In case the number of players on the teams is different by lets say n (=3,4...) and you die on the team with more players, you cannot respawn instantly because you have to wait until one of your teammates gets killed so that the total number of active players on the team with more players is equal to the number of active players on the team with less players. The number n could be set as server cvar. In case you are on the "stacked" team you can either wait for the next spawn, or just switch the team in order to play immediatly. Stacking (at least by player number) would be no longer possible. Moreover the players will notice when games are stacked. Which is in my oppinion currently the main problem about stacked games. In addition one could introduce a number m > n at which the team with less players automatically loses after a certain amount of time T has passed including an on screen countdown stating that fact. This way totally stacked games will end very quickly if nobody feels responsible to balance the teams. Moreover, kill farming without even trying to end the game (which is done over and over nowadays) gets shut down hard.
This sounds boring. What if I have security or Nihia on my team, that means I never get to spawn. What if nobody dies in 30 minutes, are we going to have teammembers raging on each other because nobody dies now? Oh Empires.. Also, stacking doesn't really care about numbers, it's the higher skill of one team that causes stacking to be painful.
Lord, I guess its great fun for you to play 5 vs 10 and just being kill farmed all the time for like 30 min. Or its great fun to kill farm for 30 min against a team which was down and out after 5min. I consider any game as boring which is already decided but didnt end already because some guys want to have "some fun" torturering the players on the other team. The answer that teams are not balanced because players skills can be very different in any case doesnt help here at all, because its just like saying: In this special case it doesnt work, so dont do anything at all. In fact even in this case it will work, because any player who is unhappy with current teams (skill stack) can join spec. I agree, if you dont want to care about stacking at all because your fun is more important then this suggestion sounds quite boring. But then you should always remember that you cannot play empires alone and tortuering other players will not increase the number of players in the next game.
If it worked with like a +2 player stack( say 9v7 or 13v11) This sounds pretty useful. The not being able to spawn part. I know there was a couple of times where I was playing on a stacked team and didn't notice til I brought up the scoreboard or someone said something, if I had know sooner I would have switched. (Assuming I am not comm at the time.) If it is just 1 more person, like 5v4 or 10v11 it shouldn't kick in. I do admit 4v4 and under can suck if teams aren't even, but at such low player counts I feel like you would have a hard time seeding servers if 1 person couldn't spawn for a set amount of time. I don't know how I feel about the timer thing, I feel like if you introduced the wait to spawn thing it would sort itself out.
Screw not being able to spawn. I say spawn with 80% reduced health/ammo/calc juice for everyone on over buffed team till teams are evened. If its really bad... make the VF perma sabbed.
....keep it as-is? I'd also like to see the "move to spec if idle" plugin that is osmetimes present on TF2 servers and such, where you get moved out of the team if you don't do anything for a set amount of time. That's my only gripe, really - BlueSky going afk for twenty minutes always gets me.
So then what happens at end of round when one team goes to spec then the winning team suddenly can't spawn anymore. This is officially the worst idea I have ever read posted on this forum. Sitka or Franklin can not even hold a match let alone a candle to the worstness of this idea.
Wait what? Oh lol, I forgot Empires lacks the simple balancing plugins of most other games, where if one team has like 2 more people you have to join the other. I guess the biggest problem is autobalance could autobalance your comm away. On the other hand, if you had a system that picked a very low number (like 1-5) that's probably not going to be the comm....well, hopefully. Or you could make some kinda comm protection...bleh, sounds complicated even as I suggest it...
There is a command that prevents you from joining the team with more players and it's in effect. 5v10 is what you get after all the cunts ragequit already.
Again... instead of making them not spawn just give them greater penalties the further the imbalance. Possible penalties: * Spawn time increases * (Health/ammo/calc juice) % lost * All VF perma sabotaged <-- including slowly dieing & new VF placed get sabbed instantly on finish build (obviously only in severe cases) * MAX Health capped LOWER then normal Have it slowly take effect over 1-2 minutes. This prevents rage quitters from effecting ending play to much.
you are right, one doesn't put the cart before the horse. stacking, ragequitting and artifically prolonging the game are the real issues. its nothing you can fix with code but with administration.
I have a different opinion. If teams are stacked, let the game end as fast as possible. There is no point in dragging out one sided games. My suggestions would encourage players to keep balanced teams, because if they don't balance, the game will end very quickly. Moreover, this is already daily procedure in NS2, where kill farming and torturing players on the losing (lost) team was a huge problem. Just to do nothing and putting everything onto the shoulders of admins is just a lazy excuse for people who like to play the "save win" game. Once the balance scripts are implemented, admins may decide to use them or turn them off by setting n and m to their preferred values.
This is the 4325th thread about balancing the teams. Basically, good ideas are hard to implement, while bad ideas are easy.
We have tickets...so...ticket bleed? If it's 2 players different make it 1/10s, if it's 3, make it 2/10s, etc..?
