Messages

31

New Server Proposals / Re: changing server 7 scoring discussion

« on: December 15, 2013, 07:16:28 pm »

Since we can't introduce other variables for scoring (so sad ) there is another option.

Set the goal to CV only so that there are no hard restrictions for performance. This way you can just race for the CV if you want and get a "high score" based on the time completed.

Point out with a comment or in the goal explanation that the performance is a SECONDARY goal. Something like this:

• PRIMARY objective: reach 30M company value
• SECONDARY objective: obtain as high performance as possible to further increase your score

This way newer players can just focus on getting that primary objective while knowing that there is a way to get higher points once you understand the game better.

As always the main issue is HOW we communicate things to our players. It took me a while to understand how someone had beaten my high score on s7 with exactly the same game length as me even tho we reached the same goal. Using my given "goal" explanation would solve this confusion.

But from what I recall, the first CB server was CB&CV. I remember back then that the motivation for the CV was for scoring.

The actual score was calculated purely on CV (and maybe perf.) because we couldn't use population at that time. We added the CV to the goal to make this slightly less awkward.
It was still a big problem and a very good reason to change the formula to what it is currently. Same as why I was requestion for a different parameter here. Sure it will somehow "work" to just disregard perf from the goal but it will cause confusion which means more work for admins just to explain what is really happening. (And as you pointed out earlier, most admins don't have that time).

32

New Server Proposals / changing server 7 scoring discussion

« on: December 15, 2013, 08:59:54 am »

EDIT: split from thread "changing server 7" because it got a bit out of hand. Use this thread to discuss the scoring on the new s7 (I might need to modify some of the messages later to make it fit this thread better).

Alex, I thought this thread was started to first get a general idea of the goals etc.. for the new server, not the specific settings (since those need to be tweaked anyway).
And true Beul overreacted in his response but from my point of view he does make a good point. We first need to get the general idea without worrying about the specific settings.
for example: "town size should be small" means, try setting it to 3, look at the size of the towns, if more than 2 towns are over 2k inhabitants (not sure if it's same for desert and temperate) it's too high and should be lowered.

I also pointed out that just removing the perf. from the goal but still using the current formula is a really bad idea.

second really important question that solves most of MY problems is:

is it possible to use BANK BALANCE/ MONTHLY INCOME / SOMETHING ELSE as the goal?
Edit: the answer was no

(answer this question in next post or at least point out to whom we should ask this).
The answer to that question could change many of my settings ...

33

New Server Proposals / Re: CHANGING SERVER 7

« on: December 13, 2013, 10:24:38 am »

You're absolutely right about the performance making a big difference in score. And true it does make for some more interesting strategies than just abuse that one most profitable resource in the game (being pax or, if all towns are tiny, coal).

But I have the same feeling as alex that the perf. hinders the new players a lot. Leaving it out of the goal is a good idea but this does require a different scoring system as it makes no sense.

Besides that I also feel that the performance doesn't really fit the goal on this tiny server.
For me a normal (big) game has 3 phases:

• build a quick money maker
• build a big network connecting all major hotspots on the map (think of 2 way oil)
• optimise the network and/or upgrade to newer trains

It is only in step 3 that you truly focus on getting that performance (remove trains running on loss, connect that missing resource etc...).
For me, the goal of this server should be to only focus on the first step and a mini version of step 2.

So I would love to see the settings I suggested with a race for cash instead of CV. The scoring should also reflect this so it would be awesome if we could adapt the CB scoring to use cash instead of population solving most of the big issues with the current scoring/goals/feel about the map.

Even better option (I think) is to measure quarterly income instead of cash so that it would be interesting to keep building until the end (whereas just cash gets counterproductive at some point).

34

New Server Proposals / Re: CHANGING SERVER 7

« on: December 11, 2013, 03:02:21 pm »

First things first:
ALEX HOW DARE YOU TOUCH S7 ... I KILL YOU!!!!!

with that being said, here's my constructive criticism:
I like the idea of no performance, making the goal of this server a race for CV (similar to population on CB servers). I do still feel that it should be a contest of money making lines (so goal not too high). No idea what a good number would be though. Maybe we should try to get some good players to achieve the highest CV in 30 minutes (invite solo/constructor/... ?) to get an idea of what is possible, then set the goal slightly higher so that the average player would need just under 1 hour to finish it. (current s7 games took me about 24 minutes, record times are 20 I think?)

No vehicle limit (or vehicles high enough to simulate this as it's technically impossible to have no limit) seems a good idea as well.
I do suggest to set up a script to figure out CV cheating (purchasing several vehicles in depot just for the CV) so that this can't be abused and we don't have to check the logs for each game just to find the cheaters ...

Other option that would be interesting but not sure if possible:
set the goal to bank balance instead of CV and disable transferring money. This makes it a true contest of profitability on your first trains and the only way to "cheat" is by selling/destroying everything you own to get a refund ... which is a really risky strategy with only a small benefit.

suggestions for the settings:
goal limit able to reach in less than: 30mins for fast players, 1hour for mediocre players, over 1 hour only for newbies who don't really understand the game.
starting with monorail: (no need to wait for ages for that first ka-ching!)
map size: 512x512 (some people think this is tiny already, we're not aiming for big networks here remember?)
vehicle limit: 500 (won't be reached anyway, so it's virtually infinite) (no ships tho)
noise limit: euhm, no planes?
town size: preferably rather small, since pax is too profitable (current records on s7 are all with pax trains for this reason)

ps Chucky:
I don't have anything against changing s7. My main issue was that the originial discussion was about changing it to something longer because mini games (1 hour or less) were not popular enough (with biased statistics, ask me about this if you're interested, I don't want to start a fight about that here). Changing s7 to something more interesting with still a short goal is not really a problem ^.^

35

Introduction / Re: Hi

« on: December 03, 2013, 08:12:16 am »

I should say that because I`m asking you something in topic, and you post the answer in another topic

You went off topic with your question on that thread, I didn't want to derail that thread any further ...
On the other hand, you were most likely not the only one wondering why I'm gone for a while so I put it here where I think it (kinda) belongs

ps: You are free to change s7 anytime, but be sure to have a good reason to do so. (One of the acceptable reasons is: nobody even looked at the server in the past months ... sorry Imus it is truly dead).

36

Suggestions / Re: Changing Moneytransfers

« on: November 28, 2013, 11:28:47 am »

Final answer here to make 1 thing clear:

1:
directly from http://wiki.openttd.org/Multiplayer_Rules:
Don't cheat to advance yourself within the game. Joining a company operated by someone else [...] to transfer money to your own company is unacceptable behaviour ...

It is obvious that sending money to your own company is NOT allowed by the general multiplayer rules.

2:
from our own rules:
The main intention of these rules and of every admin watching the server is to keep the fun for all players up. If you work against that intention and constantly annoy players and/or admins – even with only things that the rules don't explicitly forbid – you're still risking to get warned/kicked/banned!

Since it was clear that it was unacceptable behaviour (including the discusions afterwards) getting a punishment was in place.

From my point of view there is no need to change our rules and no need to disable moneytransfers (since they are still mostly used in a positive way to help newbies)

37

Introduction / Re: Hi

« on: November 26, 2013, 03:35:55 pm »

For those wondering why I've been inactive for a while now, I was too busy doing truly important things. Like finishing my thesis, taking a vacation, applying for a job and playing some other games together with my girlfriend.

I did graduate as a computer scientist so I'm officially an "engineer" now. How awesome is that?
I found a job at a hospital in belgium as a programmer. I'm able to read the forum and respond from time to time (when the other guys aren't looking at my screen) so you might see me lurking here. Right now when I'm at home I play guild wars2 with my girlfriend so I won't really be chatting on IRC or playing openttd games soon but this might change some time in the future.

Right now me and my GF signed a contract for the appartment where we can move in in februari. Maybe once I'm done moving I might pick up my admin duties again ^.^

If there are really important things to discuss (like changing s7) feel free to send me a message on the forum (or just post on the internal forum). I can make some time to give some constructive criticism. (for example: how dare you touch s7, I KILL YOU!)

38

Suggestions / Re: Changing Moneytransfers

« on: November 24, 2013, 08:10:41 pm »

Back on topic: here's my opinion as requested in the original post.

Although true that some money transfers at the start of the game can have a huge impact no matter how small, we don't really know of any cases where this enabled a new record.

The usual way that money transfers ARE used (that we know of) are:
- people join in really late and the good players send some money so they can quickly do SOMETHING at least (fun times)
- people abuse it to get better scores, are discovered as cheating and punished.

So it's a choice between allowing the first option and preventing the possibility to abuse...

I'd choose the latter one but since it makes so little difference overall I wouldn't care whichever option you would pick

39

New Server Proposals / Re: Temperate CityBuilder

« on: October 09, 2013, 09:12:44 pm »

If this means only pax/mail => NO! (because you can just transport pax/mail inside city and you'll just end up waiting for your city to grow)

Probably not the case so I don't see why it would be a bad idea.

(ps: Is there room for a new server?)

40

Suggestions / Re: Removing performance on small servers

« on: October 09, 2013, 09:09:40 pm »

Pro:
It really is the biggest difficulty for new players to reach a certain performance (perhaps even to figure out what performance is in the first place).

Con:

• Need a way to really make the goal difference clear to all players (especially new ones) to prevent confusion. (this might be a little bit tricky).
• Some of the charm of record attempts is lost. For example on s7: reaching 3M CV is easy, getting the required performance within 2 years is not.
• Doesn't this make it a lot easier to cheat on CV again? (the reason we use multiple goals in the first place for the scoring)

Overall I think it really is a good idea but we need a way to prevent the cheating and perhaps update (increase?) the CV goals a little bit.

41

Tournaments & Battles / Re: inter community tournament discussion

« on: August 09, 2013, 07:40:36 am »

Sorry The_Dude but I currently got very little time to do anything outside of my thesis (deadline soon and still too much work -.-). I barely have the time to check and reply on the forum right now =D

If you want to get the first match done soon I suggest you ask Batt and Geert if they got the time and know a third player to join them. If we got to wait till I got the time again to find more players it probably wont be happening before September :s

It's good to see you guys are ready for it tho

42

Suggestions / Re: Server Suggestion: Temperate, 1970 to 2080, 800/900 Performance, 40 Million CV

« on: August 09, 2013, 07:32:07 am »

I just wanted to point out what the weakness of the goal was to know what to be careful of when implementing this game type. If there is an easy way to cheat, a few people do tend to use it. (This happened some time ago on the airplane server, where it was just too easy to win fast and get a lot of points, so the top 3 players who abused this had 3 tot 10 times the score of other people). An easy way to get around this initially would be to give the server only a low score so that people wont play it just to abuse it like that and only play it for fun. The more extreme examples for this are the CB servers which didn't have any scoring at all in the beginning and were still the most popular servers, just because the game type was fun.

Like you said, it's good to have a nice diversity in our games so it is at least worth to actually test the type of game to see if the benefits outweigh the problems. So feel free to keep suggesting things, we like it

Now as a last note: if you want to get your idea on the test server FAST (like in 2 days) it would be best to try to find the IRC to find the correct settings for your server. Finding the chat is explained here (chat menu on the main site): http://www.n-ice.org/openttd/contact.php
But don't use the embedded chat, that one is a bit outdated so you wont find anyone there. If you don't have your own client just click the first link on that page to use mibbit (browser based IRC).

43

Suggestions / Re: Server Suggestion: Temperate, 1970 to 2080, 800/900 Performance, 40 Million CV

« on: August 05, 2013, 02:09:50 pm »

From my experience with TTD I can tell that ALL goals have their problems.

For CV goals, the most effective way to reach the goal is by creating one big line spanning the entire map and then feed all nearby primary industries to that big main transfer station on both sides ...
On steamer world it's slightly less effective to span the entire map because of the slow trains but the main concept stays the same. After that it's rarely worth it to continue building another decent system so it becomes a waiting game instead especially since having more vehicles reduces the earned n-ice points (to prevent the CV cheating). (Some people do enjoy this tho)

The problem with focusing a lot more on the perf and have a small CV goal in comparison would just shift the powerplay to a different style. Those 120 vehicles don't need to make a profit actually unless if you set goal to over 900, you just need to load/unload something.  So what if I would play a game with a 900 perf and 10M CV goal like this:
- Start with a decent pax/coal money making line or 2 over a normal distance. (Takes about 10 -15 minutes as I've shown on s7)
- When money starts rolling in, build a lot of bus stations inside the bigger cities and run some busses in a circle inside them (to quickly reach the 80 stations and the amount of cargo of the perf.)
- I would then build some truck lines to feed primaries to a somewhat nearby industry and spam trucks just to reach the vehicle number, if trucks are disabled or set really low for some obscure reason, it also works with trains of length 2 for example)

With this (ugly) strategy I get all the perf. things except for the minimum profit (that's why the 900 perf. goal). Building this would take what, 2 hours tops? It's not exactly fun to play like this in my opinion but if it wins the game 3 times faster, why bother not doing it, right?

If you do require a minimum profit (let's say perf 950) it suddenly jumps from super easy to really hard for a lot of players. From what I've seen we got roughly 10 people total who have no problem reaching this goal ... but they don't play every day, all day long, so that would mean you would be lucky if you had a decent player on the same server.
And like Batt said, we can't really customize this setting to do anything about it.

For city builder games the situation is completely different. The positive side here is that you force players into an active build style to keep up with the huge demands for the city. The difficulty lies in figuring out how to make that city grow fast, and even then it sometimes depends on getting the best starting town.  This means that for CB games it comes down to a race to find the better starting town and have the skill to keep it growing and then hoping your town grows faster than your opponents (if there are any).

TL;DR:
CV based goal (perf secondary target) makes for boring inactive play style that a group of players enjoy.
perf based (with CV secondary target) is either super easy to abuse, or too hard for most of the players to reach and would thus be empty most of the time.
city builder: the good thing is that it forces active gameplay for a decent amount of time.  down side is that it's far from clear how to make your town grow fast. The main issue is that it's somewhat luck based.

Anyway, I DO like what you are trying to achieve but I don't think that perf is the way to reach it.

44

Tournaments & Battles / inter community tournament discussion

« on: July 11, 2013, 09:43:39 pm »

The initial agreements for the tournament are done and can be found here: http://www.novapolis.net/tournament
The most important ones are:
- each team has up to 3 players
- each community hosts 1 game with their own rules
- we can choose our own goal, but it should take at most 4 hours to complete.

btpro and novapolis are probably going to do a CB (city builder) goal. So what do you guys think, should we do a CB as well? Or should we go for CV instead? Don't worry too much about the exact server settings, I'll open a new thread later once we decided which of the 2 we are going to do.

Don't forget to sign up as well. If we don't find players for the preferred goal, it would be stupid to organize it, no?
www.n-ice.org/openttd/forum/index.php?topic=447

45

General / Re: TOURNAMENT REQUESTS

« on: July 11, 2013, 07:33:55 pm »

Yes geert, so start agreeing on settings so we can watch the epic-ness