The Energon Pub

(I address you folks directly, but this is open to all bots to comment on.)

I'm looking to start up some more of the old-style forum games here again. I know a few others are as well and having chatted to Burn, he's given me the go ahead to get planning.

It's your factions turn to be outnumbered these days, so I'm looking at ways to even the odds for you guys in the hope it'll get a few more of your kin to dive in and join.

My initial idea involves weighting the scores by how much you are outnumbered by (so 5 bots vs 10 cons would give you all a 50% score bonus) but I'm not a maths expert so I'm not sure that would work properly.

Would this help make it feel fairer to you, or is there anything you guys would like to see or suggest that would make it more fun for the bots?

I don't mind being outnumbered. There's a certain pride when my bots still do well even when we lose.

Maybe instead of a percentage, we take the top participants in each match?

Say 3 participating bots enter a mission, but 6 participating cons enter. Take the top 3 bots scores and top 3 cons scores. Just an idea that cuts out the math.

I miss the days of the cons being outnumbered at low levels, speed and avoid were match winners back then.

Maths-wise weighting is in theory pretty easy.
Both armies numbers are counted and the difference converted into a percentage, which is then added to the smaller teams score.
(It would be explained in full before it was implemented though to ensure full transparency)

Only scoring the top 3 may also work, but in hunting style games it may work against you as well.

You not so keen on the weighting idea?

Again, I'm ok at maths, but so many here as better at it than I And all ideas are welcome, I just know I'll get a load from the cons anyway

Oh I'm ok with it, but my sleep deprived brain took one look at doing math and was all like NOPE FIND A ANOTHER SOLUTION

Grab some coffee dude. Please feel free to encourage any others who have suggestions to join in, I can't see Iacon these days so can't keep up with the ideas there and these games are for both sides.

What about assigning score bonuses based on the level of the killed bot? You could have several different level brackets (0-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-11) and then depending on which bracket your kill falls in determines your bonus. Perhaps, if you defeat someone in a bracket higher than yours, you get double points for that kill; likewise, if you kill someone in a bracket lower than yours, you'd get half points. That might make it a little easier for the lower levels to keep pace with the high levels.

It might be a little more work for those involved, and we all know how we feel about that...

Oh, I like that. I'll have to have a think about ways to implement it, as my concern would be the work involved to score it.

Do you think it would be fair for us to ask you to track your own 'points'? Its often difficult for organisers to keep up with scoring and running at the same time.

Psychout wrote:Oh, I like that. I'll have to have a think about ways to implement it, as my concern would be the work involved to score it.

Do you think it would be fair for us to ask you to track your own 'points'? Its often difficult for organisers to keep up with scoring and running at the same time.

Yeah, I think that would have to be a given for each player to keep their own score. We could set it where in each person's kill claim post they organize their kills by the level bracket - that way calculating points is a more simple matter.

That as a format would work very well for collection tourneys.

Sounders has offered to plan another scavenger hunt and if she wanted to, weighting the number of 'items' collected from each kill then brackets like that could come in very handy.

Likewise for alt hunts, a higher level alt could count for more towards the target total and so on.

Yea, the scoring would be the difficult part, but only if it's done all at once (lesson learned with my current project: work through it as the event is happening not all at once at the end. Gonna look nice, though, I hope.)

A question for you, Psych. How were tournaments scored in older events? Was it based on kill count, xp, or a customized algorithm based on performance per battle? Based on your answer earlier in the thread regarding score counts being converted to percentages, is that a new idea or something that has typically been done before when the 'Cons were outnumbered?

Dragonslayer wrote:

Psychout wrote:Oh, I like that. I'll have to have a think about ways to implement it, as my concern would be the work involved to score it.

Do you think it would be fair for us to ask you to track your own 'points'? Its often difficult for organisers to keep up with scoring and running at the same time.

Yeah, I think that would have to be a given for each player to keep their own score. We could set it where in each person's kill claim post they organize their kills by the level bracket - that way calculating points is a more simple matter.

I agree with this, wholeheartedly. It's not difficult to do and would have the potential of saving any organizers a lot of time. =)

Psychout wrote:I miss the days of the cons being outnumbered at low levels, speed and avoid were match winners back then.

Yep XD This! Also, I agree with you, Ashe. Being outnumbered really doesn't bother me. The way I see it, I might not win the fights often, but when my s walk out of missions in the middle or close to the top of the list in XP it still feels like a victory

Scoring and technicalities aside, I'm extremely excited for this! It'd be really nice to have forum games here, again! I've only really read what they used to be like and have asked around about the general enthusiasm they created to get an idea of what the game was like in its prime, being very new to this community. Trying to bring a piece of that back would be awesome!

This is why we had a minimum. Each mission had to have 2 of each side to make it a valid mission. Being the way it is, we might think about making it 3. Then the outcome of the mission is what it is. No points really needed.

Wingz wrote:A question for you, Psych. How were tournaments scored in older events? Was it based on kill count, xp, or a customized algorithm based on performance per battle?

Previous tourneys were almost always done on kills. Alt/Scavenger hunts were counted by how many kills on specific targets, and War Tourneys were done the same way as BB ran your awesome little battle earlier (and I don't know enough about algorithms for me to do anything useful with them. )

Wingz wrote:Based on your answer earlier in the thread regarding score counts being converted to percentages, is that a new idea or something that has typically been done before when the 'Cons were outnumbered?

Its been discussed but we've never had to use it, the outnumbering has never been this much of an issue before.

10-15 ish years ago there were always huge swarms of bots and far less cons in the general missions, but on the forum things were always much more even (we cons love talking) and so we often got a similar amount of tourney entrants despite the overwhelming numbers against us in the trenches. Unfortunately, you don't even have that these days.

Wingz wrote:

Dragonslayer wrote:

Psychout wrote:Oh, I like that. I'll have to have a think about ways to implement it, as my concern would be the work involved to score it.

Do you think it would be fair for us to ask you to track your own 'points'? Its often difficult for organisers to keep up with scoring and running at the same time.

Yeah, I think that would have to be a given for each player to keep their own score. We could set it where in each person's kill claim post they organize their kills by the level bracket - that way calculating points is a more simple matter.

I agree with this, wholeheartedly. It's not difficult to do and would have the potential of saving any organizers a lot of time. =)

The sentiment of everyone counting their own, or the brackets idea Dragonslayer suggested? Either way the idea has merit.

Wingz wrote:Scoring and technicalities aside, I'm extremely excited for this!

Glad to hear it, think you can infect a few other bots with that enthusiasm?

Sustain wrote:This is why we had a minimum. Each mission had to have 2 of each side to make it a valid mission. Being the way it is, we might think about making it 3. Then the outcome of the mission is what it is. No points really needed.

This is also a great point, but I hear that level 1 missions with
2+ bots in them at level 1 is pretty rare. Is that still the case?

Sustain wrote:This is why we had a minimum. Each mission had to have 2 of each side to make it a valid mission. Being the way it is, we might think about making it 3. Then the outcome of the mission is what it is. No points really needed.

Yeah, that would solve some issues. The problem that I see is that I don't often have two other Bots in missions with me at the level 2-3 range right now. The 1-11 missions can get that many with a fair amount of consistency. It's just a matter of timing, I think. If all the Autobot players that are active on the boards right now were active in missions at the same time, it'd be alright. But there are a lot of times when either I'm the only Bot in a mission or I might have one other with me. So maybe keeping a minimum of 2 TFs for a mission to count is the way to go for now and then we can bump it up if/when the player base rises up a bit.

EDIT: A bit of evidence on this point - 1 Bot & 3 Cons, another 1v3, here's a 1v2

Dragonslayer wrote:

Sustain wrote:This is why we had a minimum. Each mission had to have 2 of each side to make it a valid mission. Being the way it is, we might think about making it 3. Then the outcome of the mission is what it is. No points really needed.

Yeah, that would solve some issues. The problem that I see is that I don't often have two other Bots in missions with me at the level 2-3 range right now. The 1-11 missions can get that many with a fair amount of consistency. It's just a matter of timing, I think. If all the Autobot players that are active on the boards right now were active in missions at the same time, it'd be alright. But there are a lot of times when either I'm the only Bot in a mission or I might have one other with me. So maybe keeping a minimum of 2 TFs for a mission to count is the way to go for now and then we can bump it up if/when the player base rises up a bit.

I've been thinking if the numbers are that bad, then perhaps, at that level we may think about giving the Automatic win to the Autobots when they show up, the heavy numbered Decepticons would then have to beat the bots to win the point.