Security undertands my idea and so does trickster. The suggestion that Candles made is too complex and obviously is not feasible. However, a simple arithmetic calculation in 5-6 areas that depends on KDR(or variant (K+D)/D), total time played, vehicles destroyed per wages spent, a bunch of other categories, with simple mathematical equations which have a limit of say 0.05 (and the majority would be at 0.01-0.04) Once again you guys are overcomplicating the issue, there is no need for something far fetched to make a perfect autobalance. This is simply to aid the noobs in the game in normal conditions (14+ players) without taking away too much from how the game is right now
Easiest way to auto-balance: Parse player names for guild tags, distribute players with identical tags equally to both teams.
Start with MEG, the meta clan. I'm pretty sure every single clan in empires has now fallen under MEG control.
Team balance solution : disable the players ability to select team altogether. Make players just start on a team, have their steamid saved to the server so they can't just rejoin until they end up on the other team (but allow teamswitching when there's a difference of 2 or more between okayercounts)
Herp derp, so how do you assemble those teams? The variance in player ability is absurd. You'd be stacking too often.
Just through random chance, the game is about competing against other players, what's the point in doing a load of bullshit to make sure teams aren't "stacked". And for completely new players have a server variable that can give steamid's a grace period (just tag new steamid's for X days and evenly distribute these "noob" tags.)
So? It's the best system by far that I've ever seen used. It completely prevents intentional stacking (which is pretty much the only kind, it might not be coordinated stacking, but it's too often I see 10 people in spec before a round just waiting to join BE or whatever.)
You can stack with auto assign. Anyone who's been playing the game for more than a few months or has been in this conversation before should know this by now. And I already can tell you where this is going to go if you just say to disable Spec and force-join on connection.
There is really no good way of balancing the fact that people stack teams. Nevertheless, I honestly think some sort of 'skill' system should be developed. And by skill, I mean it very loosely.
With current player count the best way to avoid stacking is to invite more people in game. The more people are playing the more things naturally even themselves out. With so few people playing sometimes stacking is unavoidable - simply having a commander could be considered stacking in 50% of the games that get played now. Stacking isn't the problem it used to be, I rarely see people power playing and rolling the opposition game after game. The players that could (and did) hang around in spec and join only for 5 minutes of a round to rush the comm don't anymore. The overwhelming majority of people either accept the pace of the matches as they are and choose a secondary objective (practise mortar skills, defend an area, hold these 3 refineries) or they leave in frustration. I'm not saying people don't comm rush as a tactic, I'm just saying that there aren't hordes of mean old vets who are vastly more skilled than the average player waiting in spec just to end the game prematurely at their whim.
I enjoy controling a round much more, than steamrolling the enemy. Drag out the game, make it last 40 mins or longer, I think this is the best way to seed up the server.
You're right that teams are often pretty balanced. The bigger problem that I often see is all of the com-worthy players specing until ~10s to start. By that point, someone like JGF or I will volunteer and eventually get bitched at because we aren't the best coms on the server. Surprisingly, the teams are often fine because all of the noobs join early and then the experienced specs join all at once later on (a lovely by product of specstax). However, if I'm in the CV, I can still manage to ruin a game by fucking up the beginning. I did it yesterday on Forest. I've done it before that. I'm not a hopelessly shitty com, but I'm not consistently good. There are better coms and some of them pub more often than we might think.
