Hey look at that, another pug to brighten up your holiday. Where and when, Click me for your local time. December 17th 1900 GMT / 2000 CET / 1400 EST / 1100 PST.Click me for your local time. On Nubs event server. Join the empires vet group for event notices and to be kept up to date on what's happening. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/empvetpug How this works To start off with we will have a 15minute warmup on glycencity at event time start. Just so people can join in. Please join in even if it's a warmup, having 10 people stumble in when we are drafting or even after the draft can be rather disruptive. We will be making the most out of scardybob's new pug plugin. To that end I just need 2 captains. You don't have to command too but be sure to grab yourself a comm(they will basically be your first pick.). You can read that link on how the plugin works but basically 2 people volunteer to be captains by typing !captain, then take turns picking players. After all players are picked then a 15 minute planning time commences so each team can plan accordingly, this can be ended sooner when both captains types !ready. When the captain and team know what they are doing captain just types !ready, when both captains type ready round starts. We will only play one round a map, but we will be keeping teams throughout the event. The plugin should keep track of who's on what team, so this shouldn't be too hard to deal with. Maps At the moment I don't have maps set in stone, you are free to suggest any commander maps you want, stock or custom. City and winter themed maps won out in the other thread, so that's what we will be playing. Glycenplains - Will probably play this, but I need to check on something. Homeland - Need a city map and the other ones are a little small. Yes there's streets but homeland generally plays better. Snowbound - This is the updated version so we will be playing it. Commandergrad - Can't have a city pug without best city map. King - This feels like the perfect map but it has a bad habit of crashing. If we do see it at all it will be at the end of the pug. Again it's not set in stone, you're free to make suggestions. I'll update this on Friday with a final map list and order. About passwords Because we are using a plugin that can delay round start and force people to whatever team they are suppose to be on there will be no password. I hope you all really show any newer player what empires is really all about so they too can up their empire's game play.
The map list is a bit funky looking but I really just need to check on some things. There was some I kinda wanted to put in but they were either played at the previous pug(frozensummit), or a little on the small side(ballast). King is more of in case people still hold interest after 4 maps, or they were short rounds. If you have opinions I would like to hear them. I have to say after looking at the map list we don't have many bigger city maps, usually it's just some small section of the map that has some buildings.
Post this on the Official Empires steam group if you can, maybe people will check it and come back to play?
I'm pretty sure King still crashes servers (ask creeper) and playing it as a last map is not such a good idea because of the size. In anticipation of many players and therefore potential crash we should probably reduce the maximum of tanks to something like 16 and maybe even max players to 56.
"really show new players what empires is about" Time to work on my flame game boys anyway who's captain Ill volunteer to captain
Well like I said, I'm not sure if king is going to be played. The reason it is last map is because it might crash the server, so if it does that's fine because the pug was going to end anyway. I only expect to play it if the previous rounds were short and we still have 50+players on the server. The server is going to have the fix that caused the server to crash last pug. There should be less problems on that end. Server will most likely be 62-64(I can't remember the exact amount he said). I might ask to limit max vehicle amount to 16 though, less for performance and more because the vehicle spam is awful in late high pop games. I would have like to simply reduce res income in some way but I don't want to mess with too many things, I feel like we should play one more standard game with the pug plugin to make sure it's working fine. Also paradox, I would like to see someone else be captain if they want it because you did act as captain last time, same goes for mr x. If no one else volunteers, or they are woefully inexperienced with empires and the player base, you'll get captain.
All good points, and I do love King, so I'm looking forward to it. We haven't had a PUG in a long time so I hope the usual people will show up for some good Empires.
Did King get fixed? Doesn't it like always crash the server by about the time you get to heavies because of entity limit or something.
As far as I know king is the same as it ever was. I have seen rounds finished on it though, always a chance it won't crash.
I don't think it was Entity limit crashing it anymore, I think it has something to do with the update compatibility. It crashed pretty early last time we played it. But I'm just guessing, need to ask creeper, or trickster, somebody who has actual knowledge. We could always get like 10 people together on a server with crash dumps on and try to find and fix the issue. I'd say it's worth it to bring such a great map back.
Aight. Also I feel like its important for you to be assertive in the pug when shit hits the fan. Examples: Everyone talking when people are picking. -> mute everyone ASAP instead of waiting for another admin to step in for you 2 captains picking and one of them is almost purposefully not picking the best team-> ruins the game because of stacks kick that bitch out asap Someones a dick-> insta kick the fool If this is going to succeed people are going to have to step in instantly so no mayhem follows
I had trouble with that because I didn't know the commands for several things, like mute players or unmute specific players. I also kept forgetting things like extend vote time. Thankfully a lot of these are options in the admin menu now, so it shouldn't take me forever to do things like that. The other problem is I tend to have a bunch of chats going on in the background, I mean steam chats, so it made it hard for me to effectively communicate with people not just in game but the people who are helping things when something goes wrong, like creeper. I'll say it now, I am awful at multitasking, it's a very good reason why I'm bad at commanding(and yet I end up in the cv a lot ). I don't have a good solution to this, beyond gitgud, so this is always gonna be a bit of a struggle for me. Like I said, I'm only giving a captain position to people who I know can effectively pick the right people. You are right it's a bit too important to just give to whoever, no one wants to fight against a stacked team for several rounds in a row. If we were picking people ahead of time I would have allowed nearly anyone, but that's just because I can guide them to better choices while they pick. The pug plugin is happening on the spot and we really can't make people wait 20 minutes to play, like what happened last pug.
Everyone should understand how hard it is to organise and administrate at the same time. In that regard you should make sure you have at least a couple of people dedicated to administration so you don't have to keep as much of an eye on it. Silencing everyone and using all-talk for the first few minutes in order to explain what's going to happen is always a good idea. However in the picking phase all-talk should be off so captains can discuss with their teams. I usually pick the squad leaders and then let them decide who they want on their squads. Basically designated positions for a successful PUG should be: 1x Organiser (obviously) 2x Dedicated Admins, who cannot be captains, commanders or squadleaders 2x Captains 2x Commanders
Has anyone been saying this stuff on the steam groups or anything? I feel like it's gonna be rather low attendance since not that many people check the forums if it's not spammed on the steam groups.
There's been events and announcements on the pug group linked in the first post. Most of the older vets who would join in such things are in that group. I did intend to make a couple of announcements on the newer pug group, because it probably has some of the more current active users, but I keep thinking I already done it when I haven't. There's no reason to keep spamming groups during the week though, most find it annoying and most don't either care or know if they can even play til the day of the event. I wouldn't worry too much about pop though, last pug had nearly 60 players on the server til it crashed on the first map I think, then it dwindled down to like 50ish. Crashes always kill pop a bit, can't do nothing about that though. I find that post funny mr x because I tend to have to fill in all those positions at some point. One of the key things is if you are organizing, at least from my experience, you have to be willing and able to fill in any position because chances are good no one wants to do one of those parts. Especially the commander bit, most don't want to command more then 2 maps in a pug, it's exhausting after all.
