucifer's nuke zone still needs to be added here, because logically, after 4:20 round time, the extra attack incentive is gone completely; after five minutes, it would be a good time to nuke. The nuke alone would make it a sound strategical decision for a less skilled attacker to just wait it out; better to get both players nuked than donating 12 points to the defender. Of course, the same can still happen with the scoring modification for a very wussy attacker, unless we elevate the attack bonus over the regular win score; then the best choice for the attacker who knows he can't succeed would be to suicide immediately, giving 10 points to the defender and 10+x to his team, better than no points for everyone. An attacker who thinks he might succeed would still be pushed to attack immediately, unless x is too large.

I experimented with growing death zones a bit, it just does not feel right. They block too much of the playing field before they get effective. I've got a setup that may technically work well: totally six zones, three on the left side, three on the right, one in every grid corner, and one on each side's center. They grow in a way that makes the last two points you can survive on the frontmost point of each zone, a point well reachable both by a defender and an attacker. That's IMHO better than having the last spot in the center field, it would take too long for the zones to grow from the point where they are touching the fortresses to the point where they would kill everyone. But it's still too invasive, I think.

Rain: the easier suggestion won't work, it doesn't give the wussy attacker any extra incentive to attack. If I know my attack has a 80% chance of failing, it is never a good idea to attack unless I get a bonus for the attempt alone.

[Lucifer]

Well, I think what you're proposing is right of way, so I'll give a short discussion and link to the wiki pages that talk about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foil_%28fencing%29 <--- general foil discussion

Right of way

Basically, it works like this. When you extend your arm to strike, you are given the right of way. That means that if you hit your opponent with a valid touch, you get a point. If your opponent hits you, it doesn't count. So say me and z-man are fencing. I extend my arm (which means I stick my sword out and am likely going to lunge), if z-man then lunges and hits me, it doesn't count. If I do this and then attack him, and he parries me, he automatically gets the right of way. If I continue trying to stick hiim and he sticks me, he gets the point.

The idea is that with foil fencing, you're not fighting for real, you're practicing for a real fight, and in a real fight with real swords where someone gets killed, you'd *never* attack someone who's already extended and ready to lunge. You might hit him, but chances are you'll get yourself impaled doing so. So the right of way rules are a way to simulate an actual combat situation without requiring actual combat and force players to think about their tactics like they would if their lives were really on the line.

Ok, that said, that's what I think you're doing, and I'd add to it a bit. Consider an attack to be over as soon as the enemy's zone is untouched for some period of time, say 2 seconds. Then the function resets to a lower maximum and the next team to initiate an attack gets the next bonus. The reward, then, isn't just for the first team to initiate an attack, it's also for the team who can regroup quicker and remise.

So it would work like this:

Blue team sneaks someone down the middle who goes into the zone and sumos hard, then dies. Blue gets an 8 point bonus, the function resets. 15 seconds later, Gold manages to break into blue's zone, and gets a 6 point bonus, but fights hard for the zone and stays in it the remainder of the round. So the function doesn't reset, gold holds the right of way. Meanwhile, blue's remaining attackers hole gold's defense, kill the goalie, and conquer the zone, earning the 10 points for the round win. Blue gets 18 points for the round plus kills, Gold gets 6 plus kills.

Remember, the idea is to take it and hold it. Even if you can't conquer the zone, you still deprive your opponent of the chance to take the right of way. If you lose the right of way while your opponent is inside your zone, then they automatically get it (and the bonus points that go with it).

The comparison to fencing isn't exact, though, because in fencing you can't attack and defend at the same time, so I wouldn't want to push it too far.

In the end, I'm still unconvinced if it'll solve the problem of 1 v 1 stalemates. The nuke zone doesn't solve it either, it ignores the current grid situation. The nuke zone + right of way does earn you some points. A weak attacker that knows his team has already racked up 15 bonus points while his opponent has only gotten 4 would do his team better by staying put and waiting for the nuke. The other caveat is that I think it would encourage more ball-hogging and less defense, because people would think they want to take the right of way rather than play defense and deny right of way to their opponents.

I think it could promote more competitive playing, and the 100 point limit will probably need to be increased to achieve comparable match times, and I'd be interested in seeing how it works out, even if I don't think it'll solve the problem. Maybe after people get it and start playing with the system they'll find ways to apply it to solve the problem.

[2020]

i like this right of way idea
luci
though it sounds like a completely different thing...
i am interested in exploring it...

!
out of all the ideas presented
one idea stood out
!
death zone starting in the centre of the zones
!
that's it
!
just think about it...
and see what comes up...

(i suspect something like
when the deathzone becomes the same size at the zone
round over and split 5-5 tie : )

[Rain]

"well, getting less bonus is better than not getting a bonus at all"

Rain: the easier suggestion won't work, it doesn't give the wussy attacker any extra incentive to attack. If I know my attack has a 80% chance of failing, it is never a good idea to attack unless I get a bonus for the attempt alone.

same as i wrote about other scoring

here what i mean:

- kill a enemy gives no points to the killer and -1 to the victim team
- kill a teammate 2 times in the same match auto-generate a poll
- no player is allowed to start a poll
- run time of a round is T:200 (200 seconds)

- conquering the zone actually gives 10 points. you start from 10 points (edit: or maybe 12) and decrease of 1 every 30 seconds, at 300 round ends

- a round ended with no zone conquered is declared tie and gives -3 points to each team
- match ends after 10 rounds, wins the team who reach more points, if points are the same the match is declared tie.

that is it.
both, defender and attacker are interested to win the round and not get the tie. both teams are interested to win as soon as possible.